Warning: Navel gazing.
Another reaction I had after researching interpretations of I’m Thinking of Ending Things (ITOET) was felling bad I didn’t come up with any of them. Which is not surprising – I have a lot of trouble interpreting complex works of art, being it paintings, books or movies. For example, I don’t understand poetry at all. If someone starts reciting poetry to me I’m completely unable to follow, although I listen to podcasts/audiobooks at 1.8x speed. I can also really enjoy David Lynch movies, although I have no ideia what they mean.
Seems to me that plausible interpretations of works of art come easily to other people. Maybe as easy as plausible solutions to technical problems come to me.
I was pretty lost when looking for interpretations of ITOET. I thought that maybe I lack the talent to interpret art. Some people are born to be good at math. Others are born good at art. And those are how things are.
But then I realized how similar the technical-problems solving skills are to the art interpretation skills. You come up with hypothesis (potential solutions/interpretations) and test them out against the evidence (by trying the solution on the problem/checking if the interpretation explains all the features of the work of art).
The activity of coming up with hypothesis involves some creativity – coming up with new solutions/interpretations you’ve never seen before. But I think a big part of it is “just” pattern matching – what solutions/interpretations solved similar problems/works of arts to the one I’m looking at now?
And if this is the case, then someone’s capacity to solve technical problems or interpret works of art is based a lot on past experience at doing similar things. The more technical problems you were presented and solved throughout your life, the better you will be at solving them in the present. The more works of art you analysed throughout you life, the better you are at doing it in the present.
Seems to me that the role of experience on the development of technical-problems solving skills is more emphasized than for the development of art interpretation skills, and this led me to having the intuition that I’m naturally bad at interpreting art. I now see this skill as no different than my lack of ability to sew clothes – I’m pretty bad at it, but I know that if I practice it, I will probably become good at it.
Hidden Meanings in Art
I recently watched the movie I’m Thinking of Ending Things (ITOEF) – I understood none of it. I mean, it was beautiful, but I was unable to come up with any plausible interpretation of what was happening and I found the ones I read on the internet really non-obvious.
This annoyed me: what’s the point of hiding the meaning so deep? If the director really wants to make an important point just make it more obvious! But of course, there are reasons to hide the meaning.
Meaning-hiding is aesthetically pleasing
Note that although I didn’t understand the movie, I still found it beautiful. Yes, it was well directed and the acting was good. But I think part of my enjoyment was caused by the fact that I knew that there was some meaning to it all, although I couldn’t grasp it – the hidden meaning made the work of art more beautiful.
Another example. Gernica by Picasso seems to be well regarded in the art world. It is an anti-war painting, a “response to the bombing of Guernica […] by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy”. Without this context, the painting has a low level of meaningness, but it is still beautiful. I say part of this beauty comes from the fact that we suspect there’s some meaning behind it. The moment we learn about the history behind the painting, we understand the hidden meaning and it somehow becomes even more beautiful.
To illustrate the point in the other direction, imagine if Picasso had wrote in the painting “war is terrible”. I feel that that directness would lower the artistic value of the painting, would make it uglier somehow, not because of the text per se, but because of the too obvious meaning.
Jumping to the TV medium. Sitcom episodes sometimes contain life-lessons – for example, a character spends the episode comically worrying about some small thing in her life but in the end someone tells her that she should appreciate what she has and not care about such trifles. Makes sense. But it lacks the meaningness
that shows like Atlanta have, where the meaning is hidden in a not-too-deep layer of metaphor, and the episodes can be as short and fun as those of a sitcom. I find episodes of the later type of shows much more beautiful.
So, it seems that hiding the meaning of a work of art makes it more beautiful, even if one doesn’t understand the meaning. I would say that even if it has no meaning, just the appearance of meaning makes it more beautiful.
Why does this happen?
(Some) Humans seem to naturally find enjoyable things that have some kind of potential. A trail you never hiked on. A dish you never tasted. A relationship you never experienced. A birthday gift. We are natural explorers. Maybe we see works of arts with non-obvious meaning as one of these things?
A more cynical option is that by enjoying a mysterious work of art we are signaling our sophisticatedness. In western society, people who like complex art are seen as smart and cultured. Our elephant in the brain notices this and makes us enjoy hidden meanings so that we gain status around our peers.
Meaning-hiding as a better way to transmit ideas
While writing this essay, I stumbled upon this:
“Words of wisdom” go into one ear and out the other, and I suppose this is a reason why a novel, a painting or a song can be more effective than a philosophical tract. Successful idea-driven art doesn’t simply supply us with ideas to use whenever we want to (which isn’t necessarily when we ought to), it burns them into our minds through repetition, elaboration and strong emotion. That way they won’t fade away like fragments of the last dream before you wake up and we won’t have the option to not use them.
John Nerst, Everything Studies
I’ll just add to it that if you hide the meaning and make the reader/viewer/listener fight for it, the idea will become even more imprinted in her mind.
But how deep should the artist hide the meaning? Too much and not many people will get the meaning. Not enough and the meaning will look like a platitude. For me, the meaning of ITOEF was too hidden. But I guess that for a number of people, it was ideal. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much about this. There’s so much variety of works of art and so much neurodiversity that there is probably something for everyone.
How to “listen to your body”?
It’s the middle of the afternoon and you just came back home after a run. You feel a little hungry. Do you? Maybe it is just gluttony and you really want that banana with peanut butter, although you don’t actually need it. Actually, you feel a little weak and maybe the urge to eat it’s your body telling you you need some sugar. But maybe you are self-sabotaging your low-calories goals with this rationalization?
Are you feeling sleepy because you need to sleep or you just don’t want to do that boring paperwork?
Do you really need vacations or you just really want to go Disneyland?
How do we differentiate between a urge to do something because it’s important for your basic health vs. for fun, gluttony, laziness?
I want to eat well, but not too much. I want sleep enough, but not too much. I want to have fun and not burnout, but I also want to do meaningful work.
How do I interpret signs from my body regarding all this? The saying “listen to your body” makes sense, but it’s not always easy.
Having experience in mindfulness meditation probably helps, since you become better at looking at your thoughts and motivations. I also find that, in a psychedelic state, the me part of my mind becomes more separated than usual from the unconscious part, making it more easier to look at urges and analyse them.
But having said this, I don’t have a clear answer – but being aware of the problem probably makes it easier to deal with it.
On Voting
Portuguese presidential elections are going to happen soon and this lead me to reflect (again) on the value of voting and of being engaged with national politics.
I have an aversion of having to keep up with what’s new on national news in general and national politics in particular – things move so fast that keeping up with it would be too stressful. But with the presidential elections coming in, I felt motivated to be an exemplar citizen and do a thorough research about all the candidates so that I could make an informed decision on who to vote for. And then publicly share everything in a blog post!
Yeah, that didn’t happen, for a number of reasons. But a lot went through my mind while struggling to do it.
Your vote is useless
First of all, it’s hard to shake the felling that the chance of your vote swinging an election is pretty much 0%. You’re spending all this time and energy doing complicated research, and for what? Even if you end up making the best possible decision on who to vote for, all your work has 0 impact.
In an 80000 Hours article, Robert Wiblin uses expected value calculations to argue that it’s worth to vote. But since I know that I’m not going to swing an election (like I know that I’m not going to win the lottery) I feel I would be a victim of Pascal’s mugging if I accepted those arguments.1
Having said this, if you have an audience (i.e. you have a popular blog, podcast, etc), you sharing your research and opinion might influence other people to vote in the same way as you do, making the resources spent on research a little more worth it. But then there’s the fact that your audience probably already has views aligned with yours: that’s why they’re your audience. But I agree that this line of argument has value, and if you’re going to do the research, might as well share it.
Actually, probably most of what you can do related with political activism (volunteer to help candidates, write to your local newspaper, etc) has a lot of more influence than voting.
Decision process can be really complex
I realized that I probably arrived at a point where I am pretty non-tribal regarding politics. I sympathize and understand many political positions, and my views depend on the issue at hand, sometimes leaning right, sometimes left.
They told me this is a good thing.
Well, when you trying to pick one candidate to vote for, it only causes a bunch of decision anxiety! It becomes not obvious on who to vote for.
I see each presidential candidate as a point in a giant multidimensional space of future political decisions that the candidate will have to deal with if they become elected. This, in contrast with the extreme of each candidate being a point in a uni-dimensional line that goes from right-wing to left-wing.
In the latter model, things are easy. If you are moderately right-wing, you just vote on the “most moderate” right-wing candidate.
But the complexity of the former model is huge. I don’t even know my position on issues before I reflect a lot on them. Even if I knew it, I would still have to deal with the extra complexity of having to weight each issue in relation to all others. Basically, how do I compare the points in that multidimensional space?
If you believe some issues are a lot more important than others, you might focus only on the candidate’s views on those issues. This seems to me to make sense. Personally, I think the most important issues are those related with the far future. Unfortunately, candidates don’t tend to talk about those. One exception now is pandemics: candidates will probably have some kind of opinion about issues related to that.2
Voting as signaling (or: Why I still vote)
It’s my impression that voting has a strong signaling value: at least in some groups, voting is a signal that you’re a good citizen, and you gain points in your community of you said you vote.
That’s the reason why I still vote, even if only to cast a blank. It doesn’t cost that much and I really don’t want to go through the hassle of justifying myself to my friends and family why I’m not an horrible person for not voting. I might even talk with them about all I’ve covered in this post; the fact that I voted might probably even make them more receptacle to my arguments.
And since I’m voting, if it’s not too costly for me to get to know the candidates, if there’s some obvious best candidate, I’ll vote for them (even knowing that my vote it’s not going to change anything). If the decision seems hopeless, I’ll cast a blank vote.
I also like to at least know a little bit about national politics so that I can better understand discussions that I happen to listen to/participate in. It can also be fun to discuss politics with light-hearted friends, and that’s pretty valuable.
Much more than voting. 🙂
1 – I suspect this is pointing at the same issue that Ergodicity Economics does for investing?
2 – I might e-mail all the candidates for the upcoming presidential elections to ask about this.
PORDATA – Alojamentos e Condições de Vidas
(Este texto faz parte da minha exploração da PORDATA – uma base de dados relacionados com Portugal)
Não tinha ideia de que a construção de casas diminuiu tanto desde 2002. Nesse ano foram construídas aproximadamente 9 vezes mais casas do que em 2019.
Adoro este gráfico:
A percentagem de agregados com uma arca congeladora subiu ~10% entre 2000 e 2005… e desceu outra vez ~10% até 2010. O que raios aconteceu aqui?
Isto parece indicar que o bem-estar dos portugueses tem melhorado desde 2004:
Mas o valor é relativo a outros países europeus. O índice varia entre 0 e 1:
Quanto mais próximo estiver de 1, mais se aproxima do valor máximo que essa dimensão assume, em todo o período em análise, no conjunto de países de referência.
Pelo que um valor abaixo de 0.5 não soa assim tão bem.
O melhor indicador para Portugal é o do Ambiente e o pior é o do Bem-estar económico (o índice deste último foi de 0.02 em 2004!)
A “percentagem da população considerada em situação de carência económica ou de bens duradouros” diminuiu desde 2004, sendo 5.6% actualmente.
PORDATA – Receitas e Despesas do Estado
(Este texto faz parte da minha exploração da PORDATA – uma base de dados relacionados com Portugal)
Algumas curiosidades:
O IVA é responsável por uma maior parte da receita do estado do que o IRS, que por sua vez dá mais receita que o IRC. Gráfico aqui:
Os próximos dois gráficos vêm daqui.
Acção e segurança social é a área onde o Estado gasta mais per capita, seguido de Saúde e Educação:
Antes de 2004, o Estado gastava mais, por capita, em Educação, do que em Saúde:
PORDATA – Library users per year
(This is part of my explorations of PORDATA – A Portuguese open data database)
This plot really really surprised me:
It shows the permilage of people in Portugal who are library users. Checkout that 2003’s number. An astonishing 82.6% of the population was going to libraries! This sounds too much to me. I don’t think I know anyone who goes to libraries. But I guess that 2020 is a really different world than 2003.
For sanity check, I’ve tried to find numbers for other countries.
From a survey in the UK:
Users are decreasing, but still pretty high numbers at 2015/2016 – more than one third of the population is a library user.
And here we have data given to us in a press release by the Spanish Statistics Institute.
So, yeah, TIL: more people use libraries than I though.
PORDATA – Hours of Work Per Week
(This is part of my explorations of PORDATA – A Portuguese open data database)
This surprised me:
It shows the average of weekly work hours for people who work for some employer (vs. being self-employed). Since the last methodology change (that’s what those dark symbols represent) in 2011 the average diminished by 0.9 hours. There was a decrease in all jobs categories.
This happens for both genders:
(Dark orange are males, light orange are females)
Also interesting to note that males in average work more time than females.
I only found one group that, since 2011, has been working, on average, more hours: self-employed workers. While in 2011 they worked on average 30.8 hours/week, they now work on average 33.0 hours/week. This is still less than what employed people work, though.
(blue for self-employed, green for people who work for others)
PORDATA – Marriages per year
(This is part of my explorations of PORDATA – A Portuguese open data database)
Here is the plot of total number of marriages per year.
Interesting things:
- Number of marriages per year decreased from ~70.000 in 1960 to ~33.000 in 2019, even though population has increased.
- Number of marriages per year increased by 20.000 (!) from 1974 to 1975. This is probably somehow related with the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974 that lead to the immigration of more than 300.000 individuals to Portugal.
Here is the plot of number of same-sex marriages per year:
Only starts in 2010 because that’s when same-sex marriage was legalized in Portugal. There seems to be a weird pattern of things starting out slow but then ramping up. Don’t know why this might be, but I’ll ask around.
Scala: Using circe and newtype to decode JSON with a field with variable type
Here’s one way you can quickly decode a JSON using circe:
import io.circe._
import io.circe.generic.semiauto.deriveDecoder
import io.circe.literal._
case class Example(id: String, field1: String)
object Example {
implicit val circeDecoder: Decoder[Example] = deriveDecoder[Example]
}
val exampleJsonIdAsString: Json =
json"""{
"id": "12345",
"field1": "something"
}"""
val example = exampleJsonIdAsString.as[Example]
println(example)
This prints Right(Example(12345,something)).
This all works well if the types of the JSON fields are predictable. But what if you’re consuming some API that you don’t control and the same field sometimes comes with different types? For example, an id field coming sometimes as string and other times as number. (I had this happening to me recently)
val exampleJsonIdAsLong: Json =
json"""{
"id": 12345,
"field1": "something"
}"""
val example = exampleJsonIdAsLong.as[Example]
println(example)
This will fail with Left(DecodingFailure(String, List(DownField(id)))) since is is expecting id to be a string but it is a number
So, our decoder has to know to deal with the id field being string or number. Now an automatic decoder will not do and we’ll have to write a custom one:
object Example {
implicit val circeDecoder: Decoder[Example] = (c: HCursor) => {
val idField = "id"
val idParsed: Result[String] = c.downField(idField).as[String] match {
case Right(v) => Right(v)
case Left(_) => c.downField(idField).as[Int] match {
case Right(v) => Right(v.toString)
case Left(err) => Left(err)
}
}
idParsed match {
case Right(v) =>
val transformedJson = c.withFocus(_.mapObject(_.add(idField, Json.fromString(v)))).success.get
deriveDecoder[Example].apply(transformedJson)
case Left(err) => Left(err)
}
}
}
This will successfully parse both “types” of JSON. But the decoder is a little cumbersome to read. And I would like to reuse this logic in other decoders. Here’s an alternate approach:
import io.circe._
import io.circe.generic.semiauto.deriveDecoder
import io.circe.literal._
import io.estatico.newtype.macros.newtype
@newtype case class MyId(private val value: String)
object MyId {
implicit val circeDecoder: Decoder[MyId] = (c: HCursor) => {
c.value.asString match {
case Some(v) => Right(MyId(v))
case None => c.value.asNumber match {
case Some(v) => Right(MyId(v.toString))
case None => Left(DecodingFailure(s"Can't decode: ${c.value}", List()))
}
}
}
}
case class Example(id: MyId, field1: String)
object Example {
implicit val circeDecoder: Decoder[Example] = deriveDecoder[Example]
}
We define a newtype value called MyId, write a custom decoder for it and then go back to using an automatic decoder for Example. The MyId type can then be reused in other case classes.
