Louie confessed her feelings to Pamela in Episode 6, Season 2. I really liked the lines.
Louie: Pamela, I'm in love with you.
Pamela: Uh God...
Louie: Yeah it's that bad. You are so beautiful to me...
Pamela: Oh, oy, ew.
Louie: Shut up! Let me tell you, let me. Every time I look at your face, or even remember it, it wrecks me. And the way you are with me, and you are just fun, and, and you shit all over me, and you make fun of me, and you are real. I don't have enough time in any day to think about you enough. I feel like i am gonna live a thousand years, coz that's how long it's gonna take me to have one thought about you, which is... I am crazy about you, Pamela. I don't wanna be with anybody else.
Pamela: Louie...
Louie: I don't. I REALLY don't. I don't think about women any more, I think about you. I had a dream the other night, that you and I were on a train.We were on this train and you were holding my hand. That's the whole dream. You were holding my hand, and I felt you holding my hand. I woke up and I couldn't believe it wasn't real. I'm sick in love with you Pamela. It's like a condition. It's like Polio. i feel like I'm gonna die if I can't be with you. And i can't be with you, so I'm gonna die. And i don't care, coz I was brought into existence to know you, and that's enough. The idea that you would want me back, it's like greedy. [Sigh] I'm doing a bad job at this.
Pamela: No you are not.
Louie: I'm not?
Pamela: No. It's a good job. It's a jewel. Good job.
Louie and Pamela are just two normal single parents. They both went through divorce and had kids to raise. What's happening between them is not about sex or possession or any cliche like that. It's really just about one man meeting another woman, who somehow tamed the the lurking monstrous solitude within him. And that's what makes the lines so touching, because it gives us a little comfort, a flash of human warmth that we are all desperate for (in my opinion).
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
About Commitment and Love
In a romantic relationship, for instance, marriage, why is commitment considered a virtue? Or, why do we give it such priority? I cannot truly understand. For me, commitment always feels artificial. It's not something that is naturally in us; it's entirely man-made. The structure of human family units changes as we evolve. One female used to be able to have different male partners, and one male used to be able to have different female partners, just like today the social norm is monogamy. I feel the praise of commitment is just another subtle manifestation of human's possessive nature and fear of loneliness, which are merely our biological, and neutral, instincts that proved to be useful for populating. However, after centuries of sugar coating commitment with romantic arts and virtuous stories, it is becoming rather difficult to see commitment is not as sacred as we wanted it to be.
And in the mean time, we forget what is most important: Love. We think commitment and love are interchangeable. I do not think so. Love is more profound and much harder than commitment -- because love do not escape or possess. Love does not try to hold on to anything. Love is a flower that perfumes no matter someone chooses to smell it or not. When we are talking, can I see clearly when do I start building a self-defense wall against you? Can I see clearly when do I start trying to exploit you, however subtle it is? And can I see these without trying to judge myself, without bringing all the moral propaganda into play? I think deep insight into a relationship is more important than commitment in a relationship.
And in the mean time, we forget what is most important: Love. We think commitment and love are interchangeable. I do not think so. Love is more profound and much harder than commitment -- because love do not escape or possess. Love does not try to hold on to anything. Love is a flower that perfumes no matter someone chooses to smell it or not. When we are talking, can I see clearly when do I start building a self-defense wall against you? Can I see clearly when do I start trying to exploit you, however subtle it is? And can I see these without trying to judge myself, without bringing all the moral propaganda into play? I think deep insight into a relationship is more important than commitment in a relationship.
Friday, December 20, 2013
A Little Memoir of Mr. Fischer Black
"The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running."
This was the caption on an old Nike poster. It's special because it used to hang on the wall in Mr. Fischer Black's office at Goldman Sachs. The following is a small memoir of him.
As one the first generation of "Quants", Fischer stood out for his famous Black-Scholes equations. But for me, he stood out because he seems to have a clear view of what's important in this field. Professor Emanuel Derman, who used to work with Fischer, describes in his book "My Life as A Quant" what Fischer is like when they were developing the BDT Model: "Fischer wanted the paper we were writing to be clear, accurate and yet not overly mathematical." Having read the paper, I was startled by how clear and easy to read the paper was, given that it was written by top quants and I am by no means mathematically sharp. This trait of Fischer could be found if we compare Black and Scholes's paper on option pricing and Merton's. Fischer's paper is 18 pages with 27 equations, while Merton's paper is 43 pages long with more than 62 equations. The other difference is their tones: Fischer's paper feels more like a conversation, while Merton's more like a serious teaching. In fact, Fischer even wrote a paper called "Noise" without a single equation.
Fischer's research style was best described by Professor Derman that "His approach seemed to me to consist of unafraid hard thinking, intuition, and no great reliance on advanced mathematics...He gave you the sense (perhaps misguided) that you could discover deep truths with whatever skills you had, too, if you were willing to think hard... and he was tenacious in trying to attain insight before resorting to mathematics." Derman also wrote "Fischer preferred reality to elegance in modeling."
Fischer helped explain lots of things that confused me. Being surrounded by equations over the past 18 months, I feel the whole quantitative finance community, as a subcategory in finance industry, seem very eager to identify itself with a more nerdy, geeky and scholarly self-image, an image never before could exist on Wall Street. Mathematical skills gradually become an honored badge, a certificate of capacity and a source of pride within this community. I have never been fond of this culture, because I always see math skills as only a tool in understanding capital markets. Math is neither something to be worshiped nor something to be disdained. It's a tool. And trying to identify myself with this tool for a sense of belonging is unacceptable. After all, finance is about people. Markets are essentially crowd activities with lots of noise. “The effects of noise on the world, and on our views of the world, are profound”, wrote Fischer, “…Most generally, noise makes it very difficult to test either practical or academic theories about the way that financial or economic markets work.” However, the respect for this complexity and humility in front of markets is seldom mentioned in my surroundings.
There is one detail I remembered very clearly. When asked is it okay to call the model "Black-Scholes-Merton" instead of "Black-Scholes", "Fischer replied with a message saying it was OK", Derman wrote, "...because it was Merton who had come up with the replication argument for valuing an option. Then he added...that 'that's the part that many people think it's the most important.'"
P.S. The following video is from Professor Derman. Having worked closely with Fischer, he shares some of the same values as Fischer’s. I think what he is trying to convey is that, math is important, but it could only get you so far. Innovation can only come from deep thinking.
This was the caption on an old Nike poster. It's special because it used to hang on the wall in Mr. Fischer Black's office at Goldman Sachs. The following is a small memoir of him.
As one the first generation of "Quants", Fischer stood out for his famous Black-Scholes equations. But for me, he stood out because he seems to have a clear view of what's important in this field. Professor Emanuel Derman, who used to work with Fischer, describes in his book "My Life as A Quant" what Fischer is like when they were developing the BDT Model: "Fischer wanted the paper we were writing to be clear, accurate and yet not overly mathematical." Having read the paper, I was startled by how clear and easy to read the paper was, given that it was written by top quants and I am by no means mathematically sharp. This trait of Fischer could be found if we compare Black and Scholes's paper on option pricing and Merton's. Fischer's paper is 18 pages with 27 equations, while Merton's paper is 43 pages long with more than 62 equations. The other difference is their tones: Fischer's paper feels more like a conversation, while Merton's more like a serious teaching. In fact, Fischer even wrote a paper called "Noise" without a single equation.
Fischer's research style was best described by Professor Derman that "His approach seemed to me to consist of unafraid hard thinking, intuition, and no great reliance on advanced mathematics...He gave you the sense (perhaps misguided) that you could discover deep truths with whatever skills you had, too, if you were willing to think hard... and he was tenacious in trying to attain insight before resorting to mathematics." Derman also wrote "Fischer preferred reality to elegance in modeling."
Fischer helped explain lots of things that confused me. Being surrounded by equations over the past 18 months, I feel the whole quantitative finance community, as a subcategory in finance industry, seem very eager to identify itself with a more nerdy, geeky and scholarly self-image, an image never before could exist on Wall Street. Mathematical skills gradually become an honored badge, a certificate of capacity and a source of pride within this community. I have never been fond of this culture, because I always see math skills as only a tool in understanding capital markets. Math is neither something to be worshiped nor something to be disdained. It's a tool. And trying to identify myself with this tool for a sense of belonging is unacceptable. After all, finance is about people. Markets are essentially crowd activities with lots of noise. “The effects of noise on the world, and on our views of the world, are profound”, wrote Fischer, “…Most generally, noise makes it very difficult to test either practical or academic theories about the way that financial or economic markets work.” However, the respect for this complexity and humility in front of markets is seldom mentioned in my surroundings.
There is one detail I remembered very clearly. When asked is it okay to call the model "Black-Scholes-Merton" instead of "Black-Scholes", "Fischer replied with a message saying it was OK", Derman wrote, "...because it was Merton who had come up with the replication argument for valuing an option. Then he added...that 'that's the part that many people think it's the most important.'"
P.S. The following video is from Professor Derman. Having worked closely with Fischer, he shares some of the same values as Fischer’s. I think what he is trying to convey is that, math is important, but it could only get you so far. Innovation can only come from deep thinking.
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