[[How has been]]

Sunday, August 23, 2026

[[Nitpicking on the new city catechism]]

Today my church read from the new city catechism: Since we are redeemed by grace alone, through Christ alone, must we still do good works and obey God’s Word?

And the answer was: Yes, because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, also renews us by his Spirit; so that our lives may show love and gratitude to God; so that we may be assured of our faith by the fruits; and so that by our godly behavior others may be won to Christ.

Unthinkly I agree with it. Even thinkingly I agree with the spirit of it.

But I'm feeling pedantic after some thought and find that it is worded a bit funny, possibly inaccurately.

So the first thought is, what does "must" here mean? Generally speaking, the common idea of "must" would be "must" for salvation, which would be kind of an obvious reading. But here it clearly says salvation is by grace alone through Christ alone and not from good works and (arguably) obedience to God's Word. I must sound a little bit catholic but I find this arbitrary distinction potentially runs into issues. The "must" here is also not to be sinless, for obvious reasons.

I also find it very odd to say we "must" still do good works and obey God's word. Is this must a moral imperative must? if so then it is arguably a bit of a by definition right, since it is "good" works in the moral sense, we are saying morally, we must do good. which is, um obvious? Unless it is trying to draw a distinction between must do good and NOT just be a vegetable or neutral.

I briefly browsed the rest of new city and there were only two other mentions of "must" in "why must Jesus be man" and "why must Jesus be God" and it both cases it gave some reason as to why he can work salvation.

Maybe the word "must" is very imprecise without something behind it to explain the "must" i.e why must the redeemer be fully human to redeem humanity or something like that.

This other two usage of the word "must" is also very... I dunno I find it very odd to say that Jesus "must" be man after the fact that Jesus is already man. Like are we saying the counterfactual could not happen (i.e Jesus could not, in all possible worlds, be not fully human)? If so... is there value in that? And if so, I dunno... does the argument hold in all possible worlds (at risk of sounding heretical, I actually don't see why not)?

Ok back to the main question. so what is it saying that we "must do good works and obey God's word? The answer says "yes" i.e "yes we must" and then provides 3 reasons which is lives may show love and gratitude, be assured of faith and win others to Christ. So... In other words, new city catechism is saying that we "must" do good works and obey God's word SO THAT we can show love and gratitude, be assured of faith and win others to Christ. Does that come across as slightly odd? it comes across as slightly odd to me in that "since we are redeemed by grace alone, through Christ alone, we must do good works and obey God's word to achieve these 3 other things" So... these 3 other things are... on a roughly equal level as being redeemed? Or they are so obviously things that are good in and of themselves?

It's like... since we are paid by the hours we clock alone, must we still work hard? Yes, because hard work shows love and gratitude to our employer, we may be assured of our value in society and helps to advertise the company.

Quite the non-sequitur no?

My second thought is that... if the 3 are suggesting alternate non-redemption / salvation reasons. Are those 3 the actual reason(s) why we "must" do good works and obey God's law?

I dunno, it seems to me that the moral answer: "As Christians we are still under God's moral law and have to obey it". Is a valid answer to the "must"

Another potential answer, and one that I would personally prefer is "as a result of having been saved and transformed by the holy spirit, we obey God's Word and do God's law" (point here that it is out of being rather than for any external reasons, although, the external reasons are very important and valuable things to have). Of course this is a slightly odd way to answer a must question. So maybe the better question (to which it can be my preferred answer) can be: "Are Christians still required to do good works and obey God’s Word?" and the full answer will be "Christians are not required to do good works and obey God's Word for salvation but having been saved and transformed... "

Or if you wanna keep the original answer, "What benefits come from doing good works and obeying God's Word given it does not lead to salvation?"

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

[[I wrote this at]]*|11:57 PM|

Sunday, August 16, 2026

[[Stocktake]]

Now seems to be a good time as any to process the next "block" of thoughts into my brain. Somewhat like a blockchain but not quite. Yknow, I think the act of processing thoughts is not largely to make decisions, but to discover the decisions that have already been made in the actions that were taken. Autonomy is not just point of decision making decision, but, it seems to me, arresting decisions that were already made and/or doubling down on them (because we don't always catch ourselves making the decisions at the point of making the decisions or give due consideration to them).

Ok, next stocktake.

Is it good to evaluate life? Anyway whatever, let me try to do it again, probably a filtered version here, if but subconsciously.

Well it is harder to evaluate life the older you are because your life becomes more of your own. As such, comparisons to others lose value. So if not comparing wages, wealth and kids and shit like that, how else does one evaluate oneself? Western individualistic society might posit that just whatever you like, make a meaning for yourself while more communalistic societies might suggest whether you have done your role on whatever society you are in.

Well ok let me stop with the meta-evaluation and get on with it.

Well, I think work wise is generally going quite alright. Pay could be better, progression could be better but I quite like my work and the autonomy within my work and bosses and colleagues are not bad and of course, it is doing meaningful work and it doesn't absorb my whole life (far from it) and the commute is bearable. Nothing much to complain about I suppose, logically speaking. Emotionally speaking I could always rail at being "behind". But the value I derive from being "ahead" or lose from being "behind" is all in the head and all ego stroking. I don't want that value (though it is very real and felt). Work in progress.

I think friendship wise... hmm. Previously I had a very mechanical structure of friendship, hit the duties, seek interesting stuff. Recently, I think quite a few people have been dropped (either they drop me or I drop them) from the rotations. Which I guess is just a fact of life and not an indictment either way. I read that you lose half your friends every 7 years and the 7 years for me is very overdue. Plus my cohort is getting married and having kids. I think I need new friendships, but to be honest it is quite a lot of work. I used to be, and am still shameless in reaching out to people but well, maybe I'm getting lazy or something the frequency and urgency of it dips. And also, probably, the alignment with friends (in general) is far less and lower. I've always thought that colleagues will yknow, fill in the gaps, but I don't think I've found a single colleague in the strong sense of friend. I mean definitely they are friends in the normal sense of the word (in case any of them reads this) but the alignment is clearly not there. To be honest, I think it is a me problem because I start to know myself better so there can be no like full alignment on many things. Arguably even on the things with strong alignment, e.g religion, there are sub alignments lol. Well, maybe a growing concern area that might have to do something about soon but it seems to me that options are also relatively limited. What used to be quite a good source, talking to people from the past (usually schooling) are getting less and less enticing as life drifts which is unfortunate.

Relationship (i.e romantically) wise, I don't really know what I'm doing. It is very hard for me to see into my thoughts here. I think I want a relationship ? But I'm not sure. And the effort I put into it is like so pathetic that it doesn't seem like I really want a relationship. And life is pretty good without one. Well I went for a singles event at the office but honestly it was very unlikely to yield anything and as per self fulfilling prophecy, it didnt. Though I suppose at least I have a new experience which is good. Ummmmmmm I think I might have cornered myself quite a bit with this and there are no easy solutions out. But is it a solving thing in the first place? Also, maybe it is hard to be with me. In fact I'm quite sure it is hard to be with me. Sigh unless there is a super complete new slate which I don't think is quite possible.

Family wise is fine, got two nieces so... they are the stars of the show so... honestly just came back from a family holiday and I must say it was really unfun for me. Well it wasn't helped by me losing my spectacles at sea and a long ass causeway jam (without spectacles). Well, it wasn't that I disliked the holiday excluding the parts in the previous sentence but I didn't particularly like anything so instead I slept and read, which was... not too bad I suppose.

Ummmmm what else? Church wise actually a bit sian. The new church thing is wearing off, holiday is over. Do work and difficult work and very similar problems as where I came from though I suppose there are more people around my age that I can work with and maybe the leadership is younger and renewing better. Well I suppose it is alright and what I signed up for. I think I would really like a strong cell group though. At least can look forward to not doing youth anymore after this year.

Character wise, not sure that I'm growing much in character. It is always an important thing to me but I can't tell, especially not through introspection.

Health wise and exercise and hobbies wise still good. Maybe it is something I over emphasise (play, that is). But I dunno, I like it, most of the time.

[[I wrote this at]]*|9:48 PM|

Saturday, August 8, 2026

[[]]

I find a lot of the point in climate change such as ocean currents or changing weather patterns to be painted overwhelmingly negative. But why is change negative? Change just is, human caused or otherwise.

Where a place gets hotter (or colder), it is worse for the incumbents, for sure, and that might be human or otherwise. Then it becomes a race to see who can adapt better. Arguably, change is generally better for those who are doing less well because there is a chance for progress.

Similarly for ocean currents stopping or reversing or whatnot. Yes the current system is optimised for this and cities that are already built cannot move out of the way (or rather, will take time to adapt) but a new system will just arise, who knows, might be great for some fishes or something.

Plus, if evolution is true, it is just survival of the fittest, whats there to complain about?

[[I wrote this at]]*|10:39 AM|

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

[[]]

I want to write something about a line in the desiringGod article that I saw about how previous societies viewed lending with interest as sin and now it is the aim in life. I have written at length about returns on capital already though probably has been quite some time.

Ah decisions, do I write the ecclesiastes study, write about the meaning premium for sihui or write about returns on capital. or just play phone game (before deleting it).

I only have a limited amount of willpower and energy and time after all.

Ok so introduced the concept of meaning premium whereby the more meaningful the job, ceteris paribus, the less it earns. This is because holding two jobs entirely equal except for meaning, some percentage of people derive value from meaning and thus value jobs with meaning more than jobs without meaning and thus, would take a lower pay for doing that job rather than for a job with meaning.

In my opinion this is a super obvious truth that I don't even know what I'm supposed to defend when people don't agree with it. Like, where is the disagreement? Isn't this self evident from demand and supply?

For sure in the real world it is not ceteris paribus and many different things affect pay of different jobs but I believe it should be uncontentious to say that the fact that it is meaningful makes it less well paid by that factor alone (given that some people find meaning to have value).

Ok let me try to hypothesise the disagreement based on what I can gather.

Potential disagreement 1: It should not be like this - people should not be paid less for doing a more meaningful job.

Response to disagreement 1: Disagreement 1 is a moral statement utilising "should". The original concept is an explanatory concept of how the world works, in other words, an "is". There is no "should" or "should not" in the concept of the meaning premium for it merely explains the thing that you are saying "should not".

If one is expressing a moral view that one should not be paid less for doing a more meaningful job, one cannot hold that together without holding that wages paid according to demand and supply is immoral or, that it is immoral to value meaning because, unless you are disagreeing with my argument above, both these pillars held together necessarily leads to something you hold to be immorally wrong.

If you hold that wages determined by demand and supply is immoral, that is a totally different argument to be had and while I am happy to engage, the scope is very large and would require a lot more space and time. Here I mean immoral i.e wrong / blameworthy and not just a personal desire that it should not be so (see the next para). If it is a vague "I dunno, the world will be a better place if everyone is paid according to the value they provide?" Firstly, who determines value? Are you saying that every transaction should be priced at the maximum that a person is willing to pay? If so then there will be a huge surplus of every good... so... lottery to determine whose good gets sold? All this because no price competition allowed?

In saying that it "should not" be like this, I suppose one might be expressing a desire that people should not be paid less for doing a more meaningful job rather than using "should" as a moral statement. If so, then there is no contention, we can all express desires of what should be and what should not be (which basically have no force or meaning behind it as much as I express that the weather should be sunny tomorrow because I want to play frisbee).

For the sake of engaging, let's look at the case of one holding a personal desire that people should not be paid less for doing a more meaningful job. Well I too hold a personal desire that people should not be paid less for doing a more meaningful job, this is especially given that I highly value meaning and thus, am willing to accept much less pay for a more meaningful job. So this is quite personally motivated for me. What is the ground of one's personal desire if not personal benefit? Some concept of fittingness?

Potential disagreement 2: Coming someday (this was originally written like, last wednesday or something) and I wanted to continue but I doubt there will be much bandwidth for this... given recent happenings.

[[I wrote this at]]*|10:14 PM|

Monday, August 3, 2026

[[]]

I notice I follow a pattern regarding lust.

Like... it starts as an itch that can be brushed off. Then it grows into an really really strong itch.

And it whispers for me to do things that I don't want to do, and it is like so itchy that when I try to ignore it / do something else, it only gets more and more itchy. Like it literally ramps up really high. And doing I don't really find any good antidote to it thus far. Most things only seem to be temporary reprieves and then itch comes back better than before.

Oh wait, actually I do have a solution, but it is kinda ridiculous. Like... if I play an idle game like really seriously, for like a day. That totally fries my brain and seems to reset it. The itch turns off and is gone.

But of course the cost is frying my brain, like... making it really tired (usually playing it really seriously also comes with sleeping much less) together with running alot of computations (mostly math) in my mind over a long period of time.

Not sure why am I like that, and pretty sure there should be some psychological thing behind it. And... hmm, I'm not sure are many people like this too or if this is just universal human experience (or at lest, a big enough subset of humanity) though of course you can replace lust with whatever it is that you are drawn to and the idle games with whatever kinda self destructive thing that somehow works?

[[I wrote this at]]*|11:42 PM|

[[]]

Somewhat related to the previous post, theres this issue of goodharts law that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

I don't like GDP as a measure but its like so ubiquitous and everyone understands it easily. GDP is supposed to be the sum total of all economic activity within the country. But the way it is calculated is where it gets murky because it generally omits things that are not tracked such as things with economic value done out of goodwill (e.g gifts) and barter and... arguably omits things that are not tracked that should be tracked (e.g cash transactions in informal economy).

There are presumably many ways to "game" GDP as a measure. For instance, you could make people earn more money and spend it on other people doing things for them instead of doing things themselves. Like if you clean your own home, you don't contribute to GDP. If you say, clean another person's home and with the income, paid the other person to clean your own home, you contribute to GDP. But gotta make sure it is paid, if it is barter and offset, it doesn't count.

So... GDP underrepresents every country's economic activity, but to different extents. To use GDP as a direct comparison for, say how productive an economy is and thus as a proxy for standard of living runs into these issues. For example, if in country A, the children run around and are being watched over by neighbours or relatives while in country B, children go to infant care then child care, country B's GDP will be that much higher because the production of taking care of children is not being paid in country A. One might argue then that the childcares have money to then do other things with it and you would be right, but that would count separately to GDP if it constitutes another person's income and is already counted (as it should).

[[I wrote this at]]*|12:23 AM|

Saturday, August 1, 2026

[[Is low TFR an existential problem for Singapore?]]

Had a chat with Ray recently and he was saying that the Singapore govt says that low TFR is an existential problem for Singapore but does not act like it is an existential problem and instead more like a good to have (maybe a very good to have). The key idea is that the existential aim for Singapore is still economic growth and we are not willing to trade it off for higher TFR and thus are consigned to doing things at the margin and trying to squeeze higher TFR out of limited options so that we can try to have our cake and eat it, but if not to eat it, to have our cake first and foremost.

So we were saying all the govt incentives are still aligned to economic growth rather than TFR. For instance, public service bonuses and political appointment holder salaries and the like. So some wacky idea would be to tie public service bonuses / salaries to TFR and political appointment holder salaries. It could just be like take the current and multiply it by the TFR (such that if TFR > 1 then everyone gets a raise, if less than 1 everyone gets a pay cut, of course capped at something sensible). Reminds me of the Warren Buffet quote that he can kill the deficit by just passing a law that bars all sitting members of congress from being reelected if deficit is > 3%. Just some sort of strong incentive alignment.

But of course, on further thought, I don't think that will work. Or rather, that might work but at too high a cost. I am of the opinion that we are somewhat stuck with having to maintain trust (that our policies are pro-business) and/or a reputation of having a highly skilled workforce. If these two things are sacrificed on the altar of a higher TFR, I think the chances of increasing TFR is definitely probable, and, it would be likely that we would need to dip into reserves to maintain the current standard of living. Which I think Singapore can do for quite awhile. But it would just be the opposite of what we did previously which is sacrifice TFR and build up reserves / GDP per capita and I'm quite sure we are not intending to unwind that. Besides, for the individuals who want many kids AND are ok with being poor, there are many ways to do that in Singapore or elsewhere.

So its ok, we just have a low TFR, squeeze the margins, bring immigrants in, enjoy the high standard of living. That can be the Singapore identity. Surely theres a place in the world for that, obviously many countries would make that exchange in a heartbeat. It is easy to trade money for TFR than TFR for money, you can always have low TFR and be poor.

And additionally, I think that losing trust of pro-business and highly skilled workforce will create a negative cascade that can easily go out of control, that is, drop the economic aspect a lot more than we want or plan for because it stops the virtuous circle and starts the opposite. Basically we have been hardcore re-investing (if you play any game, that is, scaling the rate at which you earn money). But once you move the society away from increasing rate of earning money to being willing to decrease the rate of earning money, usually on consumption goods (arguably more babies are a consumption good, at least compared to skilled immigration), you usually do this when you know the end point. In a game that can be some short amount of time before the final boss fight (so that you can pump it into levelling up your fighting capacity), in life most people generally do it to enjoy (no point in having a lot of money when dead, i.e die with zero). But for a country, there is no end point. And thus it becomes trading the economic future of the country for the TFR / whatever social future that might be construed as.

But okay, let's not be so pessimistic, we could try to squeeze the margins really hard and maybe give out a few million dollars (total, not per person). Maybe that moves the needle. Maybe bifurcate the economy into mo kids less money and mo money less kids. have that k-shaped thing.

[[I wrote this at]]*|1:18 AM|