Unseen Variables

Data matters. But there’s more to the story.

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The Prince, A Brief History of Time, and Excellent Sheep

If you ever pay a visit to the study at my home, you will probably find few professional books on engineering, technology or AI. I bet you can’t recognise this is a study of someone who studied engineering from undergraduate all the way to a doctorate level. The absolute majority of my collection consists of books on political science, economics of diverse schools and textbooks on theoretical physics. Among all the books, I have to acclaim three books which sculpted my cognition capacity:

The Prince

My first reading of The Prince was back in high school. Of course, in my country, students were strongly discouraged from engaging with such realistic literature; instead, it was compulsory to read “positive” works, such as the sayings of Confucius. Yet, almost instinctively, a thought surfaced in my mind: authoritarian rulers prefer the masses to consume idealistic moral instruction in order to keep them subjugated. When people are indoctrinated with positive ethics like loyalty (to the emperor or the regime) and innocence (again, towards the emperor or the regime), rulers can exploit their labour and wealth at will, without much fear of exposure or mass rebellion. Over the course of millennia, there have been nations that never quite managed to free themselves from totalitarianism and authoritarian rule. When one examines the social cultures of these countries, it is hardly surprising to discover that their people have long believed—almost instinctively—that emperors and rulers ought to govern on account of their supposed goodness and moral virtue. For much of their histories, even when rulers stripped the populace of basic rights and welfare, people remained innately loyal because they were only ever exposed to texts extolling “noble characters”, never to more realistic insights—namely, the necessary conspiracy and tyranny required to keep the masses ensnared.

But reading The Prince is not solely about grasping the mechanics of tyranny and political manoeuvring. After all, the vast majority of us are unlikely to earn our living by forecasting whether Japan will intervene in a looming China–Taiwan conflict, or by determining how a nation ought to respond in the face of such turmoil. As individuals navigating conflicts and disputes in everyday affairs, it is crucial to understand what the sinister looks like—and how to shield ourselves from being sacrificed for someone else’s gain. Those schooled only in tales of “noble men” are easily elbowed out by sharper, more ruthless forces.

As for the “tutorials” in The Prince, most educators in my home country were deeply reluctant to let students read them. Instead, they encouraged young people to focus on “knowledge”—namely, history (carefully curated by the authoritarian regime), mathematics, and physics (chiefly to pass university entrance examinations). Ironically, almost everyone in my homeland has been playing Machiavelli against each other; lying and bribery are rife, all in pursuit of greater privilege for one’s cronies—even at school. Moreover, if knowledge truly equated to power, there should not have been millions of scientists and engineers slaughtered in Robespierre’s France, Hitler’s Third Reich, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Bangladesh back when it was still known as East Pakistan. Clearly, those who orchestrated and executed such purges were neither particularly learned nor cultivated. But they were undoubtedly adept at practising Machiavellianism.

A Brief History of Time

I fell in love with A Brief History of Time at the age of ten—yes, really, I was fascinated by the theories about space and time at that age. Although often portrayed as a book comprised of impossibly abstract theories that only geniuses can decipher, I highly recommend it to any school pupil who harbours an ambition to study theoretical physics after secondary school. Perhaps for the very first time since scientists such as Poincaré, Einstein, Bohr, and others laid the foundations of modern physics, there exists a book that articulates most of its concepts in language and visualisations accessible to laypeople. When students acquire an intuitive grasp of the mathematics and geometries in theoretical physics, they will find themselves better equipped to comprehend the ensuing equations more swiftly later at university and in postgraduate study.

Professor Hawking’s writing in A Brief History of Time ought to prompt educators and policymakers to reflect on a well-worn yet vital question: how can we inspire more students to study STEM and pursue careers in science and engineering? There are numerous factors pushing young people away from STEM disciplines, and one of them is undoubtedly the intimidating task of discerning the meaning behind mathematical equations and the jargon of physics. The prevailing solution advocated by policymakers and educators—from China and India to Europe and North America—is to subject students to more rigorous mathematics and science instruction during secondary education. The assumption is that, having been drilled in maths and science exams, students will be less overwhelmed by complex equations at university. This approach, however, is fundamentally misaligned with how the human brain learns. Most of us are not born prodigies, and as such we need intuition before delving into advanced mathematics. When we fail to grasp what a theory is meant to apply to, or what an equation visually represents, we begin to lose our enthusiasm for studying STEM subjects.

Excellent Sheep

This book came onto my radar in the summer of my bachelor’s graduation. It is a kind of revelation about what “elites” really are nowadays. The sample pool in this book comprises Ivy League students and recent alumni, but the logic it reveals, I believe, can be extrapolated to other prestigious universities across the Anglophone world.

The elite students got into elite universities by piling up medals in sports championships and art competitions—their A*s across all subjects help, too. After university, they naturally receive job offers from Wall Street or the City of London, either in top investment banks or consultancy firms, at salaries within the top 1%. This procedure can be abstracted thus: they were born into elite families who are sufficiently well-off to fund years of sporting or artistic pursuits, which lead to the glamorous CVs needed for elite university admission; after four splendid years at said universities, their alumni networks grant them access to job offers in major banks and consultancy firms. Do they contribute to the development of society? No. On the contrary, the education of elite students is a kind of corruption or embezzlement—the Ivy League institutions receive billions in public funding!

But this kind of corruption does not end there. Since these elite students secure offers from top consultancy firms owing to their prestigious alma mater and accolades in sport and the arts, they go on to advise client companies to filter applicants using the same criteria. Then, we see the vicious situation created by the elites: even an ordinary position at an ordinary company demands a QS Top 100 bachelor’s degree and four internships. As such, if we say that alumni and students from elite universities have led the world into economic decline and political turmoil, we are at least partially correct.

However, are they truly talented in what they have studied and worked on? The author of Excellent Sheep, Professor Deresiewicz, offers the reader a negative answer. Most elite students practise all manner of sport, art, and musical instruments purely to collect medals and prizes for their CVs. Moreover, if we examine the subjects they target at their dream universities, we find only computer science, business, law, and finance on their lists. To some extent, elite students are the most cynical among their peers. Do they enjoy the time spent on sports training and internships? I am afraid the true answer is No.

The three books discussed here have had a staunch impact on me. As always, I hold firmly that reading is meant to uncover what mainstream perceptions have been obscuring—not to make one more innocent, more tolerant.

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