天定人为

我经常会不自觉地思考人生的意义，就像PhD Comic某一期一样，我经常怀疑我存在的意义。尽管不会轻生，但总担心错过了使自己的人生变得更有意义的事情。可是归根到底，并不懂得如何衡量人生的意义。所以一切都是没有意义的惶恐和犹豫。

午夜巴黎已经看过一段时间了，但总是会回想起男主角的心情。对于当今时代的鄙夷，以及对于过往时代的向往。以我一个博士生而言，总觉得现在那么多没有意义的研究正在进行，相比前人开创时代的壮举相去太远。而在思考这个问题的时候，我总会把自己扔进井底。在过往的时代，以我的天赋和出身，想必是做不了研究的，想必是碰不了科学的。

这就是我的时代。一个高速发展，人们都害怕错过机会的时代。人们常说”follow your heart”。这句话似乎在默认我的heart是完全由我决定的。虽然我经常在给自己幻觉，我已经独立地进行了很多决定。但是很明显，这与where I am from, who I know，how I grew up等等都是分不开的。也就是天定人为。试想我此时此刻所思所想所为均已注定，起初觉得有点害怕，觉得自己过于渺小。然而实际上我就是那个执行者，我就是那个思考的人，即使这个思考的过程，思考的结果都是注定的，我还是那个思考的人。所以安安心心地思考，做事吧

An enjoyable talk with my officemate

I had a nice conversation with my officemate. I have been a jerk for a long time. Try not to be jerk in the future. Do something enjoyable.

How many selves

I was trying to define myself, what I am. I am still a student, I am a male, I am my parents’ son, my girlfriend’s boyfriend, my advisor’s advisee, my friends’ friend, etc… What do I need to do to fulfill all these roles?

When I was young, I dislike, to be frank, people who are disguising. They acted not straightly according to their mind, in my naive opinion. One extreme can be those who betrayed their country or people, and served their enemies. But what about myself? As I grow up, I have been taking more roles, or at least I realize that I have many roles. There are many “myselves”.

Sometimes I feel very tired. Now I think one reason is that I do not know what to do, and I am tired of disguising. Sometimes I may dream of doing something that is not moral. Is that one? I am not sure whether I was born evil or the true myself is evil.

I have been pushing myself to be a good guy. I want to be nice to my parents, be the perfect boyfriend, and be the one who is right there when my friend needs me. I do not think any of them think so though. My parents think that I am a kid, I need to enjoy 8 hours’ sleep to be healthy. When I go back to my hometown, I try that to my best, especially in recent years. But it is not me.

In Harry Potter, Voldemort split his soul into pieces. I feel that is exactly what I am doing. But I cannot separate them well, and store them into other bodies. I am mixing them everyday, sometimes guilty for the mistakes that I have made before, especially those that may hurt other people. Sometimes I am trying to develop my moral standard to the very highest.

At the end of the day, I am the one who is articulating here to make some sense about myself in my spare time, considering that I can never make full sense. Enjoy the new self everyday!

 

Too big to know

I went to the talk by David Weinberger. I have not read his book. I assume that the points in the talk are what he tried to make in the book. It is very nice a talk that is a little out of my expectation. It did not really talk about how we deal with information overload. Actually, one point is that there is no information overload but filter failure. Another interesting point is that there are no more authorities because the smartest thing now is the room (the internet). To some extent, I agree with this point.

(hooray, I can switch to talk about myself again. I really like to go over my own experience, haha)

I have to say that I have overestimated my own ability to know for a long time, maybe including now. But obviously I am not a genius. And I even doubt whether a genius can have the ability to know whatever I want to know. The world and the human are too big to know.

Knowing this fact, I can adjust myself much better. What I should do is figure out a good filter well personalized for myself so that I have a reasonable expectation of my own knowledge. Take things easy. It will be a hard task. Working on it right now …

Metaphysics as a branch of Philosophy

Some of my friends mentioned 形而上学(metaphysics) to me. I have known this word for a long time, and I am sure I should have learned the definition of it. However, as I usually do, I forget. During that conversation, I was actually talking about the meaning of life, which happens not to be the core question of metaphysics as I read some philosophy book recently. That is why I am posting this short note to clarify.

Metaphysics as a branch of Philosophy, has two central branches, copied from Wikipedia.

“A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to each other. Another central branch of metaphysics is cosmology, the study of the totality of all phenomena within the universe.”

The Artist and Hugo

一直没有写影评的习惯，其实主要是没有写blog的习惯，不明白把一些事情想法记录下来的意义。而慢慢地思考人生的意义，也是毫无进展。所以不妨用一些时间，记录一点想法。

这两部电影都是最近看的，都是属于向以前的电影人致敬的电影。很多人评价都很高，但是至少刚看完之后，我并不是觉得有传说中的好。我的第一反应是剧情太简单了，完全可以预测。也许我确实被惯坏了，喜欢剧情离奇的，就像读悬疑，侦探类的小说，我总是会被情节带着一口气读完。同样的，我看李安的家庭三部曲甚至感到难以看完。

然而仔细一想，这两部电影确实很好。他们都有一点记录的感觉，在讲一个很简单的故事，很流畅地讲了两个很简单的故事。这两部电影同样做得很细致。Hugo有着精致的画面，The Artist采用默片的手段讲述了关于默片的故事。我还是不废话了，谈几个简单的东西。

1. 这两个简单的故事，值得回味，很吸引人的主要原因是人生就是这样的。我基本可以预见我的人生不会有大的波折。也不会有离奇的事情发生在我的身上。如果我要给我自己拍一部电影，恐怕最后什么都不能剩下。尤其是The Artist的男主角，让我很有共鸣。莫名其妙的自尊，毫无必要的比较主要将我引入歧途。当George看到Peppy购买了所有他在拍卖行卖掉的东西，愤懑地冲回去的感觉，我觉得我也出现过类似的感觉。很明显，我没有手枪，也不会自杀。所幸我现在长大了一些。

2. 做自己喜欢的事情。这是Hugo教我们的。对于老导演来说，排除万难，为了兴趣，钻研新兴的电影，废寝忘食地工作，即使后来失败了，现在还有人为他记录。而对于Hugo来说，Life as a mission。修复父亲没有彻底修复的机器人，以及之后发生的故事。他们都在一段时间内，为自己热爱的事业奉献。也许，老年的时候我也可以去开个玩具店。这样的人从来都不少，他们很幸运，有这样的事业。有一些人被记下来了，有些人被遗忘罢了。

3. 在social media的时代静静思考。我其实不太清楚为什么今年会有两部向电影历史致敬的电影同时出现。这在这个浮躁的社会很有趣。为什么有声电影会很快地取代无声电影？在The Artist当中，我们可以看出一些端倪。首先有声使得表达更容易了，这个有两方面，一是电影制片商可以更容易地完成一部电影，二是普通的观众可以更容易地理解这些电影。而The Artist 是一个反例。他的成功说明，甚至包括剧情里最后男女主角的同时表演，都在说明即使无声，只要内容足够精致，仍然可以获得满堂喝彩。social media使得所谓的重口味，谣言，碎语，更加容易传播，有点像有声。而静静的思考则像无声。只要无声的作品达到的真正的高度，是不会被埋没的。同时，我渐渐觉得，世界上静静思考的人的总数并没有少，人口的膨胀，availability bias，使得我总是杞人忧天。

当然，埋没与否又有什么关系呢。走题在我的文字里是不变的主题。。。

当你无聊的时候你会做什么

本来都写好了英文的标题，最后换成了中文。写中文的机会估计不多，还是利用这个写写。

有时候会感到莫名的空虚，有时候会思考人生的意义，可是当你开始思考人生的意义，就已经非常危险了。“一事无成”基本是可预期的。

当你会感到无聊，说明你不够客观和理性，说明有些时候感性会占据你的内心，说明有些时候你会无法控制自己。。。

疯言疯语到此为止。

养成一些良好的习惯，可以帮助自己专注，可以帮助自己控制情绪，控制思维。