Category Archives: Existentialism

The Way Home

by in Boundary Behavior, Death, Environment, Existentialism, Family, Humanity, Loneliness, Love, Luminous Aether, Mystery, The Road | 8 Comments

I wrote this initially about two decades back, ironically during an apparently rather tedious, science-related conference. I first posted it at another, now defunct website.  I re-posted it again at WP in September of 2015, just before some travels to the general area where I witnessed this event.
I was eleven-years old, and it left a deep impression on my still young mind.

 

“不知周之夢為蝴蝶與，蝴蝶之夢為周與。”
“Did a man dream he was a butterfly,
or is a butterfly dreaming it is a man?“
–Zhuāngzǐ (c.369 BC – c.286 BC).

Science has been at the center of nearly all of my adult life. Ironically, however, I find some reassurance in that science doesn’t have answers to every question. To be honest with myself, I don’t want to know everything.

Bewilderment can be a marvelous sensation, hinting at possibilities that some wondrous magic perhaps awaits just behind the curtain. The joy in watching a good magician is in the mystery. And life itself is filled with mysteries — experiences that liberate stories far more wonderful than anything possibly rendered into mere description.

Finding myself alone one autumn afternoon in the years before being endowed with the all-knowing condition of teenager-hood, my eyes fell upon one of those magnificent, but mysteriously unexplainable phenomena. Rounding a corner along a trail through the hills near my childhood home, the very landscape suddenly transformed into a rolling, whirling, orange and yellow cloud of pulsating wings.

A tremendous gathering of monarch butterflies had settled into a ravine of wild oaks and milkweed near the edge of the Forest of Nisene Marks, draping everything in a living fabric of what entomologists refer to as the “imago stage of lepidoptera” — or “butterflies” for the rest of us.

In one of life’s great mysteries, scientists have no idea how, or even why tens-of-millions of monarch butterflies travel thousands of miles across the North American continent, ultimately to converge on just a few locations. Moreover, a single migration is accomplished through generations. Each delicate butterfly’s life enduring only a fleeting few weeks, it will be the offspring of many generations on who complete the cyclic annual journeys started by distant ancestors.

Of course, scientists know some things. Experiments show that southward migrations can be triggered by cold weather. But this only tells us that the butterflies don’t like to get too cold, and that’s not really very surprising.

Some also think that monarchs orient themselves to the sun during their travels. But they don’t know how the insects compensate for the sun’s different positions over a day, or at different latitudes. And even more mysterious is how a butterfly, so many generations removed from any who previously congregated at some special location deep in a Mexican forest, can ultimately return to that exact spot.

Scientists are also just as mystified by how monarchs form “roosts” along their migratory routes, such as the one I happened upon in the local hills near my childhood home. These delicate insects don’t travel in flocks, like birds. Rather, they migrate alone.

Yet, these sudden gatherings of sometimes vast numbers of butterflies will form spontaneously over a few hours, with members converging from every direction onto a single location. It’s as if countless flyspeck minds suddenly resolved that this particular place should be called “home.”

And just as suddenly, they’re gone.

Maybe there was a message for that solitary witness. After all, what is “home”, and what is it that draws us to gather in such places? And why is it that just when we might think we’ve discovered such a place, it just as suddenly disappears?

The world around us changes. The young and the old alike, move on. New generations take their places. We awaken to a changed landscape, perhaps even one in which we no longer find refuge. Maybe home isn’t a place after all?

And so we migrate. And if not in our bodies, then in our hearts. We go on to what comes next and gather anew. We gather with our friends and fellow travelers, our families, lovers and companions, or perhaps just our faith in something greater. That, or we die alone.

And how we know when it’s time to travel is not by the temperature of the air, or by the positions of the sun or the stars, or by changes in some physical field. Instead, we look inward, toward something else entirely, to something unquantifiable. We turn to a counsel for which there is no science.

Standing within a swirling sea of pulsating wings, some brushed my face while others took momentary refuge upon outstretched arms. I stood in place until my muscles ached, until I knew that I’d be missed among my own. But the warm memory of the experience remained, like the magical iridescence of orange dust that was left on my skin afterward.

Returning to that same spot the next day, but for a few lifeless husks they were gone. Now even the hills where nature once performed that blissfully mysterious act of magic for an awestruck child have been tamed by other humans in search of homes for themselves. And I too have moved on. But every journey has a destination, even if we don’t know what it is.

 

the big game

by in Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Identity | 18 Comments

“In the game of life, sports teach us that victory is sweetest when shared, and that the bonds forged in competition last far beyond the final whistle.“
– Fake Quote Generator, (2026).

My part-time neighbors across the street are apparently here. I can tell because their Dodge Ram 3500 with its super-extended cab and Turbo Diesel V8 engine won’t fit in their garage; so it’s usually parked in the driveway when they’re in town. I’ve always thought it looks rather like the offspring of a limousine that was mated with a short-bed pickup.

I understand that it cost something like $90,000, which seemed like it was important to let me know. I hope they kept some money to pay for fuel.

Meanwhile, my new, also part-time next door neighbors from the Bay Area apparently arrived in their little Subaru hybrid. Being near silent and getting parked in their garage, I wouldn’t even have known if they hadn’t knocked on my door with a gift bottle of wine.

He works for Google, and once confided that they bought the old house mainly because they just didn’t want to keep any assets in California. But she’s a serious skier; and they tend to head out to the slopes before sunrise.

While I was out washing the road grime off my old Toyota pickup with a sponge and a bucket of hot water, my neighbor from across the street came by to ask if I knew anyplace local that could fix a snowblower. After a couple of suggestions, he then mentioned that the Seattle Seahawks would be playing in the big game.
He seemed pretty happy about it, asking me if I was going to watch.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t really follow much sports.” I didn’t mention that my years in Seattle were among those I’d rather forget.

“Your husband have any teams?”

“Not really. He’s more of a skier…
when he’s not working…
or traveling.”

He seemed a little disappointed, shifting his eyes onto the grimy truck getting the sponge bath. “Nice little truck,” he said. Then noticing the rusting steel hook held up under the license plate with a piece of rubber from an old bicycle inner tube, “Is that a winch?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “A five-ton. Good for moving trees or pulling people out of the snow.”

His expression conveyed images of just how big of a winch could be stuffed under the bumper of a Dodge Ram 3500.
–

I think my neighbor from across the street was hoping to do a little “BIRGing”, or basking in reflected glory. It’s that vicarious experience of success one has by aligning a personal identity with an external source of victory or success. We usually think of this in the context of sports; but it can apply to anything… a famous person from one’s hometown, pride in a national hero or achievement, affiliation with successful cultural or political groups…

When BIRGing, it doesn’t really matter that the individual didn’t actually contribute to the success. It’s merely the sense of association that connects the perceived achievement to the individual. The dopamine rush is just the same. This contrasts with people who tend to get their hormonal fixes through direct experience, like my neighbors who were out skiing.

The concept of birging in social psychology dates back to the work of Robert Cialdini in the 1970s as an approach to “Social Identity Theory”. Cialdini proposed that personal identity is, at least in part, drawn from perceptions of association with high-achieving or high-status group identities. BIRGing is consequently an attempt to enhance one’s self image by association.
–

I guess surveys show that a slight majority of Americans don’t really follow professional sports anymore, or at least not all that closely. And only about 16% of Americans venture to keep themselves well informed and watch most or all relevant games. What percentage of those can be found sitting at the bar in a casino sports book, I can’t say. But I suspect my neighbor will probably be in front of his $16,000, 180-inch, OLED big-screen during the big game.

I’d categorize my husband in the “not closely” group. I know he doesn’t really care all that much about professional sports. But he seems to be aware of the tribal benefit of at least not appearing clueless in discussions with other guys.

In the circles I tend to keep, sports isn’t an especially frequent topic of conversation. But I work with someone who follows political kayfabery with the same degree of fervor. He’ll occasionally hit me up with something like, “So what do you think of that (fill in the politically explosive blank) that happened yesterday?!”

Usually, my responses tend to fall along the line of, “I don’t know. I’ve only heard what’s been on the news.”

The look of astonishment at my apparent lack of excitement over news-as-performance-art suddenly reminds me of the tribal benefit of at least appearing to have some emotional investment in sports. But at what point does it all become more like belonging to a cult?

It strikes me that it’s not necessarily easy to spot people who find themselves tied up in them. Cults mostly revolve around the fixation on a particular message that colors how one views the world. That doesn’t necessarily imply a destructive influence. But it is a subjugation of “self” to someone else’s messaging.

Ironically, most of those who don’t follow sports at all tend to fall into lower socioeconomic groups. So feeling an investment in your local team apparently isn’t merely some form of compensation for not feeling invested in the rest of society… at least not economically. And a significant portion of those who identify as more recently losing interest in professional sports say that it’s because it’s become too politicized.

For the 7% of Americans who identify as “superfans”, however, it doesn’t seem that they much care. They’re going to cheer their teams and their favorite players tomorrow, regardless. And I’m sure the adrenaline and dopamine highs will be just the same as if they’d skied a perfect powder slope while perilously threading between menacing rock walls and being chased by an avalanche.

The difference is that win or lose, they will all survive. And whether to a cheering high-five or to laments over another beer, the tribal bonds will be cemented for another year.

Links:

 

Sunlight and Ground

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Death, Existentialism, Feminism, History, Hmmm..., Humanity, Identity, Japan, Loneliness, Music | 23 Comments

Some time on February 5th of 1999, Mutsumi Fukuhara stepped from the balcony of her Osaka apartment. Sunlight and ground became one.

“Someday I’ll melt into the ground,
And be fertilizer for the earth,
So better than too fast the stream of time,
Is too slow the universe turning.
Still I battle with questions of love.

This is my life.
Only one life in this Role Playing Game.”
S.J.M. – R.P.G.
–

Getting myself grounded in an only marginally familiar culture after moving to Japan in mid 2002 was a difficult process. Viewed from the outside, Japan is a peaceful country… clean, safe, orderly…
Too orderly.

The peace of Japanese culture conveys the spirit of “wa” (和), a concept usually interpreted in English as “harmony”. But wa isn’t really something that can be properly translated in a single word.

Wa describes a kind of communal harmony based in valuing social conformity over individual concerns; and it’s a central concept in Japanese society. Many both formal and informal Japanese social structures exist primarily as means through which to ensure this harmony. To disregard their expectations is to be as the proverbial “nail that sticks out”, and the recipient of a sort of passive-aggressive hammering down.

Individually, this results in what are known as “honne” and “tatemae”. Honne (本音, “true sound”) refers to one’s inner feelings, desires, or opinions. Tatamae (建前, “facade”), however, refers to one’s expected pattern of public expression through which wa is maintained.

Understanding this is important to understanding social interaction in a culture where people rarely say what they mean. Personal expression and negative reactions aren’t prevented; but they don’t encourage future connection. The Western saying goes that, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” But in Japan, even silence leaves a chill.
–

Like the passions of honne hidden beneath a veneer of tatemae, the Japan I experienced in the early 2000s concealed a surprisingly expressive wilderness beneath that external facade of conformity, neatness and order. At the time, cities like Tokyo and Osaka hosted entire networks of discrete, underground music establishments known as “live houses”.

Often little more than transitory basement dives, they’d be ignored by police so long as the local yakuza assured that nothing unseemly made it onto the streets. But especially in places where art-communities or vice tended to congregate, some were more established.

“You can dance your dance. you can talk hard loud.
you can live your own life with your POPO…
you can walk your way. you can scream in this way.
I can live my own life!”
S.J.M. – POPO Bar
–

East Asian kids learn early on to be self-reliant. This is rooted in a Confucian ethic that one shouldn’t be a “problem” for parents, family or others. The Japanese term, “meiwaku” (迷惑) means to be troublesome, or a nuisance or annoyance. And it’s a kind of criticism most Japanese children learn to avoid. Meiwaku is more than just an expression of annoyance at another’s behavior; it’s a disruption to the communal harmony of wa.

Adults unfamiliar with meiwaku often perceive East Asian children brought up with this internalized principle as easy. But a lot of these kids are simply struggling with not getting the care or attention they need. And for those who are called out as troublesome, it can become a sort of hammering down that deeply affects self-worth.

“Just like weapons (Yes) WORDS kill me
Just like weapons (Yes) WORDS kill people I love…

At some point … we must forget the WORDS
To the broken body, gentle lights
To the open pupil, Sweet liquid
To the blocked up ears, bird-like sounds
To the closed mouth, Song from stones.”
S.J.M. – The WORDS
–

Stumbling into this music scene, I never really thought much about it having emerged from something cultural that had preceded my own time in the country. Japan was the “Asian Tiger” of the 1980s. In a mere two generations, the country had accomplished an economic “miracle”, taking itself from the ashes of WWII to a nation seemingly poised to simply purchase the world. But near the end of 1989, that all changed.

The fevered inertia of economic enthusiasm collapsed as “zombie companies” kept alive by endless injections of investment capital from over-leveraged banks eventually resulted in a stock-market crash. Then, equity and property values collapsed. Early 90s Japan marked the start of more than two decades of near total economic stagnation. But more importantly, it also represented a broken promise in the Japanese social contract.

Many lifetime jobs, once the hallmark of Japanese corporate employment, were replaced by temporary workers. Wages stagnated. And real household earnings fell as the purchasing power of a weakened Yen resulted in inflation. A generation of youth approaching adulthood were greeted by uncertain futures as families struggled. And Japan’s young population became caught up in an atmosphere of anxiety and frustration.

“The era bathed in light disappears,
And new seeds are born,
Spreading branches envelop my body,
Colors flow and fill the gaps,
The empty time becomes a crimson sea,
The empty time becomes a crimson forest,
The empty time becomes a crimson sky,
The empty time becomes crimson waves,
The forging of memories… of sharp memories.“
S.J.M. – Forged Memories (from Japanese)
–

Against this backdrop, the almost mythically notorious all-female Japanese band, Super Junky Monkey, would emerge in 1991. Known for raucous performances that frequently hosted masses of stage-diving youth, their music defied any particular niche… aside from that of being “anti-mainstream”. Too experimental and unrestrained for popular domestic consumption, they remained mostly live-house performers in Japan.

Overseas, however, a 1993 live album the band had produced was getting noticed. And in 1994, they were picked up by Sony Records. Taking cues from genres like funk, metal, hardcore punk, grunge, stoner rock, and avante-garde, the band continued to skillfully navigate a wide range of sounds that utterly defied categorization.

A big part of Super Junky Monkey’s success was that all four members of the band, percussionist “Matsudaaaahh!!“, bassist Shinobu Kawai, guitarist Keiko, and vocalist Mutsumi Fukuhara, were all talented musicians. But it was frontwoman Mutsumi’s brashly charismatic performances and vocals that really gave the band its unique character, especially in  live performances.

“If we were deaf and blind, could we still kill each other?
If we were able to fly, then would borders still fence us in?
If the human beings could love, would we live as equals?
If we were happy innocent and… dumb as dorks,
Would there still be wars?
Would we still want more?
Would there be users controllers and hierarchy?
Can you give me the answers?“
S.J.M. – IF
–

By all accounts, Super Junky Monkey was a successful band, producing four LPs, two EPs, and a number of videos, while developing significant followings both in Japan and abroad. They traveled extensively, performing in some larger venues in the UK, the US, and Canada, while receiving both foreign and domestic awards for their work. And in Japan, they blazed the trail for other all-female bands that also broke the usual Japanese “cuteness” mold for women as performers.

After a brief hiatus, Super Junky Monkey began performing live sets in the latter part of 1998 that pointed toward a new direction. The music was just as difficult to pigeonhole, but more contemplative and mature.

Moving away from the gritty sounds and Hip-Hop narratives that once invited stage-diving youth, Mutsumi’s voice instead began to echo into a distance that slowly disappeared into a kind of musical chaos. Her feverish leaps and long flailing ponytail were replaced by hands that slowly reached toward a calling sky. There was clearly some new inspiration to the compositions, perhaps reflecting her having had a child. 

I never saw Super Junky Monkey perform; I was hunkered down in the conformity required of my own life in the US during the band’s peak. And by the time I found myself in Japan, Mutsumi was gone, and the rest of the band had moved on. But I wish I had seen them. It would have added a great deal of context to what I witnessed in the Japanese music scene of the early 2000s.

Sometimes, success isn’t really what it’s all about. A lot of these musicians were simply pouring out their souls…
Sometimes, until there was nothing left.

“Storm is gone
Earthquake is gone
Time is gone
Sunlight dazzled my eyes
Sunlight surround me
Sunlight and ground became
Congenial to each other“
S.J.M. – Towering Man

Regression to Mediocrity, Pachinko

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Humanity, Japan, Numbers, Risk | 25 Comments

“Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant.”
-Sherlock Holmes

Taking a bit of a side-trip between my “Regression to Mediocrity” posts (or maybe just some avoidance behavior), the mention of “Pachinko” (パチンコ) had me realizing that this is something most Americans don’t really know all that much about. While many in the US have probably seen Pachinko machines at one time or another, especially when they became a fad in the US back in the ’80s, they might not understand just what they represent.

In Japan, Pachinko is a form of gambling that was originally intended to get around the activity being illegal. In fact, most of those Pachinko machines that found their way into the US back in the ’80s were ones that had been removed from service in Pachinko parlors because they were paying out too much.

Essentially, a “Pachinko machine” is similar to an American-style “pinball” machine, except that it’s in a vertical position, rather more simplified, and the player has less control over a ball’s progression through the machine. Modern Pachinko machines have added more flashing lights and electronic score-keepers. But playing one remains effectively like playing a “slot machine” in a gambling casino… fast, noisy, and unpredictable.

A Pachinko hall is in reality a low-stakes, low strategy gambling casino. And they are still fairly common throughout Japan. To get around the illegality of gambling, however, Pachinko hall operators traditionally used a legal loophole that avoided the direct exchange of money. Today, this process might not be necessary in some areas, as Japanese gambling laws in certain regions have relaxed.

In principle, the process of gambling first involves the “rental” of the 11-millimeter steel balls that run through the machines. The player will then use these for the “entertainment” of watching them bounce around in the Pachinko machine, presumably for as long as possible while the machine credits points with more balls for more play until they are all eventually returned through the machine.

To keep there from being any gambling involved, the Pachinko hall can’t reimburse a player for any extra or leftover balls generated from play should the player decide to leave before running out. So instead, the player will gather up all of their remaining steel balls and carry them out, perhaps to be used at a later time.

In reality, however, the player will proceed around some corner into a back alley. And then, at the window of a nearby wholesale buyer of 11-millimeter steel balls, they will sell them… a lucrative “business” considering a local Pachinko parlor that provides a constant demand for the product.

No one has ever been fooled by the fact that it’s actually gambling. But it has been tolerated, at least in certain areas, because so many people engage in the activity. The Pachinko business is also sufficiently profitable to keep many local authorities well compensated with either community contributions or simply bribes, so no one wants to bite-the-hand-that-feeds. It’s a perfect Yakuza business.

In an effort to clean things up a bit, some jurisdictions in places like Tokyo have attempted to legitimize Pachinko by licensing and regulating the venues, and by officially collecting taxes and fees. In exchange, these Pachinko halls are allowed to make direct transactions, and additionally to maintain and to operate low-stakes “Pachi-slot” machines that can directly accept money.

Where I lived in eastern Tokyo, there was local Pachinko hall on a main street just around the corner. It was almost always well attended. I never managed to make it past the wall of cigarette smoke at the entrance. But living in a US state where gambling is legal, it looked a lot like the slot-machine floor in a casino. Rows of people sat staring into the flashing lights and garish displays of the machines.

Doing a quick search for some images to use for writing this, I was struck by just how easy it is to deceive humans into self-destructive behaviors. Article after article in Japanese, the recurring themes were addiction and financial hardship. Below is my translation of just a part of one article written by someone who apparently struggled terribly to regain control of his life:

“It’s been five years since I washed my feet of Pachinko and Pachi-slot. I’m just an ordinary office worker in quality control for manufacturing for about 25 years. I’m a dad with three kids (smile). I will turn 50 this year. I was hooked on Pachinko at 18, and went to Pachinko halls for 25 years whenever I had free time. At first I enjoyed playing… but I became absorbed in it. I would even reserve a spot in the morning to relieve my stress (at work).

When I was young, I thought, ‘Maybe I can earn money without working?’ But as I got older, it became ‘I’ve lost so much that I have no money! I’m quitting Pachinko!’ But I still went to Pachinko halls, even though I knew I would lose. I wanted to quit, but I didn’t know how. I understand that feeling very well.”

Happily, the writer went on to explain the steps he took to wean himself away from his addiction.

Probability is one of those things that humans have difficulty grasping, myself included. One of two “D” grades I received during my undergraduate studies was in an upper-division statistics course. (The other was for a Sociology class.) While I could do the math, I never really understood the meaning of half of what I was calculating.

But probabilities are a fundamental aspect in the human ability to make predictions and to plan. In fact, “behavioral psychology” is an entire field based in how the brain responds to perceived probabilities of outcomes. And the most powerful of behavioral modifiers is what’s called “variable, intermittent reinforcement“.

Essentially, this describes cases where there’s a reward, but of differing amounts at differing intervals… just like gambling. The mind perceives this as indicating a behavior that warrants perseverance, like a bear enduring the bee-stings because there’s occasionally a stash of honey. And whether as individuals, or as a collective society, that’s how we shift our odds in life.

Image:
Electric City Akihabara in Tokyo, By Tischbeinahe – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12746666

Regression to Mediocrity, Part 1

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Humanity, Identity, Numbers, Philosophy, Politics, Science | 16 Comments

“Remember, half the people you know are below average.”
-Larry the Cable Guy (Daniel Lawrence Whitney).

Charles Darwin’s half-cousin, the polymath, Sir Francis Galton, was likewise knighted in 1909 for his own contributions to science. Galton created the first weather maps, discovered “anticyclones”, and devised classifications for fingerprints that are still used by forensic experts. He also analyzed the medical benefits of prayer (concluding that it had no measurable effect).

Galton was interested in statistical patterns, and especially those emerging from humans. However, this would eventually result in his becoming among the more controversial, if not maligned of scientific theorists. Today, Galton is mostly remembered as a product of his time and culture, for his role in promoting eugenics (a term he coined in 1883), and for his theories of social Darwinism.

Hundreds of Galton’s academic papers and books discussed statistical correlations in populations, especially with regard to human intelligence. He first used the phrase, “nature versus nurture“, and his 1869 book, Hereditary Genius, was intended as a scientific study of extraordinary intelligence through statistical correlations.

Valid ethnocentric, moral and ethical criticisms aside, Galton was at the very least a brilliant mathematician.  And he did make some interesting, if controversial observations.  Among the more amusing, and generally misrepresented, is Galton’s “regression to the mediocre”.

The idea, which describes a mathematical tendency of the extraordinary to return to some average state over time is often attributed to Galton. Indeed, Galton found that generations of offspring of extraordinary individuals tended to deviate increasingly less from the mean (average) value of a population than did their parents.  That is, successive generations became increasingly ordinary, or what Galton called, “regression to mediocrity”.

While the statistical phenomenon is real, its emergence in discussions of Galton’s work is generally misinterpreted.  Regression to the mean, as it’s usually termed, is merely the result of dumb luck.

In college, I was generally a good test-taker. Much of that had to do with actually studying, and consequently knowing how to at least get into the ballpark with my responses. But I’ll admit to a fair amount of guesswork.

So imagine a whole class full of entirely clueless students merely guessing on a 10-question, true/false test. You might reasonably expect that most will score around 50%, more or less, a “failing” grade. Diverging scores, from 0% to 100%, are also possible. But they become increasing rare the farther they are from the average. The rate at which they happen is known as a “normal”, or “Gaussian” distribution.

Graphing such a distribution will ideally create what’s known as a “bell-curve”, where most scores are concentrated around the center, and increasingly extreme scores become increasingly infrequent. Still, every now and then someone might score an 80%, or a 90%, or even ace the test… if just by pure chance.

You can simulate such a randomly answered “test” on something known as a “Galton board”, or “quincunx”.  The device uses a series of carefully aligned pegs to mechanically bounce a dropped ball either right or left with an equal probability at each peg (essentially a “Pachinko” machine).  By dropping a large number of balls through the device, a probabilistic, normal distribution can be observed to appear in a series of collection bins at the bottom.

The example below is the result of a simulation where 100 “balls” have been dropped through a series of ten, right/left “pegs”, and collected into 11 resulting bins.  If this represents 100 students making random, true/false guesses on ten questions, each bin, from left to right, can also represent the number of correct answers, or of students who received scores ranging from 0% to 100%.

Hmm… So in this first simulation, the most common score was only 40%. Still, 20% of the class passed the test, with 5 students receiving 80% (a “B” grade), and 2 more 90% (an “A” grade)!
That can’t be right… can it?  So let’s try that again with another group…


Well… This looks slightly better.  Only 16% passed the test this time, and there weren’t any “A” grades.  Regardless, I know these students are entirely ignorant.  So let’s try it again…


Again, no “A” grades… Still, 19% passed, and 3 with “B”.  Hmm… Is somebody cheating?


This time 17% passed.  And there were a half-dozen “B” grades.  One more try…


19 people passed the test this time, and with 3 more “A” grades in the mix!

If these graphs all together represent 500 utterly ignorant students in a lecture class left to some entirely incompetent TA, how did 91 students manage to pass the test (“C” or better) without knowing anything at all? And how is it that 28 students received grades sufficient to go on to the next level in a core subject?  Five students even scored 90% for “A” grades!

Of course, no (competent) instructor would run a class like this. But the point here is that sometimes we get lucky. A guess might be right, the weather might have cooperated, cutting the red wire disarmed the bomb, or two fortuitously inherited genes combined to impart some unusually beneficial characteristic. But this doesn’t always happen.

Given more opportunities, random chance tends to drift each individual increasingly toward the middle. For example, if I was ball number 421 in the previous simulation, I might have been one of just that one-percent to get an “A”. But the odds of scoring a 90% (or better) again are a mere 1 in 512. And notice that about three-quarters of scores are in just the 40% to 60% range. Over time, events based in chance will tend toward the average, or the “mediocre”.

Galton observed this with the offspring of remarkable individuals. The descendants of unusually tall (or short) individuals tended to generationally drift toward some average in height. And more controversially, he observed the same tendency among the descendants of remarkable intellectuals…
with a caveat.

Humans are a (mostly) successful species because we (mostly) work to shift, or “skew” the odds… we educate ourselves, take a jacket when there’s a possibility of snow, read the instructions before cutting the wire. And given the chance, we tend to choose our mates.

Going back to those quincunx simulations, we can imagine a Pachinko player who searches for machines with some slightly bent pegs.  Likewise, a competent TA (or a little studying) might shift some number of student responses toward the “correct”, skewing the average toward a higher score.

Still, whether shifted to the right or to the left, there will be an average, a zone of comparative mediocrity. And with whatever influence is left to the gods of dumb luck, repetition will work to move results toward it.

Galton’s discussions of eugenics and cultural Darwinism were merely mathematical acknowledgements that selection, whether natural or human, have statistically predictable results. And where humans have an ability to change the odds, we also change the definition of “mediocrity”.

Photo:
Mug-shots of Francis Galton, taken at Bertillion’s criminological institute in Paris (1893).
Sourced from: https://www.galton.org/photos/slideshow3.htm
There’s an interesting discussion of what was behind the photo here:
Belden-Adams, K. (n.d.). Smarthistory – Alphonse Bertillon, Mugshot and Record of Francis Galton. https://smarthistory.org/alphonse-bertillon-mugshot-and-record-of-francis-galton/

References:

Francis Galton (1822-1911) | Embryo Project Encyclopedia. (2011, April 6).
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/francis-galton-1822-1911

Galton, F. (n.d.). Regression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature.
https://www.galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1886-jaigi-regression-stature.pdf

Galton, F. (1892). Hereditary genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences.

Jones, E. W. (2025, April 15). Francis Galton’s Theory of Intelligence | 2025. Psychology For.
https://psychologyfor.com/francis-galtons-theory-of-intelligence/

The collected published works of Francis Galton. (n.d.).
https://www.galton.org/bibliography/index.html

 

Apophenia

by in Existentialism, Hmmm..., Identity, Mom, Music, Mystery, Philosophy, Science | 19 Comments

Alice Sara Ott, Gnossiennes No.1, Gymnopédies No.1, & Gnossiennes No.3, by Erik Satie.

“Je suis fatigué de toujours mourir avec le cœur brisé.”
[“I am tired of always dying with a broken heart.“]
– Erik Satie

“Apophenia” is the human perception of patterns in otherwise unrelated or meaningless information. It’s the experience of seeing faces in clouds, or of sensing order in random events.

The experience is an ordinary and usually benign product of brain function. But in extreme cases, it can result in behaviors such as unreasonable gambling, superstitious actions, or irrational beliefs. In statistics, it can result in what is termed “Type-I error”, or a false positive.

The brain is an instrument of pattern-recognition, constantly searching for relationships between the sensory inputs it receives. And it changes throughout a life as it attempts to make sense of an external world by matching the patterns of its experiences to other established patterns. We discover clues to our existence by connecting perceptions, defining our bodies and the spaces around them, learning when to feel fearful or safe, and the communicative meanings of words and of sounds.

The very reality we experience in our minds is the result of how we construct these relationships. But always, the brain looks for patterns, even in the random occurrences that fill the world, even if they don’t exist.

When I was much younger, I thought of music as a sort of universal language, that people all sensed pretty much the same thing in its patterns of rhythms, melodies, harmonies. But over time, I’ve come to realize that’s not entirely the case. We may all hear the same things, and even connect certain instinctive responses. Regardless, interpretation is emergent; music is a product of mind.

The power of music is in its evoked emotional response, but without the need for any apparent linguistic or semantic context. It can express emotion while itself remaining abstract. But the experience of music is still an interpretation. So not everyone necessarily feels the same things from the same combinations of sounds.

This isn’t about those who seem to have super-abilities to hear things most of us cannot. Simply getting older reduces the physical ability of our ears to register higher frequencies. But “music” as an experience is something different. It’s more than just combinations of sounds; it’s what emerges from the mind.

About one in ten-thousand people have “perfect pitch”, or an ability to exactly identify notes without hearing a reference. This isn’t a “good ear”, or an ability to accurately perceive the relative notes of an instrument. Tuning a piano requires good relative pitch; but a piano-tuner will still use something like a tuning fork as a reference.

Perfect pitch is an ability to bypass that interpretation of sound, and to instead have direct access to the neurological connections within the ear itself. Likewise, it tends to become less acute with age, mirroring the physical decline of hearing’s mechanics. So it’s an ability that, while developed with exposure to music, also seems to bypass the relational character of music itself.

Conversely, “congenital amusia” refers to cognitive music deafness, which apparently affects about 4-percent of the general population. Amusics can usually tell whether one note is higher or lower than another, but they can’t consciously distinguish differences in pitch. Most people can reflexively experience the difference between an “octave” and a “major 7th”, the first sounding harmonious and latter discordant. Those with amusia cannot, nor can they distinguish major and minor chords.

Somewhere between these extremes is where the patterns that give rise to mind create the experience of “music”, with perhaps a sliding scale. And “audio pareidolia” might be the extreme, a form of apophenia where people may experience music in even the random noise of anything from wind to the sound of a motor.

As with perfect pitch, exposure to music, especially when young, probably has an influence in how sounds are interpreted in our awareness. And for that, I thank my mom especially for the music she taught my young mind to perceive.

“Frisson” (French for “shivers”), sometimes called, “goosebumps”, is a response to certain emotionally stimulating experiences. The sensation includes a feeling of tingling skin, and may occur as a pleasurable emotional response to music. Many, myself included, strongly experience this effect when listening to emotionally evocative pieces of music. And yet, about one-in-three people have never had such an experience.

Frisson is a psycho-physiological phenomenon. It’s a physical response of the human body to a stimulus that, in the case of music, is merely created by the brain. It’s a reflexive manifestation of mind, of something entirely imagined.

When I was very young, my mom would encourage me to lay on the floor, eyes closed, and to imagine something while listening to a piece of music. And later, after we moved to the US, she would encourage the same while she played the piano. Several of my favorite pieces were by the French composer and pianist, Erik Satie.

Satie expressed an absurdist sense of a world that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. And many of his compositions were written in such a way as to encourage those who performed them to make their own interpretations. So my mom would sometimes play these pieces slightly differently, and then challenge me to see how how the story had changed.

What my mom was trying to teach me was how to experience those faces in the clouds that hide in the patterns that give rise to music… that it becomes what we experience and what we feel. Life is indeed an absurd performance, filled with joy and with sadness, with passion, and with irony. But when we take the stage, we at least get to choose what to evoke in our own renderings of its script.

Music is to me as standing in the clouds, surrounded by the wind, an arrangement of incantations read from some ancient, esoteric text. Voices sometimes whispered, sometimes singing in a bell, summon something magical, a radiant tingling glow.

 

Ada Zhao, playing the Italian composer, Benvenuto Terzi’s, “Carillon” (Bell Carol).
Yes, this is two overlapping parts being played on a single guitar. The melody is tapped out with the left hand, while the harmony is played in bell-like single-hand harmonics with the right hand.
Talent, skill, and a lot of passionate practice!

References and stuff:

Bowling, D. L. (2023). Biological principles for music and mental health. Translational Psychiatry, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02671-4

Jain, A., Schoeller, F., Horowitz, A., Hu, X., Yan, G., Salomon, R., & Maes, P. (2023). Aesthetic chills cause an emotional drift in valence and arousal. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1013117

Satie, Erik: Why and where Satie composed | Gnossiennes – Mara Marietta. (2024, June 8). Mara Marietta. https://www.maramarietta.com/the-arts/music/classical/satie/

Schoeller, F., Jain, A., Pizzagalli, D. A., & Reggente, N. (2024). The neurobiology of aesthetic chills: How bodily sensations shape emotional experiences. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 24(4), 617–630. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01168-x

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2025, March 21). Erik Satie | Biography, Music, gnossiennes, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erik-Satie

 

Same Same, but Different

by in Boundary Behavior, Death, Existentialism, Fear, Humanity, Identity, Loneliness, Love, Luminous Aether, Music, Philosophy | 11 Comments

“I look up at the sky, wondering if I’ll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don’t. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. …all I see is my own nature… I’ve carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I’m not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I’ve carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry.”
– Haruki Murakami (translated by: Philip Gabriel), What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007).

The Akira Kurosawa film, Rashomon, is a Japanese period-drama set in late Heian-era (1185) Kyoto. The story follows the accounts of four witnesses to the mysterious death of a traveling samurai. As each witness tells seemingly contradictory versions of events, questions arise about the meaning of evidence, subjective versus objective experience, and biases in perceptions.

As in the parable of the blind men and the elephant, each of the story’s characters is confined to discerning an overall meaning from his or her own limited perspective. But conceptualizing the whole by interacting with only a part ends up leaving no one with an entirely accurate representation. Though each knows an objective truth with the certainty of personal experience, none can agree to an overall interpretation.

Rashomon is about how personal circumstance affects an individual’s experiences, value judgments, and understandings. Even the most sincere attempts at discerning an objective reality become a subjective process whenever humans are involved. “Rashomon effect”, is commonly used in reference to the unreliability of eyewitnesses in courtrooms.

The takeaway is that a belief in absolute truth based in the limits of human experience leaves an individual ignorant of others’ experiences, which may be equally true. But the limitations of personal perspective also speaks to the cognitive tools we use to interact with the world. “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.”
–

For several years during my undergraduate college days, I played mostly percussion in a down-tuned, Japanese-American “power-trio”. We called ourselves “Byōki”, meaning “Sickness”… three Asian-American women responding to the nauseous corporate saccharin of 80’s Americana.

Our sound was hosted in garages or at the college bar, and at a couple of Japanese-American cultural events where I’m not so sure how welcome we were after sponsors actually heard our music. We were slow, loud, dark, and scrappy.

Listening to an old recording, I could barely hold a note; but it didn’t really matter. Hammering out lyrics like nails, the words to a piece inspired by the experience of a friend betrayed in a moment of weakness started, “I know God is dead. I will bury him.”

Still, I have long-time friends who talk to Angels, to the Universe, and even to God personally. I’m not sure whether I should envy, or pity them. Most seem pretty happy; and I don’t have any better ideas for making life work. Regardless, God has never taken much interest in speaking with me.

If I’m honest with myself, and I try to be, my perspective would probably keep me from hearing anything anyway. Pathologically unable to take Kierkegaard’s “leap” into faith, it is simply my own voice in the silence, saying what I want to hear. And if those who try to communicate the depths of their faiths to such as myself could understand, I don’t know whether they would feel pity or despair.
–

Living in northern Thailand for a couple of years at least put a lot of my first-world problems into a better perspective. And there was a kindness, an understanding allowing the forgiveness that I’m not omniscient. We can’t know the depths of others’ experiences; and we can’t look back. And especially when the people we love die suddenly and unexpectedly.

It’s a circumstance of enduring. And it becomes numbing after awhile, brushed off like snow at the door, left outside. A photo from decades ago, young friends, healthy, ambitious… It reminds me of a scene at the end of some old war film where the recollected dead outnumber the living, each representing some different lost promise.

Friends, family, mentors and heroes leave in ways that hit closer to home. Unexpected, discouraging… not lost to adventure, life’s risks, or simply poor judgment… but at home. For some, it was time. But for others, there was no goodbye, no word. Just a phone call… they’re gone.

A mentor and a friend, cursed with integrity and a kind heart, a beautiful mind and generous soul. Giving, simply that he could. But never taking enough. One of those rare people found on the path taken because of wanting to be more like them. To dare to be invested in life. Not a God-like man to proclaim how he lived. Just a humble man who claimed no special status with God at all. In the words of Krishnamurti,
“Love is not aware of itself as love, for the word is not the thing.”

Seeing the self-serving limits to each witness’s story, the Buddhist priest in Rashomon finds that he has lost his faith in humanity. There is no honor among any… thieves, opportunists, the unfaithful, the samurai’s self-inflicted death. But in a humble woodcutter’s appeal to spare the life of a child, the priest finds at least some promise.

 

So, What’s the Point?

by in Boundary Behavior, China, Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Identity, Japan, Philosophy, Taiwan | 13 Comments

The One-Thousand “New Taiwan Dollar” is something like a US $20. The most commonly carried banknote in Taiwan, its face isn’t that of a dead-president or some famed character from the past. Rather, it’s the country’s youth looking toward the world. The watermark on the right depicts a girl looking inward through a microscope. And another watermark, not visible to the left, shows an older student looking toward the heavens through a telescope. I think it’s probably one of the most profound, beautiful, and hopeful statements ever made on a piece of currency.

We were heading back to Taipei after having traveled to a traditional Chinese event at a rural Taiwanese “old town”. The journey required about an hour by bus to the commuter-rail stop in Changhua, where we hoped to catch the last train back to the High Speed Rail station in Taichung.

The late afternoon bus was crowded. So I ended up sitting next to an elderly woman while my husband stood a few rows back. But after just a few stops, the woman departed and I slid over toward the window, thinking my husband might be able to join me. However, the stop also served a high school that had just let out a mass of students who were also served by the local commuter systems.

About twenty teenagers piled onto the bus, with two girls perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old pushing back to where I was seated. One of the girls immediately sat down next to me, and rather to my surprise, collapsed onto my shoulder, sound asleep. Angling toward her, I let the girl’s head fall into my arms as I looked up toward her friend, who merely smiled and raised a shoulder.

About ten-minutes on, the girl who was standing prodded her friend awake, and they departed at the stop for another high school where the two were apparently attending evening classes of some sort. This process of shuttling northward migrating students between high schools along the bus’s route continued for many more miles. It was dusk before my husband could slide into the seat next to me.
–

Walking the mile or so from the train station to my place in eastern Tokyo would take me past a local high school. Even late into weeknights, the site would host large groups of students. Sometimes, it would be study teams working on specialized skills such as a foreign language. Other nights would see students practicing physical disciplines such as kendo (Japanese fencing), or judo. Evenings and Saturdays were also the domain of “gakushū juku”, private cram-schools where students prepared for things like college entrance exams.

So, what’s the point of all of this apparently endless schooling?

Westerners see only youth absorbed into a never-ending drudgery of learning and the seemingly overwhelming pressure of keeping up. We see lost freedom and subdued creativity, and wonder what drives such sacrifice… all while signing-off on the $100,000 loan for a Fine Arts degree.

Education is serious business throughout East Asia. Historically, it was seen as a way to obtain meritocratic access to the authority (and power) of Chinese bureaucracy. In Japan, the tradition was applied to the rarefied status of samurai. Seen not only as skilled warriors, they also possessed the social merit of refinement through an education providing the wisdom incumbent to a position of authority. Even today, government jobs in Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan are perceived as high-status positions.

This East Asian expectation that the young must prepare both intellectually and physically to prove themselves worthy of a respectable place in society is still maintained by the sheer inertia of centuries of cultural tradition. It keeps both the physical and bureaucratic infrastructure in place, as well as the societal expectations. And armies of “tiger parents” continue to enforce this ethic that a measure of one’s very worthiness can be found in having developed the skills necessary to assure a prosperous life.

In East Asian culture, the wisdom of knowledge is purpose. And the purpose is to assure prosperity in a communal society where one’s social identity is the product of others’ perceptions. In the West, this is frequently referred to as “face”. In kanji , this is written as, 面子 (Chinese: “miànzǐ”, Japanese: “mentsu”).

As a generalization, East Asian societies are built upon hierarchies based in reputations among social groups. “Face” is consequently central to both an individual’s identity and status. So it’s not a small thing. A person’s ability to prove his-or-her self capable of gaining access to responsibility (and presumably to prosperity) amounts to proving one’s self as worthy.

Historically, passing government examinations could quite literally be the proof of one’s worthiness to others and to society. It granted status, and thus access through social bureaucracy. And even if the contemporary goal isn’t necessarily to become a bureaucrat, it remains a means to achieve the security of meritocratic status within some structure of society. It is the underlying social force behind the East Asian pressure to obtain an education.

The closest Western parallel might be an eldest son of a wealthy family being sent to Law School, a second to Medical School, and third son perhaps to Seminary. The point of such a Western education is that of gaining access to the systems that guarantee authoritative social, physical, and religious connections. In the West, a degree from the right university can thus be analogous to a form of “gaining face” through one’s education.

More pragmatically, the Western “sciences” emerged as expressions of a direct power over nature itself. But there’s a Japanese idiom, “門前の小僧習わぬ経を読む” [Monzen no kozōnarawanu kyō wo yomu]. It reads literally (and figuratively) that, “Before the (temple) gate, the little boy is lessoned in read sutras (that he overhears)”. It means that one may learn something, but not understand it. Mere knowledge has to be grounded in wisdom.

In the broader, if more traditional Western sense, the idea of the “Liberal Arts” was to give context to practical knowledge so that it could be applied with that wisdom. It was seen as a way to connect the mere fact of a science to the social fabric in which it was to be applied. It’s only a modern interpretation that such an education has value on its own. But at what point does it lose its purpose and become mere self-stimulation?

Knowledge, skill, self-discipline… we are what we know.

The Amazement of the Gods

by in Culture, Existentialism, Fiction, Identity, Japan, Love, Mystery | 9 Comments

A Movie Review… sort of.

“Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.”
– Plato

About an hour southeast of Tokyo, at the mouth of the Sakai River, is the island of Enoshima. About a half-mile from shore, it can be accessed from the mainland via a bridge. The island is best known for the legend of a terrible dragon who was pacified by his love for a goddess who lived there. And so, its shrines are a destination for lovers and for those seeking love.

– – –

While visiting family in Japan last year, I ended up watching a “Jun-ai” (“true-love”) movie with my middle-school aged niece. It’s a popular genre in East Asia, with stories usually based on the trope of finding love only to have that happiness somehow doomed. I’d have been unlikely to have watched the film on my own. But set in the Shonan region along the coast of the Sagami Bay, and using the island of Enoshima as a focal point, it ended up being an intriguing story.

Based on a light novel by Osamu Koshigaya, the 2013 film, Girl in the Sunny Place
(陽だまりの彼女, Hidamari no Kanojo) [I think a better translation is “Sunshine Girl”] is a G-rated, young romance in which two middle-school friends are separated, and then find each other again. But woven into the story is a mysterious undercurrent that something isn’t as it seems. And a warning here that, while I’m not revealing everything, there are spoilers in the summary that follows…

Kosuke Okuda is a reserved, 25-year old advertising executive, bored with life and finding that he’s missed a chance at romance. Meeting a new client, however, he recognizes the radiant woman in the doorway as an old middle school classmate, Mao Watarai. It has been more than a decade since Kosuke last saw Mao, when his family moved away from his childhood home.

Recounting those times, Mao was an odd new student at his middle-school, socially awkward, disheveled, failing at her classwork, and seen as “stupid” by the other students. Naive to the constant bullying she receives, she’s the focus of malicious rumors such as that her parents aren’t actually her parents, and that she was found walking around the streets naked one night.

Kosuke, however, stands up for Mao, sometimes assertively, resulting in trouble for his family and a distancing from his schoolmates. But Mao responds to Kosuke’s kindness, and begins accompanying him to a park after school. Helping Mao with her schoolwork, Kosuke discovers that she is actually very intelligent. She has apparently just never been to school. And Mao eventually admits that she’s a foster child.

After Mao receives a perfect score on a kanji exam, the couple share a first kiss. But this leaves Kosuke feeling awkward, and he becomes more distant. He hasn’t told Mao that his family is moving from the town due to Kosuke’s problems at school. And the last he sees of an irreconcilably distraught Mao is her frantically waving as she watches him depart.

Years later, Mao has grown into a beautiful woman who is well-educated and respected at her workplace. But it becomes apparent that there’s something more to Mao’s quirkiness as a romance develops. Subtle clues to the truth are hidden throughout the story-line.

Kosuke’s parents welcome Mao after he introduces her. But Mao’s parents are discouraging, and her father warns against a relationship. He tells Kosuke that he needs to understand more about Mao, and warns that she will eventually forget him. Mao then confesses to Kosuke that she has no memory of anything beyond the last twelve years of her life.

After an evening spent drowning their disappointments, the two decide to elope. Eventually moving into their new apartment, Kosuke suggests getting a dog. Mao, however, sternly refuses. Kosuke then recalls how the two scars on his hand were from the only animal he’d ever cared for, a kitten he’d rescued from the rocks on Enoshima. It was so frail that he had taken it home and nurtured it back to health. But the kitten eventually disappeared. Mao replies that it’s his kindness that has made her happy to have married him; and they eventually settle on some goldfish, which also seem to mysteriously disappear.

The couple are happy together. But Kosuke eventually finds a bundle of cash hidden in Mao’s dresser. And he’s surprised when he discovers an “omamori”, a small silk-enclosed written prayer paper that he recognizes from Enoshima. Mao’s father also reveals that she was, in fact, found wandering naked through a residential area at night. As the town’s Police Chief, he and his wife had taken her in. And meeting Mao was not a coincidence; she had been searching for Kosuke relentlessly for years.

Meanwhile, Mao is becoming uncharacteristically less energetic. And noticing that her hair has been falling out and that a ring he’d given her had become loose, Kosuke takes Mao to see a doctor. However, the doctor doesn’t find anything wrong.

Returning from the hospital, they hear cries from
Mrs. Hiraiwa in the adjacent apartment. Her young son has slipped from their fifth-floor balcony, and she is struggling to hold him by one arm. Kosuke rushes to help but can’t reach the boy before he slips from her grasp.

Kosuke is stunned and confused by what he sees next, as Mao leaps from a third-floor balcony to catch the boy in mid-air. They both emerge miraculously uninjured as Mao looks up at Kosuke from the ground. Later, she tells a silent Kosuke only that, “My life is almost over“; but seeing his shock, claims that she was joking. The next morning, after happily preparing breakfast, Mao goes out to get the morning paper. But she never returns.

Increasingly distressed, Kosuke contacts anyone who might know of Mao’s whereabouts. But the Hiraiwa’s act as if the events of the previous day had never happened. Mao’s parents ask who he is. And Mao’s workplace reply that, “There is no such person here.”

Photos and objects associated with Mao have also disappeared. The only physical traces of her are the omamori and the money that she had hidden in her dresser, along with a note that reads, “I’ve moved my money here because I’m sure my bank account will disappear with me.“

From here, the story takes a very Japanese turn, as Kosuke puts together enough to understand the truth about Mao, and rushes back to a special place on Enoshima Island. But there are limits even to the powers of the gods, with the message that we create ourselves through how we choose to exist in the moments granted to our lives.
–

This isn’t quite a movie review. I don’t watch enough to be able to discern what qualifies as “good” anyway. But I thought this was a beautiful film, fun to watch, and a worthy alternative to the usual Japanese pop-cultural references to manga and anime. And the story engenders a compassionate message while appealing to several Japanese folk and cultural motifs in its mystery. With the caveat that the ending may not entirely make sense to some non-Japanese viewers, it was an interesting twist that caught my American senses off-guard. So, I’m giving it a “thumbs up”.

Free Money… Really!

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Numbers | 9 Comments

This is Part 2 of 2 regarding Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the United States, and covers Sam Altman’s recent UBI study. Part 1 can be found here.
–

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
– Ayn Rand

In 2016, when Sam Altman was the CEO of the tech startup venture capital firm,“Y Combinator”, he announced plans to fund a comprehensive Universal Basic Income (UBI) study. His intent was to put hard data behind answering some of the more contentious questions about UBI, such as its effect upon financial security, individuals’ motivations and productivity, or if it would create economic value. A study was ultimately financed with $60-million, including $14-million contributed by Altman himself.

The Study:

The study would follow one-thousand UBI recipients, comparing them to a control-group of two-thousand statistically similar individuals. Participants in the UBI group received a guaranteed $1,000 each month for a period of three years. Members of the control group would receive $50 each month. There were no restrictions on how the money was spent by recipients.

Participants were chosen from a cross-section of rural, suburban and urban areas in Texas and Illinois, with ages ranging from 21 to 40 years. The maximum income of participants could not exceed 300% of the federal poverty level, and the study intentionally over-sampled individuals living in households making less than 200% of the federal poverty level. Average household income was around $29,000.

All selected participants were guaranteed that they would not lose any already existing government or other financial benefits; however, this necessarily excluded participation by individuals receiving federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Experian credit records were used to provide data regarding household financial liabilities for those who consented to access, which were approximately 86% of $,1000 recipients, and 82.7% of the control group. Payouts started in 2019, and the results of the study were published last July.

https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/documentation

Data and Results:

The study procedures, data and results total around around 1,100-pages, including model surveys, health plans and assessments, evaluations and summaries. Self-reporting was used for much of the data collection, sometimes facilitated through professional screeners or survey administrators. Areas that were analyzed included the effects of unconditional cash on Moving, Agency, Employment, Entrepreneurship, Unhealthy Behaviors, Health Outcomes, and overall Monthly Spending. Anecdotal information was collected regarding reported stress.

Oddly, the study noted an average increase of $310 per individual on spending. What became of the other $690 wasn’t clear. It did not appear that any money had been set aside or saved, as the study concluded that the transfers, “…had little effect on net worth.” Analysis also concluded that their consumption survey methodology tended to, “…under-state total consumption.”

As spending habits were self-reported, it appears that some significant portion might have been directed into expenses that weren’t acknowledged. Statistics were adjusted to avoid “false positives” by inference, causing me to believe that some apparent but unreported outcomes, potentially such as increased but unreported drug or alcohol use among low and middle income earners were ignored as merely “speculative”.

The study also noted that its “Consumer Expenditure Survey” (“CEX”), “…measures don’t capture all consumption, particularly irregular expenditures.” Data was also “Winsorized”, limiting extreme values to reduce possible effects of spurious outliers.

When compared to the control groups, the most notable differences to reported dollar spending among both low and middle income individuals was on food. However, there are no specific breakdowns regarding the types of food purchases, for example groceries versus fast-food or coffee. Overall, food, transportation and rent expenditure increases totaled around $169 per month on average, with transportation being the largest percentage increase for low-income recipients.

Rent also accounted for a significant difference for all groups, and it was the single largest increase in spending for higher income individuals. Those who were able to move to new neighborhoods saw an overall 11% increase. However, close examination of the data shows that most of this effect was concentrated among highest earners who greatly increased rent expenditures. The study also noted a 5% increase in those who expressed an “increased likelihood” that they would pay for housing in the future.

The study also found increased spending on healthcare among middle ($38/mo.) and low ($16/mo.) income individuals. However, it also noted that, “…we find no significant effects on measures of physical health,…” Chronic health issues were suggested as an explanation.

Aspects of “agency” were commonly noted among UBI recipients in the study. At the start of the program’s final year, there was a 14% increase in expressed intent to pursue some form of education or job training. Low and middle income UBI recipients were also less likely to accept jobs and worked fewer hours, averaging overall to about 1.5/hrs per week less. From the study, “Households spent a further 22 cents of each dollar on higher leisure (i.e., reduced work hours and labor force participation).”

Conclusion:

Lifted from the conclusion: “The lack of improvement in net worth described above, combined with the small effects on credit access and null effects on credit delinquencies, bankruptcies, and foreclosures, suggests that the transfer did not improve participants’ long-run financial position. Consistent with this, self reported financial health rises at the start of the transfer but this effect decays to zero by year three of the transfer. These findings suggest that, at least for the young, low-income households in our sample, large, temporary transfers may not generate persistent improvement in financial outcomes.”

– – –

In summary, this is something I personally would have liked to have seen work. But stepping back a little and taking a look at the bigger picture, the study’s positive public media presentation seems to rely upon a great deal of “feel good” narrative. In terms of measurable effect, it appeared to do little to change participant’s socioeconomic status, educations, health, lifestyles or habits, or happiness. And there isn’t any evidence to show an economically beneficial return on the overall financial investment.

It also strikes me that there’s something entirely missing in discussions of the effectiveness of simply throwing money at a problem. Merely managing money well is a skill requiring some knowledge.  And social, psychological, health, and substance abuse issues might be better addressed through the establishment of services that more directly address their treatment or beneficial lifestyle changes. Regardless, Altman and his team certainly deserve credit for the honest attempt to document the effects of a specific approach to addressing poverty.