悉达多 Siddhartha

Years after first reading Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha in college, I revisited the novel and noted a few themes that stood out for me. This time, I resonated with Siddhartha much more around understanding the limitations of seeking wisdom from others, the idea that life’s meaning lies in the act of living itself, and the depth of insights offered by nature and fictional narratives.

这周重新读了黑塞的《悉达多》，这本学生时代就很喜欢的小说。当时的经历太少，只读懂了情节，对背后的隐喻一知半解。在二十七岁的年纪读来，虽然对悉达多的一些观点仍有疑问，但对他不同时期的经历有了更多共鸣和理解。

1 圣贤理论的局限性

悉达多年少时就意识到要去寻找“自我”（Atman），于是离家追随沙门修行，期望通过戒律和禅定摆脱自我。然而，不久他就发现学习禅定和克己只是暂时逃避生命的痛苦和无意义感，无法带来真正的安宁。圣贤的智慧终归是他人经验的总结，不能代替自己的感悟。许多人追随乔达摩（释迦牟尼），将他当作信仰，但如果信徒们内心没有自己的教义和律法时，最终也难以真正获得救赎。只有走出自己的路，诚实面对内心的渴求，才能获得安宁。不去玩别人设立好的游戏而去创造属于自己的游戏是很难的，但也许这是最靠近正确答案的路径。

Photo by 雨空 on Unsplash

2 活着就是人生的意义

我们这一代人常被鼓励去寻找生命的意义。我仍然觉得追寻意义是重要的，但也开始接受或许生命本身没有固定的意义，活着并不断经历就是其意义所在。通过与不同的人和事碰撞，更了解自己，也有能力诚实面对和接纳自己已经是艰难的课题了。所以当我读到悉达多从向圣贤寻找智慧转向 “拜自己为师，认识神秘的悉达多” 时，也深有共鸣。在以前的悉达多眼中，森林，群星，动物，河流都没有意义，于是他对万物熟视无睹。当他不再询问意义后，反而可以清晰辨明地看见世界，单纯地欣赏自然之美，也有更敏锐的观察力。“自我” 是无法仅靠思考或遵循他人经验来捕捉的，需要实实在在地生活，倾听内心的声音和环境给你的信号。我以前对这些信号也熟视无睹、敏感度很低，但现在越来越认同重要的决定需要等待信号，除了耐心等待和增强基础能力以外，没有太多可以做的。这和学霸猫说过的 “人除了照顾好自己以外，无事可做” 也是类似的逻辑。

3 游戏心态的背后是游离于真实生活

带着游戏的态度生活，实际上也意味着冷眼旁观，只寻得开心就够了，不愿全身心投入生活和劳作中。 过去的很长时间里，我也一直处在这样不够认真、游离的状态，对很多事情都不够在意，觉得好玩就行了。作为一个知识工作者，哪怕我很喜欢理论和建立框架去解构人和世界的运行规律，并以此为乐，这几个月在工作中也越发体会到理论和概念本身的价值有限，只有当这些想法被实现的时候才能带来真正的价值。松弛的态度虽然表面上看似是更健康的心态、也减少了焦虑，但实际上也反映了内心的不坚定和逃避责任。这也是我下半年的功课，学会更 “在场”，愿意承担真实的风险与责任。

4 倾听河流的启示

当悉达多步入尘世成为商人和赌徒后，也承受着沉闷和无意义的生活陷入绝望。他来到河边，原本打算结束生命。站在河流面前，听到潺潺流水的生命力时，他忽然意识到自己的痛苦源于对物质的追求和舒适生活的沉迷，丧失了爱与看见万物的能力。他发现了河流的秘密，“不懈奔流，却总在此处。永远是这条河，却时刻更新。” 这让我想到河流的两个隐喻：一是人的成长就如同河流的不断流动和轮回，不断从头再来，学到一些事情后又会犯错，经历失望和痛苦，再重新站起来。哪怕泥泞不堪，也要心悦诚服地随它走，流动和不稳定是常态。二是悉达多提到的河水中成千上万的声音，“王的声音、卒的声音、牡牛的声音、夜莺的声音、孕育者的声音、叹息着的声音” 象征着生命的多样性和复杂性。倾听河流的声音，也是倾听生命的声音。河水奔涌着流向湖泊、湍流、大海；抵达目标，又奔向新的目标，这也是人一代又一代生命周期的隐喻。

5 虚构作品的自由和广阔

最后，回顾这些年的阅读偏好，我对虚构和非虚构作品的看法发生了很大变化。学生时期看了大量虚构类文学作品，甚至本科也选了文学作为专业之一。但从大四开始，出于工作和专业的考量，我开始看更多应用类的非虚构作品，当时看了大量行为经济学和社科类的文本。直到近几个月，随着工作进入了新的阶段，又机缘巧合重新找回了对虚构作品的兴趣，意识到虚构类题材有更多自由度去探究现实所无法触及的隐喻与问题， 例如《悉达多》中河流的隐喻，以及博尔赫斯短篇中的图书馆与花园。它们让我们跳脱现实的框架，有空间去思考更广阔的命题。

Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

P.S. If you feel so inclined, check out this song 河流（River）

The world as reinforcing cycles

Ray Dalio’s Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail presents a comprehensive, longitudinal approach for understanding the world, one that our recency bias sometimes forgets. For those who have primarily experienced periods of growth or focused on the post-WWII era, including myself, it can be difficult to envision a world radically different.

To understand and navigate the complexities of our time, it’s important to explore a broad range of historical examples of how nations rise and fall, which would help uncover the fundamental, timeless patterns that shape these cycles. Dalio’s method of analyzing the intricate forces at play and synthesizing the cause-and-effect relationships behind historical progression is a powerful model. Personally, it has inspired me to rethink how we might study the complexity of user and market behaviors, especially how we could distill principles and patterns to better understand and guide the seemingly complex behaviors of AI/ML models as UX and product builders.

Dalio, Ray. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

01 A 1400-year perspective

Looking back 1,400 years (~600 CE), human productivity has steadily increased global wealth and living standards. While different societies rose at different times, the reasons were consistent — education, inventiveness, work ethic, and economic systems turned ideas into output. For example, wealth once centered on agricultural land, then on machine output, and now on digital data and information processing.

Dalio, Ray. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

Personal notes

  • Time scale: Dalio’s 1,400-year perspective is a powerful reminder that our current experiences are just a tiny part of a much larger cycle. Understanding our position within these cycles is crucial for discerning what truly matters amid the noise.

  • Diverse and global perspective: Drawing insights from a diverse, large sample size across space and time is essential. Too often, we only focus on a single country, missing valuable lessons that a global perspective can surface.

  • Cause-and-effect relationships: As we shift towards building probabilistic experiences with ML and AI, our role as designers and product builders increasingly involves defining and communicating the underlying cause-and-effect relationships that guide model behavior. Seeing how Dalio studied and presented the cause-and-effect patterns that drive historical progression is an inspiration for effective communication of complex insights.

Guiding question

  • How might we build collective intuition for long-term thinking?

02 Reinforcing nature of rises and declines

Productivity evolves steadily but doesn’t cause sudden shifts in wealth and power. These shifts come from cycles driven by logical cause-and-effect relationships, such as boosts, booms, evolutions, and wars.

My biggest takeaway is the reminder that strengths and weaknesses are mutually reinforcing. For example, education, competitiveness, economic output, share of world trade, contribute to the others being strong or weak, for logical reasons. This also reflects the old Chinese saying, “That which is long divided must unify; that which is long unified must divide.”（分久必合，合久必分）

Dalio identifies eight key determinants of a nation’s strength: education, competitiveness, innovation and technology, economic output, share of world trade, military strength, financial center strength, and reserve currency status. These determinants reinforce each other, driving a nation’s rise, peak, and decline:

  • Rise: Strong leadership, inventiveness, and education foster a strong culture and efficient resource allocation, leading to economic growth, strong markets, and financial centers.

  • Peak: The nation enjoys prosperity with low debt and minimal gaps in wealth, values, and politics, under a stable world order. However, within capitalist systems, uneven financial gains widen the wealth gap.

  • Decline: Excessive borrowing and financial bubbles weaken the nation as debt rises and wealth, values, and political divides grow. Emerging rivals challenge the nation, leading to a painful restructuring.

Dalio, Ray. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

Personal notes

  • Reinforcing dynamics: Although I’ve long heard of the saying that our weaknesses tend to hide behind our strengths, it’s not until reading this book did I truly see how powerful this means over the scale of history, manifesting through humans in aggregates how our strengths and weaknesses reinforce each other in a cyclical pattern.

  • Mirroring business lifecycles: The rise and fall of nations closely mirrors the lifecycle of a business—from growth to maturity to decline. Similarly, a strong founding team that allocates resources efficiently is more likely to achieve product-market fit, driving rapid growth. However, at its peak, a business may develop inefficiencies that undermine its strengths. Its ability to remain a market leader depends on managing these growth factors effectively.

Guiding question

  • What are the key factors that drive and hinder a company’s growth, and how can we accurately assess them to ensure long-term investment in the right areas?

03 Measuring real value

Dalio’s articulation of how the debt cycle works is the best I’ve seen, so it’s worth getting into more details in this section. In a capitalist system, money, credit, and economic growth are the biggest influences on how wealth and power rise and decline. The difference between real vs. market value varies at different times of the cycle and a typical long debt cycle goes the follows:

  • Early stages: With little or no debt, hard money like gold is used for transactions because no trust/credit is required. Later, to avoid the risks and inconvenience of carrying metal money, credible parties issue paper claims on hard money, which soon function as money itself.

  • Middle stages: Initially, the number of paper claims matches the hard money in reserve. Over time, the appeal of credit and debt grows, leading to trouble when income can’t cover debts, or when claims on money outpace the growth of actual assets or goods to back them up, making debt repayment impossible.

  • Late stages: In a debt crisis, printing money becomes the quickest way to reduce debt, allowing the credit/debt cycle to restart. This approach, though not well understood, seems beneficial because it alleviates debt, obscures the harm to holders of money and debt assets, and inflates asset values in a depreciating currency, giving the illusion of increased wealth.

Dalio, Ray. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

Personal notes

  • Measuring real value: Evaluating real value is crucial in early-stage research—uncovering the honest, unfiltered opinion and behavior of users. Observing where real vs. market value diverges or aligns helps guide investment in products and infrastructure, especially with overhyped areas like generative AI and agent.

  • Aligning with ground truth: As builders of probabilistic ML models, how do we evaluate if our predictions actually align with ground truth to guide model training and iteration? This is a fascinating area to be further explored to keep our products truly user-centered.

Guiding question

  • How might we create a clear feedback loop for model iteration and collaboratively define principles for ML model behavior, involving UX, product, engineering, and data teams?

Being able to combine multi-disciplinary thinking to expand our perspective has been my ongoing passion, and Dalio sets a great example for the kind of in-depth, longitudinal studies needed to unpack the complexity of our world, uncovering clear cause-and-effect relationships that are easy to understand and learn from.

Ending on a personal note -- sharing a photo of the Chapel of Soul from Porto with y'all since I've been traveling in Portugal lately. Humans are so small in front of this ;)

巴黎 2024

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五月和家人在法国休假，重游了巴黎和南法。上次来已经是六年前了，在加州待久了有时候视野和审美会变得局限，巴黎是一个特别尊重美和人文的城市，很喜欢巴黎人自由、优雅、松弛的精神面貌。

01 巴黎的设计风貌

今年七月巴黎即将举办奥运会，看着城市筹备奥运觉得耳目一新，好玩的是奥运场馆竟然把传统的砖红色跑道漆成了淡紫色（”shades of lavender”），这种看似细微、打破常规的设计既有创意又不增加太多成本，完美展现了法国的设计功力。此外，在凡尔赛国家议会场馆还有一组特别的雕塑——将断臂维纳斯设计成参与各项比赛的希腊神像，有打网球的、射箭的、还有冲浪的。与传统希腊雕像的象牙白不同，这些雕像采用了颜色鲜艳的奥林匹克高饱和亮色，使它们既有反差感，又充满活力。这两处设计是我目前看到最有创意、也最喜欢的奥运设计。

杜乐丽花园仍然是我私心最爱的公园，最初因为摄影师 Guillaume Lavrut 的喷泉系列摄影作品而开始关注这座花园的设计。出发前，我正好在读 Jane Jacobs 的《美国大城市的死与生》中关于公园设计的章节，这次逛花园时明显能感受到其以人为中心的设计理念。花园的中心不是景观，而是供行人散步的林荫大道。花园中心的喷泉设计优雅简约，突出了围在喷泉周围的绿色躺椅。每天都有大量游客和当地居民围坐在喷泉边聊天、吃法棍、发呆、约会，或者在逛完卢浮宫后出来透透气，这些坐在喷泉周围鲜活的人才是公园的主角。形形色色的人聚集在喷泉周围，自然形成了一个舞台中心，这些围坐的人既是观众也是表演者。正如 Jacobs 在书中提到的，好的公园不仅需要周围有足够丰富的商业和住宅区，这样有各种各样需求的人群能在不同时间段出入公园，同时也要提供一个能吸引人们自然汇聚的舞台中心，这样公园才会显得热闹而有活力。我想这也是杜乐丽花园的设计理念。

另一个印象深刻的例子是巴黎戴高乐机场的设计，候机楼的桌椅采用丝绒面料搭配黄铜复古手柄，灯的造型宛如烟花即将绽放。整体设计融合了现代的简约与古典的华丽，这一定算得上欧洲最美的机场之一。

Jardin des Tuileries

Assemblée Nationale

Jardin des Tuileries

Charles de Gaulle airport

02 法网：网球爱好者的迪士尼

这次法网的体验远超预期，像是网球爱好者的迪士尼乐园。园区内有三个主场馆，明星球员会在这里比赛。主场馆内设有直播间，现场有新闻记者播报赛况。场馆外还有多个室外训练场，观众可以近距离观察球员比赛，每分结束后观众可自由进出球场。走在园区里，第一次真切感受到来自世界各地的网球爱好者为一项运动而相聚的热烈氛围。

这次买的日场票是第三轮的晋级赛，在主场馆之一 Court Philippe-Chartrier 看了来自意大利的 Sinner 和俄罗斯的 Kotov 的男子单打。看到他们在赛场上拼尽全力去发挥出自己的最佳状态和水准，沉着地应对每一次进攻，观众全神贯注地关注着赛场的动态，那种热烈而专注的氛围很动人，是透过屏幕难以复制的独特体验。

场馆内刻着一句话：“Victory belongs to the most tenacious”（胜利属于最坚韧的人）。当时深深被这句话击中，这不仅是对球员的鼓励和提醒，想做好任何事情，都需要专注力、体力、和意志的坚韧。看 Sinner 和 Kotov 单打时，从观众席上能清晰地看到球员的优劣势，当时一直在想，果然一个人的优势也藏着他的劣势。比如 Sinner 擅长打靠近出界线的球，不好接，但也容易出界；Kotov 则喜欢打刚刚过网的球，也不好接，但经常因为球力度太轻不过网而丢分。看着他们比赛，意识到运动时所展现的状态和风格，其实也是生活中我们做事和理解自己优劣势的隐喻。后来得知 Sinner 在半决赛时竟然是男单积分最高的球员，这场比赛看似势均力敌，是因为他只需要发挥足够赢对手的实力就可以了。果然，胜利属于能留在场上最久的人。

Stade Roland-Garros

Court Philippe-Chartrier

Stade Roland-Garros

03 卢浮宫收藏的人类佳作

重游卢浮宫，再次被这里藏品的高水准所震撼。尤其钟爱群像画，其中最喜欢的是 Jacques-Louis David 的《拿破仑一世加冕大典》（The Coronation of Napoleon，1807）。站在如此大规模的作品面前，会感受到自身的渺小，反衬出作品所描绘世界的宏大。画中的众人见证着拿破仑为皇后加冕而神态各异，各怀心事。这也是我喜欢群像画的原因，每个人都会亲历某些历史事件，尽管只是看似渺小的旁观者，但个人的多样视角本身就具有意义。

去完意大利后，对雕塑的鉴赏力提高了很多。这次在卢浮宫特别喜欢古希腊雕像《胜利女神》（Victoire de Samothrace，公元前190年）。这座雕像将胜利的意象表达的淋漓尽致，尽管雕像失去了双臂，但身后的翅膀和向前倾的姿态展现的磅礴气势令人难忘，优雅轻盈又有力量。

艺术藏品和体育竞技的共性在于人们对探索人类潜能的热爱。在诺大的卢浮宫，场馆地图上只标出了十多件“最值得看”的藏品，这些在上千年历史长河中留下来的作品，就像体育竞技中胜出的冠军，只有最高水准的作品才能在现代仍然与普世价值共鸣。这也是为什么传世作品的题材都围绕着人性最本质的诉求，比如追求真、善、美、权力、爱情和战争。每个时期的艺术流派都有不同的媒介和表现方式，但其内容所表达的人类底层诉求和情感是不变的。

这也对应了一种简单易操作的艺术评判标准：当你站在一件作品面前，如果觉得有打动你的地方，那它就是有价值的。个人喜好会潜移默化地组成当代社会的价值取向，而时代的品味则选出了那些在卢浮宫地图上通过了时间考验的佳作。

Victoire de Samothrace

Vénus de Milo

04 体验人间的镜子

沉浸式体验最佳的是由巴黎商品交易所改造的皮诺私人美术馆（Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection），这座美术馆主要展出 François Pinault 五十多年来收藏的当代和新兴艺术作品。前身是巴黎的商品交易所，后来由日本建筑师安藤忠雄（Tadao Ando）以当代建筑风格进行改造。馆内有一个中央展览空间，以便参观者有更多元的动线和观赏视角。

这次最喜欢的是韩国艺术家 Kimsooja 在新展 Le Monde Comme Il Va（《世界如其所是》）中的镜面艺术装置。展览以伏尔泰的哲学短篇为名，讲述一位天使派使者前往人间去观察人类行为的故事。面对人类社会的矛盾与不确定性，神明不确定他们是否值得继续生存，还是应被毁灭以创造一个更好的文明。最终，天使决定让世界如其所是，相信人类能掌握自己的命运。

对应这则故事，Kimsooja 在圆形大厅的地面铺设了一面巨大的镜子，参观者可以穿上鞋套走在镜子上。镜子看似是一个透明的媒介，却诚实地反射出周围的环境、场内形形色色的人和透过展馆玻璃穹顶的蓝天。站在镜子上，看到倒置的世界时，对环境的感知会变得强烈。很喜欢镜子的隐喻：人通过不断经历事情、认识不同的人、与不同环境碰撞，以这些为镜去映照自己的状态。在亲密关系中尤其如此，对他人的认知常常只是映照了自己内心的想法。镜子同时也提醒我们关注现实中的人和具体场景，而不仅仅看到自己想看到的一面。这也是我今年的人生课题，通过接纳和融入真实的环境和他人，真正认知和完善自己。

Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection

Bonus: Château La Coste

在普罗旺斯的 Aix-en-Provence 北面约20分钟车程处，有一个艺术酒庄 Château La Coste。创始人是一位热爱葡萄酒和艺术的北爱尔兰人，酒庄的设计理念与加州的 Donum Estate 很像，主打酒庄和艺术中心的结合。酒庄内有许多由安藤忠雄设计的建筑，其中一条走廊由艾未未设计，庄园里还收藏了 Louise Bourgeois 的大蜘蛛雕塑。我们到达酒庄时已经快日落了，是临行前偶然在地图上发现的，也算有缘分，希望下次有机会多待几天。

Crouching Spider, by Louise Bourgeois (2003)

Drop, by Tom Shannon (2009)

Art Centre, by Tadao Ando (2011)

Mater Earth, by Prune Nourry

在法国放空的两周里，虽然身体在旅行，但思绪仍在消化上半年工作中的思考。在新环境里，我依然对事物的设计逻辑和人在其中的角色很敏感，但同时也意识到，自己看到的东西真的只是自己在意的东西而已。我的视线总会落在人本设计、打破常规的创意、人的运作模式和作品的传播性等等。以及关注自己一直渴望的能力，比如竞技场上的坚毅和能够接纳真实世界的包容力。看到不同文化下，大家都困惑着向前，反而觉得自己不是一个人在挣扎。也许就像皮诺美术馆里的展览《世界如其所是》里提到的，重要的是对真实世界保持觉知，认识自己，相信人的能动性会带着我们依旧向前。

What makes a great park?

Why are some parks so lively and popular, while some are so lonely and even unsafe? When we think about how to improve our neighborhood, many would say we need more parks and open space. Parks have been perceived as a cure that can uplift a neighborhood, stabilize real estate value, and bring the community together — but that is a false reassurance because park behaviors are actually pretty volatile and extreme.

In the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of the most influential books in the history of American city planning, Jane Jacobs talks about the use of neighborhood parks and the drivers that are critical in the making of a vibrant, well-loved park. She advocates for community-based planning and the importance of preserving diverse, mixed-use neighborhoods.

Photo by Ignacio Brosa on Unsplash

At the time, this book was written as a critique of the top-down city planning approach advocated by Robert Moses, the most powerful urban planner in NYC in the mid-20th century, who believed in large-scale urban renewals and modernizing the city at the expense of disrupting existing neighborhoods. Just like human behaviors, parks also have distinct “park behaviors” and layers of complexity, which is a mix of design, urban planning, and psychology.

01 Mixture of Primary Use

The top driver of a park’s success is ensuring a mixture of primary use surrounding it. When you think of a lively park, what matters the most is actually having enough people who enter and leave the park at different times. That required a mix of primary use surrounding the park, including residential, office, and small business, etc. That’s why parks in the financial district tend to be less lively because people all operate on the same daily schedule — they enter the park at once, then leave after work hours. Most of the day and the evening is empty. When an area has a single, dominant use, it imposes a limited schedule, which leads to a vicious circle of an unpopular park.

Photo by Lison Zhao on Unsplash

02 Diversity of Park Design

Besides schedule and usage diversity, Jane Jacobs additionally introduced 4 essential elements that introduced diversity at different levels for a lively park. First, at the eye level, a vibrant park usually offers sufficient stimulation to different usages and moods, also termed intricacy by Jane Jacobs. When the park is too small or its design is very flat, where you can see the whole park at a glance, that’s not enough stimulation at eye level to keep people around. Changes in the rise of grounds or the presence of various focal points introduce subtle differences at the eye level that keep people stay curious to explore. 

For example, San Francisco’s valleys are great examples of this principle, where the ups and downs of the hills introduced intricacy at the eye level. Another great example is the classical gardens in Suzhou, where the location of landscape, rocks, hills and rivers are all strategically located in the garden to introduce subtle eye stimulation from every angle. 

The other related elements are centering and enclosure. Just like a good story, a park also has its climax in the hero journey. We can think of a park as a stage, where there is a center where everyone is both a spectator and performer at once. And finally, the sun is also important, otherwise the park feels gloomy and sad, which attracts less people.

03 Differentiation & Demand Good

The third driver of a lively park is thinking about how it differentiates. There are many parks in a city and sometimes they have similar purposes to each other. Just like building a product, we need to think about what specific, differentiated value a park provides, because there are only so many people in a city and parks essentially are fighting for attention and limited time, just like TikTok and Instagram. 

Jane Jacobs encouraged us to think about the “demand good” for a specific park. For example, having a nice landscape itself isn’t a demand good, but having sports fields, swimming pools, or activities like carnivals are. We can also figure out the demand good by observing its natural use. This again resembles product development where we identify product market fit by observing how real needs are met with our offerings. This is the beauty of multi-disciplinary learnings where we see similar patterns of how things operate from seemingly different fields.

Ultimately, the making of a beloved park isn’t just about the design of the park itself, it's about nurturing diversified neighborhoods capable of using and supporting parks. This is a great example where to make the design successful, designing the ecosystem surrounding it and considering its overall context is critical to its long-term popularity.

There is a video version of this post on YouTube if you prefer a visual walkthrough.

HCI Paper Review: Alignment in the Design of Interactive AI

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In 2024, I set the goal to learn more about designing for human-centered AI and would love to share my learnings from reading academic papers in the field as part of the journey. The hope is to make knowledge in design, behavioral science, and human-computer interaction friendly and accessible for everyone.

In this blog post, I’ll share my review notes for the paper AI Alignment in the Design of Interactive AI: Specification Alignment, Process Alignment, and Evaluation Support by Michael Terry, Chinmay Kulkarni, Martin Wattenberg, Lucas Dixon, and Meredith Ringel Morris. 2023. arXiv:2311.00710.

User Interface Shifts in Computing History

For those who are unfamiliar with user experience (UX) or human-computer interaction (HCI), here is a high-level overview of how user interfaces (UI) have evolved in the past 60 years:

  1. Batch processing: The first general-purpose computer was introduced around 1945. The UI was a single point of contact where people needed to submit a batch of instructions (often a deck of punched cards) to a data center, then they would pick up the output of their batch the next day. It was common to need multiple days to fine-tune the batch to produce the desired outcome.

  2. Command-based interaction: Around 1964, the advent of time-sharing (multiple users sharing a computer’s resources for tasks) led to command-based interaction, where users and computers can take turns, one command at a time. In particular, graphical user interfaces (GUI), using visual elements that convey information and actions a user can take, have become the dominant UX since the launch of the Mac in 1984. A strength of GUI is that it shows the status after each command if designed well. Users don’t need to have a fully specified goal initially because they can reassess the situation and modify their goal/approach as they progress.

  3. Intent-based goal specification: With the third UI shift, represented by the current generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini), the user tells the computer what outcome they want, but does not specify how it should be accomplished. Today, users primarily interact with the system by issuing rounds of prompts to gradually refine the outcome, which is a form of interaction that is currently poorly supported with rich opportunities for usability improvements and innovation.

From batch processing to command-based interaction, the speed of fine-tuning the desirable outcome improved drastically. However, with the third shift to human-AI interaction, the lack of transparency of how the AI performs a task, especially for the increasingly complex and high-consideration scenarios, presents new UX challenges for the HCI community today.

Photo by Falco Negenman on Unsplash

Interaction cycle for human-AI systems

The ultimate goal of human-AI interaction is to efficiently achieve a desirable goal for the user. Today, this process involves 3 basic steps: user input, system processing, and system output.

Different from the traditional command-based interaction, where a user monitors and gives commands at every step in the process, with an AI system, the user’s skills shift to focus on (1) being clear and effective at articulating the goal and providing input, and (2) once the output is available, being able to assess if their goal has been achieved.

As an analogy, a human’s role switched from being the executor (take main control to execute) to being the manager (tell another person to execute for you). It requires a different set of skills and mindset, just as when an independent contributor switches to a manager role. For a team to be effective, the manager can’t micromanage every step, otherwise, it decreases the overall productivity. In this case, what are the key touch points where humans (the manager) need to intentionally “align” with the AI system (the executor) to ensure the interaction is effective?

Overview of the paper

To ensure an AI produces desired outcomes, without undesirable side effects (also termed “AI Alignment”), Terry et al. introduce 3 dimensions to consider as we address user interface challenges with AI systems: Specification alignment, Process alignment, and Evaluation support.

  • Specification alignment is the first step in human-AI interaction, where the user defines the desired outcome for the AI system to execute. In addition, the paper also points out the importance of specifying constraints (e.g. safe, cost-effective, aligned with human values). As an extreme example, consider the paperclip thought experiment, where an AI is tasked to produce as many paperclips as possible. The AI may eventually start destroying computers, refrigerators, or anything made of metal to make more paper clips, which is not aligned with how humans will achieve the goal.

  • Process alignment refers to providing the ability for users to view and/or control the AI’s underlying execution process. The paper proposes providing mechanisms that ensure (1) the user can understand how the system executes the task in ways that can be understood by humans (“means alignment”), and (2) give users the ability to modify these choices (”control alignment”).

  • Evaluation support is the final step where users validate that the AI’s output meets their goals. As AI becomes increasingly capable of difficult and complex tasks, a significant challenge is evaluating its outputs. The problem of evaluation can be further divided into two problems: (1) verifying the AI’s output correctly and completely fulfills the user’s intent and comprehension, and (2) understanding the AI’s output, with comprehension being a much more important problem to solve.

Personal notes

1\ Cognitive challenges with defining outcome. Counterintuitively, this step can be tricky because humans are not good at knowing or being able to describe what they want initially, especially for complex and high-consideration tasks. Considering human cognitive limitations, it’s important to account for the process for users to learn, then gradually understand and be able to describe their goal. This resembles a classic decision-making challenge when people shop. Although you know the goal is to buy a vacuum, you still need to go through the lengthy process of reading articles to learn about its major categories and functionalities and talking to friends and families before you know what you truly need and want. Similar to shopping research, the learning process is where we gradually build confidence in our judgment. Open question: how might we help users learn while maintaining efficiency in the process? One idea could be dynamic, personalized support for more or less explanation as users specify the requirement.

2\ Verifying interpretation upfront. One way to improve specification alignment for general-purpose AI is by providing the ability for users to verify and make necessary corrections to the AI’s interpretation of the intended outcomes before it proceeds. I love this direction because it resembles how real-life human collaboration works. Think about the manager and IC example, to ensure your project goal is aligned with what your manager has in mind (which could sometimes be under-specified or ambiguous), paraphrasing the requirement and sharing your plan of action beforehand helps confirm again that you and your manager are on the same page. Future research to understand (a) how real-life human collaboration and communication best practices can be applied for human-AI interaction, and (b) the right balance for efficiency vs. efforts for verification will be interesting to explore.

3\ Bridging the Process Gulf with a Surrogate Process. The paper introduces the concept of Process Gulf, as an extension of Norman’s concepts of the Gulfs of Execution and Evaluation, that highlights the gulf that can arise between a person and an AI due to the qualitatively different ways in which each produces an outcome. For example, a diffusion model for image generation transforms an image of statistical noise into a coherent image, an image creation process unfamiliar to most people. To bridge the Process Gulf, the paper proposes creating a simplified, separately derived, but controllable representation of the AI’s actual process, also termed a Surrogate Process. With a more accessible representation of the set of choices the AI needs to make in the process, the user can better intervene and guide the execution. Open question: since AI systems can be understood at many levels of abstraction, what’s the right level of explainability so that humans can easily understand and control how AI solves a problem?

4\ In-context evaluation and learning. Today, an AI tasked to recommend clothes you like would simply show you visuals of the clothes for at-a-glance evaluation. However, when the task becomes complicated, like creating code for an app, the AI system may provide comments, a natural language summary, or an architectural diagram of the code produced to help you evaluate. Future research: explore ways to provide simple, dynamic, and accessible explanations (e.g. visual, links to learn more) of the outcome produced would be useful for in-context evaluation and learning — it also assists with understanding the state of the problem after the AI performs some work, as the paper alluded to.

5\ Control mechanisms inspired by real-life tools. The importance of control mechanisms has been discussed extensively in the HCI community and I especially love the principles outlined in the People + AI Guidebook. When thinking about the appropriate levels of control, the common mechanism is providing parameters for a user to play with. For example, in Midjourney (a text-to-image model), users can adjust the “chaos” parameter to produce variations of the image. However, no support is currently provided to understand how a particular value will impact the generated images. Relatedly, as an interesting research exploration, PromptPaint provides users the ability to influence the text-to-image generation through paint medium-like interactions, using the paint palette metaphor to provide more control. As a result, it helps users specify their goals at greater granularity and gives users the ability to modify the choices involved as AI is producing the image. Future research: based on the specific task, what other real-life metaphors can be referenced as inspiration for control mechanisms (like pain palette for image generation)?

In Prompt Paint, the user can specify the area of generation with brushing (dark grey) with a prompt stencil. When the user completes brushing, the tool starts generating a part of the image while showing the process to the user (Chung and Adar, 2023)

6\ Interactive alignment for multi-users. The paper has been primarily discussing the user interface challenges and opportunities of a single user interacting with a single AI. As the paper alluded to, it would be useful to consider the alignment for interactions that include multiple parties, which introduces additional dimensions and complexity. For example, when an AI engaged in a music creation task involving two people. Future research: how would the alignment goals, processes, and dimensions evolve for a wider range of collaboration scenarios?

Thanks for reading

This post covers a broad set of themes in the AI alignment problem space. In upcoming HCI paper reviews, I’d love to explore specific use cases and verticals in the field. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment or get in touch!

Thanks to Bonnie Luo and Benjamin Yu for helpful discussions and feedback.

References

Jakob Nielsen. 2023. AI: First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years”. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ai-paradigm. Accessed: 2024-03-01.

John Joon Young Chung and Eytan Adar. 2023. PromptPaint: Steering Text-to-Image Generation Through Paint Medium-like Interactions. In Proceedings of UIST 2023. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 17 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3586183.3606777

Michael Terry, Chinmay Kulkarni, Martin Wattenberg, Lucas Dixon, and Meredith Ringel Morris. 2023. AI Alignment in the Design of Interactive AI: Specification Alignment, Process Alignment, and Evaluation Support. arXiv 2023, arXiv:2311.00710.

Negotiation and Human Agency

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Negotiation has been a term I mostly associated with business or politics in the past, involving intense debates and advocating for the interests of each party. However, I began to appreciate and explore this concept more intentionally since last year, when I was exposed to a more diverse set of collaboration scenarios. Then, I realized negotiation is everywhere and understanding its history, philosophy, and practice is important for thinking about how humans interact in a world of complexity. With a background in behavioral science, human-computer interaction, and design research, I began to see deeper connections between negotiation with each of these fields.

Okochi Sanso Garden, Kyoto 京都大河内山庄

Evolution of negotiation theory

Two notable milestones in negotiation literature are Getting to Yes (1981) by Fisher and Ury, and Never Split the Difference (2016) by Chris Voss. The former focuses on identifying interests and creating value for both parties, while the latter recognizes the emotional nature of negotiation and emphasizes the importance of building tactical empathy to gather information and influence the other party's thinking.

The shift from objectively identifying a win-win solution to challenging the idea of seeking a compromise is fascinating and counterintuitive at first. As the title Never Split the Difference suggests, Voss believes it’s better to not make a deal if compromise is involved. Instead, drawing from his experience as a former FBI hostage negotiator, he focused on uncovering Black Swans, which are hidden pieces of information that can change the course of a negotiation and push the other party towards a deal. This became his primary strategy for finding unconventional solutions.

This evolution in negotiation philosophy is an interesting parallel with the shift from classical economics to behavioral economics — both evolved to recognize the limitations of purely rational and utility-maximizing models. Similar to Never Split the Difference, behavioral economics shifts the focus from simplified, rational economic models to a more nuanced understanding of human behavior, which is shaped by emotions, biases, and heuristics.

Konchi-in Temple, Kyoto 京都金地院

Human agency at heart

People want to be heard, understood, and respected. In Never Split the Difference, building tactical empathy in negotiation means ensuring sufficient trust and safety for a real conversation to begin. Since change represents uncertainty and people want to be in control, saying no to a proposal is the easiest way to maintain that control and the status quo. This completely changed my perspective on the nature of negotiation because it’s ultimately about addressing fundamental human needs with psychological principles. It’s not just about fighting for individual interests, it’s much more about building connections, helping each other feel in control, and identifying creative solutions together.

Another memorable idea is that “Yes” has multiple layers (i.e. counterfeit, confirmation, and commitment), while “No” is the gateway to “Yes.” Saying “No” allows us time to pivot and adjust, creating an environment for the one “Yes” that mattered and gives us an opportunity to convince others that the proposed change is more advantageous than maintaining the status quo. Then, negotiation is the process of helping the other party feel protected and safe, so they can consider other possibilities with a relaxed mindset.

This also resembles the dynamics of how humans interact with technology, especially with AI systems. When systems (e.g. algorithms) collecting human input (e.g. data) without making people feel heard, respected, or in control, it becomes difficult to establish a genuine conversation (e.g. engagement). An effective feedback and control mechanism needs to account for human motivation and provide a clear incentive structure, so that the value and impact of input is meaningful. When considering human-computer interaction through the lens of human-machine negotiation, it’s interesting that we’re applying similar psychological principles to help individuals maintain their agency as foundational needs.

Practice of tactical empathy

When it comes to tactical steps to build tactical empathy or uncovering the black swan, the approach mentioned in Never Split the Difference shared a lot of similarities with user experience research moderation practices. Methods like asking calibrated question, focusing on discovery and uncovering insights, and active listening are all familiar to researchers. Although the relationship between a user and a researcher isn’t a negotiating one, the process and desired outcome is similar. Both the negotiator and the researcher aim to uncover insights about the other party to deeply understand their needs, so they can identify unconventional solutions or framing that change the course of the conversation or strategy.

Finally, the practice of emotional labeling reminds me of methods used in psychotherapy. It involves identifying and verbalizing the predictable emotions of a situation, which helps build empathy and insights for both parties. Once the emotion is labeled, we can talk about them without getting wound up because using language to objectify negative thoughts make them less frightening and disrupt their raw intensity.

Nanzen-ji Temple, Kyoto 京都南禅寺

At its core, negotiation is not about being competitive and skillful in applying complex methods or tactics. It is all about creating the right environment for genuine connection and conversation to begin.

日本设计随笔

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年末在日本度假，旅途中一路都感受着独特的日式设计美学，很钦佩这种愿意用心、耐心把所有事情考虑到极致的理念。无论是宏大的建筑景观还是料理食器的每一处细节，都能感受到背后的设计哲学：尊重自然，返璞归真，现代与传统的巧妙融合。

01 景观与建筑

在京都游览青莲院时，一踏入华顶殿内院里的竹席，就被绿意盎然的庭院景观吸引，视线由内庭延伸至外庭的青松、池塘和竹林。外景与内景相融合的设计将庭院和自然环境作为一个整体，庭院的结构实是为了突出园林景观之美。坐在竹席上，映入眼帘的绿色让人觉得不自觉地安静下来。青莲院的设计完美体现了日本美学中「静寂」（Seijaku）的原则，让人沉思安静，不感到浮夸、躁动。

青莲院华顶殿

青莲院内庭

京都知恩院大门

岚山常寂光寺大门

每次游览寺庙都喜欢在大门前后停留很久，因为喜欢看大门作为画框内流动的风景。看着游人进进出出，大门内外也自成一景。京都知恩院的大门尤其壮观，体积比别处寺院的大门更宏伟。站在台阶底下望向大门，每向前走几步，画框内的风景也不停变换，由远到近能看到不断放大的竹林，再往前走时便能看到正要跨过门栏、左顾右盼的旅客。

东京麻布台之丘

除了传统寺庙内外景相结合的结构之美以外，东京2023年末新落成的建筑「麻布台之丘」（Azabudai Hills）在线条和形状上也令人眼前一亮。麻布台之丘背后的设计理念是「现代都市村」（Modern Urban Village），采用格状花栏、棚架和弧线的元素，屋顶种满绿植，像是都市中的一座绿意山丘。该建筑由英国设计师 Thomas Heatherwick 设计，他也是纽约 The Vessel 的设计者。麻布台之丘体现了日本美学中「不匀整」（Fukinsei）和「脱俗」（Datsuzoku）的设计原则，前者指的是让设计不规则、不对称、不呆板、充满惊喜，后者指的是让设计风格自由而无拘无束，能超越传统和惯例，有创新的思考。

京都清水寺

京都金阁寺

日本建筑既有沉稳安静的一面，也有大胆运用鲜明色彩的一面。不同于中国皇家建筑钟爱的朱红色，日本寺庙常用更活泼的橘红、玫红或鲜绿，色彩饱和度更高。京都的清水寺和伏见稻荷大社皆用橘红作为主色。

不同于中国皇家建筑常用华丽的图案作装饰，金阁寺的主建筑舍利殿没有华丽的图案，外墙却大面积地使用金箔装饰，呈现出华丽辉煌，又严谨克制的美。这样的设计反差感既简素、不留过多装饰，又以一两个巧妙的元素呈现惊喜、大胆、有创意的风格。

第一次听说金阁寺还是小时候读《少年文艺》短篇选集，有一篇写两位在BBS论坛上相识的网友约在金阁寺见面，才对这个名字有了最初的印象。如今身临其境地感受过金阁寺黄昏时的美，好像也和那篇故事有了更多连结。

02 料理、食器与菜单设计

豆腐泡饭（岚山常寂光寺前）

冷制京茄（ここら屋 烏丸店）

日本料理特别能体现日本人对待生活的态度，在日本觅食容错率很高，哪怕是角落里的隐蔽小店也能体会平凡简单的美味。现代生活往往在各方面都最大限度地被效率优化了，在旅行时留出空间允许自己尝试新东西，鼓励更多偶然性和未知进入生活是难得的体验，而日本恰恰提供了能让人安心探索、不担心踩雷的餐饮环境。

在日本最让人念念不忘的反而是最简单的小菜，像豆腐、茄子、白萝卜、鱼干、细葱这些看似朴素的食材，浓郁又有香气，和他们的建筑风格如出一辙 —— 简素却经得起推敲，令人印象深刻。

在京都住了四晚，其中两天晚餐都在我们钟爱的一家居酒屋「ここら屋 烏丸店」（Kokoraya Karasuma），以京都家庭料理为特色，也是我们随机发现的一家小店。特别喜欢店里手写菜单的设计，视觉层次清晰，橘红色的标题和京都庙宇常用的橘红相呼应，手写字体也流畅雅致，竖版排列有古韵，特色菜品和店名以朱红印章强调，点菜的时候静静观赏了许久。

菜单（ここら屋 烏丸店）

梅子茶渍饭（ここら屋 烏丸店）

正好年末在东京喜迎新年，尝试了日本新年特色的御节料理。据说从平安时代开始，为了不惹怒火神，日本人在春节里尽量不用火，因此会提前准备好能够长时间放置的食盒，留给新年的头三天吃，家庭主妇在新年也能好好休息。食盒里以小菜为主，皆是寓意吉祥的食材。比如黑豆与「勤勉」为谐音，寓意新一年健康、勤劳、踏实的生活。鲭鱼卵寓意子孙繁荣，像鱼卵一样能多子多孙。沙丁鱼干原本是肥料，因此寓意来年丰收。虾在日本代表长寿，寓意「活到腰都弯了」。

御节料理食盒

蟹肉茶碗蒸（东京 Miyake Akira）

京都 Iolite Coffee Roasters

除了食物本身，日本食器的设计和搭配也很有巧思。印象深刻的两个例子：一是在东京吃 omakase 的时候碰到一道菜品与食器巧妙呼应的螃蟹茶碗蒸 —— 茶碗蒸盛在蟹壳里，与盘子里的螃蟹腿相呼应。二是在京都一家色彩鲜明的咖啡店 Iolite Coffee Roasters，每个人的杯垫和杯子都是活泼的多巴胺色，咖啡店老板递水的时候会先附上与后面咖啡杯颜色相应的杯垫。店里咖啡豆质量极佳，香气逼人，是希望再访的小店。

03 地图与导览

从小就喜欢研究地图，因为观察从不同角度将多维复杂的现实世界化繁为简总是很有趣。这次逛日本的园林、寺庙、美术馆和机场时也发现了一些让人眼前一亮的地图范例，原来好的设计每次都会令人惊叹「这个真有用，确实是我需要的」，以后对类似的体验也有了更高标准。

岚山大河内山庄的山景导览图

京都南禅寺金地院的地图

京都岚山大河内山庄的山景导览图：根据所站的位置，导览图会介绍近景，中景，远景中的山。想到以前爬山到山顶，虽然能看到远方的全景，开阔的视野每次都觉得震撼，但并不了解这些高楼、河流和山脉的来历，不知道具体在欣赏什么，只是一种模糊的对自然广阔之美的感受。当知道了远处各个方位具体的景致，对眼前的风景也更有概念，可被描述的风景和感受更容易被记住。

京都南禅寺金地院的油画庭院地图：油画版的庭院地图很少见，把具体的景观也微缩在地图上，不像在中国景区常见的地图，往往只把线路抽象出来。庭院中水池的画风甚至有莫奈荷塘的影子。

东京森美术馆的少年展览导读

羽田机场安检处的登机口地图

森美术馆的少年展览导读（Junior Guide）：看展时很少见到特地为少年制作的导读，逛展的时候觉得很惊艳，这也体现了无障碍设计（Accessibility Design）的益处 —— 虽然设计的主要目的是为了让青少年更容易理解有时晦涩难懂的介绍，实际上所有观展的人都受益了，包括像我这样对题材不了解的成人游客。Junior Guide 的易读性为所有来看展的 amateurs 提供了更容易理解的内容，从而丰富了整体的观展体验，是极佳的人本设计范例。

东京羽田机场安检处的登机口地图：年末的羽田机场人满为患，安检的队伍很长。站在队伍里抬头就能看到一张登机口的地图，具体的登机口大概在安检处的哪个方向，有多远都很清楚。这张地图虽然看似简单，但放在安检这个位置很巧妙，对于时间紧张、过了安检就要马上奔向登机口的人很方便，能缓解安检时对于登机口位置未知的焦虑。

这几处地图的例子能看出日本设计师对用户需求的深度理解，避免了用户调研中的一个经典误区 —— 很多人会直接问用户想要什么功能，但人是很难准确描述或预测自己的偏好和需求的，这也是理解用户需求真正困难的地方。好的设计能够满足那些用户自己都无法描述的真实需求，就像在机场安检处展示登机口地图，以及策展时包含少年导览那样。这些看似简单的设计，看到之后会感受到被关照到了。

04 与传统相结合的人本设计

商店窗户的圆形画框

植物造型夹

碎石网

在日本街头闲逛的时候，还记录了一些看似简单，但会不自觉惊叹的设计细节：

  • 商店窗户包含圆形边框，拉下窗帘时，也调整了画框的形状，让内外窗景变得灵动好玩

  • 在咖啡店里看到线条优雅的绿色夹子用于调整植物造型，相比于传统使用的钢丝或绿色绑带，夹子本身的线条很美，绿色也和植物相称，整体效果更融合

  • 日本寺庙地面大多铺了碎石，碎石上铺网避免了风大时容易扬起细石的问题

  • 羽田机场安检时提供拖鞋给需要脱鞋的旅客，既卫生又贴心，作为游客觉得被照顾到了

京都青莲院

后记

离开日本后，整理笔记的时候才意识到原来这些美学细节的背后就是禅宗哲学里「侘寂」（Wabi-sabi）的设计理念，是一种简朴、克制、以接受短暂和不完美为核心的日本美学和世界观。由于所处的地理位置，日本作为一个经常遭遇爆发性、不规律、和毁灭性自然灾害的国家，需要更早地思考如何与自然这样既赋予生命力和灵感，又时而危险有破坏性的力量相处，这也解释了为什么日本设计中对自然的尊重贯穿始终。有趣的是，同样在火山多发地带，夏威夷岛上的居民也敬畏自然，但他们以活在当下、及时行乐的态度生活，以及充满热情的社区、舞蹈和冥想来与自然的无常相处。反观日本，大和民族则用更沉静、克制的「侘寂」的美学去理解和面对自然中不可避免的生命流逝和不完美。感谢日本的设计灵感，下次再见。

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Elon Musk: Reading Notes

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Reading notes from Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

01 Musk’s Production Algorithm

First-principles thinking has been a well-established practice for some time, which involves questioning all assumptions about a problem and creating new solutions from the ground up. Reading about how Elon Musk applies it extensively in design, engineering, and manufacturing, from building rockets to designing car factories, made me appreciate even more its elegance in finding creative solutions to complex problems.

Here is Elon Musk’s version (“Algorithm”) of applying first-principles thinking:

  1. Question every requirement. Each should be attributed to the person who made it. Think for yourself and don't simply follow instructions. Never accept a requirement blindly just because it comes from a department.

  2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.

  3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.

  4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, Musk mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that he later realized should have been deleted.

  5. Automate. That comes last.

Noteworthy examples of applying first-principles thinking:

  • Innovate on material and product design. When designing the cybertruck, the Tesla team initially considered using titanium for its durability. However, Musk was reevaluating the material choice for SpaceX's rocket ship at the time and realized stainless steel could be a viable option, which could also be used for a pickup truck. A stainless steel body eliminated the need painting and could bear some of the vehicle’s structural load. This opened up new possibilities for a more futuristic and edgier design, featuring straight planes and sharp angles, which pushed the team to explore new ideas.

  • Cut costs in the auto and rocket industries. Musk believed that reusable rockets were essential for establishing a multi-planetary civilization, particularly for sending humans to Mars. To achieve this, he introduced the concept of the "idiot index," which measures the ratio of a component's total cost to the cost of its raw materials. A high idiot index indicates overly complex design or inefficient manufacturing processes. By reducing the idiot index, Musk aimed to lower the cost of rocket production and make space travel more affordable.

  • Reinvent the policy incentive structure. Musk proposed an alternative incentive process to the traditional "cost-plus" contracts used by NASA and the Defense Department. Instead of providing detailed specifications and awarding contracts to large companies, SpaceX introduced a new method where private companies bid on specific tasks or missions. This approach allowed SpaceX to have more control over the design and construction of their rockets. They took on financial risk and were only paid upon successfully completing milestones, which incentivized results and fostered innovation.

Another important production philosophy of Musk is to have tight end-to-end quality and cost control through vertical integration, while also applying first-principles thinking:

  • Design-manufacturing feedback loop: Musk follows the principle instilled by Steve Jobs and Jony Ive at Apple, where design is not just about aesthetics but also about connecting the looks of a product to its engineering. However, Musk takes it a step further by applying this obsession not only to product design but also to the underlying science, engineering, and manufacturing. This approach highlights the importance of connecting the art form with its underlying science, which is one of the key themes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  • Redesigning the manufacturing process: While creating a good car is important, Musk believes that creating efficient manufacturing processes and factories is even more crucial. In order to have tight control over the manufacturing process, Musk redesigned the assembly line. This involved questioning every requirement, making quick decisions to change or remove elements, and iterating on a daily basis. This design-manufacturing feedback loop has given Tesla a competitive advantage in its manufacturing process, resulting in solutions that are simple in design, communication, and cost.

02 Inspirations from science fictions, toys, and games

Musk often thinks at the scale of what truly impacts humanity, and this includes endeavors in space travel, internet infrastructure, sustainable energy, and artificial intelligence. He believes technology does not automatically progress, it requires human agency. While he sees the mass production of electric cars as inevitable, he believes that becoming a space-facing civilization is not. For example, although America had achieved sending men to the moon in the 1970s, there had been little progress until Musk founded SpaceX.

Musk had founded SpaceX, he liked to say, to increase the chances of human consciousness surviving by making us a multi-planetary species. Tesla and SolarCity were established to lead the way towards a sustainable energy future. Starlink was created to promote freedom of information, while Optimus and Neuralink were launched to develop human-machine interfaces that would protect us from malevolent artificial intelligence.

Photo by Leyre on Unsplash

Beyond thinking at the grand, historical scale of humanities, I really enjoyed learning how he took inspiration from science fictions, toys, and games, exemplifying combined creativity at the intersection of arts and technology.

Inspiration from science fictions

The most notable source of sci-fi inspiration was from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which featured a supercomputer designed to figure out the “Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” Moreover, the idea for Neuralink was inspired by the space-travel novels Culture by lain Bank, which feature a human-machine interface technology called “neural lace” that is implanted into people and can connect all of their thoughts to a computer.

Inspiration from toys

Musk mentioned getting ideas from the design of toys and the production process of the toy industry. For example, a little model car has inspired him to make real cars using big casting presses and Legos helped him understand the importance of precision manufacturing. When Musk inspected the Lego factory floor, he learned that each piece is accurate and identical to within ten microns, which means any part can easily be replaced by another — precision is not expensive, it’s mostly about caring to make it precise. On the production process, Musk also learned that toy companies need to produce things very quickly and cheaply without flaws and manufature them all by Christmas.

Inspiration from video games

When designing new car models for Tesla and someone proposed something conventional, Musk would push back and forth to the car from the video game Halo, Cyberpunk 2077, or from Riddle Scott’s movie Blade Runner as design inspiration. The other genre of games Musk loved is strategy games, including Civilization, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and Polytopia. Players in these games take turns making moves as they compete to win a military or economic campaign using clever strategy, resource management, and decision-tree tactical thinking. Musk’s passion for strategy games provides a window to understand his intensity, focus, competitiveness, die-hard attitudes, and love of strategy for business.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

03 Bridging virtual and physical AI

Solving full autonomous driving is to solve real-world AI and Musk attempted to bridge virtual and physical artificial intelligence with Tesla and Twitter/X, which could provide the data sets and the processing capability for both approaches: teaching machines to navigate in physical space and to answer questions in natural language. In his grand vision, with Full Self-Driving, the Otimus robot, and the Dojo ML supercomputer, Tesla will not just be a car or clean-energy company, it will be an artificial intelligence company that operated not only in the virtual world of chatbots but also in the physical real world of factories and roads.

Musk sees his ventures as different, yet connected experiments for exploring AI.

  • Tesla: Besides freeing people from the drudgery of driving, Tesla aims to eliminate the need for people to own cars. Musk envisions a future dominated by Robotaxis, driverless vehicles that can be summoned, take passengers to their destinations, and move on to the next customer. While some Robotaxis may be owned by individuals, most would be owned by fleet companies or Tesla itself.

  • X/Twitter: The video footage from self-driving cars and the posts on Twitter offer vast flows of real-time data for training and analysis. Musk sees the Twitter feed as a representation of humanity's collective knowledge, capturing real-life human conversations, news, interests, trends, arguments, and lingo.

  • Neuralink: A device to explore the human-machine interface by connecting our brains to computers through a skull-implanted chip. This allows for faster information exchange and promotes collaboration between humans and machines.

  • OpenAI: Musk initially had the vision to make OpenAI truly open, allowing many people to build systems based on its source code. He believes that the best defense against AI misuse is to empower as many individuals as possible with AI technology.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

04 The other sides of Elon Musk as a human

Much more can be said about Elon Musk's achievements as a technology entrepreneur. However, beyond his accomplishments, the biography also sheds light on other aspects of Elon Musk's life, including his role as a partner, father, and friend. It explores his risk-taking nature, a maniacal sense of urgency, recklessness, mood swings, and occasional toxicity towards towards people around him. Elon Musk exemplifies the human experience - daring to dream big and change the world, while also grappling with his limitations and weaknesses.

If anything, reading Elon Musk made me realize the greatness we can achieve as humans, while reminding us of the underlying trade-offs we’re constantly making for ourselves, our loved ones, and the environment.

Finite and Infinite Games as Modern Analogies

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I was first introduced to Finite and Infinite Games in 2016, a book by James P. Carse, who was a Professor of History and Literature of Religion at NYU. At the time, its influence was cited by Chinese tech entrepreneurs like Wang Xing, founder of Meituan, and Kevin Kelly, cofounder of Wired magazine and author of Out of Control. Lately, I started this book out of curiosity to rethink the familiar concept of gameplay in everyday life.

Photo by eleonora on Unsplash

01 Boundary differentiates finite and infinite games

As the title suggests, Carse argues that there are two types of game in the world: finite and infinite games. Finite game is played for the purpose of winning, with an agreed winner and an end, whereas an infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play.

To play a finite game, players must agree to a set of externally defined spatial and numerical boundaries. For example, a game is played in that place, with those people. Each game is defined by its rules, or its range of limitations on the players, which allow considerable room for choice within those restraints and by which the players can agree who has won.

On the contrary, an infinite game does not have such boundaries. The rules of an infinite game evolve to prevent anyone from winning the game and to bring as many people as possible into the play. This resembles the mechanics of open-world games like Minecraft and The Legend of Zelda, where players can freely choose how to approach the game without the traditional linear structure. In short, finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.

Emotionally, it’s interesting to note that finite game feels serious because of the competitive nature of the zero-sum game, whereas infinite game comes with laughter and feels like play because new possibilities are continuously discovered to be explored with other players.

02 Power through title is won in a finite game

In a finite game, what one wins is a title. When a person is known by title, the attention is on a completed past and may take a person out of play. On the other hand, infinite players are only known by their names and the attention of others is open to the possibility of their future interactions. This is a gentle reminder to focus on the concrete, specific person, instead of the abstract titles.

Carse argues that titles are theatrical, where each title has a specified ceremonial form of behavior. This reminds me of a common improv acting technique to assign titles to your partner to shape the relationship in the narrative. For example, using titles such Captain, Mrs., Professor, Comrade, Father, Secretary signals the mode (e.g. appropriate respect), the content (e.g. only certain subjects are suitable for discussion with the District Attorney), and the manner (e.g. shaking hands, bowing, averting the eyes) of address.

Unsurprisingly, titles also conveyed power. Power can only be measured in relation to others and is determined by the amount of resistance one can displace within spatial and temporal limits. Those around them are expected to withdraw their opposition and conform to their will in the area (i.e. the game) the title was won. Validity of these titles depends on the repeatability of the game.

The finite player plays to be powerful, whereas the infinite player plays with self-sufficient strength. Power refers to the freedom people have within limits, strength is the freedom people have with limits. Strength is allowing others to do what they wish in the course of my play with them, whereas power is considering how much resistance can I overcome relative to others.

Carse further argues that society is a finite game whereas culture is an infinite game. A society preserves its memory of past winners with record-keeping functions like large bureaucracies to maintain social order. Culture, on the other hand, has no boundaries and anyone can participate and shape. Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but continues what had begun and not finished in the past. In contrast, social convention requires that a completed past be repeated in the future.

Photo by javad saraji on Unsplash

03 Storytelling can be seen as an infinite game

Storytelling can be seen as an infinite game. A good story presents a vision that moves and inspires you with its underlying belief. The interactive and engaging elements of storytelling is what truly connects the speaker and the listener. The end of a compelling story is the new beginning of the listener’s imagination and reflection on their own journey, which is similar to how an infinite game continues the play without true ending.

When comparing storytelling with explanation, Carse argues that explanation settles issues, showing that matters should reasonably end as they have. Narrative raises issues and inspires reflections in others. In this case, explanation sets the need for further inquiry aside, whereas narrative invites us to rethink what we thought we knew. I see where Carse’s argument is coming from, but am not convinced that explanation is a finite game in this sense.

The concept of explanation actually makes me think of its inherent role in interpreting and predicting the future. If the rules governing past events can be discovered and explained, we can make better prediction about the future. This captures an important philosophy of user experience research as a discipline: if we can understand the motivation that guides human behaviors and perceptions, we can meaningfully derive aggregate patterns of human needs to inform investments for the future. Investing in research is a way to play the infinite game, where the focus is to co-create a long-term vision on the horizon. The more insightful framework we have to understand a problem space based on existing behaviors, the better we can predict and build for the future. In this example, explanation is also an infinite game that opens up new possibilities.

04 Garden is an infinite game, while machine isn’t

Carse further extends the finite and infinite games framework to the machine and garden analogy. Think of a gardener who uses machine as a tool to help with gardening. Machine is a finite game because it is operated to complete a task. When it is most effective, the tool becomes invisible and eliminates itself because the effort is minimal. Garden, on the other hand, is a place of growth and maximized spontaneity. “To garden is to design a culture capable of adjusting to the widest possible range of surprise in nature.”

Machinery can exist in the garden quite as finite games can be played within an infinite game. Technology is a tool that helps with gardening as a means to an end, not the end itself. The question is not one of restricting machines from the garden but asking whether a machine serves the interest of the garden.

Additionally, the relationship between the machine and its operator is very much like how humans interact with technology today. We often think of a machine as a tool—the extended arms and legs of the operator. However, Carse suggested that “to use the machine for control is to be controlled by the machine.” For example, when using a search engine, many start with a broad query then gradually refine and add keywords as they review the result. This is not how we naturally talk to others when we look for things. Search engines are designed to help look up information today as a tool, but we as operators are also trained to interact with it in such specific ways.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

05 Celebrate spontaneity and forgo control

In the garden analogy, gardeners celebrate variety and spontaneity, which may seem chaotic and out of control on the flip side. But vitality comes from an abundance of styles and sources of change. Gardeners are acutely attentive to the deep patterns of natural order, while having the freedom to choose how to play with nature and its force.

If we play the finite game, the more power we exercise over nature, the more powerless we become before it. In a matter of months we can cut down a rainforest that took tens of thousands of years to grow, but we are helpless in repulsing the desert that takes its place. The human desire to control and organize chaos means transforming the remote into the familiar. When we attempt to take control of nature, we’re essentially reducing an unpredictable vitality to a predictable mass. Sometimes, the desire for control, just like the need to declare war, is a way for us to re-identify ourselves.

Ultimately, Carse gently nudges us to rethink the type of game we are playing. When it comes to interacting with other humans or with nature, it’s easy to go straight to playing the finite game, so we can gain the immediate reward quicker. Carse reminds us to think about the trade-offs behind these finite games and whether they truly serve the interest of the garden—the infinite game—that we are working towards.

大理 Dalifornia 2023

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During my travels in China this summer, I visited Dali, a city in China’s southwestern Yunnan province, and immediately fell in love with it. I was initially curious about Dali because many Chinese digital nomads, tech entrepreneurs, and bloggers I follow moved there, after spending years in urban cities like Shanghai.

Dali has an interesting combination of grand, imperial buddhist temples in the mountains, modern night life and live houses, as well as rolling green hills of peaceful paddy field in the countryside. Culturally, it felt quite different compared to the rest of China, since it’s the capital of Bai culture and architecture and there are influences from Laos, Vietnam, and Burma as these countries border the province to the south and west. Its relaxed, laid-back vibe with beautiful landscape, a burgeoning tech community, and the mild climate inspired the “Dalifornia” nickname among locals.

傍晚的光影打在山谷西南的高山草甸上

01 喜洲稻田

六月在云南大理休假，一方面是因为太喜欢《去有风的地方》（笑），另一方面其实好奇为什么很多国内的数字游民、科技从业者、和很酷的年轻人都搬去了大理。回国前，碰巧好友 Tina 推荐了大理喜洲，也正好想和家人一起去一个清净的地方好好休息，就决定去大理转转。

绿油油的喜洲稻田，六月水稻已经收割完了

这次旅行的亮点之一是住在喜林苑（The Linden Centre），一家由古宅修复而建的酒店。这个品牌的好玩之处在于它以酒店为起点，融合了民宿、文物修复、乡村文化和教育基地的角色。喜林苑的创始人林登1983年从芝加哥来中国，最初在北京学中文，后来辗转选择在大理定居，2008年在大理喜洲开始运营喜林苑。这次在大理体验了喜林苑的两家分店，分别是位于喜洲古镇的喜林苑 · 杨品相宅，以及位于石宝山下的喜林苑 · 沙溪夯土酒店。

喜林苑 · 杨品相宅是清末至民国初年很有影响力的喜洲商帮之一杨品相的旧宅，杨氏当时主营黄金、外币和棉纱。林登修复和设计喜林苑的过程很像设计研究中常用的「参与式设计」（Participatory Design），强调用户（即喜洲的当地居民）也沉浸式地参与到设计过程中。把设计权交给用户，借此激发不同视角和出发点的发散性创意，并从中提炼出核心需求和意想不到的解决方案。根据《寻乡中国》里的描述，林登当时邀请整个喜洲古镇的居民一起参与改建，以白族的传统手法，细细修缮打理这座老宅。以喜林苑为起点，希望能让世界各地的旅行者深入了解、体验并保护当地的人文历史。

照壁上的「清白传家」可知院落主人为杨氏

白色照壁除了阻隔空间外，反射光也可增加室内的采光

门前的石雕

照壁下的佛像

02 茶马古道上的沙溪古镇

临行前还犹豫是否值得开车两个多小时去大理北面的沙溪古镇，但后来很庆幸去了沙溪，也是这次旅行最喜欢的小镇。当地的建筑和社区保护得较好，目前还没有被过度开发和商业化。沙溪的发展模式确实和《有风》里描述得很像，不少当地的手工艺人擅长做木雕，镇子里也能看到很多木雕坊。沙溪还引进了先锋沙溪白族书局，以更好地保存本土作家的作品和系统整理白族历史、文化、民俗风情相关的书籍。慢慢地建造的文化社区，也带动旅游业的发展。

沙溪的建筑大多是黄色土培外墙

先锋沙溪白族书局

沙溪卓别林给妹妹画速写画像

最爱这尊笑容灿烂的弥勒佛木雕

沙溪的喜林苑夯土酒店坐落在石宝山森林公园里，傍湖而建，伫立在湖山之间。外墙使用了当地特色的建材夯土和毛石砌筑的搭配，以深赤色的毛石墙为主色调。除了建筑设计很出彩以外，酒店还有图书馆，每年会和北上广深的国际高中以及美国大学合作提供交换课程和暑期游学，让来自不同背景的学生到镇子里实地体验当地文化。

Windows 桌面 IRL

酒店入口的木桥，连接着客房建筑群

白族歌舞表演和篝火晚会

钟爱这套古朴的白陶茶具

杨梅、荔枝和白桃都特别新鲜

妹妹在餐厅抓拍到的光影

每天的早餐肉燥米粉太快乐了

酱菜肉末豆腐

白豆炖猪蹄

03 苍山脚下的崇圣寺

大理在唐宋时期相继建立过南诏国和大理国。大理国时期佛教盛行，因此大理也被誉为「佛都」。崇圣寺则是南诏、大理国皇家寺院，位于大理古城西北，苍山之下。千寻塔是典型的唐代建筑风格，始建于南诏时期（公元824-859年）。走进崇圣寺，印象最深刻的是建筑群的布局设计，从南到北，千寻塔、山门、大雄宝殿、以及观音阁都位于一条中轴线上，其余殿阁一一对称分布。从低往高处走，站在千寻塔前是完全看不到背后庞大的园林和建筑群的，每往高处走一段，新的建筑（比如山门）才缓缓出现在眼前。园林的设计也巧妙工整，有庄严的皇家气势。

崇圣寺的设计逻辑像是在循序渐进地与游人缓缓展开对话，能联想到交互设计中「渐进式呈现」（Progressive disclosure）的概念，每向前走一段时间，就能解锁新的景观和建筑。而站在这个中轴线的每一个位置，都能欣赏恰到好处、遥相呼应的风景。离开崇圣寺时快日落了，站在山脚下回头看了很久苍山上映着透过云层的光影。

千寻塔脚下

苍山下的崇圣寺三塔

在主塔台基石砌照璧上，嵌有明代万历年间黔国公沐英之孙沐世阶书写的「永镇山川」

04 大理古城北市早集

在大理古城的最后一天在北门市集转了转，是这些瞬间让大理变得具象又生动。

A tiny bar with flowers growing on walls

Couples dancing waltz in the park

Father and son sitting under a giant tree

Motorcycles and small town street view

Couplets for prosperity and good fortune

Roast goose 烤鹅

Pipa 枇杷

Hustling in the farmers market

Dai-flavoured pilaf 傣味手抓饭

Lychee 荔枝

谢谢大理的清净和滋养，下次再见啦！

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置身事内

in

While visiting China in June, I read Xiaohuan Lan’s new book Chinese Government and Economic Development as an introduction to learn about how the government influenced and managed economic development in China. This post summarized my reading notes, including discussions on the operation model of a government-led economy, as well as its benefits and drawbacks in the long run.

六月在国内休假时读完了兰小欢 2021 年出版的《置身事内：中国政府与经济发展》，补充了很多中国政治经济的入门知识。很多术语和概念以前仅仅听过，却一直没有去认真理解中国政府、政策、经济与民生之间的关系，尤其政府是具体如何参与和推动经济发展的。

兰小欢在书中切入的角度偏学术研究，侧重于从社会运行的角度描述政府及其财政体系的运作模式。书中描述的政府对于企业的参与和扶持，实际上只侧重反映了政府对上市或过千万营收的大企业的扶持。书中没有提及政府对于中小企业的参与，实际上，从中小企业管理者的角度看来，政府对小企业的扶持极少。书中描述的是理论上政府在经济中的角色，并没有深入描述现实中出现的诸多问题，比如重复投资所带来的资源浪费、众多烂尾的大项目、政府扶持企业所引起的市场垄断、以及随之带来的市场效率降低和小企业的积极性减少等等。不过这本书作为入门读物，帮助读者建立基础认知还是很有帮助的。

Photo by Cagatay Orhan on Unsplash

01 地方政府的事权划分和制度设计

政府的核心任务是发展经济。而发展经济是一个复杂庞大的任务，需要各个政府层级协作，优化资源的分配和利用。那么具体怎么协作呢？这就需要决定好怎么样划分事权 —— 决定了做哪些事，才能决定用哪些资源，也就是「制度设计」。

我觉得最有趣的部分是借此观察事权分配的逻辑，并且比较政府管理和企业管理的相似和不同之处。一个企业，往往管理层的事权划分有按业务为边界划分的（比如 Head of Ads）、按职位类别划分的（比如 Head of Engineering）、或按地理边界划分的（比如 Head of APAC）。具体按什么为边界划分涉及到三个基本原则：规模经济（Economies of scale）、信息复杂性、和激励相容（Incentive compatibility）。

  • 规模经济（Economies of scale）：在国家管理层面，这里具体指公共服务的规模经济。按照经典经济学的看法，政府的核心职能是提供公共物品和公共服务，比如国防和公园。这类物品一旦生产出来，大家都能用，用的人越多就越划算——因为建造和维护成本也分摊得越薄，即「规模经济」。

  • 信息复杂性：行之有效的管理，必然要求掌握关键信息，因此实际权威来自信息优势。而获取和传递信息需要花费大量时间精力，上级要不断向下传达，下级要不断向上汇报，平级要不断沟通，作为信息载体的文件和会议也成了权力的载体之一。因此，一套复杂的文件和会议制度就成了权力运作重要的部分。

  • 激励相容（Incentive compatibility）：即一方想做的事，另一方既有意愿也有能力做好。发展经济是一个很宏观的工作，上级往往只有大致目标，需要下级发挥主动性和创造性调动资源去达成。首先要明确地方政府的权利和责任，一般一个地区谁主管谁负责，以行政区划为权责边界。其次是权力和资源的配置要制度化，不能朝令夕改。财政体制的设计也很重要，明确了收入和支出的划分，也就约束了谁能调用多少资源，不能花过头的钱，也不能随意借债。

这些原则的目的是为了有效处理不同群体的利益差别与冲突。完全没有冲突当然不可能，但如果能让各个群体对利益和代价的看法趋同，也能消解很多矛盾，增强互信。因此，国家对其公民都有基本的共同价值观教育，包括历史教育和国家观念教育。

02 招商引资和土地财政

中国地方政府的权力非常广泛，不仅提供公共服务，也深度参与经济的生产和分配。因此，招商引资不仅是招商局的职能，也是地方政府的核心任务。从生产和供给的角度，地方政府是城市土地的所有者，为了招商引资发展经济，会把工业用地以非常优惠的价格转让给企业使用，并负责对土地进行一系列初期开发，比如「七通一平」（通电、通路、通暖、通气、给水、排水、通信，以及平整场地）。

总的来说，对企业至关重要的生产要素，地方政府几乎都有很强的干预能力。其中土地直接归政府所有，资金则大多来自国有银行主导的金融体系和政府控制的其他渠道，比如国有投融资平台。对于劳动力，政府控制着户口，也掌握着教育和医疗等基本服务的供给，还掌握着土地供应，直接影响住房分配。而生产中的科技投入，也有相当大一部分来自公立大学和科研院所。除此之外，地方政府还有财税政策、产业政策、进出口政策等工具，都可能对企业产生重大影响。

政府的事权要求相应的财力支持，否则事情就办不好。事权与财力匹配很合理，但从预算收入的角度，地方政府是否也应该有与事权相适应的收钱的权力，让「事权与财权匹配」呢？实际情况是地方政府的支出和收入差距很大，地方财政预算支出一直高于预算收入。近些年地方预算支出占全国预算支出的85%，但收入只占50%—55%，入不敷出的部分则通过中央转移支付来填补。

1998年后，城市土地的真正价值才开始显现。1997—2002年，城镇住宅新开工面积年均增速为26%，五年增长了近4倍。一是单位取消住房福利的分配，而改为在工资中发住房补贴的形式，让职工凭个人的工资收入购买或租用住房，商品房和房地产由此开始兴起。二是修订后的《中华人民共和国土地管理法》开始实施后规定了农地想要转为建设用地必须经过征地后变成国有土地，确立了城市政府对土地建设的垄断权力。

「土地财政」是什么？

为了应对财务压力，地方政府发展出了「土地财政」，即通过卖土地来获得巨额的土地使用权转让收入，以及与土地使用和开发有关的各种税收收入。其中大部分税收的税基是土地的价值而非面积，所以税收随着土地升值而快速增长。这些税收分为两类，一类是直接和土地相关的税收，主要是土地增值税、城镇土地使用税、耕地占用税和契税。2018年，这四类税收共计15081亿元，占地方公共预算收入的15%，相当可观。另一类税收则和房地产开发和建筑企业有关，主要是增值税和企业所得税。若把这些税收与土地转让收入加起来算作「土地财政」的总收入，2018年其收入相当于地方公共预算收入的89%。

出让的土地中，商住用地虽然面积中只占一半，但贡献了几乎所有土地使用权转让收入。因此「土地财政」实际上是「房地产财政」。地价的飞涨一方面随着各地补贴工业用地，大力招商引资，推动了制造业的快速发展；另一方面，随着工业化和城市化的发展，经济发达地区涌入大量新增人口，而这些地方的住宅用地供给却不足，房价自然飞涨，同时也带动地价飞涨。

土地财政的优势：资本化土地从而快速提供大量资金发展城市和工业

回到经济发展的本质，其实就是提高资源使用效率。而在中国的经济起步阶段，对于庞大的人口基数来说，自然资源相对贫乏。因此，能利用的资源主要是人力和土地。过去几十年的很多政策改革大多和盘活这两项资源、提高其使用效率有关。与人力相比，土地更容易被资本化，将未来的收益转化为今天高升的地价，为地方政府所用。因此，「土地财政」虽然有诸多弊端，但确实是过去这些年城市化和工业化得以快速推进的重要资金来源。

地方政府在招商引资和城市化的过程中，需要通盘考量税收收入和土地使用权转让收入，以达到总体收入最大化。举个例子，地方政府会压低工业用地价格，因为工业对经济转型的带动作用强，能带来增值税和其他税收，还能创造就业。而且工业生产率提升空间大，既能帮助本地实现现代化，也能带动服务业的发展，拉动商住用地价格上涨。另外，工业生产上下游链条长，产业集聚和规模经济效果显著，若能发展出特色产业集群（如佛山的陶瓷），也就有了长久的竞争优势和稳定的税收来源。

此外，地方之间招商引资竞争非常激烈。虽说工业和商住用地都由地方政府垄断，但工业企业可选择落地的地方很多，所以在招商引资竞争中地方政府很难抬高地价。商住用地则不同，主要服务本地居民，土地供应方的垄断力量更强，更容易抬高地价。因此，分税制改革后经济的快速发展得益于各个行政区通过税收和土地来进行招商引资的竞争，从激励相容的角度，上下级政府间层层承包责任和分享收益的制度框架。

经济学家张五常曾做过一个比喻：地方政府就像一家商场，招商引资就是引入商铺。商铺只要交一个低廉的入场费用（类似工业用地转让费），但营业收入要和商场分成（类似增值税，不管商铺是否盈利，只要有流水就要分成）。商场要追求总体收入最大化，所以既要考虑入门费和租金的平衡，也要考虑不同商铺间的平衡。一些商铺大名鼎鼎，能为商场带来更大客流，那商场不仅可以免除它们的入门费，还可以降低分成，甚至可以倒贴（类似地方给企业的各种补贴）。

土地财政的弊端：地方政府的债务问题

土地的资本化运作，本质是把未来的收益抵押到今天去借钱，如果借来的钱投资质量很高，转化成了有价值的资产和未来更高的收入，那债务就不是大问题。但地方官员任期有限，难免会催生短视行为，寅吃卯粮，过度借债去做大项目。功是留在当代了，利是不是有千秋，就是下任领导的事了。如此一来，投资质量下降，收益不高，债务负担就越来越重。

制度一直如此，为什么前些年问题似乎不大？因为经济发展阶段变了。在工业化和城市化初期，传统农业生产率低，只要把农地变成工商业用地，农业变成工商业，效率就会大大提升。但随着工业化的发展，市场竞争越来越激烈，技术要求越来越高，先进企业不仅需要土地，还需要产业集聚、研发投入、技术升级、物流和金融配套等，很多地方并不具备这些条件，徒有大量建设用地指标不一定有用了。

另外，分税制改革之后，中央和省分成，省也要和市县分成。可因为上级权威高于下级，所以越往基层分到的钱往往越少，但分到的任务却越来越多，基层财政变得很困难。这最终涉及了财税体制的层级问题：要不要让财政制度更扁平化？如果要，具体怎么实施呢？

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

3. 土地金融

「土地金融」是什么？

再穷的国家也有大片土地，土地本身并不值钱，值钱的是土地之上的经济活动。若土地只能用来种小麦，价值便有限，但如果能吸引工商企业和人才，价值想象的空间就会被打开，笨重的土地就会展现出无与伦比的优势：它不会移动也不会消失，天然适合做各种资本交易的抵押，地价自然飞涨。

土地资本化的魔力，在于可以挣脱物理属性，在抽象的意义上交易承诺和希望，将过去的储蓄、现在的收入、未来的前途，统统汇聚和封存在一小片土地上，使其价值快速增长。由此产生的能量支撑起了工业化和城市化的巨大投资。经济发展的核心之一，正是把有形资产转变成为这种抽象资本，从而聚合跨越空间和时间的资源。

那么「土地金融」具体如何操作？

土地开发可细分为一级和二级开发。用术语来说，一块划出来的「生地」，平整清理后才能成为向市场供应的「熟地」，这个过程称为「土地一级开发」。「一级开发」投入大、利润低，且涉及拆迁等复杂问题，一般由政府融资平台公司完成。之后的建设和运营称为「二级开发」，大都由房地产公司来做。大多数城市的休闲娱乐项目。比如遍及全国的万达广场和上海新天地，都是政府一次性出让土地使用权，由民营企业（如万达集团和瑞安集团）开发和运营。当地的融资平台公司一般只参与前期的拆迁和土地整理。

与成都宽窄巷子或上海新天地这样的商业项目相比，开发工业园区更像基础设施项目，投资金额大（因为面积大）、盈利低，大都由融资平台类国企主导开发，之后交给政府去招商引资。政府付费使用私营企业开发建设的基础设施的模式叫「政府和社会资本合作」（Public-Private Partnership, PPP）。那么，企业和政府的边界在哪里呢？从实际业务和行为模式来看，融资平台类公司就是企业和政府的混合体，而民营企业如华夏幸福，又承担着政府的招商职能。现实世界中没有定义，只有现象，只有环环相扣的权责关系。或者按张五常的说法，只有一系列合约安排。

「城投公司」又是什么？

1994年分税制改革后，中央拿走了大部分税收。但因为有税收返还和转移支付，地方政府维持运转问题不大。但地方还要发展经济，要招商引资，要投资，都需要钱。土地价值飙升后，政府不仅靠土地使用权转让收入支撑起了「土地财政」，还将未来的土地收益资本化，从银行和其他渠道借入了大量资金，利用「土地金融」推动了快速的工业化和城市化。但同时也积累了大量债务。

这套模式的关键是土地价格。只要不断地投资和建设能带来持续的经济增长，城市就会扩张，地价就会上涨，就可以偿还连本带利越滚越多的债务。可经济增速一旦放缓，地价下跌，土地出让收入减少，累积的债务就会成为沉重的负担，可能压垮融资平台甚至地方政府。

为解决这三个问题，城投公司（即城市建设投资公司）就诞生了，即全国各大城市政府的投资融资平台。发明这套模式的是国家开发银行。1998年，国家开发银行（以下简称「国开行」）和安徽芜湖市合作，把8个城市建设项目捆绑在一起，放入专门创立的城投公司芜湖建投，以该公司为单一借款人向国开行借款10.8亿元。这对当时的芜湖来说是笔大钱，为城市建设打下了基础。当时还不能用土地生财，只能靠市财预算安排的偿还基金做偿债来源。

2002年，全国开始推行土地「招拍挂」（招标、拍卖与挂牌），政府授权芜湖建投以土地出让收益做质押作为还款保证。2003年，在国开行和天津的合作中，开始允许以土地增值收益作为贷款还款来源。这些做法后来就成了全国城投公司的标准模式。

政府投资和土地金融的发展模式的利弊

地方主官任期有限，要想在任内快速提升经济增长，往往只能加大投资力度，上马各种大工程、大项目。以市委书记和市长为例，在一个城市的平均任期不过三四年，而基础设施或工业项目最快也要两三年才能完成，所以往往「新官上任三把火」：上任头两年，基础设施投资、工业投资、财政支出往往都会快速上涨。而全国平均每年都有三成左右的地级市要更换市长或市委书记，所以各地的投资都热火朝天，「政治-投资周期」比较频繁。

投资需要资金，需要土地财政和土地金融的支持。所以在官员上任的前几年，土地出让数量一般都会增加。而新增的土地供应大多位于城市周边郊区，所以城市发展就呈现出了一种「摊大饼」的态势：建设面积越扩越大，但普遍不够紧凑，通勤时间长、成本高，加重了拥挤程度，也不利于环保。

虽然官员的晋升动机与促进经济增长目标之间不冲突，也对地区经济表现有相当的解释力，但这种偏重投资的增长模式会造成很多不良后果。

  • 2016年之前，官员升迁或调任后就无需再对任内的负债负责，而新官又通常不理旧账，会继续加大投资，所以政府债务不断攀升。在经济发展到一定阶段之后，低风险高收益的工业投资项目减少，基础设施和城市建设投资的经济效益也在减弱，继续加大投资会降低经济整体效率，助推产能过剩。此外，出于政绩考虑，地方官员在基础设施投资方面常常偏重「看得见」的工程建设，比如城市道路、桥梁、地铁、绿地等，相对忽视「看不见」的工程，比如地下管网。

  • 政府投资和土地金融的发展模式，一大弊端就是腐败严重。与土地有关的交易和投资往往金额巨大，且权力高度集中在个别官员手中。近些年查处的大案要案大多与土地有关，在最高检《检察日报》从2008年到2013年报道的腐败案例中，近一半与土地开发有关。

  • 1994年分税制改革后，财权集中到了中央，但通过转移支付和税收返还，地方政府有足够的财力维持运转。但几乎所有省份，无论财政收入多寡，债务都在飞速扩张。可见政府债务问题根源不在收入不够，而在支出太多，因为承担了发展经济的任务，要扮演的角色太多。因此债务问题不是简单的预算约束问题，也不是简单修改政府预算框架的问题，而是涉及政府角色的问题。为了改善这些问题，未来的路径是逐渐简政放权，从生产投资型政府逐步转向服务型政府。

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04 政府深度参与工业化经济

现实世界没有清楚的「市场」和「政府」分界，只有利益关系环环相扣的各种组合。中国经济的起点是计划经济，所以地方政府掌握着大量资源（土地、金融、国企等），不可避免会介入实业投资。

生产复杂产品的能力与法制和营商环境直接相关。从2000年到2018年，中国出口商品的复杂程度从世界第39位上升到了第18位。这不仅反映了技术能力和基础设施等硬件质量的提升，也反映了营商环境和法制环境等软件质量的提升。因为复杂的产品和产业链涉及诸多交易主体和复杂商业关系，投资和交易金额往往巨大，所以对合同的制订和执行、营商环境稳定性、合作伙伴间信任关系等都有很高要求。各国产品的复杂程度与本国法制和营商环境之间直接相关。

新型制造业如何选址？新兴制造业在地理上的集聚效应很强，因为扎堆生产可以节约原材料和中间投入的运输成本，而且同行聚集在一起有利于知识和技术交流，外溢效应很强。因此产业集群一旦形成，自身引力会不断加强，很难被外力打破。但在产业发展早期，究竟在哪个城市形成产业集群，却有很多偶然因素。大部分新兴制造业对自然条件要求不高，不会特别依赖先天自然资源，而且我国基础设施发达，物流成本低，所以一些内陆的中心城市虽然没有沿海城市便利，但条件也不是差很多。这些城市若能吸引一些行业龙头企业落户，就有可能带来一大片相关企业，在新兴产业的发展中占得一席之地，比如合肥的京东方和郑州的富士康等。

政府扶持行业的负面影响：引起产能过剩和重复投资

很多行业都有很强的周期性。市场价格高涨时很多企业进入，供给快速增加，推动价格大跌，让不少企业倒闭，而低价又会刺激和创造出更多新的需求和应用场景，推动需求和价格再次上涨。一个例子是显示面板，这种周期性的产能过剩已经清洗掉了很多企业，行业中心也在一轮轮的清洗中从美国转到日本，再到韩国和台湾，再到大陆。招商引资竞争所引发的重复建设确实屡见不鲜，尤其在那些技术门槛较低、投资额度较小的行业，比如曾经的光伏行业。

  • 无论是欧美还是日韩，光伏的需求都是由政府补贴创造出来的。中国在开始进入这个行业时面临：需求和市场来自海外，关键技术和设备来自海外，关键原材料也来自海外。所以基本就是一个代工行业。但当时光伏发电成本太高，国内市场用不起。在地方政府廉价的土地和信贷资源支持下，大量本土光伏企业在海外用低价占领市场，并在这个过程中不断技术创新，逐步进入技术更复杂的产业链上游，以求在产能过剩导致的激烈竞争中占据优势。但由于最终市场在海外，所以一旦遭遇欧美「双反（反倾销、反补贴）」，就从需求端打击了全行业，导致大量企业倒闭。

  • 但积累的技术、人才、行业知识和经验，并不会随企业破产而消失。一旦需求回暖，这些资源就又可以重新整合。2013年以后，国内市场需求打开，光伏发展进入新阶段。因为整条产业链都在国内，所以同行沟通成本更低，开始出现全产业链的自主和协同创新，各环节共同优化，加速了技术进步和成本下降。这又进一步扩大了我国企业的竞争优势，更好地打开了国外市场。2018年以后，低价高效的光伏技术刺激了全球需求的扩张。中国企业当年开拓海外市场的经验和渠道优势，现在又成了它们竞争优势的一部分。

  • 从光伏产业的发展中，我们还可以看到「东亚产业政策模式」的另一个特点：强调出口。当国内市场有限时，海外市场可以促进竞争，迫使企业创新。补贴和优惠政策难免会产生一些低效率的企业，但这些企业在面对挑剔的海外客户时，是无法过关的。而出口量大的公司，往往是效率相对高的公司，它们市场份额的扩大，会吸纳更多的行业资源，压缩国内低效率同行的生存空间，淘汰一些落后产能。当然，中国要应对的国际局势变幻比小国更加复杂，所以不断扩大和稳定国内市场，才是行业长期发展的基础。另一方面，若地方政府利用行政手段阻碍落后企业破产，就会阻碍优胜劣汰和效率提升，加剧产能过剩的负面影响。

政府扶持行业的负面影响：资源错配和浪费

就算中央政府提倡的产业政策是普惠全行业的，并不针对特定企业，但到了地方政府，政策终归要落实到「特定」的本地企业头上。若地方政府保护本地企业，哪怕是低效率的「僵尸企业」也要不断输血和挽救，做不到劣汰，竞争的效果就会大打折扣，导致资源的错配和浪费。这是很多经济学家反对产业政策的主要原因。尤其是，我国地方政府有强烈的大项目偏好，会刺激企业扩张投资。企业一旦做大，就涉及就业、稳定和方方面面的利益，不容易破产重组。

重复投资的一个好处是能够「保持竞争」

所以在很长一段时间内，「成本创新」是本土创新的主流。虽然被西方讽为仿造和山寨，但其实成本创新和功能简化非常重要。因为很多在发达国家已经更新迭代了多年的产品，小到家电大到汽车，而当时中国消费者都是第一次使用。这些复杂精密的产品价格高昂，让试用者望而却步。如果牺牲一些功能和质量能让价格大幅下降，就有利于产品推广。当消费者开始熟悉这些产品后，会逐步提升对质量的需求。正因如此，很多国产货都经历了所谓「山寨 + 价格战」的阶段。但行业正是在这种残酷的竞争中迅速洗牌，将资源和技术快速向头部企业集中，质量迅速提高。就拿家电行业来说，国产货从起步到质优价廉、服务可靠、设计精美，占领了大部分国内市场，也就是20年的时间。市场经济的根本优势不是决策优势，而是可以不断试错，在竞争中优胜劣汰。

什么是「政府产业引导基金」？

政府产业引导基金既是一种招商引资的新方式和产业政策工具，也是一种以市场化方式使用财政资金的探索。与地方政府投资企业的传统方式相比，产业引导基金或投资基金不直接投资企业，而是做LP，把钱交给市场化的私募基金的GP去投资企业。一支私募基金的LP通常有多个，不止有政府引导基金，还有其他社会资本。因此通过投资一支私募基金，有限的政府基金就可以带动更多社会资本投资目标产业，故称为「产业引导」基金。同时，因为政府引导基金本身就是一支基金，投资对象又是各种私募基金，所以也被称为「基金中的基金」。

  • 政府产业引导基金的弊端：财政资金的地域属性与资本无边界之间的矛盾。在成熟的资本市场上，机构类LP追求的就是财务回报，并不关心资金具体流向什么区域，哪里挣钱就去哪里。但地方政府引导基金源自地方财政，本质还是招商引资工具，所以不可能让投资流到外地去，一定要求把产业带到本地来。

  • 无论是土地还是税收优惠，都无法改变招商引资的根本决定因素，即本地的资源禀赋和经济发展前景。在长三角、珠三角以及一些中心城市，大企业云集，各种招商引资工具包括引导基金，在完成招商目标方面问题不大。但在其他地区，引导基金招商作用其实不大，反而造成了新的扭曲。有些地方为吸引企业，把本该是股权投资的引导基金变成了债权工具。

  • 比如说，引导基金投资一亿元，本应是股权投资，同赚同亏，但基金却和被投企业约定：若几年后赚了钱，企业可以低价回购这一亿元的股权，只要支付本金再加基本利率（2%—5%）就行；若企业亏了钱，可能也需要通过其他方式来偿还这一亿元本金。这就不是股权投资了，而是变相的低息贷款。

  • 再比如，引导基金为吸引其他社会资本一起投资，承诺未来可以收购这些社会资本的股权份额，相当于给这些资本托了底，消除了它们的投资风险，但同时也给本地政府增加了一笔隐性负债。这种「名股实债」的方式违背了股权投资的原则，也违背了「去杠杆」和解决地方政府债务问题的初衷，是中央政府明确禁止的。

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05 城市化与房地产

城市化的所需要的钱从哪里来？

城市化需要投入大量资金建设基础设施，而「土地财政」和「土地金融」是非常有效的融资手段。通过出让城市土地使用权，积累以土地为信用基础的原始资本，推动工业化和城市化快速发展。

中国特有的城市土地国有制度，为政府垄断土地一级市场创造了条件，将这笔隐匿的财富变成了启动城市化的巨大资本，但也让地方财源高度依赖土地价值，依赖房地产和房价。房价连着地价，地价连着财政，财政连着基础设施投资，于是经济增长、地方财政、银行、房地产之间就形成了「一荣俱荣，一损俱损」的关系。 这种以土地为中心的城市化忽视了城市化的真正核心：人。地价要靠房价拉动，但房价要由老百姓买单，按揭要靠买房者的收入来还。所以土地的资本化，实质是个人收入的资本化。

房地产的供需矛盾

房地产常被称作「经济周期之母」，根源就在于其内在的供需矛盾：一方面，银行可以通过按揭创造几乎无限的新购买力；而另一方面，不可再生的城市土地供给却有限。这对矛盾常常会导致资产泡沫与破裂的周期循环，是金融和房地产不稳定的核心矛盾。而房地产不仅连接着银行，还连接着千家万户的财富和消费，因此影响很大。

缩小贫富差距的本质是让人和土地自由流动，价值才会增长

要实现地区间人均收入均衡、缩小贫富差距，就要增加低收入群体的流动性和选择权，帮他们离开穷地方，去往能为他的劳动提供更高报酬的地方，让他的人力资本更有价值。同时也要允许农民所拥有的土地流动，这些土地资产才会变得更有价值。

累积的财富差距一般远大于每年的收入差距，因为有财富的人往往更容易积累财富，资产回报更高，可选择的投资方式以及应对风险的手段也更多。按照中国人民银行对城镇居民的调查数据，2019年净资产最高的20%的家庭占有居民全部净资产的65%，而最低的20%只占有2%。在经济发达、资产增值更快的沿海省份，父母累积的财产对子女收入的影响，比在内地省份更大。当经济增速放缓、新创造的机会变少之后，年轻人间的竞争会更加激烈，而其父母的财富优势会变得更加重要。

中国的城市化的三个阶段

第一阶段是1994年之前，乡镇企业崛起，农民离土不离乡，城市化速度不快。第二阶段是1994年分税制改革后，乡镇企业式微，农民工进城大潮形成。这个阶段的主要特征是土地的城市化速度远远快于人的城市化速度，土地撬动的资金支撑了大规模城市建设，但并没有为大多数城市新移民提供应有的公共服务。第三个阶段是十八大以后，城市化的重心开始逐步从「土地」向「人」转移。

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对于中国政治经济这个庞大复杂的课题，《置身事内》带我认识了一些最基础的概念，但实在还有太多需要学习的了，若笔记中有错漏偏颇之处，请大家评论指正。

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怦然心动的人生整理魔法

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“经过整理，物品减量之后，自己在生活中重视的是什么，还有价值观，都变得一目了然。并非是要一味地追求物品减量，有效收纳，而是要去尝试用心动的感觉选择物品，并学会用自己的基准享受生活，这才是整理的奥义。” —— 近藤麻理惠

读近藤麻理惠的《怦然心动的人生整理魔法》的契机是因为近两年一直在思考怎么样建立一个简单清爽，可持续，又适合自己的生活和信息汲取系统，进而释放更多能量和精力给真正重要的事情。实际上，写这个订阅周报也源于想要建立一个更专注的信息汲取机制，给自己充分的理由在两周内只集中阅读某一方向的信息，而不会感到焦虑或信息过载。今年受好友的启发，开始尝试「断舍离」的生活方式，于是想认真了解这类生活方式背后的理论。一口气读完这本书后，对「整理」这件看似平平无奇的事情也有了全新的认识。

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01 透过整理物品，去面对自己「过去的执着」和「对未来的不安」

在开始整理前，需要仔细思考整理的目的，这也可以说成是「思考理想的生活」。思考「为什么想要过这样的生活」时，对于自己说出的回答，要反复追问自己「为什么？」三到五次。如此一来，开始整理后该做的其实只有两件事，那就是「判断物品是否要丢掉」和「决定物品的定位」。判断物品该留下或是丢掉时，应该以「拥有这样物品是否幸福」作为标准，也就是说「拥有时是否感到心动」。把东西一个一个拿在手里「触碰时是否怦然心动？」是判断时最简单又正确的方法，因为只被心动的东西所围绕的生活才是我们想拥有的人生。按「物品类别」，以「正确的顺序」，只留下「心动的东西」。这件事要「一口气」，在「短时间」内「彻底」完成。

多数人不会整理的最大原因就是东西太多；而东西不断增加的最大原因是因为没有掌握自己现有物品的数量；而这其实是因为收纳场所分散所致。因此，整理的关键之一是按照物品类目，而不是房间来思考。把同一类目的物品集中在一处，会被迫发现一直逃避而不得不解决的问题。人们常常通过收纳把不要的东西盖上盖子，乍看之下误以为问题好像解决了，但其实只是装作没看见而已，并非真正的整理，这样就会陷入一种恶性循环。整理的过程中，透过用手触摸带着回忆的物品，才能与过去面对面。若一直被放在抽屉或箱子里，不管过了多久，都还是会被过去的回忆所牵制，而这些东西或许会在不知不觉之间变成现在的「包袱」。所谓的整理，就是整理每一个过去，让人生可以重新出发。

人们无法丢东西的原因其实只有两个，那就是「对过去的执着」与「对未来的不安」。掌握「自己拥有物品的确切数量」之所以重要，是因为这往往代表了自己生命里的价值观。拥有什么东西，就等同于你的生活态度。了解你拥有物品的方式，也能从中发现你在做一切选择时共通的原则和与人交往的模式，或是选择工作的方式。因为看不清对自己而言必要的东西或自己追求的东西，所以才更容易在不知不觉中增加了不需要的东西，让自己无论在物质或精神上都不断地被不需要的东西所淹没。那么，该怎么才能理清「现在对自己而言必要的东西」呢？不必到远处去寻找，也不必买新的。只要真心地面对自己所拥有的东西，减少不需要的东西即可。

02 认真倾听身体的声音

整理是一件完全不需要与他人比较，基准完全掌握在自己手上的事情。人要被什么样的环境所环绕才觉得幸福，只有当事人能决定。因此，对每一样物品都认真面对「自己的感受」就变得非常重要。占着大量的东西不丢，并不代表就是爱惜物品。恰恰相反，透过减量到自己能够确切掌握和面对的程度，物品与你的关系才会充满生命力。「用是否心动来判断」听起来很抽象，但实际上用某一个理想的数字，比如「两年没用就丢掉」，「买一样就丢一样」或「十件衬衫」才是会反复变乱的原因。因为采用的是他人提示的基准，并不一定符合自己内心觉得舒服的基准，就算暂时变得整齐，最后又会开始变乱。

认真整理时，虽谈不上是进入冥想状态，却会产生一种平静地与自己面对面的感觉。郑重其事地与自己拥有的物品面对面，一一地去感受是否心动，或是有其他的感觉，对已经完成任务的物品表达谢意之后，送走它们，就好像是透过物品与自己对话。面对自己拥有的物品并决定是否丢掉其实是痛苦的过程，因为你会看到过去选择背后的愚蠢，糊涂，无聊和缺点，比如那些明明不需要却因为虚荣买下的贵重的东西，或是逞强买下却完全不适合自己的衣服。东西之所以存在，就是自己的选择造成的结果，不能怪别人。最危险的是明知道这些东西的存在，却装作没看见，仿佛像否定自己的选择一样，粗鲁地把东西丢掉。唯有一一面对每一项物品，好好体验其中的情感之后，才能真正消化与物品的关系，看清对现在的自己而言真正重要的东西。

03 重新思考每件物品所具备的真正功能

「为什么会有这样东西呢？」有时候，如果在买下一件衣服的那一瞬间曾经让你心动，那它就完成了一项任务，就是赋予你「买下那一瞬间的感动」。如果这样的结果让你之后不再买同样的衣服，明白「这种衣服原来不适合自己」，也是这件衣服另一项重要的任务。那么，这件衣服已充分完成了自己的任务。每样东西都有它不同的任务，并非所有衣服都要被完全穿坏才来到你身边。这与人与人之间的缘分一样，所遇见的人并非都会变成挚友或恋人。正因为有些人让你觉得「我有点害怕这种人」或「我就是和这种人合不来」，你才会再次体会到「我还是比较喜欢这个人」，越珍惜与这个人的关系。对于「虽不心动，但就是没办法丢掉」的东西，尤其需要一一思考它们的任务。你就会出乎意料地发现，很多东西其实已经完成他们的任务了。我们要做的其实是好好面对物品为我们完成的任务，表示感谢然后放手痛快地解放它们。经过这个过程留下来的东西，才是你真正应该珍惜的东西。

比如书真正肩负的任务是阅读的体验。于是这周重新整理了书柜后，决定捐出42本不再需要的书。很多书陪伴了我快十年，从高中和本科时期就一直带在身边，每次搬家都觉得有它们在身边才比较安心。通过这次整理，在认真面对每一本书带给我的感受时，能观察到这些年自己兴趣的变化。不少要捐掉的书是本科读文学和政治专业课留下来的，如今只保留了对我影响深远的几本；一些商业创业类的书作为工具看电子版就足够；行为科学的知识我偏好直接看论文，所以通俗类的入门书也不再需要。反而是泛设计类，经济学，历史哲学，艺术史，和中英文古典著作都原封不动地保留下来了。书柜里收藏了各个版本的《红楼梦》收藏版和画册，光是看到它们在书架上就觉得「有这本书在这真幸福！」令人时时刻刻心动。当手边不放过多的信息时，对信息的敏感度反而会提高，更容易发现对自己而言必要的信息。除了书以外，也重新整理了礼物。礼物真正的任务是「接受」，送礼物更重要的是传递心意。因此，像近藤麻理惠说的，对一些此刻不再感到心动的礼物致谢后，就可以丢掉了。去体察「当下的心动」，而不是过去的心动。

04 训练判断力和重获决断的信心

人之所以无法丢东西，通常是因为还能用（功能上的价值），还有用（信息上的价值）或还有感觉（感情上的价值）。若再加上很难取得或难以取代的话（稀少价值），就更难以放手了。一开始从难度较低的东西（如衣服和书）开始丢，然后阶段性地培养在整理上的判断力，才比较容易有所进展。因此，顺利丢掉东西的基本顺序依次为：衣服，书籍，文件，小东西，最后才是纪念品。按照这个顺序整理，就能自然而然地训练出识别心动或不心动的感觉。整理魔法的效果之一，就是开始能对自己的判断有自信。在整理过程中，透过重复判断「是否觉得心动」这个瞬间几百次，几千次，判断力自然就被磨练的越来越敏锐。

透过不断地丢东西，就不会想把判断的责任交给别人。换句话说，在发生问题时，不再觉得「那个时候，那个人这么说」，而想把原因归咎于外部。开始能够觉得一切都应该靠自己的判断，重要的是现在该如何行动。有时人们也会因为手边随时都有信息，所以才不付诸行动。所以整理的重点是只留下「心动的」，而不是「可能会用到的」，比如囤积生活用品或者电器说明书之类的，其实只要付诸行动，就能在必要时得到自己需要的信息，比如打电话去电器维修就能找到说明书上相关的内容。这种「就算没有东西也总有办法」的感觉，一旦体验过了，一下子就会变得轻松许多。

你拥有的东西，会正确地诉说自己的选择历史。因为整理也是为了发现自己喜欢事物的自我盘点。达到整理彻底完成的状态时，就不用再想整理的事，所以对人生而言重要的课题自然也会变得明确。整理之后，也更能明白「什么叫做足够」，人能够以最自然的状态生活，珍惜对现在的自己而言真正重要的东西。因此整理房屋最好要迅速完成，因为整理并不是人生的目的，真正的人生在「整理之后」才开始。

Photo by Jason Wang on Unsplash

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Improv Comedy and Collective Imagination

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Recently, I completed a 6-week Improv 101 class and had a lot of fun trying out acting and improvisational comedy for the first time. I was initially curious about improv because its philosophy is very similar to design thinking and participatory design methods. Although improv comedy and design thinking may seem unrelated, they actually share important principles around creativity and collaboration.

As I learned more each week, I realized that the art of improv is not only about being funny, but also about behavioral observations and analysis, creating and deepening relationships, and understanding power dynamics, among other things.

Rule-of-thumb: “Yes, and …” and avoid asking questions

The "Yes, and …" rule is a guiding principle in improvisational comedy. It advises improvisers to accept (”yes”) and build on what their partner has stated (”and”). The “Yes” portion of the rule encourages the acceptance of the contributions added by others, fostering a sense of collaboration, rather than denying the suggestion or ending the line of communication.

Another helpful rule is to avoid asking questions. This can be difficult to follow at first, since we often ask questions for clarification or to learn more. However, asking questions in an improv context does not build or expand on your partner's input. Instead, it’s best to rephrase questions into statements and hand them over to your partner to move the plot forward.

After we get comfortable with following the “Yes, and …” rule, it feels just like the idea generation process in design thinking. The feeling of letting go of control and embracing uncertainty is similar to rapidly iterating crazy new ideas without judgement in product design. It reminds me of a design workshop like crazy 8s, a fast sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes, with the goal of generating a wide variety of solutions to your design challenge. Creativity, collaboration, and collective imagination are the key spirits of improv, which are also qualities commonly shared in a good design brainstorming session.

Establish relationships and keep the plot moving

Every week, we learn about different techniques that help us establish partner relationships, set the scene, and keep the story progresses.

  • Naming and Identity: Assigning a name other than your partner's real name, such as "Josh," can help them establish a fictional character and give them permission to unleash their imagination. Assigning an identity, such as "captain" or "principal," also helps establish the scene by framing their roles. In this case, it can ground the scene in a specific setting, such as a ship, sports team, or school.

  • Social status: Assigning a rank to individuals in a group immediately shapes their relationships with each other. It influences how they choose to look, act, and respond to people with different ranks.

  • Holding on to a secret: When developing a scene with your partner, you can imagine that you are holding on to a secret. This secret could be something like "please don't leave me" or "I'm ashamed." Your partner may also be holding on to a secret. This approach is similar to design thinking, where a particular user group may have persistent, hidden motivations or needs that will manifest in different forms in a user journey. Understanding these "secrets" is key to unpacking people's behavior on the surface. This concept also occurs in psychotherapy, where certain internal motivations, fears, or desires drive consistent behavioral patterns. It is only when the client becomes aware of these persistent, hidden triggers that they can gain a new understanding about themselves and assess them objectively.

  • Choosing a posture: It's no surprise that your body language when sitting, standing, or walking can reveal a lot about your character. For example, leaning forward while sitting on a chair may make you seem attentive, nervous, or younger. Holding one hand under your chin may make you seem observant, judgmental, or thoughtful. In one class, everyone sat in a circle and took turns analyzing each other's posture while sitting on a chair. Then, based on the information inferred from the posture, each person started an opening line.

  • Overusing a word: You can choose to overuse certain words such as "like," "awesome," "honestly," or "actually." These words can become a part of your language system and act as signals that guide you as you establish and develop your character.

  • Emotion: Assigning a mood or emotion to your partner's character is a common way to establish their personality and the scene. For example, the opening line could be "You seem [sad, anxious, nervous, happy, scared]."

  • Relationship history: Setting the rule of knowing your partner for more than 3 months adds depth and shared memories to the relationship. This can be used to expand the story and shape both of your characters.

Our Improv instructor Maurissa holding the drawing co-created by our class

Status game as a social experiment

One of the most memorable exercises during class is the status game. You get assigned a card with a rank from 2 to ace, without knowing your own card. You have 15 minutes to socialize with everyone else, who you imagine you're at a party with, and figure out your rank. Then, everyone lines up from low to high, and you try to guess your relative ranking.

For example, you are more likely to approach and talk to someone who has a similar ranking as you. When people with significantly higher status approach you, you may appear more respectful and attentive, whereas you may seem more impatient or dismissive when people with significantly lower status approach you. Therefore, if you are either on the higher or lower ends of the rank, it’s relatively easier to tell based on the kinds of numbers that proactively approach you. But if you’re in the middle rank, such as 6 or 7, it can be harder to assess.

It's interesting to observe how people's actions can be influenced by the cards they receive and the power dynamics within relationships. It brought to mind the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, a psychological study that explored how roles, labels, and social expectations affected behavior in a simulated prison environment. While the status game is not as extreme as a prison environment, it highlights how status plays a significant role in shaping and defining relationships.

In addition, when someone is given a certain status, people often make assumptions based on that rank. These assumptions are used as a guide for the character and their partners to act in the story. For instance, status is often linked to wealth, political position, career, attitude, and lifestyle.

In a different situation, two people of different social status are waiting for a bus at a bus station. Their status may influence how they look, stand, and act. The person with the higher status may intentionally keep their distance from the person with lower status while waiting, and may be more relaxed since they can afford to take an Uber instead. On the other hand, the person with the lower status may appear more anxious and stressed because taking the bus is their only affordable option to get to work.

Final thoughts

The most counterintuitive moment for me was when I realized that all of these improv techniques are about giving structures and signals to help actors build their relationships as the story progresses. I used to think the plot came first, and that characters were just there to act it out. But in improv, I see that by focusing on the characters and exploring the complexity, nuance, and layers of their relationships, the story will naturally progress in interesting ways. This is similar to the logic behind producing reality shows. By inviting celebrities with distinct characters and capturing their interactions and relationships, an entertaining show can be created without the need for elaborate storylines or scripts.

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Photo Essay: Museums in Boston

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When I wrote this post, I had the song Dancing with my phone by HYBS playing in the background. You can try that while reading, too. Totally optional.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

María Berrío is a Colombian-born visual artist based in New York City, who crafts her large-scale paintings through a meticulous process or collaging layers of Japanese paper with watercolor. When I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (ICA) on March 4, 2023, her exhibition The Children’s Crusade was on display. Her series blends the history of the Children’s Crusade of 1212 with the contemporary mass movement of peoples across borders.

Cavalry, 2022. Collage with Japanese paper and watercolor paint on canvas. Interesting to note the dynamics between the children and their guardians (reflected in the mirror).

Idea: Seeing art projected on the dining table makes me wonder if we can explore showcasing artwork in a restaurant more and incorporate dishes as a component of the art installation. Visitors can also co-create with the projected art with food on their plates.

Noted the header “Invisible Ground of Sympathy” because I was thinking about sympathy vs. empathy in the context of practicing stoicism earlier this year.

This work made me appreciate the method of collaging Japanese paper with watercolor paint because it nicely conveyed the glassy, reflective medium of the window and the floor.

Besides the exhibitions, the real highlight was about the modern architecture, the seaport view, and the many interactive installations and workshops in the museum.

I drew the card on the left: My childhood summer is all about hanging out with grandma, watching TV shows, carving out a huge chunk of watermelon with sister, and delicious steamed egg with rice for dinner in Zhongshan, China.

Here are a few adorable ones drew by others as part of the “Childhood is …” workshop.

Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge

It was raining lightly when I arrived at the Harvard Art Museums near Harvard Square. The gloomy weather made the courtyard and ceiling lighting somewhat mesmerizing, especially when viewed from the upper floors. Many thanks to Boge for showing me around!

This view of the museum was so mesmerizing, with the perfect lighting from a rainy day.

The statue is the real protagonist in the courtyard.

Mardi Gras on the Boulevards, 1897, by Camille Pissarro (Danish, 1830-1903). Oil on canvas. An impressionist read of Paris in the 1890s, capturing the evanescent energy of the large crowds on the boulevard.

Cotton Merchants in New Orleans, 1873, by Hilaire-Germaine-Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). Oil on linen. This painting caught my attention because the man appeared to be arranging fluffy clouds on a table.

Charing Cross Bridge: Fog in the Thames, 1903, by Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926). London in the fog.

Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston

My first impression of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum was its elegance and liveliness. The courtyard gave the museum a vibrant ambiance, which was balanced by the classic cloisters and galleries surrounding it. Isabella’s personal motto “C’est mon Plaisir” or “It’s my Pleasure” echoed on my mind throughout my visit. I could imagine the joy she felt while designing this masterpiece, in the hope of celebrating art with the city. This is a powerful reminder that sharing pure joy and beauty is always a great reason to create. As my friends mentioned, visiting the Gardener Museum is all about experiencing good vibes and enjoying the atmospheric views.

Thank you Boston for the vibrant art scenes and inspirations. Till next time!

Generative AI Summit at MIT 2023

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Sharing my conference notes and thoughts from a UX and behavioral science perspective after attending the inaugural Generative AI Summit at MIT on March 3, 2023. If you’re exploring similar areas or interested in collaborating on a generative AI project around tools for thought and co-creation, let’s connect.

1. Explainability and Trust

The explainability of an AI system is inherently tied to user trust. To calibrate trust, users must set proper expectations and understand what the AI system can and cannot do, as outlined in the People + AI Guidebook. People learn faster when they can see the system's response to their actions right away. Therefore, it's important to help people understand the cause-and-effect relationship between their actions and the system's response, which fast-tracks human reasoning and learning of the machine's "thought process." As AI increasingly helps solve important tasks in everyday life, how do we deal with the growing complexity of AI systems when we may not understand why they work so well?

In the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari argues that humans' unique ability to create and spread fictions, leading to shared beliefs/religions and collective imagination, makes large-scale human cooperation possible. Ultimately, the ability to quickly establish trust with many strangers fuels human productivity, institutional stability, and industrialization. In the future, when the cost of producing seemingly correct information becomes minimal due to advances in LLMs (Large Language Models), how do we scale trust?

Ellie Pavlickm, Google Research

Keynote by Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google

2. User Feedback and Control

AI systems are probabilistic, which means they can give an incorrect or unexpected output at times. Therefore, it's critical to develop the right mechanisms to gather user feedback and give users control. This will improve the AI model's output and ensure the user experience is personalized, valuable, and trustworthy.

When errors occur, we need to help users understand the machine errors and provide controls and alternative paths to navigate. This means new mental models will emerge for how humans interact with machines, requiring new levers and interaction patterns, as emphasized by both Linus Lee and Catherine Havasi during the summit. I am curious to explore new human-centered, participatory design research methods to better understand the future relationship between human input and machine output.

Today, a significant portion of UX research and behavioral science involves studying, modeling, and framing specific contexts of a problem space, so we can better reason which design direction or intervention might be more effective in solving user problems. As explained in the essay The Science of Context, the real skill here is “recognizing and articulating context with enough clarity that it illuminates how small changes (e.g., nudges) will affect behavior.” As we explore new levers and interaction patterns for AI product design, the application of behavioral science could play a bigger role in the product development process.

Panel: The Future of Creation (Linus Lee, Nicole Fitzgerald, and Russell Palmer)

3. Augmenting Creativity

While some may question whether human creativity will decrease with the advances in generative AI, I really like how Linus Lee raised the question of whether humanities have been getting better at making music over the past few centuries. Since the key to expanding creative expression is having an augmented ability to say the things we want to say, I see generative AI as a new tool and lens that can introduce inspiring perspectives during the creation process, much like how cameras facilitated new multi-modal art forms (e.g. films and photographs) over the past few decades.

In a previous discussion on creativity that I helped moderate with a group of friends last summer, one key aspect that emerged was the importance of cross-pollination of ideas, which can be facilitated by LLMs through the introduction of serendipity and randomness early in the creation process. In other words, LLMs can help humans quickly explore the unknown. We know that creativity can be fostered conscious actions, which is at the core of human-centered design, emphasizing the process of divergent and convergent thinking. In the future, the creative process may place greater emphasis on elements of chance, selection, and iteration, and augment human decision-making at each step of the human-machine feedback loop.

To effectively interact with generative AI models, it is critical to also augment our ability to accurately communicate what we want and develop clarity of thought, so we can be more capable in the co-creation process of prompt engineering. For example, how might we better describe voice and texture? People need to get better at communicating exactly what they want, whether it is a high-level concept or the specific way we want audio or images to be produced when interacting with LLMs.

4. Emergent Value Systems

With generative AI models now capable of quickly producing vast amounts of open-ended, creative, and multi-modal content, our tastes, values, and evaluation criteria as a society will also evolve. As emphasized by Nicole Fitzgerald during the summit, the ability to curate and fine-tune this content with taste will become critical. We can already see the education industry's evaluation system as one of the first to respond to this impact.

I'm optimistic that social curation and co-creation with collaborators, including both humans and machines, will play a big role in future information discovery processes. Content curation from trusted networks will be key in helping people discover, filter, and digest useful information.

During his keynote speech, Eric Schmidt emphasized the need for new thinkers and interpreters with multidisciplinary backgrounds in both science and art (e.g. math and philosophy) to help people understand the implications of the new AI-powered reality for society. I strongly believe in the value of multidisciplinary conversations, and this reminds me of Robert Pirsig's argument in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig distinguishes between two kinds of understanding of the world: classical and romantic. Classical understanding sees the world primarily in terms of the underlying form itself, with the goal of making the unknown known and bringing order out of chaos. Romantic understanding, on the other hand, sees the world in terms of immediate appearance, and is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, and intuitive.

Currently, there is a lack of reconciliation between classical and romantic understanding. In the case of motorcycle maintenance, for example, although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classical. The problem is that people tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other, which can lead to misunderstandings and underestimations of what the other mode is all about. The real reunification of art and technology is long overdue.

Léonard Boussioux, MIT Operations Research PhD

Thanks for reading! If you have any comments or feedback on this blog post or are interested in collaborating on a generative AI project, I would love to connect. Please feel free to email me.

Practicing Modern Stoicism (Part 1)

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Image generated from DALL·E 2 with the prompt “modern stoics”

One of my New Year's resolutions is to be more focused and disciplined. To help achieve this, a friend and I decided to read A Handbook for New Stoics by Massimo Pigliucci together this year. The book offers 52 weekly exercises that teach us how to train our minds with Stoic practice.

Stoicism is a Greco-Roman philosophy that began around 300BCE with Zeno of Citium. Stoic ideas influenced thinkers throughout the Western history (e.g. Descartes) and inspired an effective psychotherapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in the 1950s.

The Stoics believe the best way to live our life is to “live according to nature.” To decide how to live meaningfully (ethics), one has to understand how the world works (physics), and reason appropriately about it (logic). This leads us to the idea of living according to nature—using reasoning-based problem solving to improve social living, as we are social creatures who are deeply interdependent with other people.

To do so, the Stoics, and Epictetus in particular, translate this into living by practicing three disciplines: desire, action, and assent. The Discipline of Desire teaches us what to want (or to avoid), while the Discipline of Action shows us how to act in social situations. The Discipline of Assent helps us make correct judgments about the obstacles that arise in life.

The central concept of Stoicism is the “dichotomy of control,” arguing we should focus our energy on affecting what we can control while regarding everything else as indifferent. This practice is the path toward ataraxia, the Greek word meaning serenity. By training ourselves to only want what is completely in our control, which is the promise of the Discipline of Desire, we become serene.

According to Epictetus, “thought, impulse, and the will to get (and to avoid)” are ultimately under our control. Accounting advances in cognitive sciences, modern Stoics define them as follow:

  • Thought is the judgment that things are inherently good or bad; can be implicit or explicit

  • Impulse is the urge to act based on value judgments

  • Will to get and will to avoid is deciding if it is worth spending the energy, time, and money

Although these three things are in our control, which we can make a conscious decision of, they’re sometimes influenced by external factors (e.g. other people’s opinion) and internal factors (e.g. physical sensations and cravings). Epictetus concludes that everything which is not in our own doing are not under our control (e.g. the body, property, reputation).

Image generated from DALL·E 2 with the prompt “modern stoics”

1. Focus on what’s completely in your control

Counterintuitively, aversion can be seen as a type of desire: the desire to avoid misfortune. The important idea here is to redirect our aversion away from things that we dislike but are not in our power, and to transfer it to things that we can completely control.

2. Take an outside view

The Stoics suggest that we should cultivate sympathy more than empathy. Sympathy is a feeling of sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult or painful, while empathy is actively sharing another’s experiences on an emotional level to the extent possible.

This is initially counterintuitive to me, especially as a UX researcher, because our job is to empathize with users and design studies to enable others to fully understand, mirror, and share another person's expressions, needs, and motivations to the extent possible, so we can create products and services that are driven by real user needs.

The Stoics, along with modern psychology and philosophy, further explain that empathy tends to be disproportionate to the situation (i.e. we feel more empathy for people we know or see directly), and does not scale up (i.e. it is impossible to feel empathy for anonymous thousands of people, regardless of how deserving they are).

Whereas sympathy is informed by reason and is therefore more wide ranging. We can sympathize with people we don’t know or whose specific situation we have never experienced, because we’re able to recognize that similar situations would be distressing for us, and that it would be unjust both for us and for anyone else to have to suffer through them.

It’s similar to taking a third-person view of the things we go through personally. This allows us to develop a more balanced and reasonable judgment, as if these events do not touch us directly. This approach also aligns with the method of practicing more self-sympathy when facing hardship, which is common in psychotherapy.

And here comes one of my favorite exercises: write about a problem or worry and offer yourself some advice from the outside perspective each night for a week. For example, instead of writing “I feel nervous about …” start by writing “You feel nervous about …” Self-empathy may lead to magnifying internal turmoil, whereas self-sympathy helps us take a step back to take the emotion out of frustrated situations, so we can see things in an objective and clearer way.

Generated from DALL·E 2 with the prompt “statue of stoics pondering with a blue sky”

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Practicing Modern Stoicism series to learn more about my journey.

夏威夷大岛 2022

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2022年末圣诞假期临时起意去夏威夷大岛，出发前决定这次旅行要做到随遇而安，哪怕多花了钱和时间，走了弯路，都没关系，要内心不带任何抗拒地接纳这次旅途中发生的一切。

1. “Lush and green”

抵达 Hilo 当天，在镇上吃完午饭后就沿着海岸线一路开车北上，去 Tropical Bioreserve 看热带雨林和植物花草。走在林子里，目光所及之处都是翠绿色，竹林和棕榈树高耸入云，耳畔是此起彼伏的树蛙声。园子里大多是一家人出来观光，只有我一个人悠闲地四处走走停停。

大自然确实是最奇妙的造物主，人类对颜色的认知会因为各地的气候和地理环境的差异被完全颠覆，在园子里看到了最奇异的颜色组合和纹理图案，还有粉色的菠萝和从未见过的珍稀热带兰花品种。一路看着这里的奇珍异宝，帮身边的游客照全家福，一边听着婉莹和任宁枪枪合作的新播客《别来年鉴》的第1期，觉得这次旅程与播客中讲到他们希望在2023年回归乡野，体验古朴生活的愿望不谋而合。最喜欢房东的描述，行走在夏威夷雨林时满眼都是 “lush and green,” 处处散发着富饶的生命力。

Hawai‘i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden

2. 大岛房东和邻里社区

Airbnb 房东是一位来自 Colorado 的打击乐手，年轻时曾在世界各地巡演，出过几张专辑，还可以在音乐平台上搜到他的作品，现在主要和女友一起经营 yoga studio，每年也在印度和东南亚组织 wellness retreat。房东的女友来自巴西，是一位资深的瑜伽老师，以前在纽约教了二十多年瑜伽，也是 studio 的主理人。正巧我在的那几天房东弟弟也从洛杉矶来小住，是位纪录片制片人，幽默又毒舌，感兴趣灵性禅修和区块链（果然是加州和夏威夷的完美结合）。

住在他们家很像回到了高中住的寄宿家庭，出门前被推荐好吃好玩的地方，晚上到家和他们分享见闻，睡前会互相说晚安之后再熄灯，确实被好好照顾了。我抵达的那天晚上正好是他们圣诞节后七天果蔬排毒的第一天，所以他们三个人晚上只能默默喝果蔬汁，饿了就泯一小口解解馋。房东弟弟每天晚上都可怜巴巴地坐在旁边看我吃晚饭，我一回到家就被要求分享今天吃了什么好东西，房东夫妇则坐在离我最远的沙发上。

房东家的 studio 会隔天提供瑜伽课，大多是附近的居民来上课，大家也都互相认识，顺便聊天喝茶。我天天跟着他们做瑜伽，也顺道认识了一些常来拜访的邻居。和一位当地的医生聊到他搬来夏威夷的契机时，发现很多附近的居民都在美国内陆小有成就，但厌倦了拥挤的城市生活，想要回归自然，尝试自给自足和更健康的生活方式，因此决定搬来大岛定居，是一群真正把身心灵健康放在最高优先级（且不太需要担心钱）的人。邻里间经常办 party，每个月都会聚集到一个人家里跳夏威夷舞社交，大概是人民公园里广场舞的热烈氛围吧。

Airbnb living room, looking at the yoga deck

3. 森林里的野温泉

一天晚上正和妈妈打着电话，房东忽然邀请我跟他们一起去附近泡温泉，我便兴致勃勃地坐上他们的皮卡出发了。一路上听房东介绍他的新曲子，不一会儿就开了45分钟，到达大岛东岸的 Pohoki Bay and Hot Spring。虽然出发前听说了是野温泉，但没想到这么野，路上一片漆黑，没有任何灯，只有头顶上微弱的月光，甚至开车走的路都不在地图上。我们一行人摸着石头，拿手机的闪光灯照着路走到了湖边。到了温泉边发现黑暗中竟然有不少人，岸边有一个女生在唱歌，嗓音很低。水是黑色的，光线很暗，正巧云遮住了月亮。脑中不断想起《哈姆雷特》里 Ophelia 在河边唱歌的那一幕。我指着云说月亮不见了，房东一家人笑着说别担心，月亮还在。

伸出手探了探水温，确实是热的温泉。温泉有里外两个池子，穿过一片树林就能到里面的池子，水温更热，像是被森林环抱着的隐秘小湖。有两个当地的男孩子在里面聊心事，声音很响亮，两个人说话的气势像是十个人在说。我和房东一家人也聊起天来，和这些平日里素不相识的人聊各自的生活和困惑，一起安静地感受黑暗中泉水的温度，应该会永远记得这个临时起意去探索和感受自然的奇妙夜晚。

Pohoki Bay and Hot Spring during daylight

Ophelia, oil painting by John Everett Millais

4. 火山熔岩

前一晚泡完野温泉后，第二天决定白天再去一次，想再亲眼看看昨晚那片奇妙的温泉。沿着大岛东岸一直往南开，恰好路过了2018年 Puna 火山爆发时沉积的大片黑色火山岩。停下车近距离观察了很久，郁郁葱葱的热带雨林中间忽然有一长条黑色火山岩盖住了那一片的所有植被，是当时火山爆发时熔浆流入大海的路径。靠近火山岩的树木毫无生机，还有烧焦的痕迹。公路走着走着发现前面没了路，因为被像小山一样高的火山岩石堆挡住了，再也没有被修复。后来和上瑜伽课认识的医生聊到这个景象，他说当时有位朋友的房子就在这附近，差一点就丢了性命。夏威夷岛民好像都习惯了和自然摧毁性的力量共存，世界的忽然坍塌也是转瞬即逝的事情。与自然的未知和风险离得越近，越明白世事无常，也正因为这样，能感受到岛民们的谦卑，更乐于活在当下，懂得探索自然的奥妙，感恩自然的馈赠，也敬畏自然的力量。

5. Namaste 是灵魂之间的问候

房东女主人是 studio 的瑜伽老师，住在岛上的时候几乎每天都跟着她上课，清晨做力量型的训练，傍晚回来拉伸和放松。她是一个特别有灵气和亲和力的女人，说话轻柔但有力量。有时在课上听到她抛出的问题也会想很久，有一次她问 “What’s your relationship with silence?” “What’s the value of silence?” 我当时愣住了，从未认真思考过这个问题。还有一次课后我问她每次结束练习时说的 “Namaste” 是什么意思。她回答说是 “Greetings between souls.” 不仅仅是日常意义上大家互相问候，而是两个人灵魂深处的彼此问候。从那以后，每当默念这个词都会想到它寓意深远的美。

6. Aloha State 租车

出发去夏威夷两周前，我在网上找遍了各个租车平台，一辆车都不剩，只有 Turo 上一天 $350 的 Tesla。后来联系了Airbnb房东，他热心地告诉我可以去联系他两位当地的朋友试试看，“告诉TA是我让你来的”。于是我就顶着房东的大名联系了他们，最后通过房东朋友的朋友以 $250 一周的超高性价比租到了一辆 2007 的 Toyota，一开始被这个美好的价格震惊了，后来意识到是他自己的车这段时间不用，租给我，所以才能这么便宜，就像向隔壁邻居家借车一样。

这位哥们特别热情，每次回复都要加上一串跳舞小人，鲜花和海滩的 emoji。我们约定好他会把车开到停车场的一个角落，车钥匙藏在驾驶座的地毯底下，我下了飞机就去取车。一切听起来都太不靠谱，甚至在我走出Hilo机场时心里还不确定能不能开上车。整个过程沟通效率极低，但觉得很好玩，仿佛回到了小城市熟人社会的运作模式，一切都不透明，全靠人传人，碰到善良的人就给你指条路，直到碰到能帮助你的人。感觉是一个现代社交关系的隐喻，人与人的关系极其流动，全靠信任和爱支撑。

7. 在山里开环岛长途

这是我真正意义上第一次独自每天开四五个小时车的公路旅行。从东岸走横跨大岛的高速去西岸，有时就为了吃一碗 poke 和木瓜冰沙。开车的时候心情很平静，开着一辆很旧的2007年Toyota，每次踩油门和刹车方向盘都在颤抖。一路上听了很多音乐和播客，单曲循环了很多次Faye的《青鸟》和《得意忘形》的第63期。在这样的环境里，心也变得开阔，白天出发看火山，路过海滩就乘个凉吹吹风，傍晚看完日落就回家，走走停停都完全随心。晚上有时雾很浓能见度低，我就认一些车作 “大哥”，我作为小弟默默跟在他们后面，一路上也算是有惊无险，一切顺利。

8. 夜雨中的圣诞灯展

即将离开 Hilo 的那天晚上，房东夫妇特地提早回家和我道别。正聊着天，房东想起晚上在社区里有一个圣诞灯展，提议我和他们一起看完灯展再去机场。出发前，房东绘声绘色地介绍了这个一年一度的盛会，于是我和房东弟弟都特别期待。待我们开车到了灯展的地点，门口的志愿者善意提醒我们可以把车里的收音机调到 FM 106.7，可以边看灯边听音乐。

把车停好后定睛一看，发现这个灯展其实是一个做灯饰生意的邻居家把自己的房子贴满了光管和亮片，再和电台协商好在这个时段可以播圣诞音乐，来看灯展的居民就坐在车里，像看汽车电影那样，一边听电台音乐一边看眼前的这个房子变换各种颜色和图案。我和房东弟弟面面相觑，一时语塞，被这个简陋笨拙但又有些可爱的灯展弄的哭笑不得。房东弟弟皱了皱眉率先打趣说 “Well, I’m not sure what to make of it … I guess I appreciate their thoughtfulness.” 外面下起了雨，我们只能待在车里，看着眼前朦胧又发着光的房子，听着喜庆的圣诞音乐，四目相对，不约而同地被这个滑稽又淳朴的画面逗笑了。

9. 附赠：海里的自由小人

每次在沙滩附近都会看到海里长出了很多浮潜的小人，像极了新西兰画家 Joanna Ho 画里的意象。

Carlsmith Beach Park

Watercolor by Joanna Ho (helobirdie.com)

至此，我的夏威夷历险记就告一段落了。独自旅行确实会有一些不方便，很遗憾放弃了需要晚上开车上山的 Mauna Kea 天文台观星，遇到意外状况也只能硬着头皮解决，没有人可以商量或照应，但无论如何，这次旅行的总体感受还是太好了，真实地被大岛的能量滋养。下次再见啦！

The Art of Loving: Reading Notes

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I initially read The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm in July 2022, in the hope of reflecting and learning systematically about the theory, science, and best practices of love. The more I learn, the stronger I felt that the education of love is long overdue and missing from our conversations today. I love how Fromm explains the evolution of love as a concept in the context of our biological needs as humans and the Western capitalist society in which we live. In retrospect, many common misconceptions of love could have been avoided have I encountered this book earlier. I noted a few key themes that I deeply resonate with as I go through the book:

Fromm argues Love is Giving

1. Common misconception: Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love—or to be loved by—is difficult. Fromm argues love is the activity of giving, which lies the highest expression of vitality and productiveness.

2. In capitalist society, love becomes package and commodities of exchange, as being lovable and attractive usually means a package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market for most people. Falling in love becomes a bargain; “the object should be desirable from the the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities.”

3. The education of love, and of mature, loving qualities, is missing. As in learning any other art (e.g. music, medicine, engineering), one must both learn the theory and the practice. However, “in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power—almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims and almost none to learn the art of loving.”

Photo by Jerry Zhang on Unsplash

How might we develop the ability to love?

4. The ability to love as an act of giving depends on the character development of the person. It assumes the person has overcome dependency, narcissistic omnipotence, the wish to exploit others, or to hoard, and has acquired faith in his own human powers, courage to rely on his powers in the attainment of his goals.

5. The ability to love requires care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. Respect (the root of the word respicere = to look at) is the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation.

6. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge. I personally love this somewhat brutal analogy: “the child takes something apart, breaks it up in order to know it; or it takes an animal apart; cruelly tears off the wings of a butterfly in order to know it, to force its secret. The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life.”

7. Common misconception: For most people, their own person, as well as others, is soon explored and soon exhausted. It’s easy to assume we already know our partner when we become familiar with each other. But there were more depth in the experience of the other person—if one can experience the infiniteness of his personality—the other person would never be so familiar. Then the experience of overcoming the barriers and separateness might occur everyday anew.

8. In modern society, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others. Automatons cannot love; they can exchange their “personality packages” and hope for a fair bargain.

9. Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence. Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or to project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong, are not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned.

10. To master any art, anyone must begin by practicing disciplines, concentration and patience throughout every phase of his life. Concentration is a necessary condition for the mastery of an art. This lack of concentration is clearly shown in our difficulty in being alone with ourselves. To be able to concentrate means to be able to be alone with oneself—and paradoxically, this ability is precisely a condition for the ability to love. To learn concentration requires avoiding, as far as possible, trivial conversation, that is, conversation which is not genuine.

11. Love also requires rational faith. Just as the purpose of education is to help the child realize their full potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities, and on the conviction that a child will be right only if the adults put into them what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable. Having faith in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love. To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment.