Profiling humanity through Trump

So Trump just did the ridiculous and won the US Presidential elections. This seemed impossible probably to billions of people across the world and also to what seemed like the majority of Americans until just before the election results came out, but- it is what it is. Trump is loud, rude, cut-throat and all the things that we see as improper in people. Why we see these things as improper is open to debate and I will try and give both sides to the debate later on, but the bottom-line is that a large majority of intellectuals- including almost the entirety of academia were wrong in saying that Trump would be a disaster for the economy- he has received a thumbs-up from the financial markets across the world. Almost all major global stock indices are up, following election results including the Dow Jones Index (considered the benchmark index in the US) which opened at a record high after the election day. Although the markets have been famously wrong on a few occasions, it is known to be correct at evaluating the medium to long term impact of events and decisions (given the current data publicly available) and this is well accepted by academicians as well. What this means is that Trump was probably the right choice, if the US voters wanted to increase productivity and job growth- and thus, for once the 'populist' choice was the right one. I'm personally anti-Trump of course and what I mean by that is that I personally behave in a way quite the opposite of how Trump behaves; and help and support other people like me, but the problem with this world right now is that a larger proportion behaves more like me than like Trump.

There can be no question that Trump represents more 'evil' in the traditional sense of the word than any other President the US has ever seen, forget Hillary. He has openly made outright racist, sexist, bigoted remarks and is still very proud of being what he is. However, all evil things that we have words for in English- are things that reside in all of us. It's just that Trump has more of these 'evil' traits than most of us and in more intensity. This guy is a bit of a catastrophe from a social sciences point of view, but as a student of economics - such a guy is an absolute gem. If we had a society where everyone was 'good' and people were always fair and nice to each other, it would be a society which lacked motivation, purpose and life itself. Such a society would probably be better than a society where everyone was evil (it might be a close call though) but wouldn't come close to a society with a healthy mix of good and evil. Japan's last 20 years of zero growth is probably an example of the limits of Japanese culture which places high importance on doing good (Without the Yakuza and co., their economy probably would've done worse) . Good and evil are not desirable or non-desirable things - they are just things, and most adults realise this. What we have had over the past few decades, with the never-before-seen levels of globalisation and technology - is an exaggeration of the benefits of good. And as we have seen, letting the nice-guy academicians who have no concern for human emotions get out of control- resulted in the second biggest financial crises of the past hundred or so years. By the way, Trump is not all-evil; I'll come to that later.

We are going through an economic and social cycle and currently the cycle favours human emotions. Fear, greed, hatred and the other emotions Trump represents are all perhaps non-desirable human emotions but are human emotions nevertheless and we shouldn't underestimate their importance. These emotions have already shown their power in Britain, Russia, several parts of Europe and now the US, apart from developing countries where they've always been strong.

Being an economist at heart, I prefer not to think of good and evil in the traditional sense that social sciences define them. Good behaviour is associated with kindness, honesty, hard-work, empathy etc. These are behaviours which are sustainable in nature and help you avoid inner as well as outer conflicts. However, these are not the only emotions we have. If a society is filled with too much good, it would develop laziness and inaction. It would all be just too boring. Productivity would plummet. To avoid this, we should have a slight dose of relatively evil emotions such as greed, jealousy, selfishness and laziness which are non-sustainable and focus on the short-term. Take the greatest leaders of people that we have seen - and you will see in them very wide spectrums of emotions and behaviour. They would be capable of great levels of kindness and honesty but at the same time they would be capable of great levels of jealousy and selfishness as well. This helps them balance out short and long-term trade-offs and more importantly, connect with large groups of people.

The world is probably too complex for academicians to understand. This is because we don't fully understand human nature yet, and humans are in control of the world right now. Humans learn better by observing patterns around them rather than by reading books and listening to experts, and thus academicians are by-default poorly positioned to understand humans. They would have to admit their shortcomings first in order to move on and study humanity. Trump understands humanity better than most academicians and as I said earlier Trump is not all-evil. He has one good characteristic in plenty, and that is the virtue of hard work. Trump is a successful businessman and so naturally knows by learning through patterns he has seen, the best and easiest way to make a lot of money. You can be very evil and very hardworking at the same time and still make for a fairly good leader. Especially in the current environment where people have been nice to each other for too long and were disappointed with the results (financial crises and rapidly increasing inequality with the richest 1% holding 38% of wealth in the US) . Good behaviour is submissive by nature and you need a little bit of evil- and the current scenario, a lot more evil than normal to bring a little spice, to get rid of the boredom and to kick the economy into action by spreading the seeds of entrepreneurship.

Having said that Trump is probably the best thing for the economy and the job market as a whole, he isn't the answer to everything. As Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy famously jokes, even if you had the answer to the meaning of life - you wouldn't probably know what the question is. Life is all about variety and it's just a matter of time before the good people strike back with vengeance- with more globalisation, trade, peace-treaties and technology! Also, unlike the case with societies, maximising only productivity and wealth will not result in individual welfare since we have different and constantly evolving individual utility functions in which money is just one of the attributes; thus as individuals we should just focus on what we love doing and try and get a reasonable amount of money at the same time. But if there's a small lesson we can take from all of this, it is to be in touch with our human emotions.

Kabali, the polarisation of opinion, and learning through patterns

I haven't seen Kabali yet and will not see it, yet I will write this piece without an inch of shame. I've seen a few Rajni movies before this including 'Enthiran The Robot' and none of them came even close to capturing my attention. The movies are based mostly on the crowd-pulling star power of Rajni and the story (if you can call it that) is just an excuse to make a movie out of a bunch of scenes where Rajni looks all cool and shit. In a land where Jayalalitha is worshipped as 'Amma' and her actions are placed beyond the questions of morality and reason (Karunanidhi enjoys a similar following among his fans), it isn't much of a surprise that a movie star can be adored to the extent that Rajni is. But he is a down-to-earth guy in spite of all the attention- the fans say. 'So what?.. his movies are shit' : I say.

I should put in a few sentences here about the purpose of movies in general. In my opinion, movies, books, TV series(es?), games etc. contribute the most to society by being forms of art. These are media where the author (or director or whatever) conveys a set of ideas to the viewer - a set of ideas which may be open to interpretation, depending on how artistic the author wants it to be. Others might differ in their opinion of what these media should represent- for a large majority of them, these media are ways to escape the real world and go into a world of singing and dancing and happiness and girls and all that is 'good'. I don't mind a bit of escapism myself, but the escapism that The Lord of the Rings or even the Game of Thrones (I'm trying to appeal to a wide audience through these references) provide is extremely different from the escapism that a Salman movie such as 'Dabangg' may provide- If you know what I mean. If you don't, I see no point in you reading the rest of the post. In any case, I can understand a bit of Salman or Transformers once a while - but cannot condone it as the way movies or other forms of art should be in general. A few parallels from other forms of 'art' are : Call of Duty, Nickelback and Chetan Bhagat.

It's no secret that movie and sport-stars (read 'cricketers') enjoy a level of popularity in India which is unheard of in other countries. Individuals such as Sachin and Amitabh are worshipped as literal Gods by millions of people (maybe Hindu polytheistic traditions have something to do with it?). The fat dude from AIB risked getting himself killed by just making jokes about Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin. It's not just cricketers and actors however who enjoy such a level of adoration. Ratan Rata is generally considered as being so good as to the point of being beyond criticism- so is Azim Premji to an extent. In fact the keep observer can notice this sort of a trend in day to day life. Students and colleagues are quick to be labelled as 'good' and 'bad' and some of them are labelled as so good as to be beyond questioning. This isn't entirely an Indian thing- it's just a bit more exaggerated here compared to other countries. Listening to a single speech each of Obama and Modi is sufficient to understand the difference in humility of both individuals, which is developed as a result of criticism they received from others in their respective public and private lives.

India is probably somewhere between Japan and the US when it comes to labeling things as extremes. Japan, a country of traditions; a country where saving rate is the highest; conviction rate of accused is 99%; where perfectionism is a way of life. US, a country for the young dreamers; where the economy is driven by consumption; the judiciary is probably is best in the world; where mistakes are not just tolerated but encouraged. India lies closer to Japan but not too close. Polarising good and evil is definitely more of a Japanese thing and it would be difficult to pin-point why exactly this occurs. In my opinion, it is mainly a result of focusing too much on productivity and too little on the finer things in life- however the factors governing culture are too complex to be listed and range from geographic location to physical attractiveness of the population. It is partly also because people are too lazy to form individual, accurate opinions on other things and people- most communities in India tend to have hundreds of close friends and relatives per individual. One additional factor which I believe encourages polarisation especially in India is how it simplifies the process of becoming richer. There are certain Indian values such as 'being social with everyone' and 'doing whatever it takes to get things done (jugaad)' which, if done to extraordinary extents will almost certainly result in higher incomes- provided that the person starts off very poor, but ambitious. The part about ambition is important, since in Kerala, even though the income is not very high- the degree of polarisation is much lesser than in other Southern or even Northern states; and this is due a lower ambition in my opinion, possibly as a result of a finer appreciation of life and art (whether this is better is another discussion altogether). But in most other states, a large number of people start off their lives as poor and ambitious. Life can be very complicated for people who shift jobs and geographies quickly and earn volatile incomes while being poor. Black and white morality simplifies things greatly, and having God-like figures helps them set targets in terms of where they want to be. The target may be far from perfect, but in a world which is further from perfect - these Demigods do their job.

So how do these God-like figures attain their God-like statuses? After being particularly good at something for an extended amount of time, word of mouth with help from the media spread word of how amazing these individuals are. These individuals become urban legends in an age where the term has become outdated. The nature of public opinion is polarised not just at the macro level (in large groups of people), but also at the micro level (in each individual). At the micro level, it is possibly due to opinions which tend to go unnoticed unless it is extreme - this can be due to some of the factors earlier discussed and is linked very closely to culture in the society. No one is going to listen to a guy at a party who talks about how Sachin is one of the best batsmen of our generation. They will listen to how Sachin is a God with billions of followers and feared by all bowlers. These polarised micro level opinions tend to get aggregated at the macro level as a result of confirmation by others who share the same polarised opinion. So, instead of having 100 opinions of Sachin being 8/10 as a batsman, we have 20 opinions of Sachin being 0/10 and 80 opinions of him being 10/10. All 100 feel unique but more importantly, part of a bigger crowd. People pick up patterns of how it is becoming cool to like/dislike a person and follow suit, to not be left out of discussion.

Learning and adapting through patterns is fundamental to how humans have evolved and still behave. We are naturally good at learning by asking others, and concluding that popular opinion is the right opinion. This leads to significant biases of course, a large array of which can be seen across cultures and have resulted in formation of castes, discrimination against races and against women etc. This is closely linked to stereotyping and 'judging' people which may work in the short run in a society due to how judgements tend to be based on average figures and can be self-reinforcing, but stereotyping is acidic to the society in the long run (and I've touched on similar ideas in the previous post).

The final idea I'd like to conclude with is the idea of  a good career, as formed though social patterns. In India, there is an unnatural number of people who decide during 12th grade that their life ambition is to be a doctor/engineer/lawyer. It is even more unnaturally skewed towards doctors and engineers in Kerala. Within the world of MBAs, it is desirable to either be a brand manager or a frontend investment banker.  Irrespective of what you do for a living, it is desirable that (as a guy) you ride a bike and play the guitar. These ideas of good and bad careers/hobbies are formed due to the average result of social discussions and personal experiences. The opinions about careers is deeply influenced by parents and colleagues who succeeded (read: made money) with a high probability in these fields irrespective of whether they liked or were good at what they did. A brand manager or a front end i-banker would in turn have a good amount of social interaction in elite circles and have good opportunities to socialise and refine his knowledge by forming opinions based on patterns of behavior he sees in others. You, as an individual may not however have similar skills or even similar likes as the average person has, and if that is the case you should be proud about it. Social patterns should serve as a guide to forming your opinion, but shouldn't overshadow your personal opinion completely. It's cool to be in a crowd, but much cooler to be able to stand by yourself as well.

The pros and cons of judging people

It's a bit of a social taboo to be 'judging' others. Yet, all of us do it all the time. In fact, I've noticed that leaders and people in positions of higher responsibility tend to judge people a lot more than the average bloke. What is it about judging people that's so taboo then? And how do 'successful' people use smart judgement to climb up in their careers?

'Judging' someone refers to making often pre-mature stereotyping and application of generalisations in the assessment of a person's character. For instance, branding a person as quiet just because he didnt talk to you much the first time you met him would be 'judging' him since you don't have enough evidence to suggest that you're right. Similarly, thinking that an attractive woman is dumb just because she's attractive would again be judging her. Now, these judgements can be right or wrong obviously but let us assume that more often than not they are right (it would help explain why everyone judges). Among the cases where the judgements are wrong, if they are made by a society at large they can be often self-fulfilling and lead to them eventually becoming correct because of how the judged people react. If black men are considered gangsters in Southern US (used to happen as recently as the 1990s) a number of them end up so, since they are may not be given equal opportunity in other fields to succeed.

So, why do we judge at all? Let me borrow a concept from behavioural finance and talk about heuristics. We use heuristics to make decisions, when we do not have complete information about something. The lesser the information we have the more prone we are to using a heuristic. A heuristic is something like this : You take the most colourful apple thinking it's tasty although you've never tasted it, based on your prior experience of eating bright apples. Heuristics help us because we do not have to 'search' for complete information on things and can make decisions without wasting often unnecessary time in gathering information which may or may not be worth the time spent in acquiring them. Thus, we end up using these heuristics or 'rules-of-thumb' as we call them in layman language. They can be very useful most of the time but can lead to incorrect decisions at times and can also lead to systemic biases which are difficult to eliminate.

Judging a person is the equivalent if using a large number of heuristics to decide on his/her character. It may be right or wrong, but it's often important for us to understand a person's character before dealing with him. Using heuristics will let us break the ice much easier or to take more important decisions such as whether to do business with him. Coming back to the self-fulfilling aspect of judging people- some of these heuristics have become so common that we accept them as fact. For example, someone who is polite is more often than not considered as nice (and enough people abuse this heuristic). Also, a well-dressed person is considered organised by the people he meets even if he is completely disorganised in real life. Judging people helps us take quick decisions which would not otherwise have been possible considering the time and effort required to collect information about all the people we meet.

What's so wrong about judging people then? It can obviously go wrong a few times, but most of the time if you're right then what's the big deal? This has to do with the application of humanity rather than decision making theories. We are offended by the idea that people try and use their personal experiences to define our character, that too in the matter of a few minutes. It is against your idea of yourself being completely unique. There is however, no getting around heuristics. First impression is always the best, and accepting heuristics such as this is part of living as a functional social being,

Middle-class morality, content neutral robots and Love

A philosophy where there are a fixed set of rules which clearly demarcate right and wrong, and those who either disobey any of these rules or are from a background sufficiently different (which makes them possibly have different values from the society in question) irrespective of whether they try to fit in to the society are shunned or considered inferior, depending on how different they are. Right and wrong are decided by the society at large and individual opinions are not entertained (unless the individual is very rich, and in that case people will at least act like they listen to him). Well, Nazism was at least more forthright when it came to what it preached. Maybe middle-class morality is just a milder version of Nazism.

Before I start out, I want to clarify - Do I hate middle-class morality? Yes. Why? Because it stands in the way of truth. Why do I care about truth more? Because the material gains from middle-class morality- the money, the friends, the security are all aimed at satisfying the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy- a part which is already more or less satisfied in me.

All of us have read about middle-class morality. It's what the rich and poor do not have. It's this set of values which exist due to some reason, which have to be followed in society. But why? It's possible that the only purpose of middle-class morality is to make the middle-class people richer than they are. But the thing about MCM (abbreviation for middle-class morality henceforth) is that it never lets you be happy. It doesn't let you be content with what you have. And that's because any hint of satisfaction or intrinsic happiness will prevent you from earning more and spoiling your children with gifts. And once indoctrinated completely, its difficult to break free of MCM and consider personal values or morals. Coming back to the purpose of MCM- the summary of how MCM works is this : (the first para kind of outlined the effects of this working) People live by rules set by the society. That doesn't sound too bad right? And the set of rules are more or less consistent across the world at an elemental level. For instance, you have to be polite to everyone you meet, or you have to study hard get good marks and marry an have children. Of course in some countries people are more individualistic or just have enough money to not care about these things and thus in the US or Europe you may not find as many people following MCM as in India. Now, these rules are aimed at letting you reliably access the wealth of the rich, with minimal risk. Study (education is good, but when it's purely aimed at getting reliable employment- MCM is responsible for that) -> Get a good paying job (pretty much the most important part of MCM's objectives) -> have a large number of acquaintances and a just a handful to zero friends (large number of acquaintances with whom you never really speak honestly even if you hate them - MCM wants to utilise these people when you are in need and allow limited utilisation vice versa as well. Having good manners, being smart and talkative etc. let you achieve this goal) -> Have children (this is again very important- since you lived your entire life according to MCM and basically did very little for yourself, mostly choosing arbitrary things such as the food you like and the movies u want to see and the like. Having children let's you focus your efforts away from yourself again. You now have to work towards making your children happy. Or else, the society will shun you and kick you out - without telling you of course; MCM does everything discreetly. ) -> Die.

My suggested alternative is : Live - > Do whatever you want -> Die. It's admittedly not as elaborate as MCM's plan - I devised it in 10 seconds (as opposed to the millenia which very slowly shaped MCM, while keeping the underlying principles same). Also, my alternative doesn't guarantee anything- you might end up being very poor and find no meaning in life. But it might lead to something very special. You might fall in love with life and everyone in it. It's kind of like setting your adolescent child free and letting him do what he wants. He might get fucked up but then he might do something fantastic as well. The same with MCM - if you set a person free from it.

Let's look at each phase- The studying and getting a good job part is pretty straightforward. In the sense that, there's nothing too middle-classy about it. And it's difficult to question the morality of it was well. Of course, the rich may let their kids do what the want and this might result in them starting their own ventures (where the middle class eventually get employed. But in a place like India, even entrepreneurship requires you to graduate from an IIT (it's not mandatory but it helps immensely in getting attention and funding) and so you can't really question this part. Unless you're a gifted footballer or musician or something. Or you want to waste away your life. Maybe it's the middle class moralist inside me taking over. Let me come back to the point- Next thing in line after getting a job is to have excellent social standing. Now, ideally your parents would've set you on track to be a social butterfly from a young age- else it's a little hard work after becoming an adult but hardly difficult. You need to now do basically what everyone does. Watch movies in the local language, eat what they eat, (When in Rome, do what the Romans do if you want to be part of their middle class- goes the wise old saying) and make yourself a review and opinion aggregator. You shouldn't really have any strong opinion on anything since it might hurt others.

Perhaps a second objective of MCM, now that I think of it, especially in India - is to have an old age where your children take care of you. In another country, this objective might be slightly differently defined as a happy old age where you have enough resources- and this might be a subset of being sufficiently rich in the first place, and thus may not warrant a definition separate from the first objective. And in a country where it is difficult to do business, the rich tend to get richer and the poor, poorer. Similarly, money tends to remain with the older people quite a bit as compared to more entrepreneurial economies where the young can start ventures and make money out of the merit of the ventures. Having an economy where the older people are more powerful has a definite impact on morality in a society- it is a relatively pessimistic point of view which gives more importance to money, fame and being 'settled', without taking much risk.

Let me digress a bit and talk about robots. So, Microsoft launched its 'teen girl' robot on Twitter called Tay, who can learn language and understand ideas based on what people tweet to it. Soon after, Microsoft had to take it down since she was turned into a Nazi-loving, racist and highly sexual creature with no regard for humanity. The whole episode reminds me of how people are more or less what society makes them to be. And the only difference between the average person in the society and you, is your personal values. If you don't have any personal values that stand out- you can be turned into things as evil as the Nazis or ISIS supporters and you wouldn't even know it.

Coming back to MCM to make one last point- people put a huge amount of importance on how the society perceives them. They have essentially no opinion of theirs which is truly their own, regarding anything. People pitch ideas to each other and reach a consensus on what is popularly liked. Things like MCM and general stupidity on this planet cause movies like Batman vs Superman to have a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 7.7 on IMDB. "The previous Batman movie- I think it was called the Dark Night, that was so cool. This one's not that great you know but not so bad either". I digress.

So what's wrong with a society filled with average people, some more average than others and the different ones living in shame at not being average enough? A lot of things, and as I'd pointed out earlier, anything above the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which are not representative of the absolute truth of course, but fairly accurate in my opinion) is beyond the reach of MCM. But for me personally there are two very specific issues I have with MCM- One is that I cannot deal with fake shit. Fake manners, lies, talking behind people's back etc. The second and far more important thing is how MCM prevents people from truly falling in love. MCM imposes a set of expectations on your partner which are centred around what the society expects from an average person. It makes you and your partner average, alas but love is when you find the best person in the world. There is no love in loving a person more average than most- a shallow being with no individuality. And a person who is completely independent of idiotic societies for her self-esteem, and having original ideas; the confidence to stand up for herself and her people when it counts without worrying about 'what others would say' is the only kind of person I can even think of falling in love with. And for movie lovers, the trade-off between the comforts of middle-class life and it's reliability as opposed to wild and unhibited love is best portrayed in Vicky Cristina Barcelona- where Vicky falls in love with the Spanish painter Juan Antonio, over the her well-paid and well-settled American fiance, and in Before Sunset where Jesse falls in love with the French girl Celine, over his well-settled and well-paid American wife.

'Boring' Blogs, self-critique and truth

I got an interesting response to sharing the blog on FB. It received literally 0 comments on FB and all suggestions (quite a few of them) and appreciations came via Whatsapp/Facebook Chat. The current post is a slightly narcissistic one which will talk about the blog itself and other blogs like it, partly based on the reaction that the previous post on FB created. But first, let me digress.

I've been considering moving to another country for some time now and have been confused between quite a few countries - USA, Europe (I know it's not a country, thanks), Canada and Australia permanently. And being very risk averse, I don't want to rush into the decision only to regret it later on. I've grown up watching American cartoons and TV shows (Cartoon Network and Nick) as well as sports (NBA, NHL,MLB and the terrible MLS) and thus can relate quite a bit to American culture as compared to say the Australian or French cultures. America is also naturally supportive of immigrants unlike Europe - and decidedly much cooler than Australia (which has it's share of immigrant hatred) and Canada.

But then you've all the problems in America- some conspiracy theories, some facts- and for me, none more staggering than the NSA's violation of all kinds of personal privacy of not just American, but citizens of several countries across the world. Then there's criticism of how America tries to bully other countries through war, diplomacy etc. and also criticism of the American corporate culture which focuses on results without much importance given to methods. However, societies which receive the most criticism might be the best and no the worst, especially when most of the criticism is from the inside, as is the case in America. It's not that Australian or Canadian spy agencies are less intrusive or that their corporates are less cut-throat . The main difference here is that American society is a freer society with more information flowing through media and having people who are more pro-active in criticising themselves. A couple of examples to illustrate this- one being the difference in bad loans reported in India and China (India has a much higher figure in % terms, but is considered safer since the Indian classification of bad loans is considered more honest and transparent). Another recent influence for thinking along these lines was the massive self-critique the feminist movement does, of itself and how they are proud of it.

Now, we love to be correct all the time and don't like to be questioned much (myself included, to an extent). It's only the highly scientific thinkers who insist on knowing the absolute truth and thus wish to be questioned on everything (myself included here too, to an extent). All of us have questions, doubts and weaknesses but we hate to admit them. Most of us get depressed, have anxieties and face extreme isolation at some point in our life - but we shrug it off as a weakness and do not wish to talk about such feelings even with close friends, let alone approach counselors. We would rather talk about Cricket (that T-20 match between Indian and Pakistan which India won so comprehensively let's you make fun of Pakistan along with your friends and makes you feel good.) or Bollywood or local events and traffic and weather and work rather than the things that actually mean something to us - such as fear or ambition or love, especially with acquaintances. But why? Is it mainly because one is shamed of these things, thinking that only he/she faces these problems? In my opinion, no. It's more about us being afraid that others have different opinions. And, in things like cricket - you have more or less facts and numbers to look at, and so when someone says that Kohli played a great innings yesterday or that he's a great batsman, you normally have the numbers to back your statement. The risk of being wrong is minimal. Of course, you have interesting conversations about the team spirit of a captain allowing his player to score a double hundred at the cost of a late declaration and so on- but arguments on both sides here are backed up by facts too, with relatively more opinion but still, nothing much to be scared of. When it comes to Bollywood or other more subjective topics, it's more difficult to back up statements with facts, but facts accompanied and mixed evenly with popular opinion, rumours and urban legend help cement opinions and make people confident about them. There are also well established groups for each opinion - for instance, there are enough Salman lovers and haters (both extremes have become popular opinion) for it to be normal for a person to be in either group.

Now, why do we want conversations which are completely impersonal? Reason one is that we meet a lot of people and need to connect equally with all of them. Common topics help substantially in breaking the ice while meeting new people. This applies to acquaintances as well- you may want to spend time with an acquaintance without actually connecting with them. This could be by going for a road trip or going to a mall or just having a drink with them. I myself try to be good at as many of these common interests as possible, for these same reasons among others. However, having these common interests shouldn't stop one from pursuing interests that make you unique.You shouldn't feel lost in all the madness of trying to blend in, because that it when you lose all individuality. If you feel like not drinking with friends, dont; If you don't like Bollywod movies, don't watch them; and if you love reading scientific journals (for some reason), do that; and if you feel like sleeping the entire weekend, do that as well- as long as you have a plan.

And in societies which have the habit of telling only one side of the story (historically though, we have had truly rich stories in Mahabharata and Ramayana which have had thousands of re-interpretations, some of which go so far as to say Ravana was a hero) the danger is even more. The singular truth these days has been a mixture of hard-work, development and love for the nation. People who don't stand by these artificial 'truths' are considered evil and intolerance is growing if anything. People who have a love for  the actual truth and who criticise the government (or the country- India isn't a perfect country by any means) or social revolutionaries- who help bring about immediate chaos but often sustainable long term growth and prosperity, are questioned. And, since this is the popular opinion, it is very easy to go along with it without criticising because that's the easy thing to do. Now, this is obviously not just happening in India but across the world given the poor economic conditions, and it includes all developed nations as well (Donald Trump  and his support for instance; or in the Middle East (and surprisingly, Japan) where it's very difficult for an accused to get a fair trial)- but most countries thankfully have people who consider 'black and white' morality as a minority.

And in this madness, the only thing I can say and hope for is 'Satyameva Jayate'. I hope the reader values the truth and actively seeks the truth and practices self-criticism whether it's critiquing oneself, one's family or friends or government. I request you that if such writing (mine or otherwise; I write less about society and more about general philosophy) which seeks the truth and appeals to you, to not be ashamed of admitting it either to yourself or to others (irrespective of the caste, wealth and success of the person who preaches it). Remember that Germans once believed as a huge majority in Nazism

Growing up

I had a happy and almost completely protected childhood and thus, leaving home for higher studies (Engg. and then the MBA) and more importantly- working in the corporate world have all been very different experiences from my childhood. I hope to thus highlight the major ways one is considered a 'grownup' and the actual ways in which one can act more mature and whether one should make an effort to grow up at all in the first place.

Growing up destroyed a lot of the dreams I had as a child but helped me build (possibly) much better ones; or more realistic ones, at the very least. My idea of adulthood (as an adolescent) had me working in a high flying corporate job  getting paid handsomely and having a hot wife in a huge bungalow and chilling during weekends. The problem with these kinds of dreams is that almost everyone dreams the same. And, in a world with limited opportunity and resource, you have to either intimidate/dominate others, be extremely skilled at something, or just get lucky/use unfair means to achieve this. Naturally, the most attractive option is to be extremely skilled at something. While it would be nice to have 'God-given' talent that makes you play football like Messi or compose music like Mozart, not all of us have that and not all of us have practised enough to know whether we do actually have (I have this weird feeling I might've been really good at football :P). Thankfully, as I've written before, talent is not the only deciding factor even in highly technical field and so practice can help you get a long way ahead.  Practice is thus the mantra for someone who wants to succeed without leading/dominating others to make them do things you feel would make money.

Now, leadership is indeed a skill of its own- but a skill that requires a certain attitude and certain moral values in addition to the skills. And, structural leadership and power arising out of position do not excite me at all- I like leading with soft power and leading by example; and not because others are forced to listen to what I say. The value of leadership, historically, has continually gone up in the world in my opinion and it is the only skill which will probably continue to grow in importance. The reason for this is the increased productivity arising out of division of labour (thus requiring large organisations) and the basic human need to connect and relate to good leaders, in order to feel that their work (no matter how boring) has a purpose. Leaders sometimes have to be harsh- since fairness (and honesty) is the most important trait for a leader

Coming back to the point, the biggest difference I see in adults as compared to adolescents is that they're self-satisfied and willingly ignorant (you could call it confidence but there's a thin line between both). If a 15-20 year old kid is told that they're not good at something and repeatedly so by a handful of people, it is very likely that he will either become depressed or change himself to avoid criticism. This is particularly relevant in changing environments, which can be due to several reasons including growing up itself (different schools, grades etc) or due to changing houses or even friends circles. The adolescent (15-20 yr old) doesn't yet know what he is good or what he should be good at. This lack of self satisfaction leads to growth and self-improvement. This comes at quite a big cost though- the cost of uncertainty about yourself and what you want to do or what you should be good at or even the things you should be proud of. Highly volatile people often end up being too depressed to do anything, since there are a 100 different points of view for everything and many of them may be conflicting. For instance, a person who wants to be 'cool' in a group of studious kids and in a group of movie lovers and in a group of football lovers as well, may find it difficult to balance time between the three and simultaneously be the best football pundit, nerd and movie critic. He should either reduce his interests and focus on something (since his time is limited) or reduce his expectation of being the best at each and everything. To be more specific, there are three things that limit a person from doing everything he thinks is cool - 1) There is limited time and you cannot expect to spend enough on each thing to be good at everything 2) It takes a huge emotional toll to be continuously open to different points of view and 3) Being too 'open' is a thing. If you don't believe in certain values yourself, it is difficult to have the conviction to do things (or even live life) at all. Certain decisions need to be taken first (from instinct) and thought about later.

However, if you can live through the pains of having an open heart, it will let you grow wildly as a person. Both your soul (knowledge) and body (physical skills) will grow far more than those of closed people. For instance, a person who feels belittled in front of others with well built bodies (and thus starts working out), feels dumb in front of finance geniuses (and thus starts reading)  and feels bad that he doesnt watch enough movies or play enough sports to be cool - will end up doing all these things and eventually become reasonably good at all these things. And since success begets even more success, learning often becomes easier later on since others also understand how capable/willing you are at learning new things.

Coming back to the self-satisfaction- This is not exactly confidence. From my experience, even adults are mostly clueless as to what they want to do- and given enough provocation, they will show the lack of confidence they have in themselves. Ignorant self-satisfaction on the other hand, is a good substitute which says "I'm a  pretty awesome person. I don't ave enough knowledge to be sure, but I don't care". It may not even define what 'being the best' includes, but it still works for a lot of people. It works because there are also others who are actually (in relative terms) a lot more confident about what they do and have a broader perspective about themselves and about life. Confidence on the other hand is having an awareness of what you know and what you do not know, combined with the wisdom of things you should be knowing and the things you're okay with not knowing. Now, there's a lot of subjectivity here and hence no one can have perfectly confident selves and perfect knowledge of what they know and don't- however, one can always work in the general direction of confidence and knowledge rather than self-satisfaction and ignorance (if one wants to)

So, what should one do? Be closed or be open? Be confident or be self-satisfied? It all depends on what you want out of life. For this, you need to have a clear idea about yourself and what you want and what your values are. Unfortunately, this requires you to be open to experiences so that you have an unlimited amount of things to possibly like and relate to. Thus, one should start off with an open mind (and heart). At what stage of his life he wants to become more confident/self satisfied is a call he has to make. I've personally felt that mid 20s is the best time to be more confident, and yes I strongly prefer confidence coming out of knowing myself, my surroundings and everything I can possibly know about- rather than fake self-satisfaction that tries to emulate the confidence.

And well, the most important thing is to enjoy it all and be happy- while not forgetting to add a bit of purpose to life, so that you retain long-term happiness as well. Also, if you're of the highly open kind (like me), just remember that most people are idiots.

Elements of love

I love girls. I love the colour red. And I love my country. But what's the difference between these kinds of love? Are all types of love the same? I'm not talking about just love for people (which is often categorised as platonic and amorous)- I'm talking about what makes up amorous and platonic love as well. The building blocks of love, so to speak.
There are mainly three building blocks of love in my opinion and your love for anything or anyone can be explained by combining these three types of love in different proportions. The love for girls is something shared by most guys and is part of my natural instinct. I am not particularly unique as a guy, just because I love girls. This is the same with food- Most people like food since  we have evolved in such a way (people who hated food probably got extinct over time!).

Secondly you have personal preference. I like red. Why?- I'm not really sure. But I've liked red since I was a kid. I feel energised when I look at red. I can't really explain the love though. And, people on an average do not probably prefer red to other colours. It's just something that I loved from when I was a kid by virtue of my DNA (and possible the surrounding I grew up in as well- I won't be able to completely attribute my love to either). Similarly, I love spicy food. It just tastes much better according to me. It might be because I'm born as an Indian and it might be because I grew up here and it might be neither or a combination of both. But it's a personal preference.

The third kind of love is due to some effort you have put in and some compromises you make. You love your wife not because all your instincts tell you to love her. You know that she will be by you side always and so have decided to love her. Of course, your natural love for girls and your personal preference for her body type might help too but they're not the only things. Similarly, you love your country and family and neighbourhood partially because of the distinct effort your put int- a love that is guided by practicality rather than instinct.

So, while analysing how much you love something or someone- ask yourself this question. Is is mostly the first kind of love or is it mostly the third kind of love? You'll be much happier if you do things/spend time with people out of the first and second types of love rather than the third and such love is more long lasting and easily sustainable- this applies to jobs as well. Happy loving.

The best way to learn

From the roughly two years of working experience and roughly four months of teaching experience (along with the several years of 'learning' in school and college) I've formed the opinion that the easiest way to learn something is to practise repeatedly. And also, that irrespective of how unintelligent you are, you can be a master of practically anything- given that you practise enough. If you're not smart enough, you might have to repeat for that IIT-JEE of CFA level 2 a couple of times or even more, while the smart guy might crack it the first time without preparing much. In the real world, there is practically nothing which i believe is beyond the reach of hard work- given a fair share of time. Now, this would open several avenues of opportunity for the intelligent kids much earlier in their life and so, they would on average reach much higher positions compared to their 'dumber' peers (factoring in other things such as emotional intelligence, motivation etc.)

Not only is practising the best best way to learn, it is also the most natural. Human beings are far more comfortable doing things and interacting with people and learning by repeatedly failing/succeeding rather than sitting with books and imagining scenarios and theories. Of course, there are certain fields of science which cannot be put into practice more than a certain extent, but for all fields where this is possible, the former holds true. So the question arises- what kind of field do you want to be in, professionally? Do you want an abstract field where you sit at home and imagine scenarios or do you want a practical field where you can fail repeatedly in the real world and learn from your mistakes? The problem with practical fields is that most people would want to get into them (since it is human nature to want to learn in such a way) and so it would be difficult for you to differentiate yourself from others and thus earn more money. Theoretical fields are more boring but possibly higher paying if you factor in individual hard work (hard work here considers the socialisation requried in the practical field as well, which may not be required in the theoretical one)/motivation required. A mixture of both would be interesting and is something I am particularly interested in. Working in finance is something I thought would be a good mixture and theory and practice, but my experience in consulting and in finance has taught me that the only kind of useful learning that happens at the work place is the learning you get from your teammates, as well as what you learn on the job- rather than concepts from outside. Even the concepts from outside which are sometimes useful are often things which you've seen in a previous organisation. Experience is trusted much more than theory at the workplace.

Gaming is a very interesting profession- one would think that sitting at home by yourself and playing all day would be enough to succeed (given you have the required high skill level cap )but that is far from the truth. To keep abreast with latest ideas and to continuously be motivated, gamers have to socialise extensively on a regular basis or else they are shunned by the gaming community- gamers and followers alike and will likely be financial and professional failures in spite of being skilled individuals. Nonetheless, gaming requires a reasonable mixture of theory and practice- all top professionals stay at the top by regularly playing against each other.

Teaching is another interesting choice which intersects both world nicely. You can be fairly good as a teacher by just being individually brilliant and hard working, but it is difficult to stay motivated without connecting with other teachers and top students continuously. Networking in the academic world is important nevertheless and co-authoring papers with top academicians can get you a long way in terms of knowledge and in terms of recognition by others.

To come to a quick conclusion- So what does it all mean? If practising is the better way to learn in general (except in a few fields)? It means that motivation (to actually try and do things and to fail and learn from them) is the biggest indicator of success in most fields - the ones which require practise i.e.and intelligence/skill does not contribute as much. In certain others though, intelligence is more prominent. But as an individual it's good practice to be good at both -practice and theory.

Combining sexiness with responsibility

The most responsible people- often mature adults, can tend to be boring. At least for younger folks, they tend to be boring. While kids talk about fun (but seemingly purposeless ) things such as movies or sports or cute girls/guys and the sort, adults talk about prices, climate, land value etc. Younger folks are generally more into doing things, going out, having fun etc. and are, in general, sexier than the older folks. The gap in sexiness ( I'm generalising the sexiness and the general fun factor that younger people tend to have and calling it as sexiness, henceforth) - let's call it the sexiness gap varies from place to place. In a place like Kerala, it is extremely wide- whereas in a place like Mumbai, where even adults tend to party like crazy, the gap is narrower. The causes are varied, but one major cause seems to be the higher amount of wealth that the younger generation has, compared to their parents- who often had to work hard for their money. The sexiness gap in Mumbai is lesser, since there are several parents who were born rich as well. Another reason is the difference in entrepreneurial spirit across places. In a place like Kerala where people are naturally risk averse and hence averse to starting enterprises, people value responsible ways of living much higher than in a place like Mumbai or Bangalore where there are smart entrepreneurs who cannot afford to be boring- then they will fail to attract investors and/or customers.

The recent (~May/June 2015) Malayalam move Premam has become a major hit and as of now the 2nd highest grossing Malayalam movie of all time- with around 60crores over a budget of 5 crores. The top spot remains with Drishyam, which had nearly universal acclaim from people of all age groups. I'm personally a bigger fan of Premam, eventhough the focus of the movie is a little one-sided, since it talks about the good things related to enjoying college life, drinking, smoking, partying with friends and not having any purpose in life but to stalk girls and carefully avoids anything negative. The movie was a fun watch however and I could relate to a lot of things I saw (as would so many others- including adults, who would've thought of their younger years). I am mature enough to not take the movie's message without questioning it, and I believe it is not the moviemakers' responsibility to ensure that all movies have great messages. But the 'responsible' adult will fail to love the movie.

Nivin Pauly in Premam is indeed sexy. He is tough, looks tough, has a bunch of tough friends, hangs out in cars and bikes, drinks and smokes a lot and all that jazz. The guy however, has no clue about life. Or love. Or anything apart from looking cool. Now this is the diametric opposite of the 'responsible' adult who thinks only about the latest onion prices or some accident someone met with or some issue which came up in the state assembly.

As adults, we need to strike a balance and understand the tradeoff between responsibility and sexiness. We need to be responsible enough to manage to a reasonable extent by ourselves and yet fun enough. We should be positive about life and focus on doing things rather than sitting back and criticising those who do. The balance depends on individual preference as well- some people prefer to be highly sexy and not at all responsible, and some prefer to be highly responsible and don't care if they're any fun to hang out with. A relatively short post, by in my opinion a very important idea.

God, hope and power

Done with the 5th season of Game of Thrones and so far the least impressive (as in, did not make an impression that will last long). Don't worry- there won't be spoilers if you haven't seen the season yet, except for a very minor one. You have been warned, nevertheless.

The idea of God is an interesting one. As I've probably written about him in the past, I firmly believe that he is a construct of human imagination which serves a very real purpose- one which has become less relevant over time but is still very important to a majority of human population. The fact that all Gods of all religions have such strong connections with humans as compared to other creatures is a basic indication that this is the case. But I will not go into the details of proving why God probably doesn't exist and rejoice at the fact that his existence doesn't really matter- since he is all loving and would not differentiate between his children on the basis of the love his children have for him. Thus I am sure that I will be loved by the God who does not exist- even more so than others who waste time trying to impress him.

While the idea of God and the cause of his creation are interesting things (kings and noblemen probably created him to authenticate their power, and to control citizens through fear of divine punishment in case they escaped punishment on earth)- what is even more interesting is how God has completely overdone his stay. A concept created thousands of years ago, it is amazing how God is well and truly alive to this day- where thousands of people die in his name every year.

One reason I've always thought of is the hope that God gives us- humans don't always get what they want, and can lose hope and thus the willingness to live. The fact that there is someone looking after us gives us the hope that better days might come. Thus, a sense of purpose is also created within people and thus they lead happier lives, and have a sense of purpose while doing things to survive. The hope that God will help you with getting a better job, or in getting a better girl, or in buying that new phone will keep you from giving up altogether.

Only recently did I think of a side-effect of this hope creation. Certain people who are highly intelligent, yet realise the true meaningless of life may not be able to live with their sense of powerlessness and hope. They might not survive long enough to reproduce and even if they do- may not do well enough in life with all their sadness. A highly philosophical person would find life much less fun to live than a high flying investment banker who fucks around in Beverly Hills. Thus, by a process of natural selection people who are highly skeptical- at least some of them become extinct and are replaced by people who are have hope and faith (and God certainly helps).

 A connected, and less important reason might be the difficulty people have in comprehending the choices in front of them and in knowing they have an eternal father figure to protect them even if their real world parents are not. God can also be a convenient construct who will help you reinforce your beliefs (which may include questionable ones like killing Jews or killing non Muslims, or indeed less questionable ones like cheating or stealing to help your own family survive).

The most recent reason I observed has to do a lot with the corporate world. While this reason is again connected to the other two, it is a fresh perspective and helps explain the often seen higher amount of faith that adults display in God, compared to their younger folks in the same society.  In GoT Season 5 *Minor Spoiler Ahead* Cersei is kept in the dungeon by the High Sparrow and his followers. This is probably the worst time Cersei has gone through till now, even though she's had pretty much half a dozen blood relatives murdered. She's deprived of food, water and company and placed in a dungeon. Once in a while she is teased by a lady- lets call her 'lady' for now. This lady confidently defies all the threats that Cersei (the queen mother) makes about how she will make the lady regret every bit of what she was doing. The lady goes on to tease Cersei with water and ensures her of being given water if she confesses to her sins (of incest). Cersei's stubbornness in refusing to beg or plead for mercy is understandable given her family's position. However, the same amount of stubbornness is shown by the lady (who ends up being the more stubborn of the two in the end). BUT HOW? The lady is an absolute nobody, yet she gets the power (along with the other followers of the 'High Sparrow') to keep Cersei in their prison in spite of being absolute nobodies in the real world. The answer of course is their faith. They believe in the power that a queen has- but more than that, they believe in God, who has higher power than those who have power over them on earth. From our horrible bosses, or the parents that we hate or the corrupt politicians- to this day it is a problem for humans that they are governed by people whom they despise. A higher power which no one can see, which supports their beliefs is so much more convenient than reality.


For the sake of completeness, I'd like to mention a bias believers have in perceiving events that often helps sustain their belief- they would notice successful prayers more than failed ones and this also contributes a lot to how adults have stronger faith over time. Another reason is the high amount of responsibility adults tend to have, resulting in lack of self belief in handling all the responsibility by themselves. The list is far from complete, but Ive highlighted the important reasons hopefully.

To conclude I should say I do love God- not because I am selfish and expect anything in return (I do not assume God is selfish enough to love only those who love him), but because I am in awe of the magnificent creation of man that gives billions of people a reason to live. I should also mention that a strong morality, and love of human beings is absolutely essential for sustained happiness of an atheist, in case you're a non believer.

Hidden market mechanics in day to day life

Basic market mechanics of supply and demand deciding the price can be seen everywhere- and often in places you would not notice. I've probably talked about this earlier but I'll repeat it and try and elaborate the concept further- since childhood I've wondered how on earth I would have enough knowledge to justify being paid tends of thousands of rupees per month for whatever job I would end up doing. It WAS to an extent lack of self confidence, but I would have the same question for a large number of my batchmates (I would ask the question only to myself of course) who were on average dumber than me. The truth is however that it doesn't matter how bad our knowledge is- the fact is that other people are equally bad at it while starting off on their jobs and hence whatever supply you give them is high enough for their demand to be satisfied at the price they take you at.Also, the average person's skill level at a particular level in a firm will correspond to the average person's salary at that level, especially for large firms, provided the company has existed for long enough for the balancing to take place. Imbalances in skill level and salary will even out over time and will reach an equilibrium based on certain other factors (such as if the location is too remote, the salary would be slightly higher than it otherwise would). The comparison to demand and supply doesn't make a lot of sense I admit- BUT the fact that everything is decided by relative values and not by absolute values is fact enough for it to be entirely market based. For many of you though, this is a very obvious fact. Let us move on to other less obvious things.

Market mechanics are also evident in friendships- especially adult friendships. People who are high achievers, highly rich, social butterflies, good looking etc tend to form groups based on these generally desirable traits (I'm talking about the majority here- a minority may value other things). The cool group could for instance may have an attractive girl, a rich but not so attractive guy, a high flying corporate guy, a social butterfly etc. You are given membership in a group based on what you can give back to them- may not be money or good looks or coolness or anything in particular but can be a combination of these traits which make it worth their while to hang out with you. Friendship isn't all about getting benefits out of each other though- it's also about having fun hanging out with such people (people who have desirable characteristics are generally fun to hang out with, and would make friends wherever they go and having such friends enables them to get more friends and thus snowball). A more obvious example is a relationship where market mechanics are a lot more obvious- being rich, cool, feminine or masculine etc are mostly desirable characteristics and you would look for a partner who has these desirable characteristics at least as much as you feel you can give them. There is a a degree of realism our mind has when it comes to setting expectations from what you get out of your partner (based on your assessment of yourself, and past failures in wooing possible partners) which is similar to the price expectation you have out of a phone with a certain set of features or a kilo of tomato based on its quality.

An even less obvious application is in morality. Good and evil do not exist in the pure sense of the words and are judged relative to how good and how evil people in the society generally are. For instance, in a Hindu village where it's normal to discriminate against a Muslim, and say, not allow him to stay in your house for rent, it isn't considered a sin to do the same. The relativeness of good and evil becomes very clear as you become a grown up, when suddenly you start hurting other people and being selfish and still not feel that guilty just because you feel others would do the same thing. As an adult, finding a good (moral) friend is often about picking the least rotten out of the rotten apples. And as I've mentioned in a previous post, given the limited amount of time we have to life- it is often unadvisable to question the quid pro quo and a lot easier to accept these things as part of human existence. The relation to market mechanics of course comes from the fact that - similar to how there is no direct match between your skills on your job and your pay  (it depends on how skilled people around you are), there is no way to measure good or evil without the whole market that exists in goodness and evilness. If you're providing goodness at a lesser price than the market (you are less irritating or something along those lines), you will be considered as a good friend.  But of course, morality is the least important consideration adults have while making friends(slightly drifting from the topic here)- material benefit is the most important.

The last application I'm going to talk about and the least obvious of the ones here is happiness- your happiness is not an absolute thing that can be obtained by completing certain tasks. Firstly, it depends on how well off the people around you are- with respect to the things you value (looks, money etc). Secondly and more importantly, it depends on how life treats you with respect to how you expect life to treat you. In short, if you are happy with the effort you are putting into living and are happy with the results life is giving you- you are happy in life. This is similar to paying a price and being happy with the product's quality at the given price. The only way to be unhappy is to overpay for the goods (putting in too much effort for no results) or not paying enough for the goods you want even though you realise you're not paying enough (this is due to lack of motivation and is a different topic altogether- the discussion here is more about disappointment than with existential crises, and so lack of motivation wont be explored further)

Belief and over-selling

Success beyond a certain point comes only with belief; self-belief, belief in people or belief in a theory. At the lower levels of any field, you can improve by just practicing by yourself and learning how to do things. You can learn how to play a sport or how to draw pictures or how to do simple math by just reading up and practising these things. But if you want to be among the best, as you climb up the ladder in each field, the importance of confidence keeps increasing. The possible reason I'll come to later, but first I'll try and give some examples.

In any field, after a certain point people will invariably question you and there will be phases of self doubt- these can be short phases where someone insults u and you feel bad or longer phases of failure and introspection that artists tend to have (artists are more susceptible since art is a more subjective field). Almost all sports consider the word 'form' to be important, and 'form' is all about self belief. Someone who has had recent success tends to believe more in himself/herself and will thus get more success. Although not exactly snowballing, this is an effect which further compounds snowballing (refer previous post). And the reason why form and self belief are so important is because of how the human brain works(performs better when confident) and how the society considers confidence. There's a saying 'If you don't believe in yourself, who will?' and this is a statement that all societies go by. They expect you to be fully confident about yourself in case you are capable. All humans are constantly expected to over-sell themselves and never be rational or realistic about themselves. If you really think about it, the statement does not make much sense. A great artist may not know that his work of art is great, but the society expects him to know, and thus only the confident artists who labour on in spite of self doubt and believe in themselves in spite of criticism will make it through.

Coming to why the society expects you to know you're good- it's partly branding. I'll probably have to write a separate piece about this. The idea is that human beings often do not have the time or resources to make a perfectly informed decision and thus they go by brands. We buy and Audi car knowing that the engineers at Audi are brilliant people compared to the engineers at Suzuki who are not as brilliant. Brilliant engineers at the same time who seek jobs know that Audi is the place to be, compared to Suzuki since Audi would have smarter colleagues, better technology and of course a better pay- which is due to the value that customers give them. Success leads to more success. We do not have the time to learn everything about car design, apparel design and the design of each and every thing that we buy. Personal branding is a relatively simple thing as compared to corporate branding. We project ourselves as people whom we wish to be perceived as, and this is called personal branding. Some people do not put in an effort to artificially portray things they are not and hence they brand themselves as .... themselves. On the other hand, successful people often portray themselves as larger than life. Narendra Modi, the Indian PM is one of the first names which come to my mind when thinking of branding.

So the society judges you by how confident you are. But is that all? Not really- after attaining a certain level of success, the recognition you get is based on how better you are compared to others. (the full reason I'll hopefully put in another write-up) Let me illustrate- the lead designer/engineer at Sony Walkman during the late 90s and 2000s, whoever it was, was most probably a brilliant man. During his initial days, he would've worked really hard and improved on himself by just being able to generate ideas and designs which are objectively amazing. But after becoming the head of Walkman products, he has to compete with Apple. And that is where he completely failed. He not only has to create a  good product, he has to be confident about it (and thus spend marketing expenditure on it) and he has to compete with the personal charisma of Steve Jobs while coping with all the criticism that comes from the public. At high levels, people use all kinds of techniques to try and demotivate you. Professional gamers will make fun of that fact that your girlfriend is ugly compared to theirs and professional cricketers will make fun of your ethnicity and call you a monkey (ask Andrew Symonds). Without belief, you cannot survive the onslaught - and more importantly you cannot intimidate others to reign supreme. I'm not the kind of guy who would use these (seemingly) immoral ways to give a boost to my success, but I can definitely understand people who do- and given that we are human beings we will all have to have that extra bit of self-confidence to survive.

I've talked about professional gamers, sportspeople and managers. These are positions which involve a lot of public attention and thus people are expected to criticise each other that little bit more. Even in academics, self belief is all important. In economics we have Keynes, Friedman, Hayek and dozens of other economists come up with completely different schools of thought on the same subject and believe with all their life in their respective schools. Tesla believed fully in the power of Alternating Current (AC) while Edison did so in Direct Current (DC) even though there was no justification available at the time for the superiority of either. Thus, even in academics where objective truth is expected to prevail, there needs to be great self belief in the idea for the scientist/researcher to put in effort and to persist enough for it to be even considered by peers and the community at large- 'Why would the community believe in your research if you yourself do not?'.

Belief often leads to achievement, even if the belief is irrational. Overselling yourself is a risk which is generally worth taking. Failure obviously will make you look a little fake, but people generally understand the requirement of overselling and thus it's not a big deal even if you, say, claim to be good at presenting something and then mess it up. You will eventually mess it up enough times to be confident enough that you wont mess up- given that you've been there 10 times while the guy who is supposed to be your alternative choice has done it only once since he isn't confident enough about succeeding.

And the importance of belief is high in fields which are subjective in nature. For example, as an academician you need less confidence as opposed to an investment professional who has to pick stocks (yes, picking stocks is very subjective) .

This was a long post which I had to cut short at places and link to other articles (1 past,2 future) but probably the most sensible one I've written in some time :)


PS: Whenever I explain a cause-effect relationship, there would be obviously a huge number of causes and a huge number of effects in turn. I try to highlight the most important ones, since it's not possible to list everything (though the title of the blog is shandification).

Snowballing and the beginning of a more practical phase

Growing up sucks. I don't think many people would disagree to this. Only the really boring nerds grow up and have more fun out of life- speaking of which I don't complain as much as others do about growing up, since I'm definitely more of a nerd than the average person. And since I'm growing up and all (an adult by pretty much all definitions by now), I'll be talking lesser about abstract things and more about things with certain practical relevance although a good number of topics will still have few applications- they might still just be commentary on the 'adult' things that people do. But less of things like philosophy within games and all that.

Having said that, it's a bit ironic that I'll be talking about snowballing- which is term with distinct gaming roots and its relevance in real life. In certain games like DotA and to an extent even in CS, there is a certain advantage that the winner gets. A successful early game in DotA is generally going to result in a much better middle game and late game. Someone who has an excellent early game will have a good game even with a mediocre middle/late game. Better items, levels and powers which are obtained make the rest of the game much easier to win. But snowballing is when you have an excellent early game, middle game and have done almost everything perfectly till the point of time in question. This instantly reminds me of toppers who top the class through school, college and what not and finally end up in IIM A, B etc. A student who had a bad 10th will not get into an IIM A or B and irrespective of how much he tries after that. Of course, admission criteria are artificially created rules but there are reasons for such rules to be there in the first place and a major reason is that human beings snowball.

The biggest 'achievers' in life - most of them snowballed. From Zuckerberg to Sachin, these are people who are talented Yes, but worked and achieved nearly flawlessly throughout the years that mattered. It's no secret either that continuous hard work results in success- even if you fail you will still be relatively very successful compared to what would've been had you not even tried. This isn't to say that it's not possible to start late- it's definitely possible but the fact remains that snowballers have a much easier time succeeding than others and often reach levels that others find absolutely impossible. While you can quit a game if you're having a bad early game in DotA, it is not quite the same in real life. Do not fear however, for we have brains which automatically adjust ambition to the levels that are realistically possible for us and of course if you're brain cannot do that you will lead a sad, delusional life forever. For the rest of us though, we will be happy most of the time with what we have, while having just enough unhappiness with ourselves to want to live and learn and improve on a daily basis.

Evil

The concept of evil is an interesting one- as kids we were told that some people are evil and that there are certain things that we do that would make us evil as well- lying, deceit and so forth. There were evil characters in fairy tales and cartoons and what not and the reason why such a black and white distinction between good and evil is made while telling stories to kids is partly because kids can easily relate to such explanations rather than ones saying that certain a character for instance is mostly good but does very evil things sometimes OR that the villain in a story has certain good things about him. As we grow up, we realise that there is a lesser distinction between good and evil and some may even theorise that there may be no absolute evil or good and bad and that it is all a matter of perception. Grown ups read fiction and watch movies which evidence this- adult themed stories have complex characters and in some cases the protagonist borderlines being pure evil himself- Breaking Bad for instance has a protagonist who was fairly good for most part of the series but became purely evil in the latter parts. I do not subscribe to either of these extreme beliefs- I do think that people and actions can be evil at an objective level(killing someone to make personal profits for example is evil, even if you are doing it for your family- it becomes slightly more evil if you're doing it for fun) but I also believe that nothing is absolutely good or absolutely evil.

Some say that there is no good without evil- and my interpretation of this saying is that we cannot identify good actions as 'good' if there were no evil actions. This is similar to identifying darkness as the absence of light. This isn't 100% true but is mostly accurate. A person can be good by helping others- this doesn't need anyone else's evil in order to be considered as good. However, someone who doesn't hurt other people becomes good only because there are other people who do hurt and kill people.

An interpretation of evil that I thought of recently is something like this: There are different ways of being good and some actions can be interpreted as good or evil depending upon the values of the person analysing them. There are numerous tradeoffs which we have to make in life and the moral consequences are often blurred. Slacking off a bit at work to come home early and spending time with your family can be good or bad depending on the work you normally do at your office, the time you spend normally with your family, the occassion on the specific day and a whole lot of other factors.

Now that this has been established- i introduce a term 'Renegade'. The term probably has a meaning different from how I'm about to use it here. The meaning I imply is the one that the Mass Effect series of games uses. As the protagonist, you are given several moral choices in the game that make us ether a 'Paragon' or a 'Renegade' to different degrees and this has an effect on the rest of the games. A paragon typically takes the safest and the 'by-the-book' approach to solving problems, empathises heavily with other characters and has a lot of patience in solving issues. A renegade is a 'no-nonsense' kind of person who wants quick resolution to problems and typically does not care much for others' feelings. To give an example, as the captain of a ship in the game - a paragon leader would forgive a crew member for making a mistake and request him to not repeat it while a renegade would shout and him and ask him to do a 100 sit ups as punishment. Although the renegade seems to be more evil, there is nothing to suggest that it is absolutely wrong to go the renegade way all the time. As human beings who live in a limited time frame ad have access to limited resources to carry out the things we wish to do, there will be times when it's more correct to go tough on your friends or enemies and be more direct in getting things done. Thus, you are a hero who saves the universe irrespective of whether you are a pure paragon or a pure renegade or a mixture (more realistically) of both.

My theory is that evil is born from a person who thinks that he's being a renegade but mis-judges his actions which are actually evil. (To repeat what I'd mentioned in an earlier paragraph, I do believe that there are some actions which are evil at an objective level.) Thus, when you have, say the option to wipe out a harmless alien species so that you get paid by warmongering species and thus improve humanity's resources- it would be evil. It seems that evil is thus a misjudgement of actions which are unacceptably selfish. Renegades can possibly be explained in a better way as people who do selfish actions(for their family/planet/species/themselves) without causing too much harm (but a little harm nevertheless) to others. Coming home early on a Friday to spend an evening with her after a long while while sacrificing a bit of work in office and making your juniors do some extra work is thus a renegade action. And as I've mentioned in a previous post, selfish (and more specifically- renegade) is sexy.

To summarise what I've written so far, evil is when you are too selfish while thinking that you are not. And apparently, this goes against what I earlier said- the idea that there is in fact pure evil. But as human beings on this planet and given that we live at this time and space- given such constraints, I'm sure that there are things that we can consider evil at an objective level. To summarise again, at a philosophical level evil is subjective and is when you misjudge acceptable levels of selfishness; however in practice there is always pure evil in any society in the world at any given point in time. I should mention a sentence about people who do evil actions without reason (the actions are thus pure evil) and these people are sociopaths/psychopaths/people with serious mental disorders.

 

Happines and purpose (and self identity)

I had written in an earlier post about how our life should ideally be a mixture of happiness- where we want things(food, chocolate, love) and get them, and purpose- where we commit to doing something meaningful and achieve it over a period of time (scoring good marks, getting a good job, having a family etc.). The first kind of happiness alone is not sufficient for a person to be happy in the long run, since it lacks meaning by itself- this probably has some relationship with Maslow's hierarchy as well, where you get your basic wants and needs satisfied, and then you need to discover self-actualisation to be truly happy.

Another way to look at happiness and purpose is on the basis of who you are, and what you identify yourself as. For most of my life, I've tried to act like the normal human being when it comes to interacting in social settings, but over time I've realised that it's more fun to just be yourself. You get a lot of happiness by doing the things that define you- the things that you really like doing. As a relatively introverted kind of guy, I might prefer to stay home on a saturday night and play an RPG or watch a movie instead of going out and over time I've realised that it is OK to do this since this is the kind of guy I am and that I don't have to necessarily go out with people for the sake of going out.

Over the course of some more time however, I've come to realise that people who combine different types of characters- especially the strengths, tend to be much more succesful than people who stick to one or few traits. For example, a guy who is naturally soft hearted by nature and who is sensitive to other people- if he puts in a big effort and manages to do all the fun things and just be the normal guy in a crowd, can be incredibly powerful as a leader in social settings, as well as in the corporate world. Similarly, a girl who is talkative and fun and outgoing by nature- if she puts in a big effort to understand the softer and quieter side of life can have a huge impact on her surroundings and be much more succesful than otherwise and indeed more succesful than independently quiet/talkative people. I'm not suggesting that these are the only two types of people- whatever type of person you are, if you can embrace what you're not comfortable with- then you can indeed become a very well rounded character who has a huge impact around his surroundings (and become a character everyone can relate to), at the workplace or at home.

And now to relate happiness and purpose to self-identity. Being yourself and doing the things that you love doing brings you happiness. If you're a foodie by nature, indulge in a feast once a while to stay happy. This is essential to everyone to stay normal- to embrance one's true love(s). However, if you can also embrace the opposite- being health conscious and working out at the same time, then you bring in purpose as well. Similarly, if you're a kind person who teaches at an NGO orphans during Friday night, it would be excellent if you could go out on a saturday night to pub with your friends. Happiness and purpose- Being yourself, and being what you're scared of.

PS: When I say embrace what you're afraid of I'm only talking about good things- if you're afraid to physically injure a person, please don't for instance :P

Learning Gray

As I've written in a few of my posts before, I tend to think a little bit in black and white- that there is either an objective good or an objective bad, objective right/wrong and so on. I realise that the world is Gray but am not comfortable thinking about things like that. Knowing the absence of God (though I also know that believing in him would've helped me) also does not help at all. There are other ways of describing this kind of personality- introvert, thoughtful,quiet etc. and they all would have similarities but I'll stick to my usage of black and white- mostly since I dont think that these sets do intersect fully; plus there are minor differences.

A lot of people criticise the educational system we have wherein we sit in a class full of peers and read about things that other people do(history), the results of what they do(economics/geography) and what we should do(decision making stuff- like how to choose a project which has higher returns) instead of actually doing. Thus the system is criticised for not being practical enough. This is a criticism I've seen across the board- right from primary school days to high school (teachers didnt show some chemical reactions, physical phenomena, some great books by great english authors etc.). And, I've always wondered- what is the amount of 'practicalness' at which the amount of practicalness becomes too much? Surely there is some sort of tradeoff here (as there is in almost every subjective decision in the world). The answer probably lies in the fact that the amount is different for different people.

 For a black and white guy, a very small amount of practicalness is what he would be comfortable with. A lecture on branding strategy for automobiles might be more comfortable for a black and white guy as opposed to a case study where the students have to create one in a team and present it in front of an audience. It doesn't mean that the latter wouldn't help him learn better- it just means that the person would be more comfortable with the former and it is entirely possible that the lecture can help him learn easier than the case study if he's used to learning in such a way (though it's unlikely). The average human being is fairly gray however, and thus would prefer a lot of practical inputs. As I mentioned earlier, black and white people can learn just as well from both methods and it's all about being comfortable with one. Perhaps one reason why I decided to go for an MBA instead of a more technical field (was into Mechanical Engg) is since I wanted to be more comfortable with Gray methods of learning and Gray life in general. Although I can handle the Grayness and learn, I would probably be way more comfortable in a more black and whitish field and would try and balance it out in the future. Academics is relatively black and whitish (at least compared to working in a firm in the same field) and I might end up there. 

Work experience is greatly valued by employers since it indicates a tendency to excel in the Gray world. Someone who has worked somewhere and been fairly successful is good at handling the Grayness around him or is fairly Gray himself. This can be a huge complement to your Black and White credentials (marks (not 100% Black and white since group projects and stuff are there but fairly black and white), certifications etc.). Around 2 years of experience is probably enough to judge the Grayness quotient. Someone with good marks and a good short stint of experience is the ideal candidate (given of course that he will stay with the company for a fairly long period). This kinds of reminds me of looking for a like partner- you should look for all the features that make him/her the right candidate but always keeping in mind to be practical, since super-amazing people may not give a shit about you. Anyway, catch them young they say- these people are targeted by B-School recruiters since they are currently jobless (so no hassles of making them want to switch etc. ), have a proven track record by themselves, have the track record of being selected by a top B-school (if it IS a top Bschool i.e) and also if the candidate turns out bad, the college also shares a bit of responsibility.

While mentioning in the previous para that Gray compliments your black and whiteness, I forgot to mention that Black and White thinking is also extremely important. You should ideally have a mix of both. Actually, when it comes to inexact sciences, I'm very skeptic about everything. If someone says that Modi is going to make India grow, my question is how do you know? If someone says Tata Steel is going to do well, my question is- how do you know, plus have you not heard of the efficient market hypothesis. It is perhaps a fallout of by black and whitishness that I'm very skeptic in inexact fields of study (like say economics).

Happy, proud and BROKE

If there's one thing that unites all the people who are broke, it would be happiness. And if there were two things, the second thing would be pride- in either their identity, or the work that they do, or the work that they have done. I'm not talking about ALL those who are broke- some of them have never had a chance to make it big (or even reasonably alright). But if you are middle-class or above and have consistently underachieved in life, these two are the main reasons. I do realise that making money is not the purpose of life and hence if a person is happy with being happy and proud and broke, I'm perfectly alright with that BUT if you (kind of like me) wonder at times why you tend to just fall short of making it big the idea deserves some thought.

The underlying reasons for being happy (with yourself, and your surroundings) may vary- you might be too lazy or not have the motivation to accept facts and become sad about the shit that keeps on happening to you. Or you do not know enough to be sad about your unfortunate situation. To a large extent, I've tried to not be too happy with myself at any stage of my life because of this- though it probably has occurred more due to a subconscious effort more than anything else and I realise it in retrospect. The second reason- pride is however something that has plagued me pretty much throughout my life. From getting accolades throughout childhood (they weren't much but they were enough for making me 'overconfident') to naturally being afraid to show weakness or to fail, and in general having a slightly superior intellect-cum-IQ(see what I mean?) pride has definitely made me underachieve compared to others with similar skills.

In all models of economy which are not market-based, pride and happiness play a really important part. I've stressed in a few of my previous posts how maximising money isn't the sole aim of man and that there are non-monetary benefits that people look for. Now, if you're the kind of person who isn't too excited by your identity (for example you aren't too proud of being an Indian or a Hindu or a young bloke or being attractive or whatever is it) then there's not much motivation for you to go after the non-monetary benefits of doing things which would not pay much but make you happy/proud. While a religious person might spend a day at a temple say every week, you could save on that time and read up The Economist. It's well known that Roman emperors used to conduct games and plays so that people would not think too much about their poverty and revolt. While the normal lower middle class to poor person enjoys going to a play everyday and eating roadside food and the small things in life (mainly because his parents and their parents realised that these are the only things they can have) the prince knows that being rich and famous is the key to being really really happy. Thus, people cultivate different utility functions and everyone is happy being themselves and would not want to be anyone else in this world.

In environments where merit isn't rewarded with money or where , pride comes in again. This happens in PSUs, crappy companies, communist societies and in jails. Pride in small communities and happiness with otherwise pointless things crowd out the search for success and money(which are beyond a person's reach in these cases).

So, if you feel that you're not achieving as much as you should- think about your present situation deeply and consider how miserable it really is. Thinking about the billions of people who cannot even have food three times a day will make you satisfied (a kind of happiness) with what you have. Be sad, miserable and thus do something productive in life.

Dating outside your league

If all of us could think objectively about other people with absolutely no bias, there is a fair chance that a guy's favourite girl may not be his girlfriend and the person he admires the most may not be his dad, but an uncle or even a distant acquintance. However, thankfully for us, we have our weird biases which ensure that it is indeed our childhood sweetheart (or the arranged marriage spouse) whom we love the most in the world and by some amazing co-incidence, we all have, individually, the best parents in the world. The probability that we all believe this at an objective level is very low- and if so, would greatly undermine human capabilities for reasoning. And I strongly believe that we know better than to be so naive.

I say 'thankfully for us', because had a person not had this bias, he would be completely shunned by the society. A guy who doesn't love his home-made food more than anything else? A guy who likes his aunt more than his mom? A guy who likes a girl he last talked to 10 years back more than his current wife? What kind of idiot would he be considered as? An honest idiot, but the degree of idiocy is unquestionably monumental. A completely logical(a person who thinks in black and white, without the grays) human being would really struggle to survive in this world. There should be an evolutionary explanation for loving all that is related to yourself- your town, family, close friends etc. more than things that you haven't experienced yet, or things that you have experienced but are not close to- for example people beyond your league. And the explanation is probably just selfishness- you like people more when there is a higher likelihood of them being useful to you, and not because of them being good human beings.

When it comes to a guy's relationship with his girlfriend, while there can be moments when the guy sincerely believes that there is this one person he came across due to sheer coincidence and happens to be the most amazing female in the world, it is unlikely that he thinks the same for a majority of his life. Think about it- out of 7 billion people, and around 3.5 billion females- say around 800 million of an age you can marry- of which say 100 million can communicate with you- and you think you found your dream girl after meeting a few dozen? The times when you sincerely feel so can be attributed to errors in human judgement (which are helpful at several instances, including at this aspect of loving your not-so-perfect partner) . A point to be noted here is that there may be people who do not really care if their partner is their ideal match, and a good number of people I am sure fall in this category- but I am a dreamer, and I write for dreamers.

As you might have figured out by the previous para, I do tend to think relatively more in black-and-white than the average person.

One thing to consider, given the things I've mentioned above is what you would do if you met a girl (or a guy in the case of girls; I've not mentioned counterparts elsewhere but please consider everything as being applicable to guys and girls) who is amazing and you do not think that you deserve her? On one side, you can try and 'get' her and if you were right initially, she might end up being worse off than she otherwise would've, with a 'better' guy and a happier life in general. And on the other side you can ignore her and not take the risk of (i) trying and failing to woo her (ii) successfully wooing her and making her life miserable. Point number two may not be considered by a lot of people, but a person who thinks in black-and-white- a person who believes in objective truth, will. Human (and animal instinct) is to go after her and so, it is not very feasible to not try wooing her, since your heart often doesn't understand our brain. Meanwhile, your judgement about the girl being in your league can always be wrong and hence it might be correct to err slightly on the side of trying to woo girls than to not. After all, losing out on a girl because of your mis-judgement is a bigger loss than trying for a girl and not getting her because she's out of your league.

 Unlike my other posts, I do not preach 'answers' in this post, and I'm still looking for an answer to this question. I've obviously tended to 'try' outside my league, but I've always had my reservations (and probably will continue to have them) and never gone ahead with 100% commitment. Perhaps the fact that such a question has popped up in my head will cause me to be inadequate for the girl in concern. But should it? This, and the other questions I leave to the reader to figure out. And as a friendly advice, even though it is good (probably) to think about such things, when it comes to practice, always go for it :P And in case you don't think you'll find the perfect girl/guy, the only thing I can say is that reading this post was a complete waste of time for you, unless you start dreaming because of it.