The Gravity of Goals

Newton formulated a theory of gravity where the attraction between two objects depends on their masses and the distance between them. Normally this theory is only applied to matter, but I think it is also relevant to the way we choose between goals.

The "Gravity of Goals" equation would reformulate Newton's model like this: my "attraction" to a goal depends on the amount I value the goal (mass) and the amount of time it will take to satisfy it (distance). The longer it takes to satisfy the goal, the less likely I will pursue it. The more I value a goal, the more likely I will pursue it. Faced with multiple goals, the goal I pursue will be the one with the highest payoff (measured by subjective calculations of combined "mass" and "distance").

Imagine an asteroid hurtling through space, irresistibly pulled by a number of planets, some larger than others. That's pretty much what we are, just in a more subjective way.

Hippies

I was thinking about hippies today and realized that really they're just Americans who have adopted elements of Indian culture. I started going down the list of things I think make a hippie a hippie, and I came up with:

1. Practicing yoga rigorously (not that stuff at the gym)
   
2. Sympathy or explicit belief in an Eastern Religion (Hinduism, Buddhism)
3. Belief in relative morality
4. Pacifistic or non-violent bent
5. Tendency to prefer natural remedies and cures over chemicals (exemplified in, e.g., ayurveda)
6. A tendency to renounce the world (derived from the concept of sannyasa)
   

Notice how all of these ideas have roots in, or are affiliated with, India and Indian culture! Of course, there are fundamental differences, and [full disclosure: I'm Indian] I think hippies understand these ideas in more naive ways than Indians (epitomized by the hippie saying "Why can't we just all get along?"). But still I'm fascinated by the connection.

From my personal experience, I always thought Indian culture was confined to the Indian culture, mostly because no one around me knew anything about it at all. But now that seems not to be the case—and it makes sense. Although Indians and Americans have begun to interact only recently (beginning, chiefly, with Swami Vivekananda), the effects of this interaction cannot just vanish into thin air. I think today I found at least one of the effects.

The In Crowd

All through grade school I believed in the social hierarchy. I believed that it was more prestigious to hang out with some groups of kids rather than others, or that there was something intrinsically better about being in certain company. To hang out with the cool kids, then, was success, and not to do so was to fail—not only fail, but also have to hang out with them.

So of course I worked as hard as I could for "success," and in so doing I treated other kids based on which group they belonged to. If they were part of the "upper" group, then I tried my hardest to be congenial and friendly and impressive; but if they were part of the "riffraff," the kids with faces covered in pimples who sat in the corner discussing anime, then I made sure to end the conversation quickly, lest a cool kid catch me and implicate me by association.

But I never made it into the in crowd. I spent most of my school days alone, confused, not realizing that in pursuing the people who "should" have been my friends, I ended up alienating the people who would have been my friends.

Humility in the Classroom

When my political philosophy professor mentioned how he invites debate, pushback, and skepticism, I think he made a mistake...and sure enough, within an hour a kid took advantage of the invitation to make a complete ass of himself in front of the entire class.

In relation to game theory, and specifically The Prisoner's Dilemma, the professor was talking about how some societies are more cooperative are more cooperative than others, and was using his experiences in Minnesota and New Orleans as examples. He said people in Minnesota are extremely cooperative, whereas, as he put it, people in New Orleans wouldn't cooperate even if you shot them. He then went on to cite research that shows that whether we cooperate or not depends on what everyone else is doing; if everyone's cooperating, then we tend to cooperate too, and vice versa.

Then the ass raised his hand. I think you're wrong about this, he said, and I think I understand why you are wrong too. He then proposed some theory of geographical determinism, claiming that people in colder climates need to be more cooperative in order to survive the winter, and that this explains the discrepancy between Minnesota and New Orleans. Uh-huh, said the professor; that would also explain perfectly why the Russians are such cooperative people...

Of course there's nothing wrong with honest intellectual inquiry. If you see things another way, go ahead and share it. But do it in a respectful way: the classroom is no place for picking fights and trying to show how "smart" you are.

Afraid of discouraging students, professors have taken to letting this kind of arrogance go unchecked, happy that students are at least speaking. But this is dangerous. I think students may get the misconception that the rest of the world will be just as patient, leading them to an inflated ego, an argumentative personality, and a head full of empty ideas. No, students need to understand that the classroom has no room for intellectual pageantry and that there is a reason they are not lecturing themselves; the quicker they do this, the better off everyone will be.

But let's not go to the other extreme either. I am not talking about complete deference to authority and seniority. Like most things in life, being a good student requires striking a balance--in this case between independent thinking and deference. It's a difficult balance to attain, but humility (which is appallingly scant in university classrooms) makes it possible.