experience-notes

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。

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.