Was thinking about the phenomenon where people tend to open up much more towards fellow travelers who they are likely never to see again, and a sort of equation comes to mind:

Where v is vulnerability, t is trust, and f is familiarity.

People who we are familiar with also tend to have influence on our immediate environment, so we tend to show less vulnerability towards them. On the other hand, we'll probably never see that stranger we are travelling with again, so we are more comfortable being open.

However, if trust is high, being open is also typically less of an issue. After all, vulnerability is about increasing the possibility of getting harmed, and trust is knowing that you are less likely to be intentionally harmed.

There are all kinds of variables one could add to this, like one's innate sense of psychological security. But I kind of like this formation. It tells a lot about relationships without requiring you to know a lot about both people.

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Categorized under: #psychology

Thinking about friends who don't mature as fast, a common trait seem to be defensiveness.

Defensiveness is a particularly pernicious problem because by virtue of a person being defensive, others are less likely to give them feedback.

It's almost always easier to maintain a so-so relationship with someone who is defensive, rather than endangering the friendship through constructive feedback. Over time, barring exceptional circumstances, the defensive person will continue to miss out on opportunities to grow and find themselves surrounded by shallow friendships.

The same principles apply to work. A person who is hostile to feedback will lock themselves out of working relationships and opportunities to grow.

My takeaway from this is to prioritize fixing my defensiveness over most other negative traits I might perceive in myself. This way, I can pave the way for meaningful relationships and personal growth in the future.

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Categorized under: #social, #psychology

Last year, I watched a little-known anime released in 2016 called Flip Flappers. The show is obscure for good reasons. There's an unusual amount of fanservice, the plot falls apart near the end, and most of the side characters come across as being very two-dimensional.

However, there was one aspect of the show that made a deep impression on me when I first saw it, and over the past few months, I have only come to appreciate that aspect of the show more and more. In this post, I want to capture this particular part of Flip Flappers that made it a special show for me.

(This post will by necessity include some mild spoilers, but I will keep it as light as possible.)
Flip Flappers centers around the story of Cocona, a middle school student who is unable to decide the high school that she wants to attend. To her, this decision seem to have the potential to decide the rest of her life. However, all around her, other students seem unconcerned about their decisions – they seem to have decided quickly play and chat during as usual, and appear not to have given much thought to the issue.

Among these students, the upperclassman Iroha Irodori is an exception. She spends her lunch break on painting, and after class can be found in the art prep room (of which she is the sole maintainer of) drinking tea and working on more art pieces. Unlike the rest of the students at the school, Iroha is thoughtful, calm, and caring. Moreover, she possesses a distinct individuality that few in the school seems to have, and Cocona finds herself drawn to her in order understand where that individuality come from.

Over the course of the show, Cocona eventually comes to understand Iroha deeply, but it is not through the way that the she would have initially envisioned.

In Flip Flappers, Cocona has the ability to travel into fantasy worlds called Pure Illusions. These fantasy worlds are whimsical and abstract, much like the world of Alice in Wonderland. And unbeknownst to Cocona initially, these worlds are deeply connected to the people around her.

In the world where she eventually realizes this connection, Cocona comes to experience the life of a child named Iro through Iro's eyes. In that world, she discovers a gaping wound forming in the child's unhappy life. Unable to bear seeing that scar, Cocona works up the courage to exert her will on that world, and in doing so resolves the trauma that opened up. Though Iro still has a relatively sad childhood, at least Cocona made sure that it wouldn't be a scarring one.

Of course, the child that Cocona helped turned out to be the past Iroha, and Cocona's excitement of helping the child became a rude awakening later on. When Cocona goes back to the art room after school, Iroha is no longer there. Looking around the school, Cocona finds the artist tossing out the old canvases that seem no longer need now. In their interactions, Iroha [no longer ]seem as thoughtful and reflective, but tends to projects her emotions spontaneously instead. Furthermore, she no longer spends her breaks painting, and has instead joined friends' conversations in the courtyard instead.

After Iroha's childhood trauma has been resolved, she has become a part of school's usual scenery of carefree students. It's scenery decidedly absent of that directedness and individuality that had once defined her and drawn Cocona to her.

And in what is unusual for a story like this, Iroha's character arc ends here. Flip Flappers does not comment on her character before or after the change, it does not attempt to have Cocona find and reclaim the old senpai. The Pure Illusion world is closed and gone, and there's no going back to the old Iroha. Cocona is left to consider the impact of her decisions on the world.

I feel that in this handling of Iroha's arc, the show demonstrates an understanding of art, trauma, and people that I have seldom seen in other media. It understands that art is sometimes born from a desire to cope with a traumatic past, rather than from the strokes of brilliance that media usually portrays it as.

It also understands that trauma can be solely responsible for a person's positive identity, yet the person could still develop other positive identities otherwise.

It understands that sometimes, as a consequence of personal growth, valuable personality traits could be lost.

It understands that the dichotomy of individuality and conformity is much, much more nuanced than most popular media would give it credit for.

Lastly, it understands that the value judgement between an artist and a student is outside the scope of the show itself to comment on, and that the audience must reach their own conclusions on this one.

Despite being written and directed by artists in various mediums, Iroha's arc understands and portrays so many bitter truths about artists that I can't help but admire the grace and conviction with which it does so. It is a rare example of a show being incredibly honest and incredibly insightful, complimented by a combination of elegant and beautifully-illustrated storytelling. Flip Flappers is a diamond in the rough, but what diamond is there shines truly brightly.

Looking back, although I have mixed feelings about Flip Flappers, the recentness and the depth of the show gives me a lot of hope that the show will be surpassed on day. Both the screenwriter Yuniko Ayana and the director Kiyotaka Oshiyama are still in some ways up-and-coming names in animation, and I look forward to what valuable things they will say about art, trauma, and life in the future.

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Categorized under: #animations, #psychology, #art, #essay

Tragedies are really interesting to me in how their effects are extremely surprising. Why would anyone enjoy feeling sad? Why would anyone enjoy hearing about others becoming powerless victims of their circumstances? Why do tragedies evoke some significant feeling, rather than just fear and negativity?

Given that some of my favorite stories tend to be tragedies, I find myself thinking about these questions a lot.

There hasn't been a nice common-sense explanation to this that I could find [1]. So I'm going to take a shot in the dark to come up with an approximated working theory on it. My confidence in it is not strong at all, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'm ok with it as a working theory.

I think most people have had some meaningful experiences that made them feel completely tranquil. This might from appreciation of nature, encounter with beauty, deep connection with others, dance, religious ceremonies, or many other sources. One common feature of these experiences is that they make you temporarily forget yourself and your concerns, and focus either beauty or connection to others. My hypothesis is that the complete forgetting of concern is one of the reasons that these experiences feel so pleasurable.

One nearly-universal feature of good tragedy is that tragic heroes gets harshly punished through little or no fault of their own. If I have to take a guess on it, tragedy is appealing precisely because the outsized nature of the punishment tells us that it is futile to worry. At the conclusion of a tragedy there's a message conveyed that “no matter how hard you try or how much you worry, you could still be brought to ruin”, and the dramatic presentation convinces us for a moment that “there's no point of being worried about anything, whatever is bound to happen will just happen”.

Usually, near the end of a tragedy, we also feel empathy for the tragic hero, and feel that we share a moment of meaningful reflection with the author of the tragedy [2]. These serve as further ways to for us to forget about ourselves for a time.

And so for a moment we simultaneously let go of all of our concerns and establish meaningful connections with others, creating a pleasurable experience that's often associated with tragedies.

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[1] Nietzsche and Hegel's explanation on Tragedy doesn't really feel common sense to me, mainly in that I think the topic can be approached in a much more layman way.

[2] In antiquity there may have also been group songs and dance. And in stage productions, there are also fellow audiences to share a moment of connection with.

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Categorized under: #psychology #speculation

One thing that consistently surprised me in America is how much negativity Americans associate with “normies” – people who are perceived to lack distinct individual traits. This is something that didn't really exist where I grew up. Certainly, I was surprised when at one point I described someone as normal, and that person reacted as if it was a slight.

America exports so much cultural values to the rest of the world that it can be kind of easy to forget that American values are a bit of an extreme case. In Hoftsteader's Cultural Framework, America ranks the highest in terms of individualism. This means that being different is likely considered more of a value in America than any other country in the world, and popular American media pretty often reflect this – Queen's Gambit, Spiderman – Into the Spiderverse, and Ready Player One being quick examples that come to mind.

It's hard to say whether things like this are good or bad – after all, America does do well in the world. It is also true that to a certain extent, I feel like I'm starting to internalize the vague notion that “normies” are “bad” as well. But still, whenever I hear or say the word normie, a sort of cognitive dissonance flashes through my mind, and I'm reminded of how much culture really shapes how people see themselves and others.

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Categorized under: #psychology #sociology

For different cravings, biology seem to operate on different models.

In the replenishment model, a craving that's satisfied won't come up again unless it's been a while since it's last fulfilled. An example here would be drinking water.

In the dependence model, a craving that's satisfied will cause the next craving to come up sooner or stronger. Addictive illicit drugs are the most obvious example here.

What mechanisms determine whether a craving fall into one or the other? This is something I'm kind of curious about. When mistaking these models, it's easy to think video game causes addiction to violence, or that social media doesn't cause dependence.

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Categorized under: #psychology #speculation

A friend reminded me of Overjustification Effect (Wiki Article) recently. Despite having heard of this effect a long time ago, I'm only recently realizing that Overjustification is an elegant solution to why creatives often burn out and find it hard to find inspiration.

Namely, when the external motivation of money/fame/recognition starts playing a role in creative projects, the Overjustification Effect states that intrinsic motivation will decrease over time. If the positive feedback of money/fame/recognition is not manifested for a while, then the creative endeavor will lose both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation altogether, and the creator will find themselves running on fumes (or face the common “I've lost my passion” phenomenon).

If a creator wants to avoid this, is seems that by necessity they will need to have a sense for their currently ratio of intrinsic-to extrinsic motivation, and intentionally try to sustain the intrinsic part. Maybe some people can do it naturally, but to be host this sounds challenging, unless one has an overwhelming amount of intrinsic motivation, and that seems a bit rare in adults.

In children, however, intrinsic motivation doesn't seem like a scarce resource. I recall having almost effortless concentration, curiosity, and motivation to play with things when I was little – legos, board games, mazes, brain teasers. Those motivations had no connection to external rewards.

So even though extrinsic motivation is effective on kids, it seems that there are less sources or concerns for extrinsic motivation when one is young, so it's pretty easy to sustain a passion for something.

At some point around adolescence, extrinsic motivation seems to take over. Hobbies not only need to be interesting, but also have a “point”, and so toys and games, among with other unique hobbies, lose their luster.

This got me thinking. Perhaps our intrinsic tendency to play with things still exist as adults, but are just suppressed by an overwhelming amount of extrinsic motivation that inevitably need to come out of our hobbies. So we gradually lose the ability to indulge in things that have no “point” – unless like the artist, we also find some way to cultivate intrinsic motivation against the usual social pressures.

The challenges that the learning adult faces is not so different than that of the burned-out creative. When extrinsic motivation takes over, it becomes pretty much impossible to sustain something unless one is frequently very successful.

What causes the overjustifaction effect? I'm a bit surprised that there doesn't seem to be a good evolutionary explanation for it yet. It would be cool to hear what science has to say on the cause one day, since I think the influence of this effect on how we behave is really underrated.

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Categorized under: #psychology, #productivity

My roommate recently got a kitten called Kiko, and I've been playing with him a lot recently.

When talking about Kiko with a friend over chat recently, I kind of realized something that playing with the cat made obvious.

Play and learning are really extremely similar, with the only difference being play benefits survival (historically speaking) while learning (in most cases) benefits community or social standing.

How to apply this to life? I'm actually not sure yet. But it's fun to realize that two distinct – even often-considered-opposite things, are really in fact really similar.

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Categorized under: #psychology #speculation

One of the interesting things about dreams are how different people experience them differently. I have some friends who would often have vidid or epic dreams, and have others friends who barely dream at all. It seems to me that if I squint hard enough, I could see some personality differences between those groups, but since the sample size is small, it's pretty hard to generalize.

I personally sit somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, which doesn't come as a surprise. However, I seem to have some other patterns regarding dreaming that others don't share.

In particular, there is a really strong three-way correlation between the amount of stories I've seen in a day, the amount of dreams that I have, and the quality of sleep I get.

Those who know me pretty well know that I'm pretty into fiction and animations, what they might not know is that these activities are backed by unexpectedly pragmatic motivations – I find that if I don't expose myself to some sort of new story during the day, I will often get less sleep. Without the dreamlike headspace inspired by stories, I would often find it hard to stay asleep.

It's as if the train I'm on had ran out of fuel and stopped dead in its tracks, and the driver could only throw up his hands like “well, I can't really do much about it, can I?”

When I ask others about the relationship between stories and sleep, I usually get this blank stare or something to the tune of “I haven't really thought about it?”, which is pretty surprising.

My theory along this line is that others tend to subconsciously fulfill their need for stories. E.g., they tend to often “feel like” that they wanted to watch a show or read a story, or just default to those activities. Whereas for me, after a certain age, I started to rarely “feel like” watching a show or reading a story, and don't really default to those activities either. As a result, I sometimes go to bed without getting my fill of stories for the day, and this made it easier to correlate sleep and stories over time.

Growing up, I was a pretty voracious reader of fiction, usually finishing a book every two or three days. What caused me to lose touch with the need for stories? I'm not quite sure. Perhaps after life started getting busy in college, story time became the first luxury to be cut. Eventually, when life went back to a less frantic state, I started to realize that narratives contribute to my well-being in an indirect way.

Over time, I started experimenting about what kind of things fuel dreams for me. At the beginning I thought that it would be “new experiences”, but stories seem to most consistently form dreams for me. For example, new music or engaging conversations don't really improve my sleep much, but first-time experiences of movies, shows, or books certainly do it. Having an eventful day in real life seems to work too.

When I have more time, I would like to try and see whether art and various documentaries do anything; but for now, the overarching rule for now seems to be that “if it's something you can tell someone else a story about” then it's good enough to generate dreams.

All this raises more questions than answers. Why do I need narratives? Where do those stories go after they become dreams? Do they somehow become a deeper part of myself, beyond the superficial imprint on my memories? If so, what sort of effect do they have on what I do?

To the extent that one can have answers to these types of questions, I don't really have any good ones as of yet But I'm super curious about what that process is like, and look forward to finding out someday.

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Categorized under: #irl, #psychology

One of the most interesting phenomenon in psychology to me is the broad category of things that could be primed by simple words, and some potential implications of those findings.

In priming, words that are conceptually close (e.g. cats and dogs), audibly close (e.g. rhyme and dime), and even just related cross mediums (one vs. 1) tend to speed up recognition and production of each other. In this way, one could conceptualize all symbols (including sounds and signs) as living on a sort of interconnected semantic web that's shaped by individual experiences.

Within each culture, these graphs are likely quite similar as well. For example, an English-speaking country would likely have such a web (courtesy of Wikipedia):

I often think about what makes interest writing, conversation, and music just for the fun of it, and one pattern I consistently see between these mediums are that pleasant examples of them often stay close in the semantic web and follows a very specific pattern if it needs to travel further in the graph.

For example, in writing, it's better to say “it's raining cats and dogs” than to say “it's raining buckets and bathtubs”. Both are understandable to listeners, but the latter takes significant effort to parse because these words don't usually appear together, and thus requires a jump in the semantic web.

Similarly, a conversation feel strange and unpleasant if a person jumped from talking about everyday work at the office to a vacation in the Amazons, since these apparently don't share any context. On the other hand, suppose that the person said “I'm really looking forward to the upcoming vacation, which I hope would be as awesome as that time I went to the Amazons”, then that connection is established, and the conversation feels normal and comfortable.

It is the case that an intentional leap in the graph can be done for comedic or dramatic effect, but outside of those scenarios, a leap almost always feel uncomfortable.

Music actually has such a network as well, for example, here are common chord progressions for the Major key (borrowed from Music Theory for Songwriters):

In music, chords have affinities due to pitch similarly, proximity, points of tension, common usage, and a wide variety of other traits. In chord progressions skipping chords would produce an effect very similar to suddenly switching to a random topic or using an unfamiliar idiom. The listener would feel disoriented, and the effect is usually bad (though sometimes it might end up being a pleasant surprise).

In general, I think this sort of semantic web applies to all real-time communications, just on different timescales. A dance or a meal could certainly have such a web at play, and even a large or detailed static image could generate a sort of communication over time that's likely governed by the same rules, but different webs.

These webs, when combined with other universal traversal patterns like hook, repetition, refrain, and climax, and decorated with other common elements like intensity and articulations, feels like it forms a bedrock for much of arts.

One thing I'm super excited about is to imagine how such webs are formed, what they look like biologically, and how they are different across cultures. In another way, I'd be curious to experiment with these a bit more, especially seeing what the rules for utilizing them look like, and how one might go about creating detailed scenes with just a few words.

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Categorized under: #theorizing, #communications, #writing, #psychology