Mastery

There are many college essays that try too hard. You know what I’m talking about, the ones that use ergo and forthwith, that end with lofty claims about the purpose of humanity or the mysticism of the universe. These applicants try to mimic, in vain, the linguistic flourishes that a dozen English teachers have fed to them. I don’t blame these children for the cliches; most adults never achieve the mastery of language to make an essay like that work. (And then, of course, there are writers like Tamsyn Muir, who have in their lexicon the entirety of the OED.)

And so when an essay begins

I find the topic of language, both dead and living, exceedingly interesting…

I think, Good on you for trying, kid and expect another paper full of adverbs and nothingness. And indeed, the author does not let up on the flowery language:

…and it is when I cast myself into its mystic profundity that all reckoning of time vanishes from me and the hours flee unheeded, until the gentle evening gloom lulls my thoughts to sleep.

And yet…

I read the first sentence again. I read it aloud, letting the mystic profundity drop out of my lips with deep thuds. I feel the gentle evening gloom settle around me. And I keep reading.

When I look at a painting, I can admire the skill that went into putting each line, each brushstroke exactly where it needs to be. But I do not see what is is that Thomas Cole sees, when he sets the composition for The Course of Empire. I cannot even point and say, it’s the contrast here. The fountain in the foreground. The reflection of the sun. That is what makes me feel this way, full of awe, breathless, bereft. I can only take in the whole, appreciating that it exists, not how it was made.

Because each individual word in this essay is a little bit blah. Not blah like Fredrik Backman, who isn’t scared of using simple words (or like the OG, Hemingway). Blah like “profundity” is one of the top synonyms for “depth” on Google. Blah like I can easily imagine some other applicant being lulled to sleep thinking of their favorite class.

And yet…

For many an hour I have passed through the vast intricacies of human speech, and wondered that so peculiar a quality might have arisen in mankind alone to sunder him from the other mute animal matter of the world, as an expression of the rational capacity by which alone he has subdued nature to his own will.

The essay continues, not letting up in its nineteenth century prose and not letting go of my attention. How carefully did the author pick over each word? What did they visualize when they wrote of the mute animal matter of the world?

Like everyone else this year, I went to ChatGPT to see if maybe it was my own mastery that was lacking. I gave the AI the passage and then asked it to write an essay about math in a similar style. The essay was titled “In the Mystical Abstractions of Mathematics: An Exploration of Timeless Truths,” which I read as “In the Blah Blah of Mathematics: An Exploration of Blah Blah.”

Maybe the content will be better:

Within the vast intricacies of mathematical concepts, I marvel at the peculiar quality that sets it apart from the other branches of human knowledge. Mathematics, an expression of the human intellect’s rational capacity, unveils a language that has the power to unlock the secrets of the universe and conquer the enigmas of nature. From the simple elegance of Pythagoras’ theorem to the complex symphonies of calculus, every mathematical characteristic imbues this discipline with miraculous depth.

The essay that ChatGPT writes for me does have the same density of multisyllabic words, so maybe that’s the style points. But, that’s it. This generated essay says nothing. “Math is different from other branches of human knowledge, because it’s cooler.” I wonder had I asked it about chemistry, it would have talked to me about the mysticism of science (which no aspiring chemistry major should ever write about). To give demerits where demerits are due, maybe my prompt was too broad for this little LLM to work with.

But worse, it’s boring. There’s no lyricism to its phrases, no imagery that jolts your mind. The complex symphonies of calculus do not sing in my ears, nor do the enigmas of nature yearn to be conquered. And of course, neither of these explain where the miraculous depth comes from. (Note that “depth” is also a top synonym for “profundity”).

I tried various tweaks to the essay, asking for more creativity:

As I waltz with the numbers, I feel like a pirate sailing the seven seas, chasing the elusive X that marks the spot of buried treasure – the unknown variable begging to be unmasked. Like a daring tightrope walker, I balance precariously on the edge of a mathematical precipice, daring to take the leap of faith into uncharted realms of theorems and conjectures.

Then to tone down the dramatic language:

Mathematics, oh boy, let me tell you, it’s like a whole other world that’s got me completely hooked! I can’t help but get lost in its captivating depths, where time seems to fade away, and curiosity takes me on the most amazing journey.

And finally reminding it that a college application should be slightly more professional:

With every step I take in this journey of discovery, I am humbled by the vastness of untapped knowledge awaiting exploration. Mathematics is an ever-enchanting realm, inviting me to further explore its timeless wonders, and I eagerly anticipate the opportunity to delve deeper into this captivating discipline.

This quote by Pythagoras has never been more fitting: “Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.” The essays that ChatGPT generates are much more what I am used to seeing. They string together words senselessly. Phrases are quite literally auto-completed until it all becomes one mealy mess of metaphors. Contrast with a sentence like this, where words are used to build a temple in your mind’s eye:

for if I should one day make secular pilgrimage to Rome, whose native tongue Latin is immortalized in the mysticism of inscription, and stand in awe of the works of gold and marble that adorn the organs of worship, I would require no stumbling technology to comprehend the letters inscribed thereupon, but their meanings would flow into me with the immediacy of vision

The student does say a little in many words, but what words they are! And yet again, I realize that this high schooler is special. I want to read more from them; it hardly matters what about. I want to hear myself trip over the syllables of make secular pilgrimage to Rome, shiver at the organs of worship, revel together in the author’s immediacy of vision. I want to read and read and read, language becoming thought, until their mastery becomes mine.

Acceptance

To my mother, having a child attend Harvard must have felt like the greatest monkey’s paw. When her wish was finally granted, she suffered for four years with a daughter who not only was not appreciative, but even, in her mind, resentful for that success. And while I cannot feel whole-hearted gratitude for her actions, I can finally see beyond a blinkered teenage viewpoint and accept that no, in fact, not everything is about me. This post is absolution for both of us.

I couldn’t say when my mother first started dreaming of it. Was it when I was six, and Ms. Samuels told my mom I had an exceptional mind at a parent-teacher conference? Was I already Harvard-bound, as I was shuttled from tennis lessons to math circle to Chinese school for the next decade? My best friend in elementary school certainly was. She was ambitious and outgoing: where I was content with my three friends at recess, she was inviting new classmates into her inner circle every year. When we learned the word ebullient, sitting together in writing class, I knew there was no better word for a person nor person for a word. She was speaking of dowager empresses at nine, citing Sandra Day O’Connor and Condoleeza Rice by eleven. She probably read the Economist cover to cover every week in middle school. It was at her house that I learned the Earth was round, and from her lips that I first heard the hallowed names of Harvard and Stanford.

Perhaps that moment is also where my mother’s dream came from. Or perhaps she was born with it, just how cuckoos are born with the urge to plant their eggs in another nest, and Asian mothers are born with the urge to ship their kids to piano lessons. Certainly it’s not hard to imagine how these thirty-some year old immigrants who had been raised by the altar of Peking and Tsinghua Universities could come to worship the Big H in their new home.

But where T’s parents signed her up for Girl Scouts, mine took me to Math Circle. That division should have made it clear enough: she was bound for Harvard, I was destined for MIT. Unfortunately life, and more importantly my mother, had other plans. In 2012, my brother was waitlisted, and then rejected, by Harvard.^1 Thence, in the face of this rejection, began my mother’s crusade, with me as her unwitting Holy Sword.

It is in this moment that I find hindsight, unlike popular claims, is closer to 20-40. Despite my central role in this narrative, I know very little about what my mother actually did. I know she drove me around to the internships and volunteerships that she signed me up for. I know that she shipped my application to writing teachers and college consultants for review. This too: I know that when I was two places off qualifying for IOL, she secretly sent an email from my account to beg for a spot at the training camp.

That was a humiliating night. I found another half-dozen email chains, written in her broken, two-spaces-after-the-period English, to mentors and strangers alike. Their replies had also been tucked away in the Trash folder. This was all before the smartphone and instant notifications: I would be off at school none the wiser, while she sent and deleted, sent and deleted from my email. It was a gross violation of my privacy and my autonomy (although I was doing nothing better with that autonomy), and my trust in her shattered.

In the end, it was her achievement, not mine. No matter how many hours I put in volunteering, teaching, studying for olympiads, she had put more in paving the way for me to do each of those things. After her first failure, she learned how to play the game, took every step she could, and then carefully constructed my resume to give me the appearance of agency, of initiative. It worked. And after all that effort, she was hardly going to let something as trivial as one 16-year old girl’s opinions get in the way of her success.

Because the truth is, you can’t brag to your friends that your daughter got into Harvard (but went to MIT instead) for years down the line. It comes off as desperate. Yes, it’s commonly understood that acceptance is the hardest step, and that from which all the accolades stream forth. But ten years later, whether it makes sense or not, all that people will see is what’s lettered on that paper.

So my mother had one last challenge. In the month between the school’s decision^2 and my own, we visited my piano teacher, the Science Olympiad coordinator, an ex-college consultant, and an older schoolmate’s parent. Each of these coffee chats wore me down with their insistence on Harvard’s superiority: H grads were leaders, MIT grads slaved away while their bosses took all the credit. (I lacked the wit and cultural awareness to respond to this blatant stereotypy). I could find a nice boy to marry at H and never worry about money again. (At MIT, it’s commonly said that the odds are good but the goods are odd). By the time I went to Veritas, I was done fighting. On the last night, I hung out on a balcony with strangers, their ruddy-drunk faces peeking through the shadows. We pointed out quietly-lit steeples and relayed stories from our upperclassmen hosts and I thought to myself, I can do this. I can wear this social mask for the next four years,^3 and that was it. My mother’s crusade was finally over.

In the end of the end, it was my life, not hers. I can see her selfishness, and unclouded by my own indignation and pain, also see that I was the one who hit the button, who accepted the offer. Yet also, I can finally see her persistence, her resourcefulness, her absolute determination towards a goal longer term than any I’ve ever strived for. In her own world, in her own way, she had done everything right.

Footnotes

Don’t feel too bad for him; he attended Stanford in the end.
Of course, she found out first, while I was at school, and proceeded to tell everyone but me.
What a lie that turned out to be.

Unconditional love

Once upon a time, I made a promise to myself, to love and care for all my past and future selves, to honor their decisions and beliefs as the best they could’ve done in that moment. There is something immensely comforting knowing that past-me has my back. No matter how much I cringe at my actions or regret my decisions in the present, someone believes in me (and it doesn’t particularly matter that the person is myself, or even that the person doesn’t exist yet/anymore.)

I spoiled it in the title, but this intertemporal love is my new definition of unconditional love. It’s rather hard to love someone intertemporally, as all those divorce statistics demonstrate. I think I hold onto my loves longer than most others, and yet still I do not love many present versions of my past loves. Time itself is a powerful poison, as is time apart. But of the friends around me today, old and new, have I committed to loving their past and future selves too?

I don’t think so, for the most part. I’m slow to trust, slow to love, and I have spent time with no one else as long as myself. I did not unconditionally love my ex (obviously). Surprisingly, I believe I unconditionally love my brother, even though we haven’t spent vast amounts of time together in ages.

Unconditional love has always been a bit of a mystery to me. “What if they murdered someone? Does love imply forgiveness?” “What if they were X-ist? Can I support someone in direct violation of my personal beliefs?” I didn’t know how to answer these questions. Rhetoric aside, I didn’t even know how my gut felt. Does it? Could I? I still don’t have the rhetoric, but applying my old contractual framework to this definition has now clarified what my intuition would say.

Siblings

I like to take pride in the fact that I come off as an only child. I like being independent, capable. So many more successful people are first-borns, according to a couple fabricated statistics. What a group to belong to.

And yet deep inside there’s still the little sister that worships her big brother. “When I heard the learned astronomer” is more profound, more worthy of study, because I knew he liked it. I play Spirit Island to honor the fact that he once talked to me about it for eight straight hours. I universally accept his friends as amazing people (almost too much so for me to talk to).

In my mind, he lives the perfect life, with the perfect spouse and perfect job. They know what they like (each other) and what they want out of life, and they have the means to achieve it. And yet this possibly just speaks to how little I actually know him.

He’s infinitely cool, but I play it cool. I too have friends and hobbies and a rough life direction (so I claim). I separate my life from his, just a little, so I’m not always playing second fiddle. I hide behind my aloofness so no one can see that my knees are knocking on the inside. Scared that even if I try, I can’t squeeze out the toothpaste, open up what’s inside him and be a friend.

Haikus

The cat meows loudly

Although it has just been fed

No one can say why

In the quiet room

A book topples on its side

Chaos on the shelf

A tea bag slouches

The mug is cold to the touch

Computer keys clack

A fuzzy blanket

The company of a friend

Peace is happiness

I want to drink dew

straight from the air. Is that why

dogs stick out their tongues?

Two bikes roll uphill

One springs ahead to the top

The other one wilts

Type / to choose a block

How do you pronounce it?

Is it “slash” or—

High-trust communities

High-trust communities are the gold standard for what a community could be. High trust reduces a lot of emotional overhead, makes collective problem solving easier, and provide participants a much-needed sense of comfort and belonging.

Richard Bartlett of microsolidarity talks about two ingredients that set a roadmap for high-trust communities: scale and tempo.

Scale is pretty clear: the larger the group gets, the less well you know everyone, and the higher the chance of there being a bad apple. There are social clubs where new members must be unanimously approved. This is the equivalent of going on twenty first dates, and every single date decides you are worthy of a second one. It’s not easy (still better than hazing!) but the tradeoff is you are inducted into a community with rock-solid foundations.

It’s not just about the size though. A community won’t thrive without its rituals, which is where tempo comes in. Bartlett’s talk illustrates tempo using standard agile rituals: the standup, the quarterly reviews, the annual retreat. Rituals are divided into relational, planning and working rhythms. Relational rhythms, for example, can be further divided into weekly coffee chats, monthly team bondings and annual retreats.

Timing is important. I used to have weekly check-ins with my ex at the beginning of our relationship. They were helpful at the beginning while we were still orienting. But when our relationship started stabilizing, there weren’t many problems that needed discussing at the level of one week, and they fizzled. If instead we had switched to a monthly or quarterly cadence, we might have caught some problems earlier.

What communities am I a part of? How can I convert them into more open and trusting spaces?

Economics

There’s a certain cynicism to economists. They like to describe the world as it is, and forget to think about the world as it could be. A model is useful if it can predict the future, true. But models can also be used to design the future.

Homo economicus relies on two assumptions: that humans behave rationally and in their own self-interest. Behavioral economics has recently begun to challenge that first assumption. No field has yet arise to disprove the second. Instead, we have evolutionary just-so stories, Hamilton’s rule and infinite games rationalizing why altriusm is self-interest in disguise.

I have long lost faith in evolutionary explanations. At the very least, I deny that reproductive pressures have any effect on myself. For every economist I’ve heard explaining the signaling benefits of philanthropy, I’ve talked to two more genuinely kind and reflective people who, to their cores, simply want what’s best for others, and yet another who struggles with altruism as a selfish motivator. Anthropologists can try to explain these with evolution, but a theory that explains everything says nothing.

In mechanism design, we talk about strategy-proofness. How important is this? In an arbitrary mechanism, how many players will game the game? There is an element of fairness in retrospect, that pushes all players to desire strategy-proofness. But when measured up against Pareto efficiency, or stability, is it truly the thing to hold constant?

And then I bounce back, and find myself marveling at the existence of strategy-proofness as a concept. That the revelation principle exists: there always exists a mechanism in a contractual world whereby players should be honest. Why don’t we strive harder for this world? For more systems in place that encourage honesty and fair distribution? Why do we accept that lemons will always be lemons — is there no way for us to sell lemon meringue instead?

I am still but a babbling toddler, when it comes to mechanism design. I know that I understand little of what I say, that my dreams are ideal beyond ideal. But what is this research for, if not looking where no one has looked before?

Trapped

I think, of everything that went wrong, there is one moment I will never forget. I was sitting on the staircase in the house I grew up in. We were on the phone. This was the third time we were having this conversation. You wanted me home earlier, you said. You missed me. We had been apart for two weeks. I had explained to you over and over again why it was hard, and each time we hung up, I thought you understood. Twenty-four hours. We fought over a difference of twenty-four hours for three days. Except it wasn’t even a fight. Because how could I really say, No, I won’t be miserable if I don’t see you twenty-four hours earlier. I live with you during the other three-hundred-fifty days of the year. I miss you, you’d say, and I’d recognize the bait for what it was and still fall for it. I’d squeeze out a I miss you too that was more obligatory than heartfelt. I was trapped, and I was tired.

And so in the end I gave in, because what is a relationship if not compromise. I moved my flight one day later, and broke the news to my parents over dinner. I had to endure their accusations of me not loving them enough. That I had replaced them with you. That once I got in a relationship I threw away my family. It was a familiar story, couched in a new setting. My mother was a skilled guilt-tripper, and overbearing in her need for affirmation. She spent the next three days barging into my room to try to convince me to move the flight back up. And so I was cornered yet again.

I had told you all this, but I couldn’t make you understand. I had long given up on making my mother understand anything. Stories romanticize the compassion of motherhood, the dependability of romantic partners. How was it that I found myself bereft of both?

Passion

Do you like school?

I went back to school to study incentives and mechanism design. In my first semester, the closest we got was one problem set on choice preferences. It was hard to say then that I enjoyed school.

I thought I liked learning, but lectures dragged on. I remembered why I fled from math freshman year, the definitions and theorems blurring together in a haze of so what? As suspected, macroeconomics was no easier to care about. I had begun to regret the series of decisions that had led me to this point. I had made a large bet, and the bet did not pay off. And then I started auditing Market Design.

I love Market Design. I literally have a crush on Market Design. I want to learn graph theory now, so that I can understand the kidney matching algorithm. I want to prove matching theorems over and over again until they are seared into my brain, until they are more intuitive than Euclid’s infinite primes. There is a language here, of equilibria and strategies and efficiency, and I want to blab and blab and blab until I am fluent. Play in the playground proving strategy-proofness. I want to learn about all its frivolous applications. About its flaws. I want nothing but to hug this new crush tight against me and dance.

Alas, I’ve lost the joy of learning. I no longer strive for mastery indiscriminately, climb the mountain just because it’s there. But honestly, who cares? I’ve got market design, and that is enough for me.

Words

//a couple weeks old

I am a sieve. I desperately scoop up words, trying to hold them close. But words bleed away.

I wanted words so I could taste emotions. Writing was thinking and if I could not write then I could not think.

The more I clung to them, the more I tried to fill myself up, the faster they slipped out of reach.

But I had it backwards. The emotions come and bring the words with them. A tsunami wave carrying the riches of the ocean. I did not have words not because I could not hold them, but because I could not feel.

And now I feel. I do nothing but feel, I feel deeply, darkly. And the words come and they bleed once more.