Slavery in the 21st Century, through the eyes of Django Unchained

This post is partly inspired by the video 'CON: Django Uncomplained' which talks about the brilliant depiction of slavery in the movie Django Unchained.  Also, this is definitely going to be a serious topic and thus warrants a tone of writing that is less exciting and more concise. I do not have strong opinions on most things I write below- these are merely observations. There is no underlying theme of criticism of slavery that I wish to have, since it would impede an objective understanding of the phenomenon. That probably sounds a bit cruel but hey- people have done worse things than write unbiased blog posts on slavery.

Slavery is an interesting phenomenon. Well, for most part WAS an interesting phenomenon since slavery in the traditional sense is nearly non-existent now. But the spirit of slavery lives on in many things that we do on a day-to-day basis. The fact that many of us do (fairly monotonous) things on a 'day-to-day' basis to earn our living is itself one of the stronger manifestations of slavery in the modern day. We are slaves to routine, to consumer culture, to our friends and family, to our jobs. But how is that possible you ask? The definition of slavery can be broadened to include such things by defining it thus: 'Acting on the will of others to make a living for yourself'. Now, this definition does not talk about whether the slave gets wages/not or whether he enjoys being a slave. However, these are details which I believe depend on the situations. You might be naturally obediant/submissive person who listens to your parents/husband/wife/friends or you may not be. But if you act in such ways as to please other people and place other people's interests consistently above your own, you are a slave.

Traditionally, slaves were required to perform mundane tasks at a very large scale and generate disproportionate profits to the owners. They were unpaid and were not guaranteed any sort of human rights. I'm not as interested in the economics of slavery (valuing a him as a series of possible future cash-flows discounted for the behavioural and health risks that society believes slaves to have- risks which would impact the capacity and willingness of a slave to work) as much as the social aspects of slavery. They were expected to be quiet, hard-working and efficient at doing the tasks they were expected to do. But these aspects would characterise a large number of slaves and thus it would be difficult to stand out consistently for a slave who had only these characteristics. For, these are all attributes which can be sacrificed by an owner with deep enough pockets. A magic ingredient is the self-belief that a slave possesses that he is inferior to his owner and thus incapable of doing things that his owner can do and as a consequence, undeserving of all the pleasures that the owner enjoys. A homogenous belief in servitude is still not enough though to keep the slaves under them since there would always be questions raised against such an obviously manipulative practice and I'll come to the details shortly. Now, the fact that most of the slaves believed in the fairness of the system is not new information by any means. What I want to talk about is the mechanism through which this belief was spread and maintained by the owners and some of the slaves themselves, for their selfish benefits.

Django Unchained is a work of art. It is a work of art, because of how it sends messages to the viewer without being too explicit about it. The message is a bit vague, yet clear enough to the intelligent audience and it is coherent enough - unlike the case with certain abstract works of 'modern art'. Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave to be sold to Di Caprio (don't remember his character's name). While travelling to Di Caprio's residence with other slaves, Django is unapologetically brazen and acts with a level of boldness which is not seen in typical slaves, in order to attract Di Caprio's interest. Di Caprio sees huge potential in Django particularly because of this: He potentially acts as an example of a black who is too 'free' for his own good and will re-inforce a sense of servitude among the other slaves. Django is expected in the future to make mistakes (according to the rules the slaves believe in/what Di Caprio has set) and these mistakes will be severely punished by Di Caprio, who will thus have justified his ill-treatment of slaves through the 'misbehaviour' of Django. In an ideal scenario, Django will slowly lose his enthusiasm and energy to be a rebel and eventually become a fully willing slave. The kindness that Di Caprio initially shows towards Django represents a fair chance that he gets before he is given the full-blown slave experience. If Django were an obedient slave who did everything as he was told to, Di Caprio would not have had even a bit of the interest that he was able to generate in himself through such behaviour. Another interesting slave is the guy who heads the slaves, played by Samuel L Jackson. This guy (let's just call him guy for now) is pretty old and clearly receives a treatment which is almost at par with the non-slaves, in terms of material benefits. However certain scenes show us the degree to which he feels 'owned' by Di Caprio. This guy serves several purposes (1) The fact that he is old and has been a slave for several decades shows that in order to earn respect, you need a large number of years of slave experience where you performed your duties without complaining or causing trouble (sounds eerily like the corporate system here) and (2) He fully believes in slavery and the inferiority of blacks himself and thus sets an example for the other slaves (3) By being a slave with the above desirable qualities, he is someone who gets a disproportionate amount of kindness from Di Caprio (even though he is still treated like shit). He thus represents a hope- a kind of role model for all the slaves to aspire for, while working hard for several years and being treated like animals while being given no pay.

Now, there are probably no scenarios exactly like the ones Django and the guy (and the rest of the nameless slaves) face, in the present day. Human rights violations are far lesser these days compared to a couple of hundred years ago. But while some things change more, some others don't change at all. We are humans after all and certain things like corruption and slavery cannot be erased from human beings very easily (it has to happen as a part of several hundred years of evolution, and it is something which I believe is still happening). In my opinion, sacrificing personal freedom to get substantial benefits that you otherwise would not is natural to how human beings react in a free-market economy. It isn't the happiest choice for us, but it is the one which will make us richest. It is lazy, but efficient in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. This isn't to say that slaves were completely willing, but to an extent I do believe that a large majority of people don't mind being slaves if it meant that they had a living. Managers (especially in jobs where the work is mundane, the quality of the output is not very relevant and thus employees are easily expendable) will function in similar ways as slavers. Average or below-average performing employees are tolerated as long as they accept the hierarchy in the firm and do not question the leadership's actions. High performers who think too independently are not thought of very highly and treated worse than the mediocre guy who passionately sucks up to the management, since these high performers represent a threat to the managers and to the status quo in general. In such a system, people who have the ability to do things independently yet make numerous mistakes and have the potential to be a willing slave, will be most valued by the manager. This is the Django of the team and will be punished and rewarded severely, with the severity depending on the supply of Djangos in the team as well as in the general job market. This Django may eithet be at the early stage(this is what Jamie Foxx tries to portray), middle stage (where he learns to go with the flow and take punishments and rewards as they come) or the fully developed stage (where he is more careful in his actions, believes blindly in the system and has probably become the guy!). The ideal team has a diverse mix of Djangos, one or two guy like slave leaders and a large number of below average performers who believe in the hierarchy- a belief which is reinforced by the Djangos and the guys. And in case you wish to point of that managers are different from owners, almost all managers in a firm in turn have managers and thus reflect the thoughts of the owners through lines of hierarchy, on the basis of the tone at the top.

A large number of office jobs qualify the conditions for the slavery comparison to be made. Also, I'm not entirely neutral on this topic. I do believe that a system where individuals are given full freedom will result in better economic benefits. Such a system would encourage original thought and creativity to a much larger extent than is considered acceptable in most places, presently. But there are pros and cons to everything including freedom and the slavers have a fair point when they disagree with me on the topic of allowing freedom. To borrow a bit of theory from modern Corporate Finance, 'shareholder value' is widely considered to be the best indicator of managers' and employees' performance and increasing shareholder value is seen as the purpose of all corporations (there are certain exceptions and nuances to this which I don't want to cover here). This is of course, equivalent to doing whatever it takes to make sure that the people who own your company get more money, in order to be a good employee. Sounds a bit inhuman but that's how it is. And, if you feel that you're not comfortable with this kind of a setup, there are four main options for you (1) Start a company which makes money/adds value without the slavery set-up (2) Work independently as a consultant/teacher/artist/architect or in fields where you can be hired to complete projects or tasks as an individual (3)  Get into a job where the nature of the job demands that individuals have to have skills which make them relatively non-expendable (4) Start a company which mass produces goods/services and become the slaver yourself. If material benefits are the sole purpose to your life, option 4 is the no-brainer. But if you want a world which is happier and in the long-term, richer - you will look towards other options, closer to the first one.

'To The Moon', the rules of modern love, and the purpose of life

So I just played this Japanese-made (but English language) game called 'To The Moon'. Japanese games handle emotional themes much better than American ones and they tend to have the courage to take risks when it comes to exploring sensitive themes. This can result in certain flop ideas within otherwise great games (such as the Metal Gear Solid series) as well as flop games altogether, but sometimes it results in beautiful works of art such as 'To The Moon'. Two scientists are hired (probably in the future) by a dying man to alter his memories so that he can die having fulfilled his ambition of going to the moon, by connecting a device to his brain. I had to play as the scientists who traversed through several memories across his life in order to understand why he wanted to go to the moon and which memories had to be altered in the initial stages so that he ends up in the moon in the later ones. <Spoiler alert> But it turned out that his desire to go to the moon wasn't exactly a desire to literally go to the moon, but a metaphor for wanting to be with his recently deceased wife, and it is possible that during his dying days he himself did not realise this. After their first meeting as kids staring at the night sky while atop a mountain near a carnival, they promise to meet on the same spot next year and possibly as a child fantasy they agree to: 'meet on the moon' if they were unable to meet the following year. This results in the dying man subconsciously wanting to go to the moon <Spoiler ends here> It all sounds very dry when typed out here but the game is a fantastic exploration of love and the purpose of life itself and the writing is intelligent enough to throw in some humour and practicality through the scientists' dialogues into an otherwise all-out romantic story.

 Now, I know that it's not exactly a manly thing to be talking about love and it is even less manly a thing to be writing about love but as someone who doesn't give a shit about such stereotypes, I will go ahead and do so. The hero 'John' likes the heroine 'River' not because she is popular in school, but because she is different. She doesn't hang out with the usual crowd or do the usual things that usual girls do. In general, this is seen as a bad thing in the society (to be more specific, a risky thing) and such people are seen to be more likely to be a liability than anything else. For John, this is a positive. River is not mundane or commonplace, but special and unique.

There are hundreds of people, magazines and blogs which advise on love. And almost all of the advice points to a certain set of consistent ideas. You and your lover should ideally be independent of each other emotionally and if possible, financially as well. You should keep a reasonable distance between you and your lover and not share literally everything amongst each other, in order to preserve a sense of mystery and attractiveness about the other person. The guy should have a strong set of guy friends and the girl should have a set of girl friends who would cater to certain emotional needs that the partner cant. Also, it is common for you to feel good about your lover only after a good number of mutual friends feel good about him/her. These ideas are commonly advised by everyone, and I have myself set similar targets in the past and will do so in the future as well to an extent. However, I wish to point out that this is not the only way of doing things. Love doesn't have to be between two independent people who don't need each other at all apart from for having fun. This is a commoditised and practical version of love which has a higher 'success' rate in terms of partners not splitting up as much as in other relationships. The success rate, if measured in terms of a less measurable but more relevant metric: pleasure for the lovers, would possibly point towards a relationship where the lovers are comfortable just being themselves instead of practical targets set by the society; One where both of them are completely open with each other and end up being so close that they cannot survive without each other. This is a riskier way to go about things (and the relationship will be more volatile; quick example of the passion of Maria Elena vs. Vicky, from Vicky Cristina Barcelona) but at least for some people the risk is worth taking. To put it simply, there are certain rules in life which we follow on the basis that the rules make us economically more productive as human beings and as lovers, more likely to stay together. We shouldn't mistake these rules as being able to give us happier and more fulfilling individual or love lives. Take a fucking chance and BE your unique beautiful self and fall in love with someone else who is equally unique and beautiful. You may end up being in a few impractical relationships and suffer a few heartbreaks but it's worth it if you finally find the person you're meant to be with (and it's worth it even otherwise because at least you tried). It all sounds a bit too romantic, but all I'm asking for is for people to be a bit more romantic than they are now, for - what is life about but loving and being loved?

Well, life's actually a lot more than about loving and being loved! .. but to go slightly off-topic before coming back, WE the people on earth are now richer than we have ever been before. There is also better technology than there has ever been in the past (some of the technological improvements don't translate into GDP and hence the separate mention). We are however, not significantly happier than we have been in the past (according to polls, and also.. common sense). Happiness of a certain kind can be attained through money or food or even having a functional relationship. But to be really happy in life you need a purpose, and you need love. There's sufficient psychological literature which suggests the importance of purpose for long-term happiness and Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which isn't without critique) outlines this through the term 'self-actualisation'. The mention of love along with purpose and thus its addition to the self-actualisation part instead of the 'basic needs' part is just a personal touch that I put in , which I believe is true for me (and possibly for some others, likely not a majority though). People are different in some ways (and similar in many other ways), but within a reasonable time of you life on earth you should figure out your personal values and the things that you are willing to stand up for. Your work should at least indirectly assist you in standing up for these values and help you in serving as a role model for others. We are social creatures however and we will need to talk to a large number of other people, belong to some groups and have different experiences before we have an idea of who we are and what values we believe in. These values would no doubt be influenced by a wide array of factors from your DNA to your personal experiences, but make you unique nevertheless. Copying others and doing things that the society does will help you get basic needs such as food, money and a sense of belonging - all without taking much risk, but doing more of it will not get you higher levels of happiness which purpose can give you. Now, being efficient and productive in life and feeling purposeful are indeed things that give you long-term happiness but for me that's still not enough.

I have to be myself, forget all the wisdom imparted by the society and practicality out of the window and fall in love, and not just have an efficient and functional partner. Love for me, is a crucial part of long-term happiness and as important as my purpose to life and my personal values. You may have a different idea about these things and all I'm saying is that you should strongly believe in them and have good reasons for doing so.

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.

The scientific side of Quora

I've never been a big fan of Quora, or the hype surrounding Quora in spite of very close friends being huge fans of it. And I've never been able to pin point the reason for the success of Quora as well- especially in India, given that most questions asked on Quora would have answers provided on wikipedia or on some similar source which is more or less accurate, and in any case more reliable than posts on Quora. Let's try and pin point.

Explanations provided on Wikipedia and/other technical sources tend to be too technical, and catered towards the academic- while people googling things out tend to not be academics (I hope). Thus, the target audience here from Quora's point of view is the average person, who wants to either prepare for exams, enhance knowledge for work related requirements, or is curious is general about scientific concepts (happens a lot in Asian countries especially- higher penetration in India has to do partly with our comfort with English).

Sites like Investopedia tend to give simpler explanations, but still maintain a certain amount of professionalism while giving examples and would not cite cricketers or bollywood actors or other things which Indians relate to (or other similar things that we can easily relate to as a global citizen as well). We love pictures, examples and simple explanations which may not be 100% accurate but are easy to grasp and provide us maybe 80-90% of the picture. These explanations generally have more value to the public as a whole who may not 1)have the technical knowledge to understand complete definitions and 2)may not have the patience to understand the whole thing

Let us look at the people who might be capable of providing answers to a technical question. (I pause here to note that not all questions on Quora are technical questions, but the success of Quora I believe is because of scientific questions like say 'Why do we have day and night' answered in very simple terms but without sacrificing too much on completeness. )We have the academic who answered the same question in a journal which was in turn quoted on Wikipedia who would answer it in a complete fashion, with a technical explanation and maybe an obscure example. Suppose we take the function of financial markets as a question and the journal would have explanations about moving money across time and states of nature and will provide a few examples with notations that may be a bit alien to the average reader. Now, an ex-VP of an investment bank would give a much simpler explanation than the academic because he has grasped the essense of the question much better than the academic, has seen real world applications or examples, and also knows better - how to capture the imagination of the listener while answering a question.He would talk about a student who hit a lottery who wants to move his money ahead in time since he cant consume it all at once, or a poor farmer who wants to hedge and move money across states of nature (I'm not really trying to be too creative here- the VP would obviously have better definitions).

Now what exactly do we want simple answers?- this is particularly relevant to Indians, but applicable across the world as well. People are lazy (in spite of having enough time on their hands, are unwilling to invest it in learning terminoogy or concepts), have too little time to spend on understanding answers (might be a senior professional not well versed in technical terminology) and in general, value answers with a practical outlook (as humans, we often understand better with illustrations, examples etc). Also, time is a limited resource and lesser time spent on understanding a concept is a kind of value addition a well. Thus, the time that a person spends in answering a single question- putting his practical knowledge and spending his time into the answer, can save the time of millions of others and help them relate the answer to day to day things that they experience. The success of Quora is in getting the people who answer recognition within the website and thus give them an incentive to write great answers. Asking questions isn't easy either and such people (who ask crisp, practically relevant questions) are also appreciated by the community and Quora facilitates this.

Philosophical questions are also a big draw that Quora has to offer- perhaps I'll write about it some other time when I have a clearer idea about the success of that part.

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).

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.

 

Advanced tactics in Mafia

If you're a friend of mine, it is statistically more probable that you've heard of Mafia than that you've not. Anyway for the uninitiated, it is a party game which has several other names and versions. The roles I'm used to are:

Mafia(s): Kills a person at the start of the turn. One person is chosen by all the Mafias together.
Detective(s): Suspects a person after the Mafia's kill. Suspected person dies if he is the Mafia and  survives if he is not. One person is chosen by all the Detectives together.
Citizen: No special powers. Participates in the Group Discussion .
Peeping Tom: Can Open his eyes(and ideally partially) and support the Mafia or Detectives by pointing them out to each other. Usually supports the Mafia who are supposed to be slightly underpowered in the game.

The tips that follow are to allow for better performance in the game and has no direct relationship with having fun. The most important aspect about the game is of course to have fun :). The 'advanced' strategies are:

1. In order to not get eliminated quickly either through the GD or otherwise, you have to be the kind of person whom others like in the game. This means that you shouldn't cheat, you shouldn't irritate/tease/insult others too much and you should not bee too quiet and boring. Finding the right balance of of these things will ensure that you stay in the game longer on an average.

2. One might think that the elimination methods in the game are fair to both mafias and detectives since mafias get to kill anyone but have a slight disadvantage in the GD since the detectives would already have wrongly accused one or two people and would have better information regarding who the mafia might be. The balance changes rapidly as the game progresses (having more citizens in the game makes the shift in power less drastic and the game more balanced in general- the amount of luck involved in determining the final outcome also reduces). In the initial rounds, mafia have the clear advantage since they can kill anyone and in the GD they're almost at par with the detectives after the first round of kills since the additional information possessed by the detectives about identities is minimal at that stage. As the game goes on, the mafia grow weaker and the vote outs tend to favour the detectives more. In the super late game, a detective can identify himself and ensure victory. As a mafia it should thus be top priority to finish off the game as quickly as possible.

3. There can be cases in the game where your being eliminated is the optimal choice for the city, especially as a citizen. One spectacular case of unselfishness was when I voted to eliminate myself during after a tied voting round to ensure that a detective did not get voted out (and the mafias had no chance of being voted out in that round). As a citizen, it is difficult to contribute much to the game and the two ways to contribute are through sound discussions and also by getting killed by the mafia and dying a martyr. It is not a bad idea to be thoroughly involved in the GD and be so interested in figuring out who the mafia is- that the mafia mistakenly identify you as a possible detective and waste a kill on you. This is a sound strategy but obviously a boring one since you get eliminated. It can be done in the latter stages of the game. It can be more optimal to not over-involve yourself if you value your skills in the GD as extremely high and your judgement sound enough to correctly figure out the mafia (and it is quite difficult to consistently do these things). Unselfishness can be taken to the next level by wrongly admitting that you're a detective (you can either 'identify' only yourself OR say that you're the only detective left- randomly claiming others as detectives can give a hint to the mafia that you're bluffing if you put a mafia's name in there)

4. In the first round, killing the person next to you is a very basic strategy that is used by an average mafia to ensure that the sounds made by the mafia(while pointing out the kill to the narrator/god) are not heard by the person nearby. Mafias can take advantage of this and kill a random person and accuse the person nearby and claim that this is the logic that he used. You might be able to get a detective voted out.

5. Never consistently team up with anyone during the GD. Similarly, never accuse someone too strongly. This ensures that people don't suspect that you to be either the mafia or a detective. This is since teaming up is generally done by mafias or detectives. If according to the rules you follow, the identities of the dead people are revealed(this rule is strongly recommended by me) it can be even more dangerous to team up with people since it might be revealed in the latter stages of the game that the person you teamed up was a mafia. Being open to others' opinions and being open to a change in your vote shows that you have no preconceived notions about mafias and detectives which they tend to have about each other. It's a good idea to change your vote as new allegations and new information comes along. And in cases where you have absolutely no chance of saving your mafia friend from being voted out, vote him out- particularly if the identities are revealed after death.

6. Having said that it's not a great idea to team up with people, especially in the first couple of rounds it is a smart idea for the mafia to start accusing random people as a group. Even if the allegation is completely baseless, if two people or more (ideally two) accuse a person before any other accusations are made, there is high likelihood that the person gets voted out. This is particularly applicable in the first few rounds when there is limited information available to others and especially the detectives. Avoiding getting voted out in the GD is the key for the mafia to win.

7. Peeping Tom is in my opinion the most powerful character in the game. I consider him on mafia's side. He should open his eyes fully during the mafia's killing round to ensure that the mafia do not kill him and also to ensure that he doesn't vote against the mafia after the GD. During the detective's suspecting round, there is a tradeoff in opening the eyes in the first round as opposed to the later rounds. Opening your eyes in the first round ensures that you know all the detectives and can thus influence the game likewise but you risk being voted out after the GD if the detectives team up against you. Your overall contribution to the game gets limited as you move along in the game without knowing who the detectives are, and plus there is a chance that you might get voted out after a GD and end up not contributing to the game at all. Peeping Tom can come up with spectacular finishes to the game during the finals rounds. One possibility is to completely open his eyes during the detectives round(when one or two detectives are left) and try and eliminate them after the GD and the mafia kill round. Eliminating detectives through the GD becomes easier when there are several citizens but few detectives. Another spectacular finish is when the Peeping Tom knows say, the last 1 or 2 detectives' names and he is about to get voted out in the GD. He can openly tell the detectives names and if there are a sufficient number of citizens, it can be difficult for the mafia to be correctly identified even if you do this reveal(total people-detectives=citizens+mafia). This can give a strong chance for the mafia even if there is only one mafia left, provided there are enough citizens in the game

Too Cool For Work

Well before I got into my first job, I remember teachers talking about how a casual attitude and a 'cool' approach to life affected your career prospects. I never took it seriously at that point of course. I remember a math teacher as far back as 11th and 12th grade talking about this. I don't remember it being mentioned by any of the engineering professors, but come MBA again senior HRs tended to value a serious attitude a lot more than a laid back attitude. I've had interviewers knowingly act over-casual in order to elicit a casual response from me. Something like 'I know you didn't perform that well during Sem 2- It's not a big deal though.. I mean you did top the class in the other Sems and getting low marks once isn't a problem.. you can fail once a while right?' digs a pit in front of you, and he awaits you to jump into the pit by agreeing with him. Having mainly worked on technical fields until the start of the MBA, I had become to a large extent not-so-serious. Now this is not a conscious effort I put in to try and have a chilled out attitude- it is just something that comes naturally. And it had nothing to do with how good I was at whichever thing I worked on. And in technical fields, to a large extent it doesn't matter how chilled out a person is. There are highly eccentric scientists and programmers who have even higher levels of success. Being weird or unsocial does not affect their career prospects too much as long as they are excellent when it comes to subject knowledge. Of course if they end up in managerial positions in the company, it can be more of a problem- even if the field is technical.

However when it comes to working in non technical fields, a casual attitude is a huge issue. And to be honest, after having a few months of work experience I can see why. There is an incredibly huge correlation between casual attitude and not doing your work properly. At this point I think I should clarify what I mean by casual attitude , so that the previous statement doesn't seem too obvious. Someone who plays Ludo in office irrespective of whether his manager sees him has a casual attitude even if he is the most hardworking guy and does his job way better than a pretentious guy who acts as if  he's working while browsing through facebook. Now that we have that clear, let me go through the reasons.

Firstly, it is relatively more difficult for non-technical fields to quantify how good a person is at his job. Thus we are forced to look at things like seriousness, attitude, language, dressing and so on- whereas a programmer might be hired just for his coding skills(which can easily be measured). And to be fair to HRs, fields such as sales and in fact any field which involves direct interaction with the client DOES require people to be well groomed, serious and all of that in order to be successful. Secondly, since people know that having a casual attitude is not looked upon favourably, it results in naturally less self-conscious people also acting serious. Thus, only those who really don't care about their career prospects end up with the casual attitude, along with a few hard working people who still haven't figured out the importance of acting serious.

And because of these two reasons (and possibly more), I do find that casualness is an amazing measure of a person's seriousness towards work. There seems to be a very strong empirical link. And So, I will try to be as serious as possible during my next interview which is up soon.  

Selfish is sexy

It's no secret that selfish assholes are considered sexy by the opposite sex. Of course, the phrase 'selfish asshole' has too negative of a connotation for anyone to agree to the previous statement, but the point still stands. It cannot be generalised but in the case of most people, selfishness is considered sexy. Though they may not even know it. People fall in love with more reasonable folks as well since it may not practical to be a relationship with an a selfish prick, but the fantasies are mostly about them.

From an evolutionary point of view, this happens since people who care about themselves can actually provide things for the family. A saint who gives away all his belongings will not have any for his wife and kids. You need a little bit of selfishness to provide for your family. In a way, you are taking from the society and giving to yourself and to the rest of your family. People who are capable of doing this are naturally found attractive by us.

Now I do not imply by this that I'm into selfish females. In fact I cannot stand them at all- though the human instinct inside me tries to make me like them.

Now, you do need the intelligence, personality (good looks help as well) etc. to carry off your selfishness. So don't try to be an asshole from tomorrow and expect to get hitched :P

At the other end of the spectrum, people who are too unselfish are considered weird. This is since others tend to be either uncomfortable with your high level of generosity that makes them feel bad about themselves, or since they may consider such levels of unselfishness as fake. So it's probably safer to try and err on the side of more selfishness than the side of less selfishness.

In addition to all of these reasons to be that little bit more selfish, there's the fact that selfish people who have the adequate capability and intelligence to get things done tend to be happier. By capability and intelligence, I'm talking about a minimum level of common sense and a sense of motivation. Selfish dudes and dudettes tend to be unhappy in the short run since they may tend to get jealous etc. about others, and try to get everything for themselves, but in the long run they do tend to achieve more. And this happiness in the long run (referred to as 'purpose' by me in my previous posts) is much more fulfilling than the short term happiness. It's a little bit like investing your short term happiness for returns (of happiness) in the long run.

Non-monetary costs of being an asshole

Ok so after a long time, another post has come. Since I've started work, there will be much less gaming and a lot more general philosophy-cum-psychology related stuff. Hearthstone is pretty much the only game I play now. And it's kind of sad that there aren't any really any communities for hearthstone in India.

Anyway, since it's been a long time, there are a LOT of philosophies which have come into my weird brain but haven't been spewed out onto this space. This time, I'll write about the experiences I've had with rickshaw-wallas and cab drivers across different cities. While places like Agra and Gurgaon have the worst auto drivers who try to over-change you pretty much 90% of the time, Bombay has a much nicer bunch of cab drivers who overcharge you only around 10% of the time. It's kind of obvious that if the autodriver/cab driver (hereafter referred to as 'driver') asks you for an amount that is greater than what was initially agreed upon/is more than the meter fare/is just unfair given the distance etc., he opens himself to the opportunity to getting more money. Now, are there any dowsides from a driver's perspective to being an asshole and being unreasonable? If you think about it, suppose the meter shows Rs.100 and he asks for 150, there aren't many instances where you would pay him less than 100 just because he asked for more. Even if you did, it's not as if he would settle for it.

The payoff of asking for more is thus unsymmetrical. One one side you may get some extra money, and on the other side you lose nothing. So why don't all drivers do it then?

The answer possibly lies in the fact that maximising monetary gain isn't the objective of the driver. the passenger might engage in a verbal fight with the driver and as a human being, this expected value of emotional cost(probability of passenger yelling*emotional loss due to yelling) might be much higher than the expected monetary gain due to asking (average monetary gain from asking for more*probability of the passenger agreeing to pay more). Now, the probabilities would change of course depending on the passenger type. Probability of the passenger agreeing to pay more would increase if he/she is an outsider and has no clue about the local rates and so on. Expereinced drivers ask for higher rates from these folks.

Now, some people are just plain assholes at heart and thus don't give a shit if the passenger gets into a verbal (or even physical?!) fight with them. These people consistently ask for unreasonable fares and thus earn more. Just another instance where assholes earn more money.

To end, I would like to thank those passengers from Bombay(and other places) who have yelled at the cab drivers for demanding unreasonable fares, and thus increased the drivers' expected cost of asking more. It is mostly because of them that we can travel is peace in these places. Adios, and... keep yelling.

Risk-return profiles, IT and passion

I've wondered at times why so many Indians go along the path of engineering and medicine (and may be a law or commerce as well these days- exceptions to these are almost entirely people who aren't capable of doing well in these fields), at least relative to the developed countries. Now it's not just India to be fair. Most developing countries see a large number of people focusing on things like school and college education while disregarding arts, sports and so on. Isn't it strange that we have highly intellectual and skilled people (though the ratio to overall population is a bit sad) capable of making movies or playing football or just painting stuff yet they don't do it? Developing countries are miles behind developed ones in terms of science and infrastructure but light years behind in terms of art. There isn't even an effort. One easy explanation would be that poorer people cannot afford to play music or play football or whatever. The real reason could be a mixture of complicated things including our tradition. For instance, countries in South America do in fact give a lot more attention to music and football and a lot of cultural stuff and we Indians have our sole cricket- which among chess and ISRO are among the few things that gives the nation pride (along with times when Indians are recognised by the western media- latest being Satya Nadella). Careers in arts (lets' club all non-conventional careers into this word for convenience) are significantly riskier than the conventional ones and Indians seem to be far more risk averse than say a Brazil or a South Africa.

First thing for me is the influence of parents and the Indian social fabric. We are surrounded by relatives, friends, relatives of friends and so on who generously bestow upon us their endless wisdom. Only that this wisdom has a problem. The advice consists not just of things that they did and wished to do but also things they've seen others do. It's generally a bunch of nonsense that no human being can ever do. Except friends advice which is generally way to far on the other side and tells you- don't work, play, party, booze etc! Now, older people naturally tend to be more risk averse and they would've seen the risk-return profile of several career paths. When I'm talking about the risk of a career path, I'm talking about the risk of getting educated (formally and informally) in a subject, intending to work in a related field. For example, doing a B.Tech in IT. And for the uninitiated, a risk-return profile is a set of values for risk and return and in this case, time and effort are the main resources being invested. For example, a person spending a lot of time learning the guitar would undoubtedly be good at it but then he may not be creative enough to earn a living out of it. It's a high risk-high return investment compared to getting an engineering degree and it may not give you the same average returns as an engineering graduate (this is just an example and I think that a guitarist would actually get on an average lesser returns than an engineering graduate in India. Film or politics might be better suited as high risk- high return investments) . Now it's difficult to objectively say which investment is better than the other even if we know the risk and return of both investments exactly. This is because different people have different utility functions. For example, an individual might prefer stock A which gives 20% average returns with 10% risk (risk here is standard deviation of returns) over stock B which gives 18% returns with only 8% risk. Close calls can go either way and it's all up to individual preference. But bring in a stock C which gives 25% returns at 5% risk and all (sane) individuals would pick C over the other two. On an average, I think engineering jobs and especially those in IT give the best risk adjusted returns since the risk is very low- you'll almost surely get hired and returns are good compared to traditional engineering fields; at par and possibly superior to them. Thus if all individuals wanted to maximise their money, in my opinion they've to get IT jobs. But we know that not everyone does it and that is indeed partly why IT remains so attractive. This could be because (A) people have different perspectives and some may agree and also some may disagree with me and even if I were right, it may not even be possible to measure the risk and returns of any career path  OR a far more interesting (B) people do not want to maximise their money in the long run.

Option (B) seems right by intuition and should be a common case. Individuals do not think long-term and often are happy with short-term rewards. Watching a movie or playing a game gives instant pleasure compared to reading a book which (for me) is not as rewarding.  But this only covers what we call laziness. It doesn't talk about a Sachin who didn't study much and decided to play cricket or an A.R.Rahman who decided to compose music. They were not lazy- they just put their efforts into something they liked. Something they were passionate about. Passion is the most sensible answer to the question -why don't people want to earn maximum money. Sachin and Rahman are obviously rich as well but I'm sure that they were not looking for money in the first place, when they initially invested their time. Passion can make your utility function invalid and force you to take up careers which may be high risk and low return. Now passion could cover hobbies or even laziness. One could be passionate about sitting on beaches or travelling. Or just sitting idle. Theres a great amount of happiness and pleasure to be derived from a whole lot of activities and IT covers a miniscule part of the pie. I believe that each individual has a utility function which is unique and only he can know what makes him happy. This means that he would have to try out many things to find what he likes. Including doing nothing. This doesn't mean however that you should take no advice. In fact I'm a huge fan of taking advice. Once you've figured what to do, you can take advice from people on how to do it. Or if you've not figured out what to do yet, you can ask people for their experiences doing different things and choose for yourself what you want. There is however a problem here. As people grow up, their needs change. And almost always, egos become bigger as people grow older. I don't mean this in a bad way and feel that it is probably required for good parenting as well. To satisfy those egos, you've to be good at something. Really good. Or you can shrink your ego to make up for it but that's not a very natural thing to do as self-respect is a basic human need (though you can decide how much of it you want) like food or shelter. So when adults tell you to read and get a hig paying job, it's what they wish they'd done or what they did but it's from an ego-hungry point of view. Adult's needs are very different I feel and money and self esteem and a big family are most important.

So when you go behind your non-mainstream passion , make sure you do a decent job of it if you want to be an average adult with self-esteem and all and more importantly make sure that it falls within your required risk return profile. If you cant take failure don't try to be a movie star- unless of course you're that passionate about it. And a small tip when you don't know what to do- go for what's mainstream i.e. accepted by the public. If you're not sure between investment banking and wealth management go for wealth management because people say it's better and if you're confused between core jobs and IT jobs as a mechanical engineer, go for the core job- so long as you've no strong biases towards either. Do a degree in engineering even if you're interested in making games because the market is just not there. Again, unless you're that passionate about gaming in which case you derive enough pleasure from a low-paying low-profile job (you could be the exception and make it big but you would've taken a sufficiently high risk already-  which would be because of your passion for it in the first place). Something I've not considered in the entire analysis is talent and if you're really talented at say chess, it doesnt matter what anyone says, you can take it up and succeed (like say Magnus Carlsen) ; I'm just talking about the average human. I'm sure I would've left out many more things so you're always free to add new ones or criticise these in comments.

P.S: If you're not comfortable with risk and return, these are major things and almost always the only things that matter in assessing an investment. Let's assume that a share of ITC on an average (geometric mean, from the time it got listed) has given 20% returns annually with say 10% risk (stdev). While Kingfisher Airlines let us assume has given -50% returns with 25% risk. Here ITC is undoubtedly the better investment. Assuming of course that past values are indicative of future values which is in fact what we assume when choosing career paths- that we would get similar pay as our seniors or dad or whatever. It doesn't matter if someone who picked up journalism became really famous because he is just an exception. It doesn't matter if Kingfisher rose 100% in a month because that was an exception and on an average Kingfisher sucks compared to ITC. And similarly journalism would probably suck on average, in monetary terms (if an analysis is done considering all the people who tried to make it big in journalism) compared to an engineering job even though some exceptions are there.