People have wrong ideas about dreams. My student gave me a GP question that asks “Is Racial Harmony just a dream?” A dream can mean rather different things; and when put in different context, the ‘just’ in the GP question can be rather unjust. Dictionary.com gives the follows explanations for the term ‘dream’, when used as a noun.
1. a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep.
2. the sleeping state in which this occurs.
3. an object seen in a dream.
4. an involuntary vision occurring to a person when awake.
5. a vision voluntarily indulged in while awake; daydream; reverie.
6. an aspiration; goal; aim: A trip to Europe is his dream.
7. a wild or vain fancy.
8. something of an unreal beauty, charm, or excellence.
When the term is taken to be used in the context of meaning 5, then the question is basically asking if racial harmony is possible. When meaning 6 is adopted or used as the interpretation of the way the term is used, then the ‘just’ seeks to demean the idea of ‘racial harmony’ and so you can argue it such that it’s to your advantage. The two meanings seem so close but is essentially subtly different and necessarily so. A dream, can thus be an indulgence (ever unreal) or an aim (a fact of the future).
That being said, the Facebook status I recently observed, which says:
Have you ever wanted a dream to become reality so badly that your heart just aches when you realise it is, but a dream.
The quote tells me that this one is a dreamer, who indulges in the dream rather than one who aims to achieve. In this self-perpetuating cycle, the guy could only continue to engage in a dream the way it is used in meaning 5 and never in meaning 6. This leap has to occur for him to make a difference; otherwise, I guess he’d just die of heartache.
I was reading Akerlof and Shiller’s ‘Animal Spirits’ and it dawned on me how our basic microeconomics assumption of our utility calculus is wholly unrealistic and simply unconvincing. Imagine that we’re able to continuously balance between the amount of money to spend and save for the future. Absolutely weird; it’s suggesting that there’s always an optimal sum of money that should be in our bank accounts, in our wallet and in various different investment instruments that would provide a return, properly adjusted to our capacity for risk (assuming the risk assessment in accurate mathematically in the first place).
Uncertainty and lack of information plays a huge part in limiting our computation abilities, not the mention the lack of access to sophisticated computational instruments that would be vital for us to perform these calculations. In many sense, that is the assumption we are making when we think that finance is a really perfect market and that it’s efficient. It’s not. Instruments of prevailing levels of sophistication would not be necessary if reality is as crystal clear as what the efficient market hypothesis requires it to be. And with the lack of such efficiency and ‘ultra-rational players’, we’re effectively trap in a complex loop of relations (and thus manipulated by ‘fate’ and ‘luck’) that would not exactly allocate capital as efficiently as we would like to believe.
Just my two cents worth. It’s not on ERPZ for the reason that I’ve found (or is not rational enough to attempt to find) nothing to support my case.
Peng Sing once showed me an MSN conversation with his friend:
Peng Sing: I really love Fireflies.
His Friend: What is fireflies?
Peng Sing: It’s a song by Owl City.
His Friend: What is Owl City?
Peng Sing: It’s the people who sing Fireflies.
That, Peng Sing used as an analogy for circular reasoning that we typically encounter, without realizing that it traps us in a loop that provide us with no new information. Today, my sister gave me a dose of something similar:
Sister: Eh, this guy looks like ‘Xiao Jing Teng’ (some singer).
Vib: I don’t know how he looks like.
Sister: He looks just like this guy.
Thanks Sis, you win.
I emerged from the City Hall MRT entrance along the North Bridge Road and walked out into the open under the dark sky. It looked like it was going to rain. The wind was strong but silent, without the sound of air movements beside my pinna. I just had the feeling that my bus was coming up, but the actual bus stop was more than a hundred metres away. I walked closer to the main road so that I could check if there were any buses approaching.
As I move closer to the road, a few Japanese tourists in front of me was looking at the flyers in their hands and then looking up at an approaching bus. My eyes followed their gaze and the service numbers on the top of the single-decked bus frame stared back. 32. I dashed in the direction of the bus stop.
It has been a long time since I really ran. After Adidas Sundown in May, I trained for IPPT but immediately after passing, I slackened. Then the familiar shin pain of my stress injury days set in. I didn’t dare to carry on with my routine daily runs for fear that my recovery would once again be compromised. Then my soles started hurting. I was afraid of suffering from a collapsed arch – a ruined feet. Fortunately a simple scan I did recently showed otherwise. My arch was intact but the stress injury had an impact on my leg posture and uneven pressure on my feet strained my left arch. I needed a pair of custom soles to support my feet. An appointment was made for that purpose, but I have not gone for it.
I ran and ran, between the pedestrians trying to get from Funnan Centre to City Hall MRT station, weaving through the crowd as the bus surpassed me. I could see other commuters at the bus stop boarding the bus as I sped ahead. The guy in a long sleeved pullover with a sling bag walking beside me started running too, but he barely caught up with me. I waved my hand at the bus to signal to the driver to wait for me before grabbing the handle on the door and swinging myself on board.
“Thank you!” I smiled at the bus driver and tapped my card on the reader, swallowing my breathlessness into the gut. It burst back to my lungs as I took strides towards the seats in the rear. The bus stayed stationary – the driver was waiting for the guy with a sling bag to board. I found a seat and sat down. As I caught my breath, I felt liberated from my injuries despite the discomfort tingling in my feet. I suddenly remembered why I loved running: it was the victory over personal weaknesses, the pride of breaking through my limits and closing in towards my potential. I want to relive that feeling again and again.
When you’re aged, sometimes you take so long to think about the answer to a question that you forgot what the question was. That’s my granddad.
For practical evil-doers, there’s little difference between stupidity and being principled. For the others, there’s a thin line between being practical and being principled. For me, I think that while being practical is important, one should uphold principles as long as it doesn’t turns out to be stupidity. In other words, there’s a gulf between being principled and being stupid.
An example
You might be late for an unimportant appointment so you’d think ‘It’s okay, the appointment is not important’. But being principled, while the appointment is not important, being punctual and keeping your word is important.
So do a principles test. Are you willing to compromise your principles because you think it’s stupid to stick to it?
In response to a friend who exclaimed ‘you’re really into Economics huh?’, I said the following, unaware of the irony until much later:
I’m not exactly into economics; it’s just that I happen to believe in comparative advantage and it seems that I manage to do (and enjoy) this subject better than anything else I do. So in order to contribute to the efficiency of mankind, I’ve decided to work on Economics.
