Visitor: A butterfly lover’s philosophy of life.

As a boy I used to chase butterflies, in the field, and among the woods. My childhood time was literally divided between reading books in the room and searching for the airborne insects in the wild. After some period of field training, I learned all of the butterfly species by heart, so that I could identify which species the moment I saw one flying. Looking back, I think it was a marvelous manifestation of the brain’s ability to apply pattern recognition. What a pity it does not have any practical value in today’s world!

Sometimes, I could not tell what I was looking at, as the butterfly would appear strange and exotic. At such a time, my heart would suddenly throb violently. It could be a new species yet to be discovered by human kind (to discover one was the wildest dream of a boy like myself). The reality was not that exciting, as we all regret to learn. Most of the time, it was just the shades and backgrounds that made the butterfly appear to be different. After a more careful observation, it would turn out to be quite a common species.

From time to time, which was equally exciting, the butterfly would turn out to be a “visitor”. A species not normally resident, but was blown into the area by strong wind, especially after the passage of a typhoon. In other cases, when the butterfly had a strong ability to fly, it could wander on its own into the forest where I was chasing butterflies.

Since I spent so much time chasing butterflies, I think part of my philosophy of life has been formed by interactions with these elegant creatures. In my life, I sometimes catch myself waiting for “visitors”. Some person, event, or phenomenon, that would enter my world only rarely. It is such a pity that visitors do not come so often. But when one does come, it infuses my life with a strange sense of joy and expectancy. It makes me want to run off and venture into an unknown, enchanted kingdom.

I would vote for Obama.

I am not an American citizen. If I were one, I would vote for Mr. Obama.

In my view, the race between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney is one between sharing vs. competition, collaboration vs. acrimony.

The idea that economic growth can be brought about through competition in the free market is a fantasy at best. In fact, people need to be in possession of certain knowledge and skills in order to be a functioning competitor. At a time when the disparity of household income directly translates into the educational opportunities for the kids, the gospel that Mr. Romney preaches is not only a logical fallacy but also a factually misleading propaganda.

The idea that prosperity can be brought about through competition is also false. Prosperity is based on collaboration, with each individual bringing onto the table his or her unique capabilities, without sticking a price tag to the contribution.

Mr. Romney’s speech divides and alienates people. Now is the time to take a hard look at the real conditions in which human beings make their efforts. Mr. Obama is not saying that we can be lazy and the let the state take care of us. He is just saying that in order to make a serious effort, we need to collaborate in a spirit of mutual helpfulness and respect. That is only a common sense. 

Something even a five year old kid knows, before the young mind is polluted by the false ideology of the free market.

The ideology of socialism is long gone. Now is the time for the simplistic belief in the free market to be gone. Electing Mr. 

Obama for President would be symbolic of the times when we are coming to grips with the realities of how human societies are organized and work, at long last.

Growing out of beers.

This summer, a strange phenomenon is happening to me. I seem to be growing out of beers.

Ever since I started enjoying alcohol at the legal age of 20 (well, my memory is actually rather fuzzy there), I liked beer the best, especially as a starter. On a summer evening, ordering a pint of beer has been the thing to do. It is a collective 

phenomenon. Actually, in Japanese, there is a special expression for the endorsement of beer as the first drink of the evening (Ask any Japanese people around).

Then it started to weigh in. I noticed the small gradual changes within me when it was too late. I find myself ordering other drinks (what a sacrilege!) at the beginning of supper with colleagues and friends. Beer is not the first choice any more.

I ponder why this change is happening. It is personally so interesting and at the same time rather unnerving. Am I losing something, perhaps the famous “mojo” (Austin Powers)?

I am watching my thirst and drive carefully as we Tokyo residents start to prepare ourselves for the inevitable chills of autumn. 

Reading for pleasure.

Last evening, I was giving a public lecture jointly with my best friend Ryo Hatoh at the Academy Hills in Tokyo. In the aftermath, we were doing the small talks, when Ryo casually mentioned how he used to love reading the Lord of the Rings.

That gave me an idea. This morning, I visited Amazon and downloaded the kindle version of this famed trilogy.

Here’s a little bit of personal history. I read the Japanese translation of the Lord of the Rings when I was a junior high student. Then, at senior high, about 4 years after starting to learn English, I made the (then for me) daunting effort of reading the original version. I must confess it was hard at that time. But I enjoyed the trial even so.

I still remember how I waited eagerly the end of the exam period. Released from the burdens of cramming, I would walk carefree under the blue sky, get on the train, and start reading the Rings straight away.

I still remember the tremendous joy I felt going through the pages, and yet, there was also a sense of guilt. In an educational system where too much emphasis is put on paper exams, absorbing oneself in a fantasy novel seemed to be a silly idea, even if it improved my English capabilities in a general sense.  It was actually this sense of guilt that made the reading of the Rings such a thrilling adventure.

Seeing through the (with the benefit of hindsight) perverse perceptions, I can now understand how my learning should have been organized. My English education should have been exactly like the experience of reading the Rings, rather than filling my head with silly grammatical rules. Lord of the Rings was actually a much better English teacher than all the meaningless entrance exam preparations combined.

Now I am looking forward to my second read, after 30+ years. 30+ years. Gee. 

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb.

It used to be that I held my breath and was hurt by every negative comment that I encountered on the web. Well, not any more. I yawn when someone tweets something negative about me or something that I dearly care for. Their bombs have simply become duds. 

I have been an avid user of the net since its nascence. Those were the days when BBS and mailing lists were at the forefront of what were considered new and exciting. The misanthropes and bomb-droppers were those who would abruptly write something nasty, just to attract attention to themselves, or to make everybody around uncomfortable.

And those creatures often succeeded, much to our dismay. The well-meaning fellows would often intervene, which resulted, almost without a single exception, in an ever escalating calamity. For the bastards, the well-meaning comments and efforts of reconciliations were just fuels to boost their malicious ego trip. I have seen many BBS and mailing lists going to the dogs through such a process.

We should not forget what a great invention twitter has been. There, the malicious comments can be largely left to themselves. The stupid tweets physically exist, but not so much socially. There is a selection pressure, in which those who tweet for benefit and substance would attract more followers. Even if you want to have an ego trip on the twitter, chances are that you won’t be able to ride on a big wave. Only ripples from the like-minded would soak your feet.

So, that’s how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb. The culture of mutually assured humiliation still exists on the web, but it does not really matter any more. We can now stop worrying about trivialities of human vice and start worrying about things of real importance.

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove.

The reason for resilience.

Talk given by Ken Mogi at TED Long Beach on 29th February, 2012, 10 days before the 1st anniversary of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of 2011.

twitter: @kenmogi
e-mail: kenmogi@qualia-manifesto.com

On March 11th 2011, a massive earthquake hit Eastern Japan. About 30 minutes later, devastating waves of tsunami came ashore across the Tohoku area. It was a natural disaster of a scale unprecedented in the remembered history of Japan. Scientists later confirmed that it had been an event once in a thousand years. Then the nuclear power plant accident at Fukushima followed, casting shadows over people’s lives and hearts. It was a “black swan” event that even experts had failed to predict. The tsunami swept cars, houses, to the utter despair of those looking on in disbelief. Children cried, while their parents could do nothing but to comfort them. Tens of thousands of people lost their loved ones, their cherished homes, and their long-held ways of life.

In memory of the people who lost their lives in the earthquake and tsunami, I would like to dedicate here a moment of silence.

Almost immediately after the disaster, recovery efforts started. People around the world were impressed by the resilience of the Japanese people, who never forgot smiles on their faces, despite the incredible difficulties encountered in the wake of a disaster.

Here I would like to share with you a philosophy behind the resilience of Japanese people. Among Japanese fishermen, there is a saying that “under the board, there is hell.” Once the Mother Nature rages, there is nothing you can do about it. Despite the risks, a fisherman ventures off into the ocean, to do his best to make a living.

This old proverb is true for all of us. As the world becomes small, we are facing newly emerging oceans of contingencies. Just like the Japanese fishermen, we don’t give up. We proceed, with smiles on our faces. In fact, we can even say that risks and uncertainties are the mothers of hope and wisdom.

Here I have a flag, given to me by a fisherman in Kamaishi, who has been personally affected by the tsunami. In order to cheer us up, I swing here the Japanese fisherman’s flag. Under the board, there is hell. That’s why we all hope to build peace and prosperity on our humble boat, through our resilience and hard work. And that’s why we are all here today. Thank you very much.

St. Valentine’s day, the Japanese way.

The 14th of February is a day on which the hearts of many Japanese men throb, in (literally) sweet expectations of pleasures to come.

The day is recognized as the “St. Valentine’s day”, a day on which you express your love to your sweethearts. That bit is pretty much the same all around the world. What is unique in Japan is that it is mainly a girl that is expected to express her love, giving a box of chocolate to the boy held dear in heart. Often the presentation is a surprise one, coming from an unexpected admirer of the opposite sex. That’s why the boys’ hearts throb on this fateful day.

Conspiracy theories abound as to how the Japanese Valentine’s day has “degenerated” into a unidirectional offering of cacao based sweets. Some say that it was a campaign of the chocolate manufacturers which kick-started the now (in)famous tradition. Brainwashing aside, chocolate giving has taken hold most probably because it somehow resonated with the Japanese psyche.

Japanese girls seem to like the idea of giving a box of chocolate to the loved one, as it fits the image of sweet feminineness. Boys, on the receiving side, admire the tenderness and considerations expressed this way. It is thus the result of a cultural marriage between the Western tradition and Japanese conception of what is feminine that has made chocolate giving on Saint Valentine’s day such a runaway hit.

It is interesting how much and deeply one could delve into the traditions and cultures of a particular nation, by taking note of a seemingly trivial custom. One would be able to reveal many things about the Nation of Japan, just thinking about the chocolate giving on Saint Valentine’s day. This short essay is intended as just a starter. I would be able to deepen my thoughts better, with the help of a box of chocolate.

If I get one, that is.


A Japanese girl offering a box of self-made chocolate, from http://umasou.com/barentain/, a recipe site for Valentine’s day chocolates.

How a Japanese prime minister has become MHP.

When I was a kid, it used to be that the prime minister was considered the nation’s top job. A boy often had the aspiration to become one some day, pouring out in school essays how he would then change the nation. Quite apart from the obvious flaw of Japanese society that girls usually did not (and still do not) aspire to become politicians, the classic picture does not hold anymore. The times they are a-changin’.

The prime ministers come in and go through the now famous revolving door of Japanese politics. When a prime minister is elected and comes into the spotlight, he (sadly, in Japan, we don’t have yet to write “or she” here as a historical fact; same applies to U.S. presidency) enjoys the “honeymoon” with the Japanese populace for a very short time. That period is then followed by a series of humiliations, both public and private, fueled by the overjealous attention of the Japanese media whose main job these days are forcing politicians to step down. One government figure resigned, one mission accomplished.

Thus, a Japanese prime minister (“JPM”) has become the synonym for the “MHP” (Most Humiliated Person) of the nation. No wonder a boy doesn’t aspire to become a P.M. any more. Nobody wants to be humiliated, or deserves to be.

This thought is just in. A female prime minister might really change the situation for the better, as it is not such a decent job to humiliate a lady. Even the media bastards know that.



Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. He has had his share of humiliation. I am personally sorry for him.

The decipherer of an enigma.

Last night, I was having drinks with my best friend and literary agent Hamish Macaskill, in a Tokyo wine bar. While we were waiting for the British novelist David Peace (now resident in Tokyo) and Spanish film director/writer David Trueba, Hamish said something quite interesting. There is a trend, Hamish said, of English writers producing contemporary or period dramas based in Japan. In the genre, Hamish said, it appears that it is essential to write the details that a Japanese writer or those who are familiar with the Japanese culture (like Hamish himself) would omit. In fact, Hamish often finds the details described in a novel based in Japan (the smell of a soy source, etc.) unnecessary and disturbing.

"It seems that the novels that I don't like sell well!" Hamish said.

Hamish's comment stroke a chord of truth in me. We take for granted what we are accustomed to. The merit of an outsider is that he or she can decipher the implicit cultural codes. The writer becomes the decipherer of an enigma.

As the two Davids arrived, we went on with the wine drinking and deciphering business, bringing together different backgrounds, prejudices, hopes and dreams. (Hamish is originally from Australia) It was a fitting action for the soul and the body on an evening of pre-Christmas merriments.


David Trueba (left) and Hamish Macaskill. David Peace went to the restroom.

Confessions of an atheist.

First of all, happy holidays, everyone!
This is a season of goodwill.
So it is with a spirit of goodwill that I jot down the confessions below.

One of the most salient endeavors of notable intellectuals in recent years has been the effort to spread the philosophy of atheism. The late Christopher Hitchens was one of the most active proponents. And of course, Richard Dawkins, whose book "The God Delusion" laid out persuasive arguments as to why religions can be sometimes oppressive, did a great service to humanity in pointing out the road toward more freedom.

It is a trivial matter, in my own perspective, that a concept of God where "he" or "she" possesses a personality like our own, is passé. In fact, Baruch Spinoza presented a beautiful argument about the absolute infinity of "God" in his magnum opus "Ethica" in the 17th century. According to Spinoza, a concept of God where he has a body, will, and intellect, is self-contradictory as these properties pertain to finite existences like ourselves. I think that was a conclusive argument. The concept of observing and punishing God has been passé for more than three centuries.



Thirty something decades after Spinoza, I think the only intellectually interesting and challenging problem about the concept of God today is why we sometimes do have illusions of a "finite" God. There might have been psychological and/or evolutionary needs. For example, the central thesis of Christianity, as I understand it, is the belief that Christ was the Son of God, and yet was incarnated to have a finite body like us, and went through all the hardships that led to his eventual crucifixion.

Although as a rational human being I remain an atheist (strictly speaking, as I am resonant with the Spinozan concept of God, I might qualify as a "pantheist"), I do find the "story" of Christian incarnation and crucifixion fascinating and deeply moving. That an "absolutely infinite God" could voluntarily put Itself in the position of a finite and mortal being like ourselves by incarnation and go through the agony and pain of persecution and death, is, I think, one of the most beautiful "fictions" that human beings have ever conceived.

After all, the very nature of our phenomenal experience is illusory. Love is an illusion, and so is perhaps the very concept of scientific truth. To say something is illusory does not mean that it must forever be marked by stigma. When an illusion has proved powerful, it is useful to study the nature of its epistemological origins, and clarify the continuing effects on people's lives.

Thus, although I hope to remain a rational thinker, I feel as if the basic claim of the "atheist" movement has now been well received and accepted, at least in the intellectual circle, so that it is probably time to proceed with business of the elucidation of its nature of the "illusion" of God, in a spirit of goodwill.

Well, that was my confession, folks. Happy holiday seasons, again.


The Crucifixion, seen from the Cross, by James Tissot, 19th century.

Beauty and dictatorship as defense mechanisms.

The “dear leader” of North Korea, Kim Jong-il is dead. The dictator could not control his own heart condition. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn’t put the dear leader together again. Although he was feared by the people, I think Kim Jong-il was feeble as a man, deep down. And perhaps he knew that himself.

As everybody knows, dictatorship is a kind of defense mechanism. The very concept of a political power suggests a dependency on others, in a big way. If you don’t have other people, on whom can you exercise your earthly powers? It is not very much fun to be a dictator, if there is only one people (you!) in the nation. As a dictator you depend on your people. So much so, that it becomes a dangerous addiction before long.
Reports suggest that when Kim Jong-il succeeded his father Kim Il-sung, he was not sure of his power base. He judged, correctly, that the military was to be the key for securing power. He went on with his business of strengthening the military. The nuclear weapon, the missiles, and the rest is now history. After all, these were manifestations of the defense instinct of a feeble man, who was dependent on his people for his very existence.

At this point, I should say that there is a completely different mechanism that could be taken by a fragile existence.

Beauty.

Take the painting of Mona Lisa by Leonard da Vinci, on display in the Louvre in Paris, for example. As a physical entity, it is very fragile. It has no means of defending itself. If an evil will wishes to destroy it and set it on fire, it can easily do so. However, the extreme beauty of the Mona Lisa has been the strong defense machinery which has preserved the painting over the centuries. And it will be preserved thus, for all eventualities, in the centuries to come.

So here is the spectrum of self-defense for you. On one extreme, you have dictatorship, nuclear weapons, and the missiles. On the other, you have beauty. What a bewilderingly complex and enigmatic world we live in.


Kim Jong-il, 16 February 1941 – 17 December 2011 (image from Wikipedia)



Mona Lisa, circa 1503–1519 to …. (image from Wikipedia)

What a wonderful pet you have on your iPad.

With the advent of e-books and e-book readers (right now I am an avid user of the kindle reader on iPad), my childhood habit of being turned into a bookworm without warning has returned with a vengeance. I am reading several books at the same time, flipping between them as my whim seems to dictate.

The list right right now are: “Cycles of time” by Roger Penrse, “Linked” by Albert-laszio Barabasi, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austin (reading for a third time!) and “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. Last week, I finished “the Doors of Perception” by Aldous Huxley for the third or Fourth time.

Although we have an abundance of texts scattered all over the cyberspace now, looking back on my own experience, books remain the significant and perhaps sole life-changer. The duration, concentration, and the sheer synthesis involved in the experience of book reading seems to be an indispensable ingredient of a dramatic change in one’s world views.

For example, “Free to choose” by Milton Friedman that I read when I was about 20 changed my idea about competition and market. I confess probably I am still under the influence of this book. An Albert Einstein biography that I came across at the tender age of 10 (I read the Japanese version as I did not speak English at all at that time) inspired me so much, that I found myself wanting to be a scientist and revolutionize the world conceptually.

Thus, although I do find the timely arrivals of latest news and comments on the web now an essential part of my reading experience (powered, nowadays, by Flipboard), I do keep my insatiable hunger for more books, from all genres.

It is my view that you can look around the world from the vantage height in proportion to all the books that you have read in your life, with all the books stuck on top of each other. Thus, reading a book is an act of building that famous Newtonian giant. You can nurture your own giant by reading books. What a wonderful pet you have on your iPad.

“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

(Isaac Newton in his letter to his Robert Hooke on February 5, 1676)

The Flipboard user experience.

I have been using the Flipboard on iPad for a week. Yes, I am VERY late to arrive on this. I am like that sometimes, failing to register an important technical trend. I am still unable to appreciate the usefulness of Facebook, for example, although I have been a registered user for over a year now.

I must say that I find Flipboard extraordinarily interesting and useful. It has changed the way I read texts of interest. I mainly browse through the news and tech sections. The way relevant sources are curated and brought to my fingertips provides an interesting insight into how the meshed up web will evolve in the future.

I read somewhere that “every millisecond counts” was the hidden ethos among engineers at Google. When you search something, it is important to return the results as quickly as possible. It is not computation, it is also about the user experience. If you extend that logic to modes of sensorimotor interaction on the web in general, you begin to see why and how an application like Flipboard is a substantial innovation.

Even if you could have arrived at more or less a similar list of information sources through traditional search engines, the ebb and flow of the pages curated through Flipboard provides a completely different user experience.

Traditional ways of “gathering” information on the web begin to pale and fade in the face of Flipboard. It is interesting to witness the latest innovations happening on the web in the direction of enriching user experiences in general. A company which does not regard user experience as an integral part of its business is prone to fail in the coming era. A few names come across one’s mind.

The cloud has finally arrived, and it is here to stay.

I used to have the notion that natural language processing was lousy and unreliable by default. And it was not simply a Luddite sentiment. With the sort of new technologies like Siri, however, the times they are-a-changin’. The artificial processing of natural language seems to have finally arrived. And it is here to stay.

Although from the strictly theoretical point of view the juries are still out, it appears that the cloud is definitely a crucial element in the remarkable innovations. The computations are distributed, and the resources are on the web. A self-contained system on the client device would not have succeeded so much. One element is the computational capacity, but the very nature of the network is also a defining factor.

And when you think about it, language has always been about the cloud. When we humans comprehend a word or a sentence, a whole network of knowledge and memories is invoked. The pattern of activation is likely to follow the famous power law. In such a distributed environment, there is no strict central control. The scattered and haphazard nature of processing has always been the defining factor of the conversations that we carry every day. And the chain of causality does not end with an individual brain. Words have been passed on from people to people, over the years, mediated by spoken words, written records, on the air, and through accidental encounters.

In the technology world the cloud has just arrived. Among our brains, the cloud has always been here. The cloud has finally arrived, and it is here to stay.

To build or not to build, that is the question.

I have made several visits to the tsunami devastated areas in Tohoku. The damages have been tremendous and heartbreaking. Now that the sorrow of lost lives and memories start to sink deep into the psyche, a hard question emerges.

To build or not to build, that is the question.

Historical records show that the area has been hit repeatedly by massive tsunamis in the past. Measures have been taken, including towering concrete walls to fend off the waves. While these precautions have helped to diminish and delay the effect of tsunami in some places, the size of the massive waves caused by the earthquake on 11th March meant many such walls were destroyed and/or overcome, with the water coming into the land with a brutal force.

The hardest choice to make now is whether to go ahead with rebuilding in the tsunami devastated areas. If it were not for the risk of tsunami, the seaside areas provide the most beautiful and comfortable living opportunities, with a convenient access to the sea for those people involved in fishery and related industries. On the other hand, the probabilities of future tsunami damages are understandably very real in people’s minds.

To complicate matters, no coastal area in Japan can be said to be safe from the threats of tsunami. Although the Tohoku area might stand out because of recent events, the possibility of a tsunami attack exist, both in theory and practice, throughout the land of Japan. Thus, making the choice of building and not building poses a hard question not only for people in Tohoku, but also for the rest of us all over Japan. It is a case where one’s philosophy of life is tested, on top of the probability estimates by seismology experts.

Facebook and twitter.

I still cannot find a useful angle to come to terms with Facebook. I am not a heavy user. I should say I am perhaps not an active user at all, although certainly registered. Given the reported popularity of the service, it is a strange enigma, as I tend to embrace new web services.

It is not the problem of Facebook specifically. It is a common defect, in my view, of Social Network Services. Perhaps the problem is not for everyone. It is a problem just for me, and the likes of me.

There is too much cognitive load compared to the benefits. I don’t so much like to see my friends’ candid photos or their casual observations. Surely these things are nice, but there are other interesting matters in this world too.

The thing is, I much prefer the brutal and swift way that people (or rather, issues) are connected in twitter. There, you don’t have to submit or respond to a friend request. The connections and comments are made without the embarrassing diplomacy and niceties. It is all about memes, not personal relationships per se.

Thus, I find myself in the domain of minorities, while the rest of the world is apparently head over heals on Facebook.