おは異様ございます！
先週はいそがしかった。にほんごのしけんがあるし、アイスホッケーのれんしゅうがにかいおそいあるし、しあいがあるし。
Translation: Last week was busy. I had a Japanese test and 2 late night hockey practices, and a game.
My sentence structures in Japanese are getting better, but I am not to the point where I can be writing paragraphs or logs. The only thing I really learned is more Japanese words. I had to cram and study over 300 new vocabulary words for the test last week, which is much more than I needed to do. The test went pretty well, only a few questions tripped me up, but for the most part I understood the test. I do not know the results, but I am confident that I passed. I get the results later today, so I will inform you next week.
Late night hockey practices and games are brutal. It was a struggle to do it when the rink was 10 minutes away in La Jolla, but even greater struggle when the rink is 2 hours away. Games was a 5-0 Loss, I am still point per game, but that was a tough game. The other team could actually skate, pass, knew their systems well, and could play. I would go as far to say comparable to a AA team. The captain or "CEO" as I like to refer to him as, only runs two lines, yet dresses a full 20 man roster. The other team had maybe less than 14 skaters and whooped us 🤣. Having 6+ healthy scratches is insane and absurd to me and I genuinely feel bad for the players who do not get to play when they are much more committed than me. The way Japanese hockey is played is so different and foreign to me. There's no end of game handshakes, only bows, and there is no sense of physically or even team spirit of sticking up for one another. One of my teammates got injured from a dirty hit from behind, and I went after the player trying to fight him, and none of my other teammates backed me up. That incident alone made me realize how we are not a team, but a black company instead. I only briefly interacted with my injured teammate, yet I willingly stood up for him. That is just an unspoken rule. When I realized the game was not going to go our way, I started playing more aggressive in hopes of getting our team some power-play action, but the "coach" on the bench lectured me for doing that. I only seen that "coach" like maybe 1 or 2 two times, never at practice, and he has the audacity to tell me I am being selfish and disrespecting for trying to draw penalties. If I could speak Japanese better, I would have chewed him out, but I just said, "すみませんでした、わかりました," which translates to "I am sorry, I understand." The respect to seniority and authority is at the max in Japan and I strongly disagree with it. I am not with the senpai or kohai hierarchy, I am just that guy. I thought that was a bar, it may as well be, but that tradition is more present than ever. Japanese people or my teammates just let this ice time and unethical practice time injustice happen to them without doing anything. I wonder if I they have Japanese copies of George Orwell's Animal Farm or 1984, those books can inspire them. I kid you not the CEO keeps track of everyone, constantly texting, and stalking everyone's whereabouts. I talk and complain too much about hockey when I am washed and retired, so let us move on from that.
Piggybacking off of my Orwell mentions, my Japanese popular culture professor gave me an 8/10 on my paper, where I compared Animal Farm with the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate riots because I forgot to include citations. I was disappointed with the score, but he did acknowledge my creativity. At least, the professor knows I got game and can pull stuff out of my bag. It is funny how 10th grade Tristan Lee in English 2A class would be fuming over this score, but now I just forget and move on. I have no clue and hope this mindset can stick with me when I get back to UCSD because every mistake or failed felt like an indictment on myself then. It is such a strange and bizarre feeling because I am sure plenty of my Japanese peers feel the same way in the courses I think are free and easy. I really wonder why do let numbers, metrics, and superficial things equate our worth. Everybody is guilty of it, but ashamed to admit it. Aside from my little spiel, I am loving my Japanese popular culture class. Most of my suite-mates are in it and the assignments are fun and interesting. I got one due tomorrow on the impact of baseball in Japan. This was one of the first time, I rushed to do a writing assignment, but I ultimately stopped 30 minutes in not due to writer's block, but because I found myself re-watching the 2023 World Baseball Classic Ohtani-Trout strikeout, then I eventually went down the rabbit hole of peak sports moments. You ever just click one highlight video from any sport then end up somehow re-watching MVP D-Rose highlights again? That has been my routine for a long time. I can never get tired of watching sports, talking, or thinking about sports. They taught me everything I need to know about life and brings people together. I should probably include that in my paper.
Moving along now, I am starting to do work for my lab. Right now, I or Claude and I are just doing simple exploratory data analysis (EDA) on eye pupil movements. My lab partner and I were the controlled group of an experiment where we are supposed to hold a conversation while wearing eye-tracking glasses. The hypothesis is you can diagnose someone has schizophrenia just based on the movement of their eyes, and where they are fixated on in a particular environment. Do not take my word for it, but that is how I describe the project in my own words. Wearing the glasses on was actually so cool. Here's a photo below:
I should have taken a better photo, but you get the point. Apparently the glasses cost $50K USD, which is insane, and I can not believe I was allowed to use it. I am not the most technical, smartest, or even careful guy, yet I somehow managed to get into a lab and participate in their research. Maybe it is just some hidden talent I have to get in places I am not supposed to be in or I am just very lucky. I think I will take the latter option. My lab professor a really nice and interesting person who does a lot for everyone regardless of the type of student. He is pretty much living the dream of being a tenured professor, living in Japan, getting to travel the world for conferences, and getting to run experiments for his research on his own time. However, the way he describes the procedures he uses when working animals, I find a little crazy. I do not think I am allowed to share that information, but that is nothing compared to my Fundamentals of AI professor's research.
His research or one of his papers deals with using conversational robots to deliver therapy to psychiatric patients and people with mental disorders. When I read the title of the paper, Robot-Mediated Multi-Party Conversation Aimed at Affect Improvement for Psychiatric Patients, it immediately triggered a Blade Runner 2049 or Her alarm in my head. If you read the paper, the intention of the study is for rehabilitating already psychiatric patients into reintegrating into society, and not for the protagonists of those two peak movies. Although that was the goal of the study, I believe once you open that door for robots to be therapists, it will ultimately lead down the slippery slope toward ultimate isolation. The term "psychiatric patients" seems so derogatory to me as they are the ones who actually acknowledge they need help. The truth is everyone is struggling, some just hide it better than others, and are able to tread in their own seas of their misery, but that does not mean we should drown the ones that can not stay afloat. The fact that we stooped down to where we are doing studies to see if we need AI and robots to help with our mental health reinforces how society has regressed and big the stigma surrounding mental health is? Whatever happened to late night podcasts in hotel rooms or sitting by the campfire with your closest mates? Those experiences have meant more to me and my well-being than an AI generated response could ever could. Who am I or you to say this too? I used and use AI for my mental health problems, my own therapist at times, and you probably did too. As humans we are perfectly imperfect. The study reminded me of this park bench scene in Good Will Hunting (watch if haven't, absolute peak):
Off-topic, but slightly related Regular Show: The Lost Tapes is peak, and I am so glad they referenced this movie.
Imitation is all an AI can do. After watching Blade Runner 2049 and Her, I do not wish to live in that reality, but in a sense we or I am living in it right now. Japan takes AI, robotics, and technology in general to the extreme. After living two months and a half in Japan, I can see why the birthrates are so low and the loneliness epidemic is at an all-time high. Waiters are replaced by kiosks, and the convenience stores feel more like an extension of a vending machine than a neighborhood New York bodega. You can easily go an entire day here traversing the city, buying meals, and navigating train stations without making eye contact or exchanging a single word with another human being. I have done it before when my friends had conflicting schedules and while it is efficient, it is completely sterile and lifeless. Oftentimes I would be looking over my shoulder or making comments when I know no one is around me, but as humans we long for connection. When every day and first-world problems are wiped away, the muscle memory for casual human interaction and small talk just atrophies and goes away with it. We isolate ourselves in these perfectly curated, frictionless digital bubbles because dealing with a machine is predictable, whereas interacting with a human is messy and carries the risk of rejection.
So going back to the study, I presented these questions to my professor:
Is the main goal to build autonomous AI companions that substitute for real relationships, or is it to create a temporary social tool that bridges people back together?
Some deep questions and thoughts, but this log is a result out of one of those 1 AM hits of sudden motivation when you realize you have not done much during the day, so you become productive at night to make up for it 🤣.
There is a huge typhoon in Japan right now and for the past two days, I just binged the entire Shogun series. That was probably one of the best dramas I have ever see, I can not believe I held off on watching it for so long. I only watched it because after I went to Nagoya two days ago, and saw the castle and Tokugawa Art Museum. Also met up with the Egans, if you are reading this, shout out Atom and Momo. So crazy I met up with my old teammate and photographer in Nagoya of all places when we live 40 minutes away from each other with good traffic 😂. Life is laughably beautiful sometimes. I do not even know what that means, but I just thought it sounded wise and thoughtful
The swords and armor at Tokugawa Art Museum were sick:
If I ever get that generational wealth, I will be like Dana White, buying swords and samurai armor to decorate the office. People comment his office decor makes him look like a "manchild," but that is another one of those terms that rubs me the wrong way because as Theo Von said, "All we ever are are just kids getting older." I would include the clip and go on a further tangent, but it is late, 4 AM, and I am trying to watch Game 3 NBA Finals in the morning. Maybe I should ask my Neuroscience lab professor if he does any research on late night motivation, sleep deprivation, and unproductive days 😂. That's it for now. Stay safe and Godspeed!
See you next week! じゃね！