I Learnt Something From A Monk’s Article Today

[iry]

I read an interesting article today in daily newspaper today. The article is written by a monk. (Something similar with “the secrets”)

The article is written in chinese, so I hope the meaning will not loss in my translation.

Long story short, he says that everything (wealth, happiness, problems) is abundance and there is no a set limit of how many of these exists in this world. If you are happy, you do not rob it from other people and others will still have their share of happiness. If you have problems, it does not mean that others will have fewer problems because you took it away. And it won’t help if you give the problems away to others people, it will only cause more frustrations. You will realize that you will be happy because your problems are solved when you help others to solve their problems.

When you help to lighten up others candles, your candles will not become less bright. On the other hand, the brightness in the room become even clearer because more candles have been lightens up.

After I read this article, I wrote a long email to this guy on how I feel about him and hope to seek understanding and gain trust again between us. I feel bad if I make his life “miserable” (if I did).

Although I’m still in doubt whether I did the right thing, (there is still some uneasiness in my heart), but I just follow this “When in doubt, just do it!”

[DarkSociologist]

Hi Iry, nice to hear from you again.

There's a really interesting concept that I've been learning about called the "relevant range." This are the conditions under which your assumptions hold for a certain scenario. For example, you might be able to expect to be able to purchase ice cream bars for $2 each if you purchase between 1 to 100 bars. If you want to purchase 100,000,000 bars, then you are out of the relevant range and your $2 price may not hold.

If you have studied calculus, then this concept would be similar to another concept called "local linearization," where if you zoom into a curve close enough, it actually becomes a line, rather than a curve. It is all a matter of perspective.

These concepts play a point when dealing with wealth, happiness, etc. From an individual perspective, these things seem unbounded. Whether a person has no money or $10,000,000 does not have a major impact on the economy, so it seems that an individual person has unlimited room for growth.

On the other hand, there is only a certain amount of money in the economy. A company cannot continue to grow faster than the economy or it will eventually become the economy itself. Most people and companies do not have to worry about this because they make up such a small portion of the economy.

To illustrate the impact of the role of perspective, let's play a game where if you win you get $1,000,000, but if you lose, you die. The odds of you winning this game is 5,999,999,999:6,000,000,000. The odds are immensely in your favor, so you are pretty much guaranteed to win (the belief that weath is unlimited). Although you are pretty much guaranteed to win, if everyone in the world played this game, then there is probably going to be at least one person who dies (the belief that it wealth is constrained).

So the lesson is that there are theoretical limits, but those limits are so large that they are outside of the the relevant range for individuals. Although the individual does not need to be concerned about these limits, we as a collective need to pay attention to the limits.

[jojo]

Originally Posted by DarkSociologist

So the lesson is that there are theoretical limits, but those limits are so large that they are outside of the the relevant range for individuals. Although the individual does not need to be concerned about these limits, we as a collective need to pay attention to the limits.

DarkSociologist, for some reason, this had a big impact on me this morning. I like the concept and that as individuals the limits are beyond what we need to be concerned about, BUT as a collective, they are important to remember. Kind of like not missing the jungle for the trees; big picture and the details all interelate.

Thanks for that!

[iry]

Hi DarkSociologist,

Nice to see you here again. The concept that you written here is interesting and I try to absorb the meaning of this phrase here “Although the individual does not need to be concerned about these limits, we as a collective need to pay attention to the limits.”

I understand what these words means but I still can’t figure out how these concept would affect the way we lives currently.

Jojo, mind to elaborates how it impacts you?

[DarkSociologist]

Originally Posted by iry

Hi DarkSociologist,

Nice to see you here again. The concept that you written here is interesting and I try to absorb the meaning of this phrase here “Although the individual does not need to be concerned about these limits, we as a collective need to pay attention to the limits.”

I understand what these words means but I still can’t figure out how these concept would affect the way we lives currently.

Jojo, mind to elaborates how it impacts you?

Steve seems to believe in unlimited wealth and value in the world. Although it may seem that a person can attain as much as they want without affecting anyone else, there is actually a limit. He himself may not have a huge impact on the net wealth in the world, but if everyone in the United States instantly gained a $1,000,000, that would mean that everyone in the rest of the world is probably going to experience a significant decrease in wealth.

Although what you do may seem to have a direct positive affect on you and no visible negative effect on others, small things add up. To negate these small effects is to remain in a lower state of consciousness because they do have a large impact as a whole.

[tomjen]

This is an interesting concept, but there
is a problem with it:
Suppose I do some action (a) - this action has a positive effect pos(a) and a negative effect neg(a) such that pos(a) > neg(a). If value can be expressed as the difference between those two (eg. value(a)=pos(a)-neg(a)) then we could matematically prove that this action increase the total value of all actions compared to doing nothing.

Now suppose I where to make and sell a cheap car (eg sell it new for $1000) I would have produced something whose value. However if I where to make billions of these I would have (indirectly) caused considerable polution.

This I guess is the point the theory comes too - but I fails to account for the fact that someone could do find a way to clean up this polution while providing a value to the world (ie a more clean environment). While his action might have a small negative side too, it would be less than his positive, which is less than my negative, or to put it more mathematically: neg(his)<pos(his)<neg(a).

This would still ruin the theory because it is easy to see that we now have more total value than we had at any other time: I made a lot of value to the world, but so did he. While it is true that his actions would not have been needed had I not done mine we would also have lost the benefit of my actions.

Now if we where to continue merly mitigating the original problems, it is true that we would have a max value (after an unlimited time with an unlimited series of actions we would have solved all of the problems and thus the combined value would at most be equal to neg(a)).

However there is nothing to prevent someone from comming up with a solution that gives more benefit than neg(a) - this could be accomplished in several different ways - maybe someone comes up with a cheap fuel that doesnt pollute and use it both on the cars and airplains - thereby generating even more value than neg(a).

You could continue this with and expand it to an infinit series, but for as long as your action has a value > 0, you increase the total value - and afther an infinite amount of actions you have and infinit amount of value rather than atmost neg(a).

[DarkSociologist]

Tomjen,

Yes, my examples were limited to wealth and I did not include examples using the concept of value because value is a little more abstract than the concept of money and therefore can have many exceptions.

For example, you give a person a hug and it gives them value, but how much? How does that value compare to the energy expended on that hug or any other effects? Can we really compare the two values?

If you want to get really quantitative in your analysis of value, then let me tell you about something called Net Present Value (NPV). To calculate the NPV of an action, you take the results of your actions, discount them for time and opportunity costs (because something done today is more valuable to you than something done tomorrow, all other factors held constant), and then you sum them up.

Using this form of analysis, the oportunity cost may make your action, while having a postive value, actually have a negative NPV.

Now, calculations for NPV only really work when you have hard quantitative numbers, such as money, so it may not be applicable in the case of abstract value or utility. Also, there is no real way to directly quantify value, so it is uncertain if pos(a) can ever exceed neg(a). It may be true, but we simply don't know.