My Disco Ball's My Kitchen Light

I have been steering off of reading non-fiction for a while. I remember when the opposite was true- when I felt like I had to read non-fiction to “grow up”, and that any time spent in fantastical worlds was time wasted. But until non-fiction grows up from being lazy regurgitation of embellished information we all already know, I remain conservative about the genre. And as always, this doesn’t go for every non-fiction book available in the world- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Dataclysm by Christian Rudder are books that I will always recommend to people. But really, if you’re in tech and have resorted to only reading non-fiction books in the past 4 years (especially self-help books), take a read of this opinionated piece about “false consciousness”. (And to those same people: non self-help podcasts exist too). If you had clicked into that link, what I’m about to say shouldn’t come as much of a surprise at all. I’ve recently laid my hands on the first non-fiction book in a while- Why You Should Be a Socialist by Nathan J. Robinson. You may now laugh at the irony.

Most people (even the wealthy) agree that we live in an economic system in which greed is rewarded and modesty is punished, but it takes a little more than that to convince someone that it’s a problem. And then a lot more to convince them that social democracy could solve those problems while not introducing any new ones. Personally, the goal is just to live in a world where we value hope, justice and solidarity. What’s your utopia?

So now I have been spending time reading about how COVID-19 could change the way people think about the world. Resources like this and these are certainly intriguing. In the meantime, I know a lot of people are once again romanticizing what people have to have “accomplished” during this pandemic- almost as if there isn’t a pandemic outside right now. I think these articles by The New York Times and Philosophy Break capture a lot of why I avert from pretending to be “busy” because “busy people are after all, a little ridiculous”. We shouldn’t feel the need to define our self worth merely by the output of “work” we are able to produce.

With that, here is a list of things I have been doing that effectively make me a non-contributing member of society while social distancing. Who cares? As long as you are happy.

• My inner dancer is back! Aside from posting low quality 8 counts on my TikTok, I have dusted off my yoga mat and finally started training those oversplits, scorpions, cartwheels and elbow stands again. I’ve been able to drag myself to the dance studio once or twice a week for the past few years, but I haven’t been able to sit down and focus on progressing those fundamental moves in a long time. Peloton’s free trial has also reminded me of that elliptical in my basement- it’s been like going to Spin classes without going to Spin classes. Classes on ClassPass have also been made virtual- I was initially bummed out by this, but I have recently realized that I can just update my location and attend classes back at my favourite ballet studio in SF. What a silver lining.

• The New York Times Crosswords. I ended up getting Andy hooked on these crosswords too- our virtual work sessions have suffered significantly in productivity as a result of them.

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Dare I say more?

• Taking naps whenever I want to. I might take one right after this post, actually.

• Meditating. I am absolutely guilty of scrolling through my phone until I eventually fall asleep halfway through. But I have been trying to kick that habit, so I meditate right before I sleep. The effect is similar.

• Trying out new recipes! I made banana muffins the other day, and I have also been making my own boba. Chrissy Teigen has been oddly quiet since I have posted about them on my Snapchat story.

• Cutting out milk. I used to love milk, but I’ve been meaning to drop it from my diet for a while. I’ve finally made the switch to oat milk! Please be gentle with me during these trying times.

• This one is a little productive (or so I hope). Fine, you caught me. But A.I. For Anyone is hosting a virtual workshop with Mark Cuban Foundation and we currently have ~50,000 registered attendees. This is a huge opportunity for us and it’s been absolutely crazy seeing how this organization has learnt to scale in such a short amount of time. I really hope this makes a difference.

• Calling family and friends. I’m a huge non-fan of calling people, but times has changed and so have I.

• I’m going to take a nap right now and then wake up at 12am so I can complain about how messed up my sleep schedule is but twirl endlessly in my dimly lit kitchen as I kiss the stars good morning.

So it goes.

Effective Altruism

I was sitting at Blenz Coffee as a gathering of Christmas carolers stumbled into the coffee shop with portable instruments- a group of young and old, meek and the bold. I glanced up at my laptop screen and noticed it was 10:30pm, a little late for these children to be out but surely, this felt harmless enough. A young boy then came up to me with a laminated pamphlet and a transparent donation box with two $50 bills sitting in there as display. I asked if they were raising money for a registered charity and he opened up the pamphlet confidently, but even then, something felt off. So in the span of those few seconds, I did a quick Google search and my screen was flooded with the term “scam”. I promptly back the pamphlet and told him I didn’t have any change at the moment. I felt bad- maybe this little boy really thinks he is raising money for an important cause, but situations like this make me wonder: how can I do good, and how do I do it right? For example, had I given the boy money, I would have done more harm than not donating at all.

So in comes “Doing Good Better”, by William MacAskill, a book about how we can practice effective altruism (“how can I make the biggest difference I can?”) to help others, do work that matters, and make smarter choices about giving back. There is a lot to unpack in the book, and I’m not sure if I agree with everything MacAskill has to say. Regardless, here are some things I hope to remember from the book:

• We have ~80,000 (40 years x 50 weeks x 40 hours) working hours in our career, how do we maximize what we do in these hours?

• Earning to give: rather than trying to maximize the direct impact we have with our jobs, we can also try to increase our earnings so we can donate more, improving people’s lives through our givings rather than our day-to-day work.

  • This feels important as I try inch closer to graduation, and recognize that I might not always be able to make “the type of difference” I hope to make. In fact, despite being a book about effective altruism, MacAskill explicitly recommends against working in a non-profit straight out of college, to prioritize building skills and credentials that could help us in the longer term. Our first job might last a few years, but our subsequent career will last decades.

• The five key questions of effective altruism:

  • How many benefit, and by how much?

  • Is this the most effective thing you can do?

  • Is this area neglected?

  • What would have happened otherwise?

    • For example, imagine a town with only three doctors, who save 100 lives each (and spend the rest of their time treating non-life threatening sicknesses, such as the common cold). If one of the doctors leave, the two remaining doctors will still save the 300 people, but perhaps the people with common colds will now be neglected. So that’s the difference that extra doctor would have made- which is probably less than what we would have thought at first glance. It’s difficult to think about the impact we make in that way, but seeing what would happen otherwise can help us see our direct impact in a clearer way.

  • What are the chances of success, and how good would success be?

• When evaluating a charity, we can evaluate:

  • What does this charity do?

  • How cost-effective is each program area?

  • How robust is the evidence behind each program?

  • How well is each program implemented?

  • Does the charity need additional funds?

• Some additional things to think about:

  • The 100x Multiplier: for those of us living in rich countries, we should expect to be able to do at least one hundred times as much to benefit other people as you can to benefit yourself.

  • People often believe that: If many people did this thing, then change would happen. But any individual person doesn’t make a difference. This isn’t true if we consider expected value.

    • We can use expected value to compare higher-risk but higher-upside actions with actions that are certain to have an impact. In the small chance that our action does matter, what is the outcome?

      • For example, in the case of the US elections, a voter has a one-in-sixty-million chance of affecting the outcome, but the expected value is very high.

  • When it comes to helping others, being unreflective often means being ineffective.

If you’re curious about Effective Altruism overall, you can learn more here, and here’s the book I read. I’m learning, but there’s still lots to learn! I’m excited for the new year. 🎉

Pursuing Hobbies

“I love intense people.” Zach Latta mentioned this to me while we were talking at Hackcon, and that one statement led to staying up all night and eventually watching the sunrise with Kedron and Patrick. Those 4 words have been looping in my mind on repeat since that night. To clarify, when I think of an “intense person”, I think of someone who is so passionate about something (their job, their side project, pottery— you name it) that when you ask them why they do it, they can go on for hours on end because when you love something, there shouldn’t be a formulated and rehearsed answer as to why, you just do. But the most important part is, you don’t have to choose just one thing, and that’s where I went wrong.

I’ve contemplated on keeping this writing to myself because I don’t generally publish stuff like this on my blog. I’m a big fan of coherency, which is probably why you’ll find yourself catching a slightly different version of myself on different social media platforms— I actually completely stopped posting on my Instagram account because I felt restricted by the “theme” that I chose for it 3 years ago. Thus, to prevent going down the same rabbit hole, I’ve decided that I should just post whatever I want to on here because it is after all, my blog. 3 years ago, I spent most of my free time in the ballet studio, doing aerial silks or singing with my choir, I also dabbled in writing fictional stories occasionally. 3 years later, I still love all of those things but I don’t do them as often as I would like, and I most certainly never post or talk about them.

Here’s why:
1. I found a community of people I love, who share a mutual passion as me— the tech community which I talk and blog about all the time felt like a blessing and a slight curse. I was so happy to have finally found a place within this community, that I would feel bad whenever I spend my time doing things other than personal projects, or hackathons. You see a large portion of my life within this one little website, but I have always refrain from posting about times when I jammed out at the beach with my friends recording covers of songs we loved, or that I finished writing a story that I was finally proud of for the first time in years. That was okay with me because I liked having something to myself but also because of that, I started pursuing these “side gigs” less and less. These passions became something I had to hide from the people around me just to be more distinctly known for doing and loving “my thing”. 

2. The fear of not being good enough. Sure, I loved all these things but was I good enough to talk about them? For example, I love taking pictures and recording / editing videos, mostly because I love the story they tell. But I could barely hold up a conversation about the focal length, or ISO of a camera. So was I really into photography? The same thing expands into something as simple as longboarding or baking.

I felt this problem long before I was cognizant of it, which probably explains why I get so defensive when someone asks me why I’m minoring in Creative Writing when it has nothing to do with Computer Science, and realistically probably wouldn’t “add” that much to my degree. But I do it because I want to acknowledge and give credit to the creative side of myself, and if getting a minor can drill into my head that it is okay to pursue more than one thing at a time, even if I don’t have 10 years of prior exposure to it, then so be it.

At the end of the day, I feel privileged to be able to do all of these things in the first place. But I guess my goal now is to more actually pursue those hobbies more actively, old or new. I’ll start talking about them more publicly so maybe I can even start being a part of active communities beyond just the one. At the very least, I’m hyperaware of what’s holding me back, so hopefully it’s onwards and upwards from here.

I’d love to hear about what you’re into, or if you too, are going through something similar. DM me!

p.s. If you want to know why I suddenly sat down and decided to piece all these things together, it’s because I saw Owl City perform live in SF and his passion for creating music really made me feel something. I guess you can say he’s “intense”.