Unknown unknowns.

I absolutely love the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It basically explains everyone's life. Here, an excerpt from a recent Times editorial:

The notion of unknown unknowns really does resonate with me, and perhaps the idea would resonate with other people if they knew that it originally came from the world of design and engineering rather than Rumsfeld.

If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance.

To me, unknown unknowns enter at two different levels. The first is at the level of risk and problem. Many tasks in life contain uncertainties that are known — so-called “known unknowns.” These are potential problems for any venture, but they at least are problems that people can be vigilant about, prepare for, take insurance on, and often head off at the pass. Unknown unknown risks, on the other hand, are problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to.

Unknown unknowns also exist at the level of solutions. People often come up with answers to problems that are o.k., but are not the best solutions. The reason they don’t come up with those solutions is that they are simply not aware of them. Stefan Fatsis, in his book “Word Freak,” talks about this when comparing everyday Scrabble players to professional ones. As he says: “In a way, the living-room player is lucky . . . He has no idea how miserably he fails with almost every turn, how many possible words or optimal plays slip by unnoticed. The idea of Scrabble greatness doesn’t exist for him.” (p. 128)

Unknown unknown solutions haunt the mediocre without their knowledge. The average detective does not realize the clues he or she neglects. The mediocre doctor is not aware of the diagnostic possibilities or treatments never considered. The run-of-the-mill lawyer fails to recognize the winning legal argument that is out there. People fail to reach their potential as professionals, lovers, parents and people simply because they are not aware of the possible. This is one of the reasons I often urge my student advisees to find out who the smart professors are, and to get themselves in front of those professors so they can see what smart looks like.

So, yes, the idea resonates. I would write more, and there’s probably a lot more to write about, but I haven’t a clue what that all is.

Home.

Home after being flung halfway around the world.

It seems as though you can't handle the fact that people exist independently of you, that other people are not doing exactly what you're doing right now.

. . . is what a friend said to me on the phone in the middle of the night. It's such a typical conversation for us to have, about exactly what we've always discussed, and even the way we hung up the phone (two and a half hours later) was predictable. Also the way he mentioned the predictability of everything, and the way that I felt the slightest hint of nostalgia before I heard the line go silent.

The same with my house, my street, my family -- though my brother is taller, tanner, better at piano than I remember. Everything is achingly, preciously how I imagined it would be.

You drive along the same highway and take the same exit for half your life, and everything on the way home (the bookstores, the restaurants, the gas stations and trees and lampposts) all start to mean something extremely important. The people, too, the ones fate has thrown you together with -- they all matter, they all mean everything you know about your life.

The economist's nightmare: endowment effect -- the over-attribution of value to something with only typical worth. Everything about coming home shows that we are all victims of it, and maybe someone rational is cringing somewhere at the thought of such a blunder.

But maybe the entirety of existence is just one endowment effect. After all, I was endowed with this subjective experience. Which brings me back to the quote above: How could I ever be okay with other people living their lives when I know that my life is just another moment happening among millions of moments right now, that my home is no more special than anyone else's? My friend was exasperated with me, but I maintain that it's a question worth fretting over.

Here is a problem.

Still have not written that goshdarn column. Four weeks offline untaught me how to deal with the internet, and my mindless-surfing tolerance is much higher than it should be. Result: will maybe push my deadline (again) and also have five or six really important personal emails sitting in my inbox to which I've already gone weeks without responding. I have always been terrible at keeping in touch, and every break just reconfirms this flaw. Why is it that my endless devotion to/affection for my friends never translates into long, thoughtful letters/emails? Why don't I ever call my parents? Why don't I ever expend the appropriate amount of energy on anyone or anything? I have no thoughtful thoughts right now -- everything about me feels mundane, sluggish, unproductive. Meanwhile the internet is full of interesting morsels of pseudointellectual babble, and I have little self-control.

Random city night #20something.

To stave off impending column-writing doom, a recap of tonight's events:

1) Ate a corn creamsicle after dinner: strange. Maybe being adventurous doesn't always pay off.
2) Met some of our students at the gate of the university. Dylan, who herded yaks by himself from the ages of seven to nine, reports being excited to "socialize."
3) Cab to Tibetan bar with students. Feigning proficiency at Chinese -- difficult to keep up.
4) Snow beer and toasting. Rounds and rounds of Psychologist.
6) Suggestive homoerotic long-sleeved dance performed by Tibetan guy with perpetual expression of orgasm (?!)
7) Belly-dancing performance (obviously not Tibetan, but).
8) Fifteen billion singers singing the same song ad infinitum/nauseum.
9) Packets of chicken feet flying everywhere (not worth explaining).
10) Immense boredom interrupted by random men toasting Mikael for being such a novelty around these parts.
11) Terrible worthless conversations back at the hostel.
12) Everyone is asleep but me + the other resident night owl.

Now my head is still full of the verb tenses we taught in class today and my hair smells like tobacco smoke and I am not finished with my duties. Summer reminds me that irresponsibility is always an option.

Not Tibet.

Not Tibet, but Chengdu. Tibet ended interestingly. I was guaranteed good stories out of this trip, but this was probably more than I bargained for.

China is always something familiarly foreign. No one I meet understands me when I say that I'm American.

Our Tibetan students amaze, inspire, and terrify me. Their diligence paralyzes me. They write down everything we say and memorize it overnight, and then ask for more the next day.

Our bathroom continues to smell worse and worse.

I grow increasingly fond of hot pot, milk tea, dripping ice pops snatched from a street vendor's freezer for less than one RMB.

Also have grown intensely fond of Tao Lin, whose poetry is among the pile of books we brought to China and includes sentiments like:

my favorite emotions include 'brief calmness
in good weather' and 'i am the only person alive'
without constant reassurance i feel terribly lonely and insane
i have moved beyond meaninglessness, far beyond meaninglessness
to something positive, life-affirming, and potentially best-selling
i have channeled most of my anger into creating and sustaining an 'angry face'
i have picked up a medium-size glass of coffee
and used it in the onventional way
because i am conventional in all situations, i'll be right back

It makes more sense at 2 a.m.

Strangest thought of all: I'll be home in two weeks, gone again in three. The future never seems close enough or far enough away.