Letters to PiePie

Enthusiasm Is A Superpower

July 6, 2024

Dear PiePie,

I recently had appendicitis in far-flung Los Angeles. It’s never easy to be in pain and be in the hospital, much less in unfamiliar surroundings and without family around. But, in spite of the labyrinthic system, in spite of the fact that not a single person can tell me what the final bill will amount to – “this is the US, you just focus on getting well, luv” – the nursing and doctor teams were wonderfully upbeat.

In particular, there was a nursing staff named Arturo with an infectious joy who wheeled me to the operating theater and, while it may not seem like much, his positivity really did lifted up my day. And it reminded me of Kevin Kelly’s “Excellent Advice for Living”, where he wrote that ‘Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points’.

Whether in workplaces or group projects, in sports teams or book clubs, genuine enthusiasm and the effort and positivity that accompanies it will almost certainly make you stand out. The operative word here being…genuine. It is hard to fake enthusiasm, and I have no good advice for how to be enthusiastic when you’re just … not.

But I have found that if you are able to see the bigger picture or purpose behind what might appear to be a mundane, boring and repetitive task, you can often be more genuinely enthusiastic than the next person made to do the same task. And sometimes, that is enough.

Hoping that you’ll find things that spark your enthusiasm!

Love, Dad

Rasa Tabula

May 28, 2024

Dear PiePie,

Should you choose to be a parent one day, I just want to pen down how I thought about this gnarly topic of raising a human (?!), which is as new to us as it will be to you, and how that might have evolved following our learnings from raising you.

And perhaps, depending on how our ‘methods’ may have impacted you, you might choose to adopt some or none of these.

I broadly think about a baby as a blank canvas, a ‘rasa tabula’, of which it is our duty to shape and ‘color’ to create the picture that is now a vibrant. How I went about doing it, is shaped by how I thought about traits and characteristics within human.

I imagine everyone as being a combination of an uncountable number of ‘dials’, almost like a DJ mixboard with the row of switches. Each dial represents a characteristic. This could things like propensity to share, with the extremes of not sharing (selfish) or very willing to share (can’t say no), or how in touch with emotions one is, from not at all to very fully.

Crucially, neither extreme is better or worse than the other. It just is.

As would be apparent, there can be any number of switches. I don’t try to define what these might be, except that everyone possess a unique combination of such ‘settings’, and that these ‘settings’ evolve over time as we have new experiences that affect specific switches.

One important note I want to make here is this: the good characteristics and the bad characteristics of a person comes from the same trait settings. One can’t praise that someone is thrifty while lamenting that they are not willing to buy gifts. The exact traits that may be a boon in certain situations could prove a bane in others, and is something we have to accept in totality.

Anyway, back to parenting. Within this framework, I hypothesize that the first few interactions the baby has with the world help to set the ‘initial’ settings for the dials – and I assume that one starts at the extreme until further experiences help to moderate and move the baby towards the centre, as the world has a knack of doing. So for example, if your first experiences of us as your parents are that we do as we say we will do, it is likely that you start off with more ‘trust’ of the world.

What this means is that sometimes, I try to think about how my action may affect your ‘dial’ settings and, combined with where I think you are positioned on that ‘dial’ and where I might want you to be, I would condition my reaction accordingly. Oftentimes, a reaction might affect multiple ‘dials’ and it then becomes a matter of prioritisation.

If this doesn’t make sense, ask me in person when you need to figure this out.

One trade-off, for example, is that you eat super slowly and don’t feed yourself even though you’re five. And if you feed by yourself, you often don’t eat a lot. But, although we try to encourage you to eat by yourself, I lean towards just feeding you if that makes you eat more. Because I believe everyone will eventually eat by themselves, but the nutrients that you’re not taking in now is ‘permanently lost’ as you can’t revisit this stage of development. This is prioritisation at play.

Being a parent is a million micro-reactions/decisions. We often aren’t even conscious of how we might be reacting to the child and what impact that may have, but when we are trying to actively shape your character, this is how I’m thinking.

I hope it’s worked out for you.

Love, Dad

Greatness

May 20, 2024

Dear PiePie,

I have long thought about greatness, often in the context of sports. The Greatest of All Time (GOAT) debates. How everyone tries to say it’s Michael Jordan or Bill Russell or LeBron James in basketball, and they all have their metrics and what they value. And it’s the same in music or investments as well. Elvis Presley might be a great, and in the future, Taylor Swift will quite possibly be considered one as well. Warren Buffett would be high up the ranking list of GOAT debates for investors, and so too would George Soros and Peter Lynch.

So what makes them great?

Is it excellence? Certainly. They were excellent at what they do. But that’s not enough. Plenty of basketball players have won a title or have been scoring champs. Plenty of singers have had No. 1 hits, sometimes even multiple hits. And plenty of investors have had outstanding years. The main commonality across these greats were the longevity of their excellence.

Greatness is sustained excellence. That one was so good, for so long, that there is nary a doubt that the excellence is by skill and not by chance. And that perhaps they were so good for so long that just pure talent doesn’t cut it anymore, that it also hints at sustained effort and resilience.

Which leads me to, what’s a necessary component of greatness?

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang recently gave spoke at a Stanford summit, and he said “Greatness is not intelligence, it comes from character, and that is informed out of people who have suffered.”

Unfortunately, some level of pain and suffering, to build resilience and character, is a pre-requisite of greatness, especially as we have defined it to be sustained excellence. There is no fluke to greatness, it has to be underpinned by the resilience to grind out the work, day after day, even in the face of adversity.

Most importantly, there is no certainty that, despite such hard work, one will achieve greatness. All this is to say, it will be a lot of hard work and effort, for a very uncertain outcome.

Still, we persevere if we have a shot at being great. For the opportunity to possibly be great is not an opportunity that is bestowed to all, and we should thus honor such possibility with optimism (that it might be us in spite of the odds) and hard work. And wish for a healthy dose of luck.

Love, Dad

Our Beliefs Can Be Wrong

March 25, 2024

Dear PiePie,

Came across a video that attempted to define beliefs and values – beliefs being what you believe to be true, and values being what you believe to be important (while presumably being also true). Most importantly, our beliefs doesn’t have to define us and we need not attach ego to our beliefs. I thought it was an interesting lens to thinking about right and wrong.

What we believe to be true about the world, even if we are almost dead certain of it, is not who we are. It is simply a fact of the world that we believe in, and which we might possibly change our mind about if presented with compelling evidence – although, do beware of ‘evidence’ in the age of AI.

Basing your sense of self on your beliefs – on what you believe to be true – can make being ‘wrong’ a major threat to your identity. And this results in a more tightly held viewpoint than is possibly sound when actually, the disproving of a belief doesn’t have to threaten your sense of self. It’s ok to have had a belief that turns out to be untrue! What’s important is having the openness to allow yourself to find out what right is, than being right.

I believe the Earth to be round, and while I think it is unlikely someone will convince me otherwise, I hope I have the openness to be open to contra-viewpoints should that day come. More importantly, that there are such discussions and challenges to my viewpoints should not cause me to lose my sense of self.

I thought this might be an important food for thought as, young as you are, your beliefs are still being formed and may come under challenge from time to time. And it might occasionally be painful to have a core belief torn down, but I’m here to say that that’s ok. That’s growth. We iterate and we move ahead. You got this.

Love, Dad

2023 Year In Review

December 27, 2023

Dear PiePie,

As I reflect on the year past, thinking about what to write, the question that came up was: in about 15 years, what will 2023 be known for?

I believe, when we look back then, this will be seen as the year that AI first seeped into mass consciousness. Work on AI has been ongoing for a while, but it seems ChatGPT, launched late 2022, really came up with what will likely be viewed as the first ‘killer’ application of AI technology. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the first widely adopted form of AI is that of a conversational chatbot. I suppose language is indeed a mirror of thinking, the conduit by which our intelligence is expressed. I sometimes wonder if artificial intelligence is good at just generating words and mimicking intelligence, or at actually thinking. I suppose it doesn’t matter if we can’t tell the difference.

But AI is such that it already has the capability to write letters like this to you, much more quickly than I can or ever will be able to, and much more fluently as well. I guess, for now at least, the ideas of what I want to say to you remains inimitable, although I expect that it will one day be able to do that, and better as well.

What remains is provenance. It will not be that we can say or write things more eloquently or profoundly than AI. We can’t. It will be that those words come from us. That we are the ones who are saying or writing, and hopefully, meaning those words.

A decade from now, as we grow comfortable navigating AI in our daily life, we may well look back and see the current pre-AI times as prehistoric. Just as we now wonder how people lived without internet connectivity and smartphones and Google and airplanes and electricity and so on.

The truth is, humans have a profound ability to get by. We are infinitely adaptable, as long as we are given enough time to make the adaptation, and as long as we have within us a teeny bit of hope, a shining bright light to keep us going.

I haven’t written much this year, but you are the shining bright light that keeps us chugging along.

Love, Dad

Responsibility Is A Privilege

October 30, 2023

Dear PiePie,

When you get older, you’ll probably yearn to make your own decisions, to have less people tell you what to do. And that’s only natural because before that, people are always trying to guide or direct you in certain directions. They may have the best of intentions, like Mommy or me, or they might not. They will all certainly try to tell you what to do about your life. But you will eventually reach the stage where you will, in fact, get to make your own choices about the path you’d like to walk on. Hurray?

Further along that path, the choices you make no longer simply concern you alone. You will make decisions where you are accountable for the outcomes, where there will be impact on others – your family, your friends, the communities you are in, or the society around you. From having many voices early on telling you what to do, there will be less people alongside you the further you go. The further you are along your own unique path. You will, therefore, be responsible for the choices you make.

These responsibilities may feel heavy. They may create pressure and stress. And that is normal. You feel the burden of the responsibilities because you care. And that is a good thing.

When the burden feels too great to bear, remember, that pressure is a privilege. That the responsibility which falls on your shoulders, is a privilege. It may not feel like one, but it is. When you experience such pressure and hold such responsibilities, you’re “In The Room Where It Happens”. Where decisions get made. Treasure it.

Some will never get to be in such rooms. And some never want to be, anyways. But just in case you ever are, I hope you are able to embrace it and recognize the responsibility and pressure that comes with it as the privilege that it is.

Love, Dad

放飞自我

August 14, 2023

亲爱的派派，

今天，碰到了一位非常热血，非常不想被社会约束的年轻人，一位觉得在社会里当普通的那位没什么不好。他有颗炽热的心，非常有主见，当然，父母也肯花钱让他到处游荡。

他写了这么一段：

人生不该是一次前往坟墓的旅程
目的不应该是为了
安全抵达一具保存完好的漂亮尸体
而应该是在一片烟雾中侧身滑行
彻底耗尽、完全筋疲力尽
大声宣布wow! what a ride!

这让我想，我会希望你是这样子吗？这样的我行我素，即便毕业两年了还追逐着也许遥远的梦。是否迟早大家都得被社会捆绑着，约束着，毕竟活在现实生活中。或,是否我这样看他的眼光，就已经是他感受的社会约束呢？

我会肯花钱让你这样吗？实说，不太肯。

但，如果问我，我是否宁愿你是很有主见，当一位因不服从而突出的人，还是宁愿你默默的被社会洗脑，失去自我？这两个极端之间，我还是希望，只要三观正确，你是自信，我行我素的模样。我希望你是活的灿烂辉煌的。只希望你足够坚强，因为那选择是累的，也希望我们有能力和意愿帮你坚持。

因为，身为父母，即便不支持你的决定，也得尽量支持你。我们是在你这一旁的。永远都是。

爱你, 爸爸

Autotelic

August 8, 2023

Dear PiePie,

I came across this word – autotelic – recently. It is an adjective that describes an activity that has an end or purpose in itself.

I thought that’s an important quality in the dreams that you pursue. Is it autotelic? In the pursuit of that dream, is the pursuit itself also an end and purpose? It’s a lot easier to sustain the pursuit of the dream if the milestones and checkpoints along the way, the pursuit, is meaningful to you.

That the trying and the having tried, regardless of the outcome, are worthwhile, is something I feel many forget about. It’s apparent in hindsight and most appreciate the path then, but by gosh it is tough to be grateful about the grind while you’re in the midst of it.

So if you’re feeling tired about the grind towards a goal – and truthfully, most goals have a price to pay – perhaps reframing how you think about the path you are taking towards that goal will sustain you more.

To quote Robert Pirsig, “It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.” I’m rooting for you on your journey.

Love, Dad

Chapter 4

April 16, 2023

Dear PiePie,

You turn 4 today, and that means it has been 3 years to the day since I thought about writing you a series of letters for when you grow up. 3 years – it seems short in the grand scheme of things, but looking back, so much has changed in that time.

When I wrote that first letter, it was whilst we were trapped at home in the midst of a global pandemic. The trajectory of that pandemic was uncertain and thousands were dying by the day. We didn’t know how long we would need to stay stuck at home for. That first birthday, we ordered in some food, put up some decorations, and had a simple celebration at home.

Fast forward to your 4^th birthday, we went to a large play gym with your cousins and played hard amidst a crowd of kids. It was business as usual in the world, as the pandemic fades behind the rear-view mirror and we worry about crowds in restaurants and at the airport. Life ebbs and flows, and meanders unpredictably, and soon, we have forgotten more than we can remember.

When I wrote that first letter, I had wanted to write weekly. That seems like a pretty foolish goal now. I’m lucky to keep a monthly schedule at the moment and goodness knows I’ll falter.

You’re now comfortable with school, having made some friends, and you’re better able to communicate what you want to express. You’re quick to whine, but also incredibly quick-witted. Some of your comebacks to our nagging are logical leaps to behold, and I continue to be amazed at how you’ve grown. You have blossomed beautifully.

Love, Dad

What Makes Us, Us

March 18, 2023

Dear PiePie,

By the time you grow up, artificial intelligence will likely be tightly intertwined within our everyday lives. I have no idea how or when artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be upon us, but I suspect that day is not far off.

I am optimistic that humans will find a way to harness the powers of AGI for good, and yet, it is inevitable that there will be significant shifts in the way of life. And that will be uncomfortable to many. I found that it is not the absolute harshness of the conditions that gets at us, but the changing of conditions, which catches us unprepared, that creates turmoil.

But with artificial intelligence bursting into mainstream consciousness, and their ability to do a lot of the ‘knowledge work’ that we had previously associate as the unique domain of humans, it raised the question of what makes us, us. Artificial intelligence should, by the time you read this, be able to demonstrate creativity and be able to create music, poem, visual arts, movie scripts etc. What, then, separates the outputs of AI from the creations of flesh-bound artisans?

I expect the following to age badly. But it seems to me that what separates us from AI constructs is the evocation of shared experiences, the weaving of our memories into our actions and viewpoints. We live in analog, even if part of that analog world is gradually replaced with digital.

By analog, I mean that our senses capture a continuously variable physical quantity, rather than the bits and bytes of digital. Colors exist on a spectrum, as do volume and pitch and smell and touch pressure. The minute changes along the spectrum, even if almost imperceptible, are what evokes feelings.

It’s the live singing performance, with less than perfect harmonisations caused by genuine emotions, that causes goosebumps to rise. It is a sepia-tinted photograph of a playground you used to play at as a child, that is no longer around, which aroused nostalgia. It could be how Mommy tousled your hair, how I carried you around, or how Yaya fed you, that makes you, you.

Our routines give us comfort, and as they change, old routines become memories laced with deep feelings. These are what we evoke later on as we blaze through life, in the conversations we have, in the things we do, in the hearts we touch.

In that sense, I suppose AI is the collective aggregate of human writings and visuals and videos that we have digitised. As a whole, it might be us. But it is neither you nor I as a singular, although it would be myopic to think that AI will not eventually be personalised. Still, with AI being trained on things from the web, and ever more AI-generated content being dumped online, it seems apparent that unless something reins it in, these models will become increasingly divorced from the core human experience. The things that make us, us.

Love, Dad