Dan Pink’s section on emphathy was extremely interesting.  I was shocked to hear that contagious yawners score higher on empathy tests.  That made me think of a friend I had in high school.  If you scratched yourself in front of her then she got an itch in the same place as yours.  If you sneezed, then she sneezed.  She couldn’t even watch someone get tickled or she’d start to laugh.  She was always the person we would go to when we had problems in our life because she was the best person to talk to.  I know see the relationship between her ability to help and her weird trait of feeling feeling what is happening to other people.

I took the “Spot A Fake Smile” test on BBC’s site.  I rated my ability to spot a fake smile pretty highly.  When the test began I trained my eyes on the subjects eyes and pressed play.  My gaze never left their eyes.  I felt pretty confident through the whole test and I even realized I got one wrong immediately after submitting my answer.  I got the results back and found out that I had answered correctly on 17 of the 20 smiles.  Pretty fly for a white guy.  So my message is this: Don’t fake smile at me, betch.

Spot the Fake Smile Results You got 13 out of 20 correct Look at the labels below each image to see which smiles are genuine and which are fake. Ticks and crosses show which smiles you got right and wrong. Click on the image if you want to see the smile again. (Above courtesy of http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index_22.shtml? gender=&age=&occupation=&country=&education=&outlook=2&confidence=5&programme=&Q01=fake&Q02= fake&Q03=genuine&Q04=genuine&Q04=genuine&Q06=genuine&Q07=fake&Q08=fake&Q09=fake&Q10=genuine& Q11=fake&Q12=fake&Q13=fake&Q14=fake&Q15=fake&Q16=genuine&Q17=fake&Q18=fake&Q19=genuine&Q20= fake&part=eyebrows) So, I took the “Spot the Fake Smile Test” from BBC and discovered that I am not nearly as inept at pointing out fake smiles as I originally thought. I attempted to use the technique explained by Daniel Pink in his section entitled “Empathy” where he describes a fake smile with higher eyebrows than a real smile in which the eyebrows are lowered by an involuntary muscle. I found it very hard to tell whether the eyebrows were being lowered or not while the person was smiling. I guess I need to work harder at determining how people feel because after all, part of empathy is being able to read a person’s facial expressions. I believe that it would take a lot of practice focused directly on people’s facial expressions in order to master this technique. Until then, I will have to continue to worry whether someone is genuinely smiling at me or if it is a fake smile that I cannot read. After taking this test, I do not feel as confident with my abilities to determine people’s emotions around me. I used to think I was pretty good at it to be honest. Now I wonder how many people’s emotions I have truly misread based on their facial expressions. Only further experience in life will allow me to better my skills at reading people’s feelings and being more empathetic. For now, I will continue to do the best I can, but hopefully in the future my skills will improve.

After reading Daniel Pink’s Empathy section in his book, “A Whole New Mind” he assigned us another task. One of the options was to take a test. It just so happens that I took an empathy test in psychology earlier this semester.

The test was a series of questions, where we answered with a number on a scale from 1 to 7, based on how strongly I personally feel on the question. As I answered the questions, I noticed I wasn’t answering with any 6′s or 7′s, but rather with a lot of 1′s and 2′s.

Come to find out, according to that test, I’m not very empathetic. Questions such as, “Do other people’s moods affect you?” or “Do you find it unpleasant to have a lot of things going on around you?” With some of these questions, I can see it being advantageous to answer strongly (a 6 or 7). But many of these, I feel it is better to have a lower response.

I feel it is good when things don’t affect your routine. I feel it is good that I don’t startle easy. And I feel it is often good that other people’s moods don’t affect me.

In some cases, I can see where an empathetic mindset would be a good thing, but where a more unempathetic mindset would be as advantageous and, in some cases, better.

Before empathy, let me tell a story first: Currently I am working on writing a script that will let my computer to play a game. The mechanics are simple: look for a coffee cup, if it exists then click on a building. How long do we identify a coffee cup? Probably in 2 seconds. For a computer, I have to specify the correct coordinates on the screen, the color of that coffee cup that that location, then let the computer to compare those two. Now I wonder, how can I find the coffee cup so fast but a computer can’t? It’s hard to explain since it happens in less than 1 second, but: First I “learn” the sample I am looking for. It color, size, location. The next time I look at it, I will look at a broader scale, determine if that fits coffee cup in my memory. Thanks to this exercise, I had an idea of “teaching” computer empathy: what if I start from the smallest thing possible? Letting the computer auto-program himself to fit new situations? Not only could to play the game, but it will also succeed on logical thinking process. Simply put your way of thinking into digitalized orders.

Anyway, back to the topic. This book, A Whole New Mind, is nothing but a “How to successfully sell your products to people who don’t need those crap” book. It’s not for an engineer, because their job is to design the product; it’s not for CEOs, because they only need to make the decisions and keep other leaders work for them; it is rather to tell you, AS PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE RECEIVING HIGHER EDUCATION, WE SHOULD TURN OURSELVES INTO SALESMEN TO MAKE THEM WORK FOR US, THEN SELL THE CRAP THEY MADE TO THEM. I won’t question the purpose right now, but seriously. This is an engineer college. 80% of the students will become engineers of some kind. YOU ARE TELLING THEM, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK TO SELL YOUR STUFF? Have you ever seen an aerospace engineer from NASA to sell a company their airships? IT’S NOT THEIR JOB. Its’ like back to the question of, WHY DOES A STORY WRITER NEED TO LEARN CALCULUS? THEY WON’T NEED THAT SKILL EVER IN HIS/HER LIFE AFTER THEY FINISHED THE COURSE. What’s the point of teaching engineers to sell their stuff? Make them suffer? They should be more focused on SOLVING THE PROBLEM, not FINDING CUSTUMERS’ PROBLEMS FOR THEM. Engineers should write technical documents, fully explain the problem, how you will solve it, the mechanics, algorithms, prototype, test output, and end product analysis. Note that the key is HOW YOU WILL SOLVE IT. If you give me the full technical document of Windows, MacOS, or whatever large programs you can ever think of, within several days of typing codes I can reproduce those for you, but THAT’S NOT AN ENGINEER’S JOB. Rather, if you stated “Umm. Global warming is a problem. How should we solve that?” Then how to solve that it’s an engineer’s job. YOU DON’T GO TO 4 YEARS OF SCHOOL JUST TO LEARN YOU CAN GOOGLE “HOW TO SHOW DESKTOP IN JAVA,” but rather “HOW DO I CHANGE DESKTOP WALLPAPER IN JAVA,” then you will list the mechanics of doing it. We are, at least I am, learning the process of solving problems. The process of invention is a technical paper. If you don’t know what those papers contain, let me tell you once again: analyzing problem, how to solve the problem, your prototype, your mechanics, test output, and end product analysis. DO I CARE WHO IS USING MY PRODUCT? THAT’S NOT WHAT I SHOULD WORRY ABOUT. IF MY PRODUCT CORRECTLY SOLVED THE PROBLEM I/OTHERS STATED, THEN I AM A SUCCESSFUL ENGINEER. SELLING THEM? TALK TO MARKET PROMOTORS. WHY SHOULD I CONVINCE YOU TO USE MY STUFF? IF YOU NEED IT, THEN YOU PROBABLY WANT TO USE IT. ELSE, SALESMEN WILL CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU NEED IT. THAT’S THE CYCLE OF BUSINESS. EVERYONE HAS HIS/HER JOB. A RENAISSANCE MAN? YES THERE ARE, BUT A FEW. WHY FORD INVENTED THE ASSEMBLY LINE? BECAUSE HE SENSED NOT EVERYONE CAN DO ALL THINGS TOGETHER. HOW DID HE SOLVE THIS? MAKE EVERYONE FOCUS ON HIS/HER JOB!

People buy why you do, not what you did? What a pity. If I am the customer, I will call myself stupid. What’s the point of people buying stuff that they don’t need? It’s just a way salesmen used to fool people to buy craps they failed to find a market on. Again, I don’t care what you said, I won’t buy a laptop without a touchpad/right click button BECAUSE I NEED THE RIGHT CLICK BUTTON, I NEED A CONVIENT WAY TO USE MY LAPTOP.

I’m very excited to talk about codes I just wrote last week; but 80% of people will see them as crap. A PhD just talked about his robotic running/walking experiment during my health class, all the moving graphs, force/wave lines, etc. I heard him for 50 minutes and still didn’t understand what he was talking about. Things have different values in different people’s eyes; if we are in Japan then my project will probably not be ignored like this. What’s wrong if your problem is small? Bell Gates did not make Windows in one night; your Steve Jobs did not just think overnight and decide, oh, we probably should make a phone where people can program stuff on it, even though android is just like this, but we are still doing it to steal their market. Also, make them expensive as HELL so people can buy them and think that they are MORE ADVANCED/INTELLEGENT PEOPLE. DOS once was just a data organizer; Mac was an advanced painting tool 30 years ago. They improved as time moved on, because people found out more and more problems, and then the engineers were making their products better and better.

WHY SHOULD PEOPLE HIRE ME, NOT SOME SMART GUY FROM CHINA OR INDIA? BY LEARNING RIGHT-BRAIN THINKING SKILLS? YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE DUMMER THAN CHINESE OR INDIANS, SO YOU HAVE TO LEARN THOSE OTHER SKILLS AND　HOPE THAT THEY DON’T HAVE? No. Face the truth, close combat with them in problem solving. If I can solve this problem, they can’t, I get hired. That’s why I go to college, to learn the skills. I once went to an anime company, mainly for my own interest, but I learned some company management skills there: they stated “company needs you to solve problems. If company doesn’t have any problems, then you are fired.” If you are the problem solving guy, what in the world will get you fired if the company still needs you to solve problems? DON’T COMPLAIN PEOPLE ARE TAKING YOUR JOBS. THEY STUDIED HARDER THAN YOU. THEY PUT IN MORE WORK. WHERE ARE YOU WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO STUDY? THEN LOSING YOUR JOB IS A DIRECT RESULT.

Don’t use humanity as a reason that this class completely ignores the value of engineering: if that so, then engineers do not need such humanity. Teach this to MBA, Harvard, Yale or Cornel kids to make them CEOs, hire us, and then use us to make big money.

BTW: wordpress failed when I have to bookmark the page of making new post.

Have you ever been in a bad situation or in hard times? If so then you know how much it means to have someone help you without even being asked. I have been on both sides. I know how good it feels to be helped and how good it feels to help someone.

While reading the chapter titled Empathy in Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind I came across an activity called volunteer. The last paragraph of the activity description states:

“Seeing another Human in distress—and thinking, “there but for the grace of God go I”—will hone you powers of empathy. But that’s not the reason to do this, of course. It’s an ancillary benefit of something more valuable: helping another human being.”

When I think of volunteering, I think of anytime a person gives up any of their time in order to help someone else in need or, as said in the book, someone in distress. As a part of the Volunteer activity I would like to share two stories. One of when someone volunteered their time to help me and another when I volunteered my time to help someone.

Story 1- Someone helped me.

I was visiting the cemetery where my grandfather is buried. The site where he is buried is not really in a well traveled area as it is located on a dirt road kind of in the middle of nowhere. Long story short, I attempted to turn my truck around on what I thought was solid dry ground. This resulted in me with truck stuck in the mud with no one around and dark quickly approaching. I heard someone coming down the road (luckily) and went to the road to wave them down. I told the very nice gentleman the problem I had and he without hesitation told me that he would be back with his truck to get me unstuck. Ten minutes later I was unstuck and much happier. I offered to give him some money for his efforts and he replied that God had blessed me today and that I could return the favor by helping next time I saw someone in need.

Story 2- I helped someone

About a half a year after story one I got a significant opportunity to help someone. The gist of this story is I gave a guy with a dead car battery a jump.

Story 2 isn’t quite as cool as story 1 but it helped me understand how good it is to help people in need. Story 1 definitely made me a believer in helping people in need because you never know when you will be the one in need.

Whenever I see someone in “distress” I now try to help them as best I can because it’s a great thing to do. It will brighten your days and especially theirs.

I had an opportunity to volunteer during the earthquake area after Wenchuan earthquake happened. I did not participate in psychological assistance, but I saw many people lose their parents or children. I saw people who were under severe psychological harm. They couldn’t forget the moment that the world collapsed in front of them. What I saw was that they still could not recover from losing their relatives.

During the volunteer process, I saw how close death was. I was deeply touched when I saw a girl who kept calm, and continued to save other people’s lives, even after  her parents  died. At that time, I thought what would it look like if to lose my parent. I felt really sad, and I knew that it would be a nightmare for me to face it. So I knew the pain this girl was going through, and how strong of a heart this young girl had.

After stay several days in this area, indeed, I could feel that I was not a person who was just using  knowledge to help people. I was not outside this disaster, instead, I felt like I had also experienced this disaster with those injured people. I knew it would be tough to go through the subsequent period, but the people had move on because they knew life would keep moving forward. So I tried my best, to do whatever I could to help them. I believe everyone in that area, the volunteers and the victims, had the same goals and emotions.

The people of China, and all those who came to help did not have sympathy, we had empathy. We all experienced the same pain as everyone else did, and we tried to overcome this pain together.

After reading the chapter on Empathy, I chose to carry out the first exercise which is to do a series of test. I have done the two tests; one is Empathy Quotient and Mind in the Eyes Test. I scored 48 out of 80 for the Empathy Quotient test which was what most women got. Furthermore, I got a score of 26 for the Mind in the Eyes Test which was also average.

The Mind in the Eyes Test is very interesting. It reminds me of one famous Chinese saying, “The eyes are the window of the mind.” Sometimes, I could get confused with the emotions the eyes trying to convey. Honestly, I do not think the answers should be just one kind of emotions. In many real-life situations, one person could have many emotions at the same time. Those emotions would be shown in one’s eyes. However, I understand that the test is just a tool to get a rough view of your empathy stand.

I want to talk more about the community services which I have done in Singapore. I lived in a small town with the ordinary education. The main purpose of schools in my hometown is to help you to get better grades and promote you to a higher education. They do not really care about the community services. Only after I went to Singapore, I got a touch on community services. I really loved all kinds of community services I could be involved in. For example, I have done the recycling project which was to raise money for the poor by collecting and selling old newspapers.

Moreover, some of my friends participated in the teaching programme. They went to some place in Africa to teach the local kids English. It was such a pity that I could not join the programme due to time constraints. I wonder if GT offers this kind of opportunity for us to go abroad to help those kids in developing countries. Moreover, I have planned to teach in a poor village in China after my graduation from GT.

Thanksgiving is coming. Let’s thank all people who contribute to our lovely and peaceful world. Let’s do our best to let the world filled with love!

Click to view slideshow.

Images by Weiting