I am a pathological "think too much-er" and a "think too complicatedly-er." Some thoughts are intelligible but most feel like noise. For the past four years, I've been trying to prescribe a regiment to this natural state of mine so that I can extract more meaningful reflections and/or actions from them (including "don't think, just experience").

One of the outcomes from such practices is a set of digital notes that contain fleeting thoughts on various topics, and another one is a set of notes that document my values and aspirations in the form of scientific theories.

This page exists so I can put these musings out in the world—unfiltered and often personal—and connect (albeit unwittingly)... also, I figured the two worst things that could happen would be that (1) a subset of people think I'm lame, which is sad but manageable, and/or (2) the world starts flocking to this page and my website actively fuels climate change... which would probably never happen, even maybe. Also, if I expose my insides outside here, hopefully I'll feel more compelled to use them to add some form of value to the world.

But tbh, I dunno... Let's see how this goes.

I read Ray Dalio's Principles, Life & Work and tried out its subsequent mobile app in 2019, which I found hugely helpful in putting a structure around my self-reflections to define my direction in life. I had forgotten about it until just now and find it an intriguing snapshot of the force that had motivated me to pursue spatial/experiential design.

— My Motivations (My “Pull”)
(1) My nature
I want to constantly be intellectually, conceptually, and creatively stimulated. I find memorable satisfaction only when I learn something conceptually intriguing or when I solve complex problems.

(2) Desire to matter/be relevant
I want to keep learning about myself and the structure, mechanisms, and the future of the human world. Subsequently I want to see my position in the world clearly so that I can realize my fullest potential and impact the world with my expertise and insights in a meaningful and novel way.

(3) My dream
I want to attain deep knowledge and insight about humanity and its relationship with the physical and imaginary world we have created for ourselves. With this perspective I want to awaken the world and promote a movement to adjust society's values to those more true to our fundamental build.

— My Principles
(1) The answer to WHY needs to be rational and convincing for anything to be endorsed, regardless of how many people have taken it for granted for any length of time. There is no proceeding without at least asking WHY.

(2) Understand why I and others think and behave the way we do. It will not only give insight into which values and ways of life have been built on faulty grounds and which are more consciously upheld, but also help communicate more efficiently.

(3) My life is a mission to serve not only my desires, but to contribute to society in a meaningful way—meaningful as defined as bettering humanity and its society as a leading thinker and as an expert in one domain.

— My Goals
Developed societies have been built around the implicit notion of the human as its cognitive functions. This is assuming we navigate through the world by means of passive/filtered interaction, as it does not include the reception of sensory information that feeds into and heavily but subtly impacts our cognition in a complex way. This impact manifests in our behavior and decision making, yet we implicitly undermine the relevance of such factors to practical economical development. Undoing the root factors that aggravate this undermining, one of them being language, and promoting learning and thinking of human as its whole body, including sensory organs and the perceptions they induce, is my goal.

It is incredibly harrowing and so sad to suddenly feel 'a fear of being outside' I realize other marginalized groups would have felt all along. But at the same time, I'm grateful to be living in a country that always strives to change towards more inclusiveness/equality, however the road may look. The thought of Trump as a human being infuriates me—divisive politics could not have been conducted more impulsively and moronically. But even the people who voted for him deep down are powered by the desire for recognition and I think seeing other groups as one's own is intrinsically a process of undoing our psychological makeup, and thus a bumpy process... so I have trust in us people. Though none of this makes all these events remotely okay or justifies the people inciting pain, I think about the racism, sexism, and every sort of inequality happening in other parts of the world with less momentum for change, and it makes me grateful to see 'noise' unique to this country.

Criticism helps fill in the missing logics, but support helps potentially shed new perspective (thus inspiration) to new branches of a concept.

I believe the latter to be more difficult, since it is easier to find flaws in most ideas but more challenging to see something and understand what the inherent values are and what potentials lie in it.

Both criticism and support ultimately help expand on idea or concept regardless...
...criticism mainly by shedding light on what to look into (more immediately related to actionable next steps to develop the idea/concept), which inherently is an opportunity for new inspiration
...and support by adding to the idea/concept by reducing it (by reducing something to its essence, it is easy to think about other ideas/concepts/things that share the essence and adopt their qualities, and it also opens opportunities for new branches to form that are strongly logically interlocked with the idea/concept).

...Also, criticism tends to arise from regional points, while support tends to be higher-level and helps surface what our key values are.

— Relevant idea
You can prove something possible by doing it, but proving something impossible can only be conceptual and is much more difficult (ref. Alan Turing).

Hypnosis demonstrates the incredible range of human imagination. It demonstrates that it is equally easy for us to behave as humans (accordingly to our collective expectation), as it is to behave as virtually anything else, be it an organism or an inanimate object (or perhaps even a concept/imaginary or mythical entity!).

 So why have we all "chosen" to behave as humans? If we can behave as anything we want, does that also apply to how our minds operate and how our bodies function?

One possible reason may be that we deem "discipline" as a strong virtue. Discipline means imposing a set of rules. These rules are not arbitrary but are values or qualities that have been collectively promised on to be "good", "beneficial", "superior," "successful." As children we are receivers of such discipline, while simultaneously being educated that a certain set of values / qualities are "good." As our bodies mature and as we naturally accumulate more experience (by virtue of being alive for a longer period of time than before), we are expected to maintain operating in a disciplined state, but being responsible for imposing this discipline on ourselves (being "responsible" is also a constructed value... this is food for another rabbit hole). This discipline helps society function harmoniously by normalizing expectations at a baseline level, but is a limitation on our ability to function according to values & qualities not aligned with these rules. It also is a limitation on our ability to conceive of concepts not directly stemming from the rules we praise as collective virtues.

Without the "consciousness," which is the primary factor separating humans and artificial intelligence, more and more interactions will become transactional—which will become cognitively registered the new definition of "interaction."

Without the assumption of the interacting entity having a consciousness, imposers(?) of the interaction will behave in a completely different way. Without even being aware, even the most "insensitive" humans cater their verbal and physical language in reaction to the other human's. Taking the consciousness factor out of the other end means this catering will be guided solely by the [imposer]'s flow of consciousness; closer to pure ego instead of a combination of ego and superego.

...We have to think about the implications of this effect at a global scale of humanity.

Why did humans invent language? The existential essence of language lies in our desire to accommodate connection between two minds. Why is language so beautiful? The character of language has been shaped by our insatiable desire to hand one’s burning heart to another’s. It is this harrowing restraint that has driven language towards countless techniques and nuances.

(Original text in Korean) 왜 인간은 언어를 만들었는가. 두 뇌 사이를 연결해줄 매개체가 없기 때문이다. 왜 그 언어가 아름다운가 하면은, 두 뇌를 연결해줄 매개체가 없는 와중에 가슴과 가슴을 잇는 뜨거운 감정이 있기 때문이다. 언어가 감정을 따라가려하다보니 기교가 사방 팔방으로 울려 퍼져 나아갈 수 밖에.

— Relevant thought
Our library of gestural language is changing to accommodate communication via long-standing technologic inventions (e.g. “tapping,” “swiping,” “pinching,” etc.) The most wonderful effect of this is that this library can be more easily shared across languages & cultures than the verbal/ written language!

I think we all cope with the gap between our individual complexities and how we fit into the built world by constructing stories for ourselves. At the fundamental level, that story is the world we actually live in—not our communities, not our homes—that give us the sense of security to explore, fall, and expand our relationship with the shared world. And it is also this story—not our peers, not our circumstances—that constrain us from exploring who we are and what we are capable of.

... The best gift I can seek in a partner dynamic is a strong foundation built with the intent to continuously take apart and reconstruct each other's stories— thereby expanding our visions of what we can be and what we can achieve.

해 쨍쨍한 날은 가벼운 옷차림이 주는 자유로움에 행복하다.

쌀쌀한 요즘 날씨가 주는 포근함이 참 좋다. 비가 오는 날은 빗소리의 다양함이 주는 즐거움에 취해 행복하고 세상이 온통 회색 옷을 입은 듯 보여도 아름다운 것들은 여전히 아름답다고 느껴지는 것이 매번 신기하고 감사하다. 눈이 오는 날은 적막함이 주는 평온함에 취해 행복하고 잠시나마 동화속에 살고있는듯한 환상을 모두와 공유할 수 있어 세상이 더욱 아름다워보인다. 필요한 것이 아닌 내가 원하는 것을 생각할 수 있는 여유가 있다는 어마어마한 축복 속에 있음에 그저 감사하고 또 감사할 수 밖에 없다. 힘든 일 가운데에 있어 순간 순간, 또는 그보다는 조금 긴 시간동안 절망스럽다는 감정이 느껴질 때에도 내가 겪는 고난 또한 누군가에게는 꿈 속 환상이라는 생각에 불행을 느낄 틈이 없고 그 고난 속에도 웃게되는 순간들이 있을 때마다 새삼 인간의 정교함에 감동하게된다. 육체적으로, 심리적으로, 정신적으로 어디 한 면도 단순하고 빈틈없는 면이 없는 인간임에 여기 저기 치여 엎어지는 일이 파다해도 맛있는 음식 한 입, 좋은 글 혹은 영화 한 편, 따뜻한 포옹 한 번에 바보마냥 다 잊어버리고 또 행복을 느끼게되는 허술한 존재임에 감사하다. 새로운 곳에 엎어질 때마다 그곳에 대한 이해의 지평을 넓히고 좀 더 넓어진 시각으로 더 많은 사람들과, 더 다양한 방면으로 교감할 수 있게됨에 모든 고난이 감사하다. 허술하게 만들어졌기에 나를 단련해가며 느끼는 성취감을 원동력 삼을 수 있어 감사하고 이 원동력 하나만으로도 삶이 가득 채워지기에 늘 기쁠 때나, 슬플 때나 즐거울 수 있어 감사하다.

근거를 기반한 사실에, 사실만을 다루려는 이성에 목메는 인간에게 가장 큰 맹점이자 행운은 근거가 뚜렷하지 않은 믿음이고, 그 믿음 중 가장 큰 축복은 희망이다. 자신의 미래를 예측하는 능력이 터무니없이 부족함을 경험을 통해 거듭 배우고서도 매 번 오늘보다 내일이, 올해보다 내년이, 지금보다 미래가 더욱 더 좋을거라는 근거없는 생각을 믿어버릴 수 있는 바보같은 존재여서 행복하다. 사람으로 인해 감정이 상하고 상처를 받아도 또 다시 사람을 찾게되는 단순함에, 특히 사람에 있어서는 차가움보다는 따뜻함을 훨씬 많이 기억하게됨이 그저 경이롭고 감사하다. 감당할 수 없을 것처럼 느껴지는 고난 가운데에 있어도 그 시기가 지난 후에 돌아보며 웃을 수 있을 날을 바라보며 미소짓는 인간으로 세상을 살아감에 참 감사하다.