Hsin-Hao Yu's Personal Blog

As a PhD student, I took a class in animal behaviour. I didn’t work very hard and have forgotten most of it. However, since I became a father, I have been thinking more about this class. One of the papers I read was the classic “The social function of the intellect” by Nicholas Humphrey, first published in 1976. The paper is packed with insightful analogies. For example, Humphrey offered an interesting interpretation of Robinson Crusoe. According to him, Crusoe’s life on the island was a relatively simple and easy one, which he managed without too much trouble. His life only became challenging after the arrival of Friday. What he meant was that it’s the complexity of society, rather than the challenges of survival that drive the evolution of intelligence. I can see this in my daughter. Her life before 4yo was quite easy and carefree. When she started to have friends and social relationships in the childcare, that’s when things became complicated.

It’s interesting that two favourite writers of mine had worked for big tech companies. Kurt Vonnegut worked for the PR department of GE. His portrayal of the genius scientist in Cat’s Cradle was based on his interview of Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir of GE Research. Thomas Pynchon was a tech writer for Boeing. Yoyodyne, a defence contractor in The Crying of Lot 49, is a caricature of Boeing. Dec 4th 2020 update: I also learned that William Gaddis worked for Kodak and IBM.

On university corridors, you inevitably see old equipments lying around. But which department threw out an entire freaking VAX? Those must be the famous “blinkenlights”…

This is the famous world map by the 15th century monk Fra Mauro. I saw it in Museo Galileo in Florence. Unfortunately it was a replica. The real thing is in Venice. I found it very difficult to recognize landmarks on the map because the orientation is very different from our modern convention. North is down. South is up. Here’s a puzzle: What’s this? Anglia is England. Scotia is Scotland. What is Hibernia? My teenage obsession with Umber Eco finally pays off. It’s Ireland. In The Name of the Rose, there is a giant library with rooms organized as a word maze. After some brilliant detective work, the main character William was able to solve the maze and drew a map. Each room is decorated with a letter. The cluster of rooms in the lower-left corner, for example, spells out HIBERNIA, because it is where books by Irish authors are shelved. In one of the rooms, William read a passage from an Irish poet: Hoc spumans mundanas obvallat Pelagus oras… and compared the rhythm to the sounds of the ocean waves.