Modern Art

I made a Facebook post a few months ago which mocked a lot of modern art. This was motivated by a visit to a German art museum in which some of the art was so abstract and profound that it genuinely could be mistaken for ordinary furniture. Some of the paintings were just colored entirely red or blue. Some artworks were a pile of clothes lying on the floor. I distinctly remember questioning whether I should sit down on a bench or not, in case it was an artwork. To mock what I perceived as nonsense, I made a post which had two photos of modern art, and one photo of a dry wall, and openly challenged anyone to confidently say which 2/3 were photos actual artworks. As you can imagine, I got some negative feedback implying that artwork in intrinsically subjective, and hence trying to analyze the quality of artwork is pointless. This is my response to that feedback.

Firstly, I am incredibly critical of this whole notion of subjectivity. I think everything (yes, everything) can be objectively analyzed. Take for example the statement "John thinks blue is the best color" and "Mark thinks yellow is the best color". You'd be tempted to think that in actuality, there is no "best" color, and hence this can only fall into the realm of subjectivity. However, I think the only reason we think this is because the word "best" is very undefined. If we simply define "best" (for example; the color that has sold the most liters of paint worldwide) then you can find out what the best color is, and either or both John and Mark could be wrong. And even if John or Mark disagree about what the definition of "best" is, then the question can be broken up into two separate statements (one using Johns definition, and one using Marks definition), which can both be independently objectively analyzed.

Secondly, even in practice, what we consider subjective material still needs to be graded somehow. Architects need a mark to get their degree, TV shows air based on ratings, and artists still sell their paintings. At some point, someone has to objectively measure their work in some way. So to argue that subjective artworks shouldn't be measured is impractical.

Lastly, let me entertain the idea that subjectivity exists, and all artwork can't be objectively analyzed. If this is the case then what is considered artwork is boundless. I can call a photo of a puppy playing in snow an artwork,  I can call any quote from twitter an artwork, I can even call a sound recording of me forcing out a stubborn shit in a Thai bathroom an artwork. This means everything is art! And none of it is any better or worse than anything else. And so, if that is the case, then my criticism of modern art is also a work of art in itself which shouldn't be analyzed, so my criticizer was being a hypocrite. Also, more generally, the statement that artwork can't be objectively analyzed, objectively analyzes the artistic statement that artwork should be analyzed, which is circular!

Politics and AI

Let me start this by saying I am tremendously ignorant about politics and everything I say here is likely to change if I ever become more informed. That being said, I think I know the bare minimum to warrant an opinion about the future of politics.

It's hard to get an accurate view on what the state of politics actually looks like. Are political affairs as chaotic and emotional as we see them? Or is that what it is made to appear like due to polarizing media? For example, was there really any major threat between North Korea and the US? Or was this a very calculated game from the start being played by 2 very rational players? I'm going to assume that the answer lies somewhere in between; democracies can be somewhat chaotic, prone to populism and indecisive about long term issues.

If this is the case, then I think we should be a bit worried. I think the tango between traditional politics and technology is a dangerous one. Our advanced military capability and our economic dependence on oil and the internet has created a very unstable peak in prosperity. Several hundred years ago, if a king made a horrible decision, an empire would fall, thousands would die and some knowledge would be lost. Now, if a horrible decision is made by the United States, the whole world will crumble due to how interconnected we all are.

Now I know what you're saying. The president isn't a dictatorship; his views are checked and counter balanced by other members of his party. Surely it would take a miracle for everyone involved to make a horrible decision like this. I actually think this isn't true, I think that due to the stunning complexity of today's interconnected world, it has become remarkably difficult to predict the long term consequences of any action. I also think humans are very prone to biases and logical fallacies that can make it hard to think rationally about heated political issues.

Let me be clear about what I'm not saying. I'm not saying we can expect a 'butterfly event' (a mathematical description of chaos; where the flapping of a butterflies wings in Texas can cause a hurricane in Japan). I'm not saying that due to the super complexity of the world, adding one more immigrant into the US will be the cause of world peace or world destruction. I'm saying there are big political decisions that will be made in the future, and it'll be increasingly hard for human politicians to tell what the optimum decision should be.

This is where AI comes in. At the moment AI is in it's early stages, but it's only an amount of time until it gets developed enough to pattern seek far better than we can. I think a gradual, controlled phase-in of AI to help predict the long and short term consequences of political decisions could be a necessary next step for humanity. I think if it's done right, and we define our values in the right way, then we don't need to worry about a 1984 like scenario.

I suspect some time in the next 100 years, humanity will be pressing against an upper limit of human ingenuity and foresight. I think for the sake of progress, we will need to do away with revamped political structures, no matter how much we currently currently cherish them, and start building our benevolent babysitter.

Update on my life

Surprisingly, I don't write much introspective shit on my blog. Well all that is going to change!

I've recently passed the 2 months mark since starting my thesis. My project is all about Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) which is a device that is used mainly to scan the topography of a super small (like atom level, small) surface. The math behind it is fascinating and my thesis supervisors and really helpful and nice. However, I'm currently doing my literature review at the moment which involves reading plenty of papers and summarizing them. This is actually a much more challenging and boring job than I thought - it's a very inefficient way to learn and it's very hard to stay motivated.

None the less, my professor recently offered me a PhD position (4 years at $50,000 AUD) after my masters thesis is done. Because it's a highly sought after position, I need to make the decision within 2 months. Honestly, I think I'm likely to decline the offer, even though I love studying and hate the real world, simply because I want to trial the whole thesis thing for a bit longer before I commit myself to another 4 years of it. But while I've been tossing up the idea of doing a PhD, I've forced myself to confront my fears of the 9-5 and reevaluate my stance on the real world.

Anyone who knows me probably thinks I have an irrational fear of the 9-5. I can understand why; I talk endlessly about horrible work culture, the arbitrary rules, and the stupid clothing policy. However, I think it's time to open up and share with the world (or at least the 3 or 4 people who read this blog) why I desperately don't want to go back into the real world. But first! A quick summary.

Shortly after graduating from my bachelors, I rejected my fathers advice and got a job at UNSW as an 'educational developer'. The job was painfully boring and poorly managed. I would get most of my weeks work done by Monday, and spend the following week browsing Facebook. 2 years later, after learning almost nothing, and earning a small financial cushion of $50,000, I applied for a job in New Zealand as an acoustic Engineer. I got accepted and started working there. The environment was entirely different; instead of being forgotten in a corner of a cubical for weeks on end, I was micromanaged to an insane level. Every 5 minutes of my time had to be accounted for, including bathroom breaks. I fell behind almost as soon as I started; I wasn't good at report writing and struggled learning the software. This problem compounded overtime and was worsened by having a very intimidating boss. Less than 6 months later, I quit.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I want to get off my chest, my two main fears I have about the real world that has been instilled in me from these two experiences:
1) UNSW gave me an extremely strong fear of losing huge chunks of my life and motivation to work routine. I should have left that job in the first 6 months, but I persisted, not out of bravery, but because I had lost the motivation to pursue anything else. The lack of motivation didn't stop at the office, it dragged itself into aspects of my personal life as well. Every tutorial I made in those two years were never used - it really was a complete waste of time.
2) AECOM increased my insecurities about my own intelligence. I've had this insecurity since I was a kid, but it was magnified 10 fold while working for AECOM. I still honestly think my inability to succeed at AECOM can almost entirely be boiled down to me not being smart enough.

And so there we have it. The two main reasons I desperately don't want to enter the real world are because; 1) I'm afraid i'll waste several years of my life, and 2) I'm afraid that I simply won't be smart enough to do the job.

Technology and values

Time to grease up the cogs of this blog with philosophical lubricant!

I've been trying to work on a big creative artwork alongside my Literature Review for my Thesis. It's still in it's infant stages and I'm not being very productive with it, but if I manage to complete it, it should reflect a lot of my philosophical views and fears for the future of humanity. I'm trying to create an interactive short story which I will narrate and post publicly via YouTube. This short story, if I do it right, should be about the difficulties humanity will face if technology succeeds in empowering humanity to pursue it's own values. Let me explain:

I don't think there is any objective set of values that humanity should follow. I think ideals like emancipation, equality, lack of hunger, freedom of speech etc are invented values that ultimately stem from biological impulses we've evolved with. Coming up with systems and tools to accomplish these values are great at first, but by following our gut too far, we risk doing more harm than good. I think this is most easily seen when it comes to food in the 21st century. Our desire to minimize hunger has resulted in the mass production of highly addictive sugar which has resulted in obesity and health problems. Clearly empowering humanity with the technology to minimize hunger has backfired to some degree, not due to technological faults, but because our values weren't fully refined. 

Now imagine a 'happy ending' to a science fiction novel where each individual human has been empowered by technology to pursue whatever goals they like. I would argue that this will still be a dystopia because humanity will inevitably trap itself chasing a poorly refined goal. If you give a teenage boy unlimited time and resources to pursue his own goals, he could simply just spiral into an addiction of video games.