Eric Tian

Hello Eric, here’s a graph outlining your levels of dogmatism over the last few years:

The trend is pretty clear. Coming fresh out of high school (pre-2017), you felt like you knew what you were doing. Your identity and beliefs were set solid and you weren’t afraid to let others know. You respected others, but for those who disagreed with you, perhaps a little less so.

But then came second and third year Uni (2018-19), when you met people smarter than yourself, and you suddenly fell under pressure from questions like why? and what makes you say that? Your ideologies, which once seemed so strong, now began to show cracks.

And in 2020, when you had time to think due to an extensive lockdown, you realised you know nothing at all.

You realised you don’t really understand terms like capitalism, Marxism, communism or democracy. You realised you’ve been throwing around opinions laid out by your smart friends and have been defending ideas that you haven’t really thought much about.

And it’s unsettling, because now you’re chronically uncomfortable giving your stance on an issue as:

• You know the issue is complicated, but you don’t know why;
• You know there are factors at play you’re not aware of, but you don’t know what;
• You know you should go and find out more, but you’re not sure how.

Hence your very low dogmatism and chronic decision paralysis.

But perhaps – just perhaps – waging war against convoluted hyper-rationality is something worth pursuing. Maybe in a society of excessive digital deduction, the tendency to consider other points of view is an advantage, rather than a hindrance. As Bertrand Russell, a champion of analytic philosophy, suggests quite passionately:

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid; and those with any imagination or understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Let doubt avail.

Recently, I noticed that my worst days are ones where I excessively scroll the internet. It kinda feels like swimming in the ocean: the water might feel refreshing at first – an amusing meme, or a cool life update on Facebook – but the deeper you go, the more dangerous and unpredictable it becomes. Sharks in the form of clickbait titles and fake news might slowly circle you, watching for a weak spot. And if you’re unaware, they can take you under. And when you’re under, it can be very hard to get out unscathed.

Here’s Merriam-Webster:

Doomscrolling and doomsurfing are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back.

As a reminder to myself, here are five things better than doomscrolling to spend time:

1. Read a book
2. Go for a walk
3. Get on the phone with a friend
4. Play games
5. Journal

… and probably a million others.

For most of my life, I separated entertainment and education into mutually exclusive categories.

The entertainment category contained TV shows I grew up watching like How I Met Your Mother, Hell’s Kitchen and Pokémon. Shows that while funny, didn’t really stimulate my brain all that much. Songs, plays and comics also found themselves strictly in the entertainment category.

On the other hand, the education category was largely dominated by difficult books. Stuff like math textbooks, physics handouts or huge works of history. Stuff that while packed full of knowledge, were mind-numbingly boring.

But of course, the domains of entertainment and education can intersect in wonderful ways. One of the greatest gifts I’ve received in my life is the gift of enjoying literature. Books have made me weep with sorrow, laugh with delight and fume in anger, all while having my worldview changed in miraculous ways – arguably the greatest form of education.

This symbiosis between entertainment and education was also recently illustrated in a podcast conversation I enjoyed between Yuval Noah Harari and Tim Ferriss as they discussed the Netflix show Black Mirror:

Yuval: I think that Black Mirror, at least some of the episodes in Black Mirror, are some of the best discussions that I’ve seen of certain dangerous tendencies in current technology. Some episodes are just fun. San Junipero, I think it’s an extremely good episode, but it describes the reality, which is so far away from us that it’s not really relevant to any of the discussions here.

But if you look at Nosedive, and maybe the Chinese got the idea for their social quality system from Nosedive, but it’s such a powerful and important episode.

And so television, while still being the source of some pretty trashy shows, can also be a powerful means of discovering fresh worlds and new ideas. There’s a certain degree of engagement enabled by music, lighting and actors that books cannot replicate, giving TV the potential to showcase ideas in a unique light.

Thus, I’m pretty excited about the future of content creators. The potential for this entertainment-education symbiosis to engage, entertain and educate a huge audience is pretty amazing.

Logic – the process of reasoning using facts and inferences – is the common language spoken within rational discussions. Whether one is debating theology, philosophy or science, logic is often the judge on whether one argument is more sound over another. Any logical blunders can singlehandedly destroy an argument.

These breaches of logic are called logical fallacies and come in many forms. Common examples include:

• Strawman: misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack e.g. After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.
• Slippery slope: asserting that one small action will lead to a chain of related events, culminating in a significant effect, and therefore one shouldn’t do the small action e.g. Colin asserts that if we allow same-sex couples to marry, then the next thing we know we’ll be allowing people to marry their parents, their cars and even monkeys.

While there are many different types of fallacies out there, I’ve always felt some to be less definitive than others. These ‘softer’ fallacies, while still breaches of logic, don’t always lead to a dismissal of the argument, for occasionally, there are other issues and biases in conflict.

Perhaps the most interesting of these soft fallacies is the appeal to emotion fallacy, where one aims to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid argument. In situations like this, one encounters a dilemma: whether to sacrifice one’s deeper feelings in place of logic.

The problem of this argumentum ad passiones is that logic in the present moment can be deeply flawed. In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell examines the ‘gut feeling’ that we all encounter, and how these feelings often provide a better means of operating over using pure logic. He writes, addressing the hyperrational state of our society,

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for. Later on, Gladwell concludes:

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

In the pursuit of truth, logical fallacies provide a strong defence against implausible ideas. Yet, to solely rely on reason as a mode of living doesn’t come without its own dangers. As Yann Martel put it in Life of Pi,

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

You’re having a bad day.

You spent all night playing a video game and woke up this morning with two hours of sleep. Grogged, you couldn’t find your schoolbooks and so you missed your usual bus, and the one after that. When you finally get on the bus, you look forward to your first class, math, where you can sleep at the back. Your favourite teacher is there, because she just leaves you alone.

But when you finally make it to math, you find your usual teacher replaced with the teacher you utterly detest. Mr Gibson. Welcome to the fires of hell.

From the start of term, Mr Gibson’s always been up your ass. The first time you met, he scolded you for being two minutes late. Two minutes?! And the second time, he told you off for having messy hair. Like that matters…

And so since today you are 30 minutes late and are still rocking your bed hair, you can feel what’s about to come. When you walk in, Mr Gibson abruptly stops his spiel on fractions and you feel his eyes on you, then the clock, then at your hair. You embrace yourself to face the fury of a demon.

But he simply tells you to sit down.

For a second, you can’t believe it. Did you just escape death? But you don’t hesitate at this chance for freedom, and jolt to the back of your class, rest your head against the desk and sleep on your bag, just as you usually do.

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When you wake, the class is empty. You look up, rub the sleep out of your eyes, and see Mr Gibson looking down on you. You feel a sinking feeling of despair. So this was your plan, you think. To execute me alone, so nobody can witness…

But instead, Mr Gibson looks at you for a while. Then he pulls a chair over and sits opposite you on the desk. With some effort, you look back. And for a split second, you see the eyes of your father in them. Those kind, compassionate eyes. Eyes which you haven’t seen in over a decade.

“I’m sorry I’m late…” you mutter. But Mr Gibson says nothing. To fill the silence, you continue rambling.

“I think my dog ate my schoolbook, and I spent ages looking for it. And my bus left without me, and then so did the next one, so that’s-”

“Tell me…” Mr Gibson interrupts, “do you like school?”

“Well no sir,” you reply honestly. “I just come here because I have to.”

“And who tells you that you have to?”

“Mommy”.

“What do you enjoy doing?”

“Playing games.”

“So why don’t you skip school and play games?”

“Well, because I can’t.”

Mr Gibson stares at you intently, seeming to wait for more. When you give no response, he makes a small sigh.

“Have you ever seen two rosebushes fighting?” The question takes you by surprise. You shake your head.

“It’s quite a remarkable sight. While rosebushes don’t exactly punch and kick like some animals, it’s a complex struggle nonetheless. If there is only one patch of good ground, but not enough space, the roots of the roses twist, turn and battle each other to survive.”

“People,” Mr Gibson continues, “are kind of like these rosebushes. We have roses we want to plant and grow, but sometimes these roses fight one another, and the resulting struggle can be terrible. One rose may destroy the other, or both may never grow to their full potential.”

At this, you feel a growing tension inside your body. One you’ve never felt before. Like there’s knots being dug up from your innermost soul. The feeling makes you very uncomfortable.

And then you begin to see Mr Gibson’s words in action. You see your rose of luxury. The rose that wants to be happy, crush noobs online and have no responsibilities. But then you see your rose of duty. Your duty to please your mum. To get educated. To give back to society. You see these two roses fighting it out. And recently, your luxury rose has been winning.

But you feel like there’s more. That there’s so much more. That somehow, your abusive uncle plays a role, that your dad dying from cancer plays a role and how you living in poverty plays a role. That there are various pieces of the puzzle that make up you, except you don’t know where they belong.

“My dominant rose,” Mr Gibson says quietly, “is integrity. As a teacher, I believe the greatest good I can do is to make sure you students become morally upright members of society. But to cultivate this rose meant I had to let some others die. Like my rose for being liked. Or for being lazy.”

You begin to understand. When you look into Mr Gibson’s eyes now, you don’t see the devil, but just another human trying their best to make the most wonderful garden. And you begin to realise that everyone is making their own little garden unique to them, and that’s totally fine.

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You go home that day and take a long nap. In your dreams, you see a wide forest of giant trees, with roots as thick as your arm. And in the middle of the forest, you see a wonderful garden. A garden of roses, white orchids, daisies and dandelions planted perfectly next to each other. And to the side, you see a tired, old man. The gardener. He looks up to you with tears in his eyes, and smiles.

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson is a short fantasy novella that I recently devoured. The story follows a thief who is given 100 days to forge a soul for the Emperor, who has been left brain dead. As the thief struggles with the enormous task and plans an escape, we encounter themes such as faith, politics and greed.

One of my favourite quotes from The Emperor’s Soul occurs halfway through the story, where the thief reflects on the impossibility of forging a soul. The quote is this:

“No person was one single emotion; no person had only one desire. They had many, and usually those desires conflicted with one another like two rosebushes fighting for the same patch of ground.”

I don’t know what it is about roses, but this imagery made my heart flutter for a second. I’ve previously written about the contradictory nature of humans, but this image adds a layer of beauty to the inconsistencies we see in ourselves and others. That while contradictions can be terribly frustrating, perhaps it is good to accept the conflict for what it is: a consequence of our splendid and beautiful complexity.

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Check out The Emperor’s Soul on: Amazon, free online pdf, Goodreads

When I was in high school, I really liked numbers because they felt grand. Unlike subjects such as politics & law, history or economics, where it is largely humans who have created them, the laws of mathematics seemed to defy human capabilities.

Maths can be grand because of its absolute nature. Pythagoras’ theorem will hold for right-angled triangles no matter how hard any human tries otherwise.

On the other hand, maths can be grand because of its absolutely non-absolute nature. The circumference:diameter ratio of a circle is always π (pi), which is an irrational number spanning an infinite number of digits. In my high school, you got a prize if you could recount the first 75 digits of π. However, try all you want, it is straight up impossible to get to all the digits.

While maths in general is pretty amazing, one of the most beautiful formulas in maths is Euler’s identity, which states:

It looks simple, but the more you think about it, the more mind-boggling it is. Here’s an explanation for some of these terms:

• e = Euler’s number. It is the limit of (1+1/n)ⁿ as n approaches infinity. Like π, it is an irrational number and looks something like 2.71828. It is very important in exponentials and logarithms.
• i = the Imaginary unit. It is defined as the square root of -1.
• π = The circumference:diameter ratio of a circle, approximated to be 3.1415. Also used in angles as radians.

Somehow, when you multiply π and i together and raise it to the e, you get -1. These three seemingly unrelated concepts, ranging from logarithms, imaginary numbers and circles/radians, all come together to the unsuspecting -1. And when you add 1 to -1, you get 0. This is Euler’s identity.

While there are many proofs of Euler’s identity, it always astounds me how wonderfully these concepts come together. I imagine a Mexican grandma, a middle-aged Englishman and a Japanese boy coming together and unsuspectingly becoming a perfect entity. It seems too ridiculous to be true. But it is. And that’s why numbers are really great.

For the first time in eight months, I thought that yesterday was Wednesday instead of Thursday, and that’s led me to me writing this post a day late. And as someone who values consistency, realising this calendar blunder was mildly infuriating.

However, I’m using this experience to remind myself of a video from The School of Life called Of Course You’ve Messed Up. Other than it being narrated by the calming Alain de Botton, this five-minute video contains powerful reassurances and has quite literally saved my life through dark times. One quote in particular has stuck with me:

None of us are beyond encounters with total stupidity.

Of course, this problem of mine is laughably insignificant. Nobody will care if this post is written on 1am Friday rather than 11pm Thursday. But sometimes, it’s just good to be reminded that no matter who, nobody is beyond encounters with total stupidity. And that’s just part of being human.

Disclaimer: In this post, I’m exercising my more arrogant voice to practice different writing styles. This topic is definitely far more nuanced than what I can hope to convey in 440 words. Please enjoy.

There is no question that the modern age provides abundant means of learning. Whether it’s traditional schooling, online courses, books or podcasts, the resources available to find information these days is unprecedented. A simple Google search will tell you the most bizarre facts like the latin name of a hedgehog and online courses have enabled great opportunities to learn science, math, or literature. The benefits this can bring to society is obvious.

But there is a problem. This abundance of information can lead people to believe they are experts in whatever they Googled that day. When you get ill, you can suddenly look up your symptoms on WebMD and treat yourself rather than consult a GP. When you come across a pseudo-scientific topic, you can suddenly find intelligent-sounding defences for dubious ideas rather than consult an expert.  

People who do this are called armchair scientists – those who read one or two articles from a questionable source, jump on Reddit for half an hour and use this to inform their opinion about a topic. And so, while technology is creating a utopia of knowledge, it is simultaneously creating a dystopia of ignorance towards experts. As social psychologist Aleks Krotoski wrote in The Guardian:

There is no doubt that the wealth of health information online has contributed to a more informed public, but this is an area in which I believe the expertise of the professional should not be undermined by the leveling power of the web.

This notion can be extended beyond the realms of science and into the spiritual. The recent rise of armchair theologians has raised questions about how Christianity is being practiced in the digital age. It can be easy for new or exploring Christians to find contrasting opinions online about biblical teachings and give them the same weight, despite significant differences in hermeneutical factors and theological context. With such clever-sounding pieces of biblical interpretation, where is the need for reading the Bible?

What to do?

Perhaps the solution to this armchair dilemma requires action on both the experts and the viewers.

To the experts: Honesty and simplicity when conducting research are essential for increasing the literacy of the general public. Dishonest and convoluted pieces of literature do nothing but harm one’s perceptions on a topic.

And to the viewers: Exercising critical thought is essential in an age of fake news and unequal opinions. It is easy to look at the wealth of information out there and believe that you can become an expert in anything. Understanding that there are many things out there that we don’t know – and may never know – is completely fine.