Hidden market mechanics in day to day life

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

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

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

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

Belief and over-selling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Snowballing and the beginning of a more practical phase

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

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

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

Evil

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Happines and purpose (and self identity)

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

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

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

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

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

"Games like Portal"

There are several automated and manually created lists for games which are like other games. Google "Games like <insert random AAA title here>" and you should get a fair number of hits. Each link generally contains at least 10 games which are 'similar' to the game that you just mentioned. Now, this works well in some cases- for example, googling for games like Bioshock can give you System Shock or Dishonored and googling for games like Mass Effect can give you Knights of the Old Republic etc. but a certain game for which I've barely found similar games is Portal (I know it's similar to Narbancular Drop whose developers were consulted for making Portal, and a few other minor titles but let's be realistic guys). There are games with distant similarities, but absolutely no game comes anywhere near to Portal at doing what it does. But, why?

From the Business point of view, Portal was created by Valve which is known for its brilliant Half Life series as well as other good games like Team Fortress and this helps the cause of course. During development, there was an incredible amount of playtesting done to figure out how players reacted to things in the game and the game was modified in order to make the players feel challenged yet not exhausted by the game. The human touch in the game was also modified to ensure that players did not feel 'alone' while playing the game- a feature that has become very important in the current generation where games are either open world such as Skyrim where you can interact with hundreds of people including kings, mages, farmers and what not.. or MMORPG style or MOBA styled, so that there is interaction with other human players.

Looking at the game itself, there are a few things that stand out: Firstly, the game never tries to 'cheat' on you. All information about the portal gun (which is used throughout the game to traverse obstacles and puzzles' and about the world around you is carefully explained by Glados, the computer in charge of conducting tests on human beings by putting them through puzzles. And in spite of this, the puzzles are actually fairly challenging from the beginning, though learning curve is fairly smooth. Several puzzles which we spent a few minutes on during the first playthrough would be done is seconds during the second playthrough (yes, I've completed both games multiple times). But since we already know the rules of the game and do not have to do a trial and error to figure out how things work (as is the case in a lot of critically and commercially succesful games these days- Dark Souls for example) we never feel cheated.

Secondly, the puzzles naturally fit into the storyline of the game. OK let me explain this- in a game like Skyrim while it is understandable how puzzles would be there for entry into an ancient ruin, there is no explanation to justify how all puzzles can be solved, and on top of that all puzzles can be solved without needing additional equipment/passwords from anywhere else. Also, most puzzles in the game tend to be very similar. The same is the case with several games involving puzzles. In fact, this is not an issue with RPGs/adventure games with puzzles. Take a game such as Mass Effect- the fact that you have to go around collecting the green alien like things in the citadel the first game as a side quest, collecting chocolate frogs in Harry Potter games, collecting random minerals by clicking on planets and scanning them in Mass Effect 2 or even opening locks using the minigames of Fallout 3, Bioshock etc. are all things which are fitted into the game so that we can enjoy the game more eventhough realism is being sacrificed. Portal sacrifices none of these things and there is no minigame to open locks or random items and loots to collect or side missions. The game is pure and feels highly realistic. (It is worth mentioning that the features mentioned in the above games are intended to reward people who explore the game world more- however, people explore these days for the sake of getting bonus items and rewards and not for the sake of exploring. Realistically, very rarely should exploration be rewarded with bonuses, but in the world of video games very rarely does it go unrewarded. The second you find a hard-to-reach location, you realise that there is some epic loot somewhere nearby- which is very unrealistic.)

Thirdly, and most importantly it is a game which considers human emotions. There is handholding through the initial stages of the game when we are explained what to do. The game is genuinely funny with Glados being extremely intelligent with her jokes, comments and practically everything she says. Wheatley manages to be just as funny in the second game. The cute robots which fire laser and insta-kill you are also fun and never appear to be scary. Even they crack dialogues when the protagonist appears in front of them and then disappears (they sense that you're nearby). There's the much talked about companion cube of the first game as well. I could go on with several other things that make the game fun for a human being to play. Now, I say human being because there are certain games which are incredibly fun and realistic but may not connect with us much, as humans. Take a game like Tetris- a classic for its time and it still is. The game mechanics are absolutely robust, but there is no human touch to it to take it to the next level.

I'm right now playing a game called Swapper (2013 game) which is a 2D platformer similar to 'The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom'. Very different from portal but yes, there is say a 10% similarity. The Talos Principle which came out around a week back looks interesting but won't run on my current lap- can't wait to get a new lap and play that.

Learning Gray

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

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

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

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

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