the stroboscobe & my banishment from science

i can't quite remember what really got me on the wrong foot with Mr. Bruce Lee, the physics teacher i mentioned in the last post. i guess i just wasn't a very good student then. and he believed in hard discipline, like the good old Chinese teacher. not that he could get away with physical punishment, even back then, but he did look quite formbidable and scary. and as i was playing my class clown thing there was no way he could let me get away with it. and because i wasn't really that bad of a student, in terms of intellectual curiosity and stuff, i felt i was picked on for silly reasons. so i couldn't really get along with the guy.

there was one incident though, that i remember quite clearly. i was doing my usual thing, joking around with friends instead of doing class assignments (always hated those). and then Mr. Bruce Lee barked my name and asked: so, how do you measure the distance between the peaks of the wavefront!

in a rare moment of sharpness i looked up the blackboard & felt i more or less understood the problem to which i should have been paying attention but hadn't. so if you throw a pebble into a pond you create a ripple. the ripple have a certain spatial frequency. but because it is moving, how do we measure the thing? if you put a ruler next to it to measure it, you need to move along with the wave which is pretty hard.

so i said: er... yes, sir. you can put a ruler next to it, and then take a picture with a camera. then in the picture you can see the static wavefont at a given moment, together with the ruler which gives you the spatial scale, we can....

Mr Bruce Lee said: no! that would take too long for the photograph to be developed. we need a solution to give us an answer now!

well, you can take a Polariod, sir. i must say i felt rather pleased with myself, for not being too slow on that day.

but he said: no! that's *incorrect*! the *correct* answer is that you use a *stroboscobe*. now, who can tell me how to spell the word stroboscobe.....

to those who want to find out WTF is a stroboscobe, you can look it up yourself. it's an ancient, clumsy device that could also do the job. it may do other cool things too, i don't know. but for this specific problem, today i'll just use the camera on the phone.

thinking about it now, i see that my teacher was no real Bruce Lee. this poor guy didn't deserve the right to call people "useless" coz he didn't really understand what it means to be useful and practical ....

***

physics was actually my favorite subject back then. but i lost interests after having been taught by Mr Bruce Lee for 2 years. in hindsight, really, it wasn't his fault. he's a good guy. just an ordinary teacher  - not any more mediocre than i myself am - trying to do what he could. the system itself was kind of dull & rigid. spelling stroboscobe correctly was the correct way to do well in the exam.

but as you see from the HK protests, the kids still turn out alright. they are anything but dull. somehow, people learn to be 'useful' after all, in this city, under essentially the same system. it would be a pity for us to not to try to understand why.

i got a B in physics in the open exam in the end. that was my best grade. i got C in average. D in chemistry - which was why i was so pleased to have gotten a paper published in the journal *Molecular* Psychiatry recently (which wasn't really about anyting molecular, but still).

because i did so badly in the sciences i wasn't allowed to continue to study these subjects in the same school. from there i studied economics and other stuff in a different school for a couple of years, and made it to university. but then because i lacked the science background, i wasn't allowed to study the hard sciences anymore. which was how i got into psychology & philosophy.

ah well. maybe i should thank Mr Bruce Lee after all.

Tucson article / Bourdain / Weiskrantz memorial

it's been a rather emotional couple of days. it was Larry Weiskrantz's memorial. and then my favorite living author Anthony Bourdain died. strangely these have been helpful in putting things into perspective, for something i've struggled with for a while.

people often think of Bourdain as a TV celebrity. i enjoyed watching those shows too. but Kitchen Confidential was something else. in a better world that would have been how i like my book on consciousness to read like. but too bad i'm not as good a writer, nor do i think the world is quite ready to accept a scientist to write in that kind of tone exactly.

but i have to say that sense of mourning paled in comparison when i watched Larry's memorial online (https://livestream.com/oxuni/weiskrantz). unlike my relationship with Bourdain, i knew Larry in person. in the last post i also hinted at some interesting kind of academic lineage. but above all, Larry's work defined my adult life. one could sum up all my work on consciousness to date as nothing more than some footnotes to help people understand what blindsight really means. i only got to have work to do at all thanks to people who continue to miss the point entirely (e.g. this; search for the word "judiciously").

it is in this sentimental context that i respond to this piece on the Tucson conference, which just came out. on a different day maybe i would have been more bothered by how lunatic some of my soundbites appeared, when they are somewhat taken out of context. but i guess these are just the nature of soundbites.

i did write to Dave Chalmers to clarify and had a nice exchange of a few emails. thanks Dave for ever having a heart so big to not take offense.

i may write more to clarify later. but for now... whatever is really all i can come up with. i'm sorry. just as Bourdain was important but not nearly as important as Weiskrantz, whatever happens to the Tucson conference is just not that important to me anymore. if you are bothered or intrigued by the article and wanted to talk more, i can only recommend two things.

first is to go to the other conference which is actually run by a professional society. without doing that one really should not be judging the field, making funding decisions for or about it etc.

second is to watch the stream from Larry's memorial (https://livestream.com/oxuni/weiskrantz), and ponder in that context what they mean when people say the modern study of consciousness was revived / reorganized in the 1990s.

to those who know the history - as a field we have made a Faustian pact of sort, and borrowed something we don't deserve via sheer black magic. we should be aware that we will probably have to repay that debt one day. sometimes debts are better settled sooner rather than later, for the interests may well rake up.

i remember Larry Weiskrantz

it's been a long time since i last posted. it's been some funny few months, more than just busy. i'll explain in another post.

today i have to finish a piece that is almost overdue.

***

when i tell people i went to Oxford for graduate school, and i study consciousness, people often ask if i have worked with Larry Weiskrantz. short answer is: no, not really. he only taught me how to tickle myself.

there is a longer version of the story, but i'm sorry that it is no less corny.

when i was a graduate student in Dick Passingham's lab, it was clear from the beginning that i had no idea what i was doing. with inexplicable kindness, Dick trained me from scratch; i literally didn't even know where the central sulcus was.

my general scientific ignorance, together with being a foreign student, mean that often i found it easier to sit by my office and read, rather than to socialize at work. Larry would call in now and then, check on how i was doing. in the beginning he would just crack some random jokes, perhaps to cheer me up as i probably looked miserable and overworked. i wasn't expecting the retired former head of department to be quite so friendly. at one point he realized my real interest was to study consciousness, he seemed ever the more amused. consciousness? with Dick? and a philosophical bent! really!?! oh how wonderful!

we would bump into each other in the corridor, at talks, at conferences, but most often he would call in - sometimes looking for another colleague who worked in the same office - and casually take a peek at what i've been reading. from there we would often talk a little, especially if i were (caught) reading something 'conceptual'. sometimes these 'tutorials' were short, in the form of a pun  - sometimes at the expense of the relevant author - followed by a jolly smile. but sometimes they could be more elaborate, with interesting historical references too.

once i was reading a paper by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Daniel Wolpert, and Chris Frith, an fMRI study on why we can't tickle ourselves. with some pride Larry told me he had done a similar behavioral study decades earlier, and one of the authors was my advisor Dick's wife, Clare! what a small world!

i told him i'd read the paper and come back to chat with him more about it. but he said unfortunately he had to have back surgery and may not see me for a while. before goodbye, he said: maybe next time i see you i can tickle myself~

i did see Larry in a few weeks, and the surgery went ok. i was glad to be able to hear more stories.

but he never told me that in this small world, Dick was also once a postdoc in his lab. had he done so, maybe i would not have been so completely puzzled when Dick told me i could study whatever topic i wanted, when i stayed on to do a postdoc with him after my PhD. i asked Dick: really? i can study visual awareness in your lab even though you told me many times you have little interest in perception? but why?

i have never gotten an answer to that, just as Larry never told me why he had a young postdoc working on action and the prefrontal cortex in his lab, funded by a grant on visual awareness.

they say there are two kinds of scientists: the creative and the careful. Larry was certainly well known for being enormously imaginative, but i think it would be wrong to think he didn't value careful experimentation just as much. you can tell by how he chose his colleagues and collaborators. just as he was quick to crack irreverent jokes, i vividly remembered how stern he looked, with disapproval, when i once described someone else's decade-old study with the details mixed up. from Larry, i've learned that you can be funny and serious at the same time. to do good science, you have to be.

another time we were discussing with another professor how long it may take for one to read a doctoral thesis, and Larry said he would spend at least one day just to check all the references. i don't think that was a joke.

the power of puns and jokes is, they can stay on even if people don't fully get what they mean. i think Larry understood that. what does blindsight really mean? everyone says they know what is it, but do they truly get how deep the implications are? i guess it is our jobs to see to it they do. Larry had done enough for us.

every now and then, as i read papers i thought of how serious Larry was about getting things exactly right, especially regarding knowing the literature. i would recall his stern look of disapproval and feel we all still have a lot of shaping up to do. but as though he would also remind us: don't forget to tickle yourself now and then to see what happens too!

thank you Larry, those puns meant a lot to an awkward graduate student, once trying too hard to impress