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我是“全球化”的孩子（之二）——上海人ｖｓ．纽约人

2011-11-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

　　　　　　我是“全球化”的孩子（之二）——上海人ｖｓ．纽约人

·罗　啸·

飞机从那个坐落在皇后区的飞机场着陆的时候，我正在打趸儿。飞机象皮球一样跳了一跳，把我稀里糊涂摇醒了。然后就看到了一只巨大的红色的苹果，油漆在倾斜的水泥平台上。夜象一面黑幕，一下子就掉了下来。

那一阵子，我飞来飞去到处面试。飞机坐多了机场就总是给我一种既熟悉又厌恶的复杂心情。刚巧耳机里的Ｂｒｕｃｅ　Ｓｐｒｉｎｇｓｔｅｅｎ正在唱“费城的街道”，凄然的男低音听的我差点吐出来。那时那个机场还没有翻修，低低的天花板陈旧的地毯令我不免深深地疑惑：

“这就是纽约？”

直到上了Ｍ６０公共汽车，听到了松脆的西班牙语对白，看到司机同老乘客习以为常地招呼，才似乎捕捉到那一点点纽约这个城特有的东西。心里才说到，是，这就是纽约。这种感觉就象前年到北京时，站在长安街等车，看到无数自行车象蝗虫一样涌动出一样。似乎看到这样的景，才有理由对自己说，没错，这就是中国。
到底这是记忆里的中国，还是从电影电视里模糊剪贴而来的蒙太奇？对于我这个初中毕业就到美国来的人来说，大多是后者。然而，不论经历如何，大概每个人时常都会有这样那样的似曾相识的幻觉。有个法国人Ｊｅａｎ　Ｂａｕｄｒｉｌｌａｒｄ把这种后现代生活中无所不在的现象称做“超现实” （ｈｙｐｅｒｒｅａｌｉｔｙ）。在我们着个时代里生活的人，在整个世界相当大的一个范围内，几乎每分每秒都在各种各样媒体不断的轰击下度过。因此，有的时候看到真实的现实，反而很难相信，甚至于强加排斥。在汉语文化圈里，“超现实”现象最经典的一句例句叫做“你不象上海人。”记得以前常常春节联欢晚会上看到小品里的娘娘腔上海男人。到底是媒体造成了偏见，还是偏见给与艺术家素才，还是双方此起彼伏的相互促动（ｐｏｓｉｔｉｖｅ　ｆｅｅｄｂａｃｋ），就都不得而知了。

生物进化的无形之手本来就不是准备让人们不带任何偏见来了解世界的。偏见本身就与民族主义，国家意识等等概念联系紧密。似乎偏见更使得人们得以繁衍，因而代代相传。这种基于文化上的错觉，与其叫偏见，不如叫作“幻像”（ｉｌｌｕｓｉｏｎ）。其根本发生原因大概和世人熟知的视觉幻像差不多。
比如说，在纸上画平行的长度完全一样的两条线，在线的两端加上两个角，如果两个角朝外，这根线的长度就会看上去缩短。反之亦然。神经生理学上对这类基本的幻像的解释仍然很不明朗。总体而言，一般方式的建筑，在墙角的位置都会有类似的几何形状，因此在方式建筑里长大的人们，对于这种几何形状会不自觉地下意识的加入一些对于深度的暗示。久而久之，就产生了这种幻像。从古罗马到中国，这个幻像的历史也已经很悠久了。但是不久前一些人类学家在非洲发现一个部落里的成员没有这种幻像。原因其实也很简单：他们造的房子都是圆形的，因此在他们生活的这个空间里面没有这种几何形状，因而也不会被下意识的暗示。

如果人的大脑里分析人跟人之间的关系，文化差异，形而上学的那一部分，和分析视觉信息的那一部分有共同的特性的话，我可以断言，类似的幻像在社会生活中肯定也是层出不穷。但是由于我们没有能够直接有效的测量社会生活中各个变量的有效的尺度，这种“社会幻像”（ｓｏｃｉａｌ　ｉｌｌｕｓｉｏｎ）往往造成相当恶劣的后果。历史上这一类的例子显然层出不穷。

社会心理学里有一个概念叫做ｃｏｒｒｅｓｐｏｎｄｅｎｃｅ　ｅｒｒｏｒ，权且译作“联系偏差”。比如说你面试一个人。他迟了很久才到，然后踏进房门就把自己的文件撒了一地，又把咖啡打翻了。我想大多数人都会想，这个人恐怕总是粗心莽撞，不拘小节。但是，也有可能他的飞机晚点了，而他的文件又太滑，握不住。到底他是行为是内因还是外引造成的？心理学研究表明，大多数人容易把行为联系到关于一个人的个人性格的内因，而不是外在环境造成的外因。然而，Ｃｈｏｉ　ａｎｄ　Ｎｉｓｂｅｔｔ（１９９８）在不同的国家做比较后发现，西方人注重人的独立性，因此这种针对个人差异而发生的偏差尤其强烈。而在中国做这个试验，就会发现中国人更注重外在的，社会环境所的原因，而相对忽略个人性格差异的缘由。

问题还不是这么简单。即使是中国人，在这个样本范围内人跟人的差异还是很大。即使总体而言中国人比美国人更注重于群体的和谐，而少关注独立人格的培养，个别中国人却很有可能比大多数美国人更独立，跟自我。目前大多数对人性格的生物学假说和证据认为人的性格有很大一部分是由人的基因所左右的。“三岁见老”可以算是说对了一半。最终行为的表现是由于复杂的遗传和环境双方面的相互影响而造成的。

回到纽约人还是上海人这个题目上，也就是文化多元性和第一代移民对于双重文化的认可的这个问题上，好像恰恰需要这样的遗传和环境双方面的分析。我本人非常不科学的统计观察了一下，很多从中国来的男孩子，到了美国就似乎诚惶诚恐，很少跟美国人（严格的说，是美国白人）交往。而从中国来的女孩子则没有类似的很明显的现象。至于异族通婚上的性别差异，则更是尽人皆知。这个问题在上海尤其明显。历史上而言，上海恐怕是中国大陆最朝外，最被殖民的地方。住在上海的中国人，跟住在被东印度公司统治下的卡尔各达的印度人心态类似。上海文人写的文章，仔细看来，尤其解放前的，渗透着一种后殖民主义的味道。一种内心的冲突非常明显：一方面现实是由遗传决定的人种，一方面向往着被殖民社会所强迫的对于文化沙文主义的反弹。也就是说，上海人一出生就必定要戴两顶帽子：上海人不但是中国人，也是上海人，是洋的，是与众不同的。

在美国的第一代（第二代，甚至更远）华人，也有着同样的内心冲突。移民的本身与被殖民是经历是差不多的。这也就是为什么文艺理论家常常把Ｄｉａｓｐｏｒａ和ｓｕｂａｌｔｅｒｎ相提并论。社会地位的不同和历史上的原因导致了男性和女性对于这种冲突表现出来的不同的反应。ＸＸ和ＸＹ染色体恐怕是最根本的遗传上的差异了。但是即使是同一个性别的人，由于其他基因的不同，对于这种冲突表现出来的差异恐怕也会相差剧烈。这也许就是为什么，同样是搬家，那个“北京人在纽约”里的王起明和我父母的经历如此的不同。

后殖民文艺理论家忽略了人的内因，常常庄严的宣判资本主义，帝国主义霸权的摧残能力如此强烈。失去了人格的穆斯林人便在Ｓａｌｍａｎ　Ｒｕｓｈｄｉｅ的 “撒旦诗篇”里头长出了角。如此这般，一个人不是向主流的殖民文化低头，从而失去人格，便是激烈反抗，永无翻身之地。其实可能他头上的角本来就是他的基因里变异出来的。后殖民文艺理论对于个人自主（ａｇｅｎｃｙ）的强烈推崇似乎已经到了不太现实的程度了。

要是从纯粹从神经科学而言，失去了自主的被殖民经历，作为几千万年进化的产物，也应该活得挺好。正如嫁了白人的中国女子似乎大都过得不错。我本人比较推崇文化的杂烩（ｈｙｂｒｉｄｉｓｍ），因而每每看到有害羞的亚裔男孩永远躲在亚裔圈子里钻来钻去，总也有些不值，甚至莫名的有些高人一等的感觉。但是回过头来要是一想，各人都有各人的活法，其实要是这些东西本来就是人无法自主的，显然也就没有对错高低之分了。

当然，在纽约待的时间长了，还是对于在纽约这样的地方生活感到欣慰。自己住在什么地方，看样子还是可以主宰的。当我前年在上海逛商场又饿又渴肚子又疼的时候，忽然想吃曼哈顿公寓附近一家破破烂烂的几十年风雨过来的老比萨饼。饼馆老板是个意大利老头，说起话来带着意大利口音，听上去像是“教父”里的一个人物，特别“超现实”地亲切。他的番茄酱有一种鲜甜的味道，说不出的受用。要是我是个后殖民的范例，这个中的奇妙滋味也怕是要错过了。

我是“全球化”的孩子

2011-11-27T11:33:00.001-08:00

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　我是“全球化”的孩子

·罗　啸·

移居美国，八十年代出生的作者写的文章似乎很少。原因是双方面的。十多岁被父母带来美国的孩子大多中文不够好，而刚刚从中国大学毕业的小留学生们苦于忙碌着第一年的研究生课没有空余的时间。各种刊物上登过很多四五十岁家长写的关于怎么样在美国教育子女的文章，但是没有多少文章是从这些现在已经二十几岁的 “孩子”们的角度来叙述这种独特的，九十年代末的移民经历。这是我写这篇文章的冲动。

其实像我这样的文体也不是没有先例。《纽约客》有一个专栏叫“ｐｅｒｓｏｎａｌ　ｈｉｓｔｏｒｙ”专门刊登三教九流的鸡毛蒜皮的人生趣闻。我本人生于上海。小学初中都是在中国上的学。高中在美国中西部的一个小镇上渡过。高中毕业后到我到芝加哥大学学习物理和人类学，现在在哥伦比亚大学医学院深造。把我的简历放在从中国来的移民子女这个群体中来看，似乎很普通。但是如果把它作为一个特殊群体的普遍的例子来说，好像还挺有意思的。
我跟所有八十年代生在上海的孩子一样，是“全球化”（ｇｌｏｂａｌｉｚａｔｉｏｎ）的古怪产物。尽管生在共产党的红旗下，小时候读的书，看的卡通，听的音乐都是舶来货。记得放学回来看变形金刚和“Ｇ－Ｉ　Ｊｏｅ”，都不情愿放过一集。到大学里和跟美国土生土长的学生们交流了才发现他们那时候也是看这些东西。当“擎天柱”死掉的时候，在太平洋的另一端也有一大堆同样伤心的孩子们。九十年代初上海最热门的电视连续剧叫做“成长的烦恼”（Ｇｒｏｗｉｎｇ　Ｐａｉｎｓ），说的是住在纽约长岛一家人的喜剧故事。家长们都以像Ａｌａｎ　Ｔｈｉｃｋｅ那样的通情达理为时髦。九五年的“狮子王”是这种文化渗透的最好的范例。我记得当时在上海看Ｅｌｔｏｎ　Ｊｏｈｎ的ＭＴＶ的时候正是他的这首主题歌在排行榜上高居不下的时候。在我到美国以后这样的同步渗透当然是愈演愈烈，以至于最近纽约时报采访上海的年轻人，几乎每个人的首选电视剧都是“性与城市”（Ｓｅｘ　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　Ｃｉｔｙ），当然都是盗版的。

所以，当我到了美国以后，才发现其实我想好好保留我的所谓的“根”也是不太可能的事情了。其实我这种人本来就没有“根”，要谈什么“中国根”简直是痴人梦呓。我父母很少跟我谈政治上事情，但是我记得小的时候听广播每听到“社会主义人民民主专政”之类的宣传，爸爸就要把收音机关掉。现在看来，政府的宣传（ｐｒｏｐａｇａｎｄａ）和好莱坞的文化之间的潜影漠化的意识形态纠纷很早就开始了，而且看来舶来文化从来都是胜出的，因为对于像我这样的年轻人来说，无论政府说了什么，都不如另类的，时髦的舶来文化更“酷”，更吸引人。

我父母其实都是典型的理想主义者。他们有一种逆反心理，一种对社会本质，尤其是中国政府和中国社会现状的不满。所以，对我的教育上来说都是反其道而行之。大部分中国家长都希望孩子能够保持“中国心”，对于中国文化有一种敬仰的心态，热爱祖国等等等等。我父母却不然。爸爸曾经要我在家里用英文交流。（幸好我没同意，不然我的口音恐怕还掩盖的不如现在这么完美。）我被布置的课外读物都是英文文学，当然也有翻译的俄文小说。在我读高中的时候，爸爸甚至每看到我读中文就反感。当然，我当时已经对“先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐”之类的经典略知一二，所以他的这个策略也不能说是有失偏颇。每当我调侃式的问妈妈， “你是不是中国人啊？”，她总是象一架破唱机半开玩笑的说：“工人无祖哦！”

现在仔细考虑过来，我父母对中国文化的一种迟疑，消极，甚至怨恨的态度在九十年代初移民美国的“老留学生”中也许并不是很特殊的。正是这种潜隐默化的灌输使得我对中国文化的态度也就总是不太以为然的。与此同时，我的英文水平突飞猛进，以至于在上大学之前我就几乎把所有的英语文学的小说经典都一目十行的读了一遍。当时我对西方文化的态度用“崇拜”两个字来形容恐怕也不能算过分。我的中学朋友里面就没有一个中国人。我除了回家以外几乎从不说中文。我也读了一些西方现代的经典科学的专著，整个西方文化世界就如希腊的雕塑一般，充满的浪漫，理性，自由和完美。诚然，我的这种比较极端的状况在从中国来的第二代学生中也许属于不太常见的，尤其是考虑到我到美国时已经十三岁多，其实已经差不多错过了学习语言黄金时间了，更不要说对于一个异国的文化产生如此强烈的认同感。
大学的第一年，我上了一门课，叫做“漫读文化”（Ｒｅａｄｉｎｇ　Ｃｕｌｔｕｒｅｓ）。这门课在某种意义上改变了我对一些关键问题的思考。这门课的主要内容是阅读世界各地各种文化的小说，艺术，以及西方现代思潮对于理解文化多元性的理论框架。读完这门课，我写出来的英语文章也就开始频繁“掉书袋”。如果辟除形而上学的，夸夸其谈的自我标榜，结构主义，后结构主义对于我这样学习自然科学的人来说绝对是一拍即合。著名法国人类学家Ｌｅｖｉ－Ｓｔｒａｕｓｓ在分析世界各地的神话传说后，得出这样的结论：无论是任和地域文化产生的独特的叙述（ｎａｒｒａｔｉｖｅ），都可以归纳成一组规范（ｐａｔｔｅｒｎ）。也就是说，文化本身的独立性仅仅是这些规范的具体例子而已。

这么一来，我对世界其他的文化，延伸到对于这些能够推而广之的“泛文化”（ｍｅｔａ－ｃｕｌｔｕｒａｌ）规范就产生了兴趣。其实，反过来想一下，我个人，或者大多数从中国来的孩子们对于中国文化的理解和兴趣完全是建立在自己生为中国人的先决条件下的。如果我生为阿拉伯人，或者是犹太人，我对中国文化就可以一概不知。生为中国人，同理，可以对其它民族，传统，文化，历史一概不知，只要知道中国以及美国的文化就可以勉强通过自己的家长和美国社会两关了。这简直是难以置信的目光狭窄，恐怖到差不多与种族主义的一样了。认识到这一点，我发现这个世界就像打开了一扇光芒四射的天窗。西方文化，就是说以人文主义文艺复兴为主旨的文化，其实本身就是“全球化”的。西方文化是属于全世界的，就像东方文化也是属于全世界的一样：君不见美国人争先恐后的学习瑜伽，“风水”佛教，东方艺术和家庭观念中也有很多值得深思的地方，而且东方文化和西方文化本身其实是统一的。孔子说他收学生不论贵贱。伏尔泰读了孔子，称赞他是平权主义（ｅｇａｌｉｔａｒｉａｎｉｓｍ）的最早的代言人。不仅仅是这样，除了东西方以外，世界还大得很，从新几内亚（Ｐａｐｕａ　Ｎｅｗ　Ｇｕｉｎｅａ）到耶路撒冷，到美国本土东部西部印第安人自治区，乡村，城市，世界各个地域文化从艺术，宗教，人文等等地方都有很多值得了解的，相辅相成的地方。其实世界上所有的思潮的最终目的，寻求答案的最终问题都是统一的。这也就是为什么世界上大多数学者知识分子，不管是从什么文化而来的，几乎连叛逆，多愁善感，离经叛道的性格模式都那么相似。

我悟出的这些东西本身不能说是极具见地的。这句话是在我心里把英文“ｔｈｅｓｅ　ａｒｅ　ｎｏｔ　ｐａｒｔｉｃｕｌａｒｌｙ　ｐｒｏｆｏｕｎｄ　ｉｎｓｉｇｈｔｓ”翻译过来的，但是“ｐｒｏｆｏｕｎｄ”和“ｉｎｓｉｇｈｔ”两个词我都是从来没有看到过中文翻译。写到这里，我想聊聊一个很有趣的现象。我的中文底子不能算太差，但是自从来了美国，几乎从来没有听和说标标准准普通话的机会。前两天突然看见加拿大相声家“大山”的网页，心里琢磨着我的中文还说得来吗？当即搜出高行健的“灵山”大声朗诵。结果第一段读的声调不伦不类，有一种“新疆”中文的感觉。第二段勉强恢复了抑扬顿挫的韵律，突然看到 “锐利”两个字，心里发怵，犹豫了半天，还是读成了“硕利”。

写了半天（其实也没花多少时间，打字挺快的），洋洋洒洒的，一下子就“散文散文，形散神也散了”。小的时候时听着，唱着英文歌曲的时候总是自我感觉非常的良好。后现代主义艺术大师Ａｎｄｙ　Ｗａｒｈｏｌ曾经指着一瓶可口可乐对伊丽莎白泰勒说道：“你看，尽管你是万人瞩目的电影明星，你却也只不过喝着全世界每一个人都能喝到的东西。”大学里读共产党宣言的时候，听到马克思说“哲学的意义不是去理解世界，而是去改变世界”，有左翼的朋友就挺蠢蠢欲动的。我却觉得世界上没有比资本主义更共产主义的东西了。理解世界，经历世界，改变世界就是从我开始，从吃肯德基开始，到看西班牙文电影，读阿拉伯文媒体出版的报纸，学习亚沙哈拉非洲的历史。好在我今年才二十出头，曾经跟我一印度裔美国哥们儿闲聊，说我真幸福啊，世界上还有这么多的书等着我去读。他大笑我整个一书呆子。我可不仅仅是在读书啊，我在干革命。我们的革命不用刀不用抢，却往往比暴力更具颠覆性。后后现代的，后后殖民主义的革命就从我们这一代“全球化”的孩子们中间拉开了帷幕。

下次有机会再聊后现代的艺术和审美，以及科学与艺术的共同性，以及神经科学认知科学。

Academic Freedom, Revisited with a Psychiatric Perspective

2009-02-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

Stanley Fish's new article compelled me to investigate the curious case of Denis Rancourt, formerly of University of Ottawa. Briefly, the poor sod was fired, quoting an earlier Fish blog entry, because

According to the Globe and Mail, Rancourt’s sin was to have informed his students on the first day of class that “he had already decided their marks : Everybody was getting an A+.”

But that, as the saying goes, is only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath it is the mass of reasons Rancourt gives for his grading policy and for many of the other actions that have infuriated his dean, distressed his colleagues (a third of whom signed a petition against him) and delighted his partisans.

A little background is warranted, though what I may be able to offer here is no more than the bland readings from Wikipedia and Mr. Rancourt's own personal blog. Rancourt is a not-so-successful environmental physicist turned social activist, whose singular note to notoriety is his "squatting" practice, where he offers to teach a class, only to fill it with content not matching the course catalog. His excuse: the course catalog is a dictator, and hence must be overthrown.

Now, forgive me for being in the psychiatry rotation for exactly one week, but this sounds a bit delusional, both grandiose and paranoid. Mr. Rancourt's later reasoning, that the university, marionette of a pro-Israel lobby, fired him because of his pro-Palestinian stance, seems to come from the same psychotic mother lode. Suppose a generally healthy 40 year old man pops into the psychiatric ER, complaining of delusions, but remain articulate and organized, the astute diagnostician might wonder if there is anything to gain--is his illness fictitious?

Most of the commentary, including Fish's, misses the most poignant point. The definition of academic freedom, the extent to which it may be exercised, and the degree of censorship with which academics must self-impose, are always delineated on a case by case basis. Making a point about a general principle exploiting a single case is not particularly persuasive or informative. The more interesting question is why Rancourt is doing this, and what this story implies for him and for people like him.

This case reminds me of the Sokal affair--yet another "scientist" achieved a much wider notoriety and educational value by giving up his role as a scientist. Comparing Sokal and Rancourt might be a bit unfair. Unlike Rancourt's shenanigans, Sokal's hoax is really quite clever and generated a much more interesting set of debates. Nevertheless, 30 years from now, the only Sokal paper still talked about will be the fake one.

Mid-level scientists who never did anything impressive in science now fashionably swarm a distinct form of academic stardom--I term it "borderline" recognition (no relation to the namesake personality disorder)--for a certain kind of spill-over fame derived from cross-disciplinary insularity. Tenured humanities professors get less out of saying outlandish things in public. It's expected. They have to say something that is really really outlandish to get famous. That's hard, and I respect it.

Scientists, on the other hand, know precisely where the "controversial" places are. Just say anything contrary to what's printed in the textbooks--or in this case, the course catalog constructed based on the table of contents in a textbook--calling any of that stuff "dictatorial" gives you an automatic swashbuckling academic "freedom fighter". Ironically, the basis of this practice is the very essence of the negative status quo that these "academic freedom fighters" are purportedly pushing against: the sensationalistic popular culture that robotizes individuals away from any independent thought. Rancourt and those like him are not particularly good at what they do, and don't particularly care about illuminating others. Instead of trying to get better at science, or at least focus their discourse on whatever little evidence they have gathered in their limited field of expertise, they whore themselves to the most politicized topic under the sun. They pretend to be outraged and fake psychosis so people can dwell less on their incompetence and more on their theatrics.

In DSM-IV, there is a diagnosis called malingering. In my book, it's called intellectual laziness.

Let's do a bit more exegesis on the whole giving-out-A+-to-everyone practice. Being a former pre-med, I hate grades too. But if I was Mr. Rancourt and wanted to cut my students some slack, I'd just make my grades based on, say, attendance, or whether someone turned in his homework. Mr. Rancourt cannot be so dim-witted that such a simple mechanism eluded him. He might insist, however, that making the class less challenging is never the point--the point is to stick it to the man! As much as we all miss the 60s, it is still a pretty hard-sell to argue that the pupils who never showed up to class and smoked pot all day disrupted some social hierarchy and are thus heroes who saved the day. Every student in his class will now snicker at how easy it is. A lazy teacher teaches a lazy class to a cohort of lazy students.

Suppose his class was actually required for some advanced course, and he deliberately avoided teaching the required material, and his students become ignorant because of it. How is this not completely chilling and a betrayal of professional ethics? The class is now not at all about the students and what they need. It's all about the professor and what he wants. If there are minors in the classroom, how is this not a form of child abuse? And why would anyone be surprised if such a professor gets fired for it? Imagine a doctor not washing his hands because the Joint Commission guidelines are "dictatorial"... how is this any different?

Mr. Rancourt is very aware of the risks and consequences of giving out As to everyone, and hence he is only doing this because he likes to be the center of attention. He is smart enough to know that whatever he does won't change the institutional norm and won't make his classes any better. The only thing that it will do is to enhance his own visibility.

Axis II, anyone? I'm calling it narcissistic personality disorder.

This is the story of a middle age, middle level, middle aptitude academic with a touch of personality disorder trying to make a splash by poking at a communal sore spot. Well done.

Intellectuals vs. Pre-profs

2008-12-28T20:25:00.001-08:00

In college, the pre-meds were a universally despised lot. They studied. They got good grades. They weren't as interested in Kant as you might be. They were particularly alien at the University of Chicago, where the life of the mind was held with great pride. Peer pressure forced me underground. I told few about my plans to go to med school until late junior year. I was a good premed, but I was in the closet. I did not feel like I fit the general stereotype of a pre-med, being neither a biology major nor overtly obsessed with grades.

In reality, I cared as much about grades as any other premed. I turned in my term paper a week in advance for critiques, which only worked first year. I felt pretty terrible for the few B+ and lower grades on my transcript. (I am convinced that a certain California school didn't even give me a secondary simply and completely because of my GPA.) The secret premed lifestyle made my life stressful. But what bothered me most was the cognitive dissonance between what I believed to be a worthy human being and my mental image of a premed.

I didn't want to be a premed even though I wanted to be a doctor. I thought of premeds as ones who had no interest in the big picture, all the glorious beauty of the universe, the complexity of society, and the intricacies of body and mind. Instead, they just cared about a career--something utterly uninspiring--that makes money, supports a family, and affords them a life unexamined. As Socrates said, the life unexamined was not worth living. My belief identified well with the assortment of cultural artifacts going back thousands of years right up to the whiny indie rock we all know and love.

Then I got to know some of those indie rockers. I got to know some premeds. My attitudes gradually changed. Intellectuals, at least at the level of college students, were not terribly interesting. They exuded a certain maverick fearlessness--they questioned every authority, rebelled against every institution. Their idealism might be admirable but their behavior was always predictable. Not every premed was interesting. Those who were interesting, however, were the ones who actively pondered their way of life, and deliberately chose the life of "responsibility". They decided that the best way to "subvert" was to become part of the institution.

In the end, I realized that I don't value someone simply because of their idealism and intellectuality. I like someone, a lot of the times, because he or she is genuine to me. Other things matter too--it is hard to suffer fools gladly, hard to interact with people with different backgrounds and interests, and hardest of all to deal with people with personality disorders. Nevertheless, being genuine is a critically necessary condition. Being intellectual is neither necessary nor sufficient. It's the icing on the cake.

I went into science with a certain idealistic vision of science and intellectuality. I was due for a shock. The most important thing I learned in graduate school may be that science isn't intellectual. Science, even mathematics, is every bit as much a craft as medicine. Few scientists are real intellectuals, and being intellectual is certainly not important to becoming a successful scientist. There is still copious amount of material to memorize. Work ethics still matters. The desire to get ahead of your colleagues can often be the main motivation behind the success stories. Most scientists earn a decent living by practicing their craft. They are invariably also constrained by certain shortcomings of society: bureaucracy, politics, money. There are a few things that make science special, and many scientists do have additional motivating factors, but I have moved beyond a certain mentality where science is deified onto an unworldly pedestal. Most scientists are in science because it is a good job. The best job they can get, in fact. For many problems, science is the best thing we have, but those who practice it aren't ipso facto special.

The same is true for any other academic discipline. Being an intellectual may be a nice thing on the side, but today's academic life is decoupled from the idealistic vision of life of the mind. Specialization is the norm. The few academics who have the luxury to be intellectuals often do so for a reason: they've earned it. We have the illusion that it's their great intellectuality that made them such great academics. We are confusing cause with correlation.

This glorification of intellectuality sometimes results in an insidious tendency that takes the humanity out of scientists. Scientific problems, if not directly applicable, can find their importance in some philosophically profound question that has no answer. Hence, the worthiness of science is determined by how intellectual it sounds. This way, science loses a certain friendliness and genuineness that I look for. Some people go into science because they love critters, or math, or machine shops. I like these people just as much and I think their science is just as good. Unfortunately my sentiments are not shared by many, and I have myself abused this bias in the community to my advantage.

Bayes' Demon

2008-12-23T21:16:00.000-08:00

A friend recently told me that one of her pupils was larger than the other. She was concerned because she thought it might be a sign of brain tumor. I told her that, indeed, it could be a sign of brain tumor. However, because the actual incidence of brain tumor in her age bracket was so low, the real probability of her getting brain tumor was slim.

The above analysis was first concocted by a priest named Thomas Bayes in the 18th century. It introduced a radically new definition of the word “probability”, which, under this context, described the degree of belief of a statement of (possible) truth. The “classical” definition of probability was a measurement of frequency of a particular subset of events in a large repeated set of trials--throwing a coin 100 times, the probability of getting a head would be about a half. My friend either had or did not have a brain tumor. Her “classical” probability of getting it would either be 1 or 0. But without actually measuring it, the term had no meaning.

The Bayesian definition solves this problem. We look at the general incidence, which is called a Prior. We then take into account the new information, the fact that she had asymmetrical pupils. This is called a Marginal. Finally, using Bayes Theorem, we can calculate her actual probability of getting brain tumor. The result is called a Posterior Probability. This entire analysis is termed Bayesian Inference.

We take the Bayesian definition for granted in our daily conversations. When we talk about the probability of life on Mars, or of O.J. Simpson killing his wife, we are all referring to the Bayesian definition. These numbers represent the degree of certainty pertaining to a certain truth statement, not the frequency of occurrence of a random event. The scientific method is, in reality, a Bayesian process. Even though most of the current rigorous results of mathematical statistics, relying heavily on a branch of 20th century mathematics called Measure Theory, use the “classical definition”, the Bayesian definition is much more widely used in a variety of other disciplines.

This intuitive grasp of the Bayesian process seems to suggest that our brain is in fact a Bayesian machine. There has been a variety of evidence that seems to support this hypothesis, coming out of divergent fields as social psychology and visual neuroscience. The implications of this hypothesis, however, extend far beyond the scope of understanding our cognitive process. Consider the question of racism, for instance. Bayesian Inference suggests that if we consider prejudices as priors, then as sample size increases, the posterior probability changes. This predicts that as prejudiced people encounter more and more racial minorities, their impressions and beliefs of these groups of people change and move towards what would be the real truth. Hence the most effective way to ameliorate racism might not be explicit inculcation but rather intensive and direct exposure. Talking from personal experience, I know most of my prejudices are shattered most readily by encountering specific counter examples.

Formation of moral values may be another instance of Bayesian Inference in the brain. We are taught a specific set of moral principles, but they change according to our experiences. As the experiences agree or disagree with the principles, our beliefs diverge or reinforce. We either become disillusioned or stubborn. Interestingly, this seems to argue that people believe things because what they experience and how much. Incorrect beliefs and differences in beliefs are probably due to sampling errors and biases. A conservative Republican may be who he is not because of his individual characters but because of his sampling bias—-his personal, circumstantial experiences. As far as individual characters are concerned, he’s exactly the same as a liberal Democrat. They are both faithful Bayesian Machines doing nothing more than making inferences.

Reading literature could be a third example. If I were to use the name Stephen Dedalus in my new novel, it probably would sound meaningless to most people. But if you’ve read Portrait of Artist as a Young Man, then it would acquire some additional meaning. The name Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, on the other hand, sounds sort of Russian to most people. So even without any further marginal, most people could infer that this is a Russian person, probably male. In fact each proper noun in a novel, like Victoria Station, or Mount Rushmore, acquires meaning through this sort of Bayesian Inference. If we go a bit deeper, every single word in any language, in fact, acquires its meaning through references to prior encounters of that word. The meaning changes every time with a new encounter under a new context. Our reading history is a gigantic prior. The Bayesian Machine samples every word whenever it appears and reconstructs the posterior, the meaning of the word. Jacques Derrida’s famous quote, “there is no meaning; there are only texts,” can probably be made more precise: “there is no meaning; there are only inferences.” [Footnote: this relates to the idea of interpretive communities and reader response criticism. Different communities respond differently to different texts precisely because they have different priors.]

This particular framework seems to make the notion of truth fuzzy and unattainable. I was not surprised when my epidemiology professor mentioned the Man in the Cave analogy of Socrates. We are forever chained to the cave of ignorance, and all we do is catching a glimpse of truth via our experiences and inferences. Unless we sample infinitely many times with no bias, our view of the world would invariably deviate from the truth outside of the Cave. This fundamental limit of our capacity to understand the world, never beyond our own experience, is in my opinion, what makes postmodernists so seemingly nihilistic. Reality, on the other hand, is brighter. Recognizing that we probably will never be able to find the “ontological” truth, we can nonetheless often construct “effective” truths that help us survive. Scientific truths are good examples of such “effective” truths. TV evangelists aside, so far our ability of making such constructions seems to be serving us fairly well.

The Science of Censorship

2008-12-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

My mom called and told me that she didn't like it that I posted someone's such and such on my blog. It annoyed the heck out of me. I thought of it as the residuals of Cultural Revolution breaking through. Maybe I'll censor myself in China, here, I refuse to do it. I think part of being confident is singing praises whenever it's appropriate. An equally important part is being capable of contempt when the situation calls upon it. Knowing that freedom of speech is not absolute, I cannot help but wonder, where does censorship begin and when does it end?

Let's begin with this website. I like to write a little, sometimes about someone moderately famous. Knowing the laws and having lawyer friends can be helpful. Posting libelous rants on the Internet can get you a lawsuit. The legal fees are so high, however, that someone actually pursuing that against me is highly unlikely, at least not until I make a gazillion dollars. I'll be more careful when I become a plastic surgeon. Posting something damaging, though, isn't defamation, if the information is true. I never make things up. This gets us into the murky territory of amateur reporting on limited public figures. ACLU is on my side. An artist in fear can't be a good artist, not even someone who's got a day job. If the criticism is not directed at an individual, but say at the government of PRC (something I generally eschew), since I am no longer a PRC citizen, the worst the Chinese government can do is to not admit me.

In general, the government, or institutions at large (say the Catholic church) may have an impetus to censor, even with violence. This seems to be the historical norm. Does that mean then individuals should, therefore, think twice before voicing their opinion because of the possible, however intangible, repercussions? I think not. While institutions at large have historically favored an illusory and coerced consensus, the great works of intellectualism, from Galileo to Darwin, were invariably first conceived amid such unfavorable environment. I see self-censorship as damaging to human "progress" per se. And I am not to about to cede to the Derrida-esque position that The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is but another "text" to deconstruct. The pragmatic side of me, though, sees that great thought and great politics are not mutually exclusive. Darwin, as a great example, was quite successful at both.

So how should a scientist and intellectual use and abuse a system of censorship to his/her advantage? We have now generalized the concept of censorship to encompass a strategy to say or not say what you believe to an authority figure, or a community that has authority. When do you censor yourself in front of your boss, the established consensus, and the institution in which you participate?

This question has a complex answer. The most controversial social question in our era, I believe, is going to yet again come from the natural sciences. A scientist has two communities to which he is responsible, his/her peers and the general public. Impression management, a la Erving Goffman, is a crucial component in being successful in both. All the successful scientists I know are masters of this art. They say seemingly outrageous things with calculation and precision. Censorship is bad not only because it's inconsistent with democratic principles. It is particularly damaging because herd behavior kills creativity in its cradle.

Taking it a step further, getting censored is a positive, even necessary consequence of being creative today. We are only censored today because someone cares enough to censor us. And being innovative, in this day and age, is the only way to be successful. The smart scientist breaks through the morass of community opposition and get away with it unscathed, and enhanced in reputation.

To address how censorship should be dealt, we want to answer two questions. First, how can a scientist raise a controversial scientific issue to the scientific establishment without being censored by the senior people in the community? Second, how can a scientist (or a group) raise a politically controversial issue (say global warming) to the public?

The first question can be illustrated in the following real world example. The current system career advancement for postdoctoral researchers in the biological sciences is highly inhumane. Everyone thinks it’s a terrible system, but nobody is willing to speak out or do anything about it. This kind of censorship has to do with a fundamental conflict between the freedom of speech and freedom of pursuit of happiness. Complaints directed at the system can be helpful, and should not be internalized as personal affronts. The postdoctoral system is neither necessary nor effective. This does not mean that postdoctoral fellows themselves are incompetent or otherwise bad scientists. I just think that postdoctoral training is unnecessary for establishing an independent research career. Suppose we simply pool all the graduating Ph.D. students, and rank them based on their publication records, and give them jobs based on their ranks, I am almost certain that the resulting young PIs would produce research that is just as good.

This is not an outlandish suggestion. Some fields, such as economics (and in some instances, academic medicine), already does it. There are way too many Ph.D.s in the first place, and the vast majority, even at the best institutions, would have no chance of becoming tenure track professors. Why drag them along for so long?

This is a bit of a digression and I will write more about the state of the Ph.D. training in a future post. Suffice it is to say, cutting the postdoc is on everyone's mind but nobody talks about it. PIs want cheap labor. It is, outrageously, cheaper to hire a postdoc than a graduate student. Postdocs want to make sure they seem more valuable than anyone else--slave mentality at its best. Graduate students are powerless. We have a mini-authoritarian state on our hands. The only ones who are powerful enough to change the system and do not have enough of a stake to be afraid are the M.D.s. The M.D.s in research therefore need to take some initiative in the future in transforming the way biological sciences are carried out. I don't know how this can be done exactly, but breaking out against this silence is the first step.

Let’s look at the second question. Scientists must be shrewdly aware of their limitations in educating the public. Physicists, as a group, were acutely politically sensitive in much of the 20th century. If you are a particularly well-known scientist, your political freedom expands considerably, though you have by no means been handed a carte blanc. The best contemporary example is James Watson and the ensuing outrage. Advocating racism, for instance, is seen as much more egregious in the US. Advocating segregation of nationhood, on the other hand, much less so. In some countries, advocating separatist ideologies, or a democratic political system, or the lack of god or even homosexuality, is seen to be extremely subversive. Racism, on the other hand, can be tolerated. Postmodern inquiries taught us that one needs to be suspicious of claims of universal values, but the fact is people are censored because of social norm, however geographically limited they are. The guiding principle is this: if you want to voice your opinion and have it heard and influence people, you have to be smart enough to protect yourself, which means you can only make certain opinions public that are deemed controversial, yet harmless. What constitute this "golden" set of opinions differ from region to region, and person to person.

The difference between Western democracies and authoritarian states can be complex and subtle. The Western states do grant substantially more freedom--people are punished less for what they do. But the basic set of acts that can cause an individual to be punished by the government is broadly similar. So perhaps thinking more broadly in terms of political reforms, the approach should be one of gradual release of rights.

The most important contributor to stability in a society is the rule of the law. Even if the government is authoritarian, if the laws are clearly defined, interpreted and executed, at least the citizens know very clearly what they can and cannot say. The biggest problem seems to be that there are subjective evaluations and abuse of the legal system for a political end. In principle the rule of law must supersede any political authority in order for a clean transition from one system to another. Historically this has been true as well, for instance the Magna Carta. Now scientists probably do not contribute directly to "Nation Building", but in general wherever the rule of law is established, the due procedure of enacting proper legislature should be the venue of advocacy. I.e. for a scientist looking to educate the public, a lobby for a national course on climate and the environment would be a good idea. Writing an underground newsletter, a bad one.

The language of the machine

2008-12-23T19:36:00.000-08:00

I started programming when I was ten years old. My first programs were written in BASIC, on an IBM 8086 that had a monochromatic green monitor, two five and half inch floppies and no hard drive. I found my dad's programming book and typed in the demo programs line by line--the computer dutifully did what the book said it would do. Then I did something remarkable: I changed the code whimsically. The computer either didn't like what it saw, or decided to do something surprisingly marvelous. I was learning the language of the machine like a toddler learning English—-playing with it like a toy.

That prodding and poking got the attention of my teacher, Mr. Wang. In the early 90s, the aging reformist statesman, Deng Xiaoping, told his posses, "computer learning ought to start with kiddies," and The Shanghai Education Bureau scrambled to get the money, hire the newly grads, and give them hundreds of brand new computers. Mr. Wang was one of those enthusiastic new hires and gave me his own hand-outs for elementary school pupils. He compared Memory to "the kitchen cabinet" where "you can store numbers and characters like you can store plates and glasses." I often marvel at my (and other youngsters') remarkable zest and uncanny ability in grasping easily the arcane and abstract concepts in computer science: the loops, the conditionals, the functions. Little kids were an unbiased lot, and we never considered categorizing hobbies into ones that were "geeky" and ones that were more socially acceptable. I felt like a god when I talked to the machine, brimming with perfection and absolute logic, expecting full obedience and control. Writing computer programs forced me to think clearly and at the end of the day I could create entirely new worlds where my friends could battle it out with little boats and airplanes on the screen rather than with marbles and baseball cards. I controlled every aspect of that world: the way things looked, the way things moved and the way things reacted to each other.

Hind sight was always clearer. Even in early 90s China, where technology was worshipped and engineers became powerful politicians, my eerie fascination with the machine was always a marginalized, cult-like pursuit. The privileged minority in the world became powerful by exploiting technology, but in the end they were interested in the power, not the technology itself. The real gods of human world studied civics and politics, or became merchants, religious leaders, lawyers and CEOs, and that had been true pretty much everywhere since the rise of the centralized nation states thousands of years ago. Technology was the "techne" in Socratic terms—-arts and crafts—-and we, the technocrats, were no better than the pathetic Pygmalion of yesteryear, struggling away in our dingy workshops, falling in love with our sculptures.

Yet, this sad state of affairs might be changing. A few weeks ago I was at a party for the launch of an online fashion magazine. What struck me weren't the usual demographic suspects-—the 40ish banker and plastic surgeon courting the 20ish writer and artist-—it was the palpable emergence of a new brand of business culture. Mr. Shah was a 23 year old college drop-out. A few years ago he wrote a nifty program that let people send instant messages over the internet to others on cell phone. Recently he sold it to a large wireless company for an untold sum, and has since then invested this fortune in his new company that specialized in marketing and managing computer media. Mr. Shah's parents were from South India but he was born in the US, and he was equally agile in networking with the "angel investors" as explaining to me the technical details of plucking the TCP/IP protocol. He had a trim frame, dressed in a well-cut dark-stripped suit and boogied like a rastaman on the dance floor. I stared at him and I thought, well golly gee, this new breed of geek is a-comin'.

The boundary between the machine world and the human world is blurring, and we have to thank Bill Gates, neo-liberalism and globalization for that. When I listen to Bob Dylan and John Lennon, I can't help but wonder, what is our generation's revolution? Who will become our spokesperson, and what will he or she say about our way of life? To me, whatever it is, technology is going to be a big part of it. In a way, that's the scariest part about the language of the machine for many people. They feel lonely and lost. The human world they know and love feels like a cultural shock, like when a traveler goes back home after a long journey and everything looks familiar and unreal at the same time. In the machine world, there are three emotions: fascination, frustration, and satisfaction. There's no fear or anger, no guilt or resentment, and no love or being loved. The human world has a language that is infinitely richer in its every mood and gesture, every little nuance of figures of speech, every motion of the limbs of the body. There are hierarchies of dominance and submission. There are protocols of friendliness and aggression. Every child learns all that when he is five. But any language is a skill—-you lose it when you don't use it. Geeks aren't popular because they never care enough to learn, or relearn, the ways of the man.

On the other hand, the language of the machine is egalitarian. There's no meanness, no cruelty, no oppression and subjugation in the machine world. When you learn the way the machine talks, sometimes you can't help but wonder how people could be so irrational in comparison. The truth is, men, just like computers, are rational and deliberate creatures. We just haven't uncovered the enormously complex logic of our human world and everything falls apart in our clueless attempts to make sense of it. In many ways, the ills of our world result directly from this ignorance and fear, even though technology, in its purest form, comes from our most benevolent, godlike nature. The day Blackberries and internet blogs prevail is the day Islamic fundamentalism falter, the day USSR crumble. Dalai Lama says if technology finds a way to nirvana, he will be the first in line.

A short newsletter is not going to do this topic justice, but sadly my attention span can't sustain me enough to talk about all the interesting things about technology and society, the way the rise of the middleclass has shaped this tidal wave, the way Marx was dead-wrong about exploitation and surplus value, and the way the number crunchers are taking over the financial markets and defense ministries, wielding the real powers of today. But the machine world is still here, and the open-source movement is alive and well, and if there's any wanna-be hippieness left in you and me, we should all download the GNU C compiler and play a bit with the pointers and the arrays. The commune of today is virtual.