An Unconventional Cover Letter: A Brief History of Me

Dear Readers,

I am Sit Man Kong. This is a rather unconventional cover letter, probably not what you expect from a job applicant. A cover letter is essentially a short argumentative article to support the view that the writer, the applicant, is the best fit for the job, the best candidate among others. I do not follow the typical cover letter format because those letters I painstakingly wrote before, trying to match the keywords appearing in job requirements, failed to persuade the reader of the above view. That being the case, I have nothing to lose even if my cover letter does not follow the “standard” – that only explicitly related experiences and skills should be included. I decided not to pretend I am confident about being the fittest. Instead, I would like to write about my past life which defines me. Now, I present myself to you with my greatest honesty. Whether you hire me or not is your call.

Problem Solving

I grew up in a typical family. My parents were never afraid of letting me experience boredom and did not give me any pocket money. This naturally led me to seek out free forms of leisure—reading and gaming1. Whenever possible, I prefer to do it myself if it saves money. I learned how to cook because it is cheaper than eating out. I learned how to build a PC because it is the most cost-effective way to achieve gaming performance. Generally, when I encounter a problem, like most people, I turn to Google to find solutions and follow them. What sets me apart is that I have more patience than others: it takes longer for me to give up. I will read the manuals and delve into the details to understand how things work. This makes me a strong, independent problem-solver, especially when the problem has been solved by others before and the solution and manual are posted online.

Mathematics

I love mathematics, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why. When I was 6-7 years old, my mother enrolled me in KUMON, where I completed hundreds of arithmetic problems each class. Initially, it was probably the satisfaction of getting good grades that fueled my interest. My practice in KUMON likely laid a solid foundation for my arithmetic skills, making my pre-university math studies relatively successful. As I progressed, I started to experience the simplicity, coherence, and fundamentality of mathematics – the beauty of mathematics. My admiration for mathematics has never waned. In fact, my second choice for university admission was the CUHK Enrichment Mathematics program, and I went on to minor in Mathematics during my undergraduate studies.2

You may wonder why I chose to major in philosophy instead of mathematics at university. I admit, I’m somewhat of a lazy thinker. If a problem in realm A can, in principle, be solved by applying knowledge from realm B, my interest shifts from A to B. For instance, if every chemical reaction is ultimately determined by the physical interactions between the subatomic particles of the chemical molecules, then why not study physics directly instead of chemistry? This attitude of seeking generality, coupled with a somewhat naive metaphysical and epistemic reductionism, was likely nurtured by my love for mathematics. I even thought that any subject related to human affairs wasn’t worth studying because it wasn’t “general enough.” This included fields like economics, business, and literature, which I deemed “useless,” “non-applicable,” or even “not knowledge” in the absence of humans.3 After all, the laws of nature would still govern the universe if humans went extinct, and mathematical theorems would hold even if the universe no longer existed. In this sense, mathematics seemed to me the most general, and thus the most fundamental form of knowledge, or what is called “pure.”

An online picture shows how narcissistic philosophers are.
Why Philosophy?

Fascinated by generality and fundamentality of mathematics, I was thinking “is mathematics the most fundamental knowledge”? At that moment, I vaguely felt that some questions in logic and metaphysics are what I was seeking, but I didn’t know their relationship with philosophy, until my encounter with some philosophy books. Remember that I love reading? My time spent in Tsing Yi public library made me realize the title and contents that keeps attracting me is the books categorized in philosophy. My first logic book is the Chinese Version of Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull 《是邏輯，還是鬼扯？》, which open up my eyes on how to distinguish between a good and a bad argument. My second logic book, also a metaphysics book is the famous Lee Tien Ming’s Art of Thinking《李天命的思考藝街》, quench my atheist thirst of arguing against god’s existence using logic and semantic analysis.4

These two books, however, did not directly lead me to choose philosophy. The decisive book for me was Zhou Guoping’s 周國平 essay collection Man and Eternality《人與永恆》, which discusses many fundamental philosophical questions such as life and death, happiness and pain, love, and beauty. I was immediately fascinated by these questions, especially death, because it echoed my deepest fear. I remember quite clearly the first time I realized that someday I would die. I was 7, lying in bed in the dark, thinking about what would happen in the future. And then it came to me that someday I would die. A great fear rushed in, and I couldn’t help but cry under the blanket.

Then, at 15, during a Form 4 biology class, it was my first time dissecting a frog. Our biology teacher, Mr. Wong, used chloroform to paralyze them so that we could handle them easily. I witnessed them transition from vivid living creatures to dissected parts, like car parts that were damaged and could not be assembled again, which made me ponder about death. At that moment, no one around me was talking about death, thus no one could answer my questions about it, until I read this book. Realizing that philosophy discussed the most general, fundamental, and my most curious questions in the world, including logic, metaphysics, and death, I chose to study Philosophy in CUHK.

Virtues

My philosophical journey has significantly shaped me. If I were to list everything philosophy has given me, it would make this letter too long to read. I can only say that most of your stereotypes about philosophers quite accurately apply to me. Let me briefly share the two most valuable lessons I’ve learned from my study of philosophy.

The first is that the purpose of debate is to seek the truth, not to win. It is respectful, not shameful, to change your stance or position if you realize it is not justified. Opposing opinions are often considered hostile. People who are too polite to disagree are similar to those who argue aggressively; they both assume critiques are personal attacks. To me, any effort in discussion is aimed at finding the truth. To maximize truth, one must practice charitable interpretation. Even if your stance opposes mine, I will still interpret your words in the most persuasive, rational way possible. That’s what I believe real understanding and communication mean.

Besides discussing philosophy, the best habit I’ve picked up is reflecting on common, widely accepted beliefs. I think my affinity for philosophy comes partly because it’s emotionally difficult for me to side with the crowd. I would feel extremely uncomfortable having to chant slogans enthusiastically in a crowd during a parade. In contrast, it is no problem for me to point out inconvenient truths or what the public might wrongly believe. You may say this is trivial, as any Reddit user might do the same. However, I am still able to lay out opposing, reasonable arguments if I think they are worth mentioning and hold my position even when my peers believe otherwise. This is not even something my peers can always do.

Why not Philosophy?

When I listed CUHK Philosophy as my first choice for university admission and throughout my undergraduate studies, I didn’t give much thought to my career. I didn’t participate in or even apply for any internships, thinking, “Why hurry when we’ll work for 40 years after graduation?” Additionally, I had a somewhat naive view of internships, especially unpaid ones, believing they were just a way for companies to avoid paying for employment.5

Contrasting this with taking a non-professional junior job after graduation, pursuing an MPhil seemed like a great deal to me. My simple thought was, “It would be great if I could receive a studentship from the government every month to study philosophy. I can study philosophy without having a full-time job and earn an extra advanced degree!” Unfortunately, this plan didn’t pan out well for me. An MPhil is a research degree that requires exploring unanswered questions. The prerequisite for finding answers to these questions is knowing which questions remain unanswered, which requires extensive reading of often dry, frontier philosophy papers that basically no one cares about and have no impact on the world. Initially, I felt it was not doable due to the vast sea of philosophical journal papers. Then, I felt it was not worth it. Why spend years investigating a particular, unimportant philosophical question instead of understanding other more significant questions that may or may not already have answers (e.g., P vs NP, Galois theory, etc.)? I concluded that devoting myself to academia would only limit my understanding of the world. Eventually I realized I wasn’t genius enough to make original and adequately supported contributions to philosophy. If there was one book that convinced me not to continue researching in philosophy, it was A Mathematician’s Apology by British mathematician G.H. Hardy, which illustrates the beauty of mathematics and claims it is a “young man’s game”. Though philosophy is not a “young man’s game” but rather an “old man’s game”, I couldn’t help thinking that any valuable contribution to philosophy requires a certain level of genius I cannot attain.6

Eventually, I spent my four MPhil years7 enjoying teaching university tutorials, seeing my ex-girlfriends, exploring possibilities outside philosophy, and working on some short-term admin and academic jobs to pay my rent for my personal space8. I regret none of the above. My explorations outside philosophy included journalism, literature, finance, driving, and programming. My resume reflects my journalism experience and some admin and academic job experiences. However, it doesn’t show that I spent time reading Japanese and Russian literature, studied for the CFA Level 1, and took driving training, failing both exams. The lack of tangible results from these activities doesn’t mean they were meaningless or futile. In fact, I learned and enjoyed a lot.

Gaming

Speaking of activities not producing any result, gaming is my favorite. In terms of actual hours, my time spent on gaming probably exceeds that of any of my studies.9 Unlike most gamers, I do not just play when I have free time, nor do I only play mainstream games with which you are probably familiar, such as those involving heavy content of fighting and shooting. Video games are more than that; they are art, the ninth art, thus gaming is no less important to me than reading and watching movies. For me, Portal is what The Godfather is to a film aficionado, War and Peace to a novel-reader, Symphony No. 5 to a classical music enthusiast. When it comes to games, instead of combat and excitement, I value meaning, interactivity, storytelling, beauty, and poetry. Just like there is no single favorite movie, I have no single favorite game. If you insist on me naming some, I will say The Stanley Parable, Journey, Portal, and Skyrim.

Some people get angry when they fall behind or their teammates do not perform as well as they expect. I don’t. I have never done so. Not that I think the game is unimportant. Quite the opposite, it is too important for anger to ruin it. I believe in the saying “Good character makes a good player” （人品好，牌品自然好） from the motivational movie Fat Choi Spirit. I consider myself a typical Asian lacking in confidence, but I am always proud of my good player character, my game positivity.

Computer Science

I think it’s too early for me to define any relationship between myself and computer science. At most, I can talk about when I started becoming interested in it. Every few years, there’s some major news about AI. I had heard about AI beating games like Breakout and Super Mario Bros. before (games again!). But for me, it was AlphaGo. I’m not even a beginner at the game of Go, but I can calculate the complexity of Go in terms of possible moves, which far exceeds that of Western chess. That’s why I was still amazed by the fact that AlphaGo, unlike the rule-based programmed Deep Blue, won against the world number one Go player Lee Sedol by learning the entire human Go record and then going beyond it, even though I couldn’t understand the technical details at that moment. Besides, terms like “deep learning,” “neural networks,” and “tree search” just sound cool, don’t they?

A few years later, the documentary AlphaGo – The Movie was released, and it told this story so well. By that time, I had finished my MPhil degree. So, it seemed like a good time to plan enrolling in a master’s program in computer science focused on machine learning. I have studied computer science until now then.

Closing

If you are reading this, thank you for your patience and interest in understanding what has transpired in my life. I believe I have shared enough to give you an insight into the kind of person I am. I wrote this unconventional cover letter because I cannot allow a recruiter to determine my value. They may decide the value of my salary, perhaps, but not the value of my life. This is how I strive to remain true to who I am. There’s no need to take pride in it, but rather to accept it, because one cannot escape their past.

  1. PC gaming, of course. My mother would definitely not buy me a machine solely for entertainment. In fact, even if the machine came with entertainment functionality by accident, she wanted to disable it, but she did not know how. ↩︎
  2. The arithmetic skills are not the dominant factor in determining grades in university math courses. Honestly, my grades in math minor courses were not great, but that did not diminish my appreciation for its beauty. ↩︎
  3. I no longer hold this belief or adhere to such naive reductionism. ↩︎
  4. I was annoyed by the religious teaching of Sheng Kung Hui in primary school. A fun fact: S.T.F.A. Lee Shau Kee College is the only non-religious Band 1 EMI school in the Kwai Tsing district. That’s why I chose it as my secondary school during the SSPA process. ↩︎
  5. Now, of course, I realize my belief about internships was horribly wrong. It’s merely a consequence of the demand-supply equilibrium between the job market and the labor market. Interns can hardly provide value to companies except by doing menial tasks, but companies offer interns experience, skills, and knowledge. ↩︎
  6. Bernard Williams once questioned, “What is the point of doing philosophy if you’re not extraordinarily good at it?” The problem is that you can’t make solid discoveries through sheer hard work, like a historian of modest gifts, that others can then rely on in building up larger results. If you’re not extraordinary, what you do in philosophy will either be unoriginal (and therefore unnecessary) or inadequately supported (and therefore useless). More likely, it will be both unoriginal and wrong. (Paraphrased from Thomas Nagel, Other Minds) ↩︎
  7. And, of course, there was some minimal time and effort to barely finish my thesis and MPhil degree. ↩︎
  8. I must say, this was particularly challenging in Hong Kong. ↩︎
  9. I don’t just play video games; I enjoy all kinds of games, including sports, board, and card games. However, video games are the most convenient and versatile in terms of content and expression, so I play them most of the time. ↩︎