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,

Cricket strike rates and financial leverage

This is my first piece on cricket and quite possibly the only one for the foreseeable future. It's a game I used to follow a lot as a kid and hence I'm familiar with how the game works, but I'm a noob at the modern day intricacies of it. I'll keep it short, technical and to-the-point. Non followers of cricket/corporate finance may find it difficult to relate to the article

So, I was going through this article the other day about a metric which is supposed to indicate how useful a player is in T20 cricket. Similar to how batting average is an excellent indicator of the performance of a batsman is tests, the metric : Strike-rate+average is used to measure roughly the effectiveness of a player in T20s. My short criticism of this is that while strike-rate is something a player scores over 100 balls and average is the what he scores before getting out, there is a bias in the metric towards players having high strike-rates since on an average, players (batsmen, bowlers and keepers) get out before playing 100 balls. Now, there can be an argument that strike-rates are more important than average in T20s and that the metric somehow accommodates for this increased importance by giving more weight to the strike-rate. However, the likelihood that the weightage provided in this simple metric being correct is very low (although the metric scores very high on simplicity due to the strike-rates and averages being readily available) and I would suggest a calculation of the average balls a player faces before getting out and calculating the actual weight that should be given to the average and strike-rate respectively. But why should strike-rates have a higher weightage in T20s?

Now, for anyone having even the most remote knowledge of cricket would know by intuition that strike-rates are more important in shorter versions of the game than in the longer versions like tests. It's something like this - when there is a smaller risk of the team being bowled out well before the allotted overs (or, time in tests- to avoid draws) the team can afford to lose more wickets sooner and thus play a high risk game which allows for a few wickets to fall. High risk tends to give high returns- players are expected to (and do) score much faster in shorter versions of the game but they might get out quicker. In longer versions, the risk of failure if wickets fall is much higher and so scoring runs is more important than scoring runs fast. To draw an imperfect comparison with the world of Credit Risk and finance, a team getting out well before its allotted quota of overs or time = default (it must be noted that there is no allotted quota of survival for corporations), faster scoring rates= financial/other forms of leverage (let's keep it financial leverage to keep things simple) and different forms of cricket represent different worlds where the risk of default is affected differently by financial leverage (while keeping in mind again that there is no expected time-span for survival of corporations).

So, when a player A scores a 3 ball 12 and a player B scores a 20 ball 30, you can judge which one is better (with all the imperfections of using statistics to model real world decisions) if you go back to the metric and combine the strike-rate and 'average' of A (400,12) with sufficient weightage given to both depending upon which form of cricket we are looking at and compare it with the metric value obtained by using the strike-rate and average of B (150,30). However, some complexities which are very difficult to factor in to the model include (1) The fact that batsmen are often expected to stay at the crease longer and make the innings stable (2) Performances in clutch situations especially while chasing require a higher average than strike-rate and (3) A reliable middle order (higher average) often gives the top order batsman more confidence and might result in a higher strike-rate for them.

Going back to finance terminology and how the financial leverage is impacted when a player scores a 60 ball 80 instead of a 10 ball 30: he is scoring for his team (getting profits for the corporation) at a slightly slower rate (the returns are lower) but resulting in lower financial risk for the team. Until now, we have assumed that it is not possible for a batsman to consistently score at higher speeds without risking dismissal. There can also be individuals who score at very high strike-rates without taking much risk, (I'm slightly deviating from the concept of risk being measured at the team level to go to risk at the individual level)- these are akin to the market beaters of the investing world and manage higher returns without taking much risk. The risk here is slightly different from what we commonly talk about in cricket- it doesn't really matter how 'risky'/aerial the shots of a cricketer are; what matters is the probability of him getting out and subsequently increasing the probability of default of the team. A batsman getting out can be considered as a default in itself, and much simpler to measure than the risk of the team getting all out faster if a particular batsman gets out (conditional probability-> Sachin during the late 90s if out quickly would have resulted in a much higher probability of the team getting all-out than with other Indian batsmen). And so, we go back to the metric which weighs and combines average and strike-rate (somehow), to reward players who score consistently higher without risking getting out themselves. The most obvious flaw with the metric (which exists with plain averages as well) is that some players who get out in the last few overs taking extreme personal risks, but not having a substantial impact on the team getting all-out (defaulting) get punished by the metric, which uses probability of a person getting out instead of a more accurate : increased marginal probability of a team getting all-out due to the player getting out. And, due to all these complexities and more, human judgement is extremely important to compensate for the lack of common sense that statistics have.

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.

Getting good at DotA and at other things

I’ve been playing a LOT of dota recently (around 72 hours in 2 weeeks, including watching a few pro-games) and as usual I’ll try and draw a few generalisations. The thing about Dota (I’ve written previously about what Dota is- a quick google will explain in detail if you require) is that it’s difficult to remain competent if you don’t play continuously. And, the easiest way to increase the MMR (Match Making Ranking- the Elo type rating system implemented in game which indicates how good you are) is to play a lot during short periods than to play a game per 2 days or so. In fact, playing after a week can often give you a rusty feeling and actions that would otherwise come to you naturally in-game have to be thought out and put into action with great effort. It kind of reminds me of how driving a car is. You can be the greatest driver in the world, but if you don’t continuously practise driving, you can quickly become rusty. The wisdom and knowledge about driving will remain but mechanical reactions will not be as quick, and at the end of the day- you won’t be nearly fast enough. My knowledge of Dota mechanics might be far superior to that of certain others who are at a higher MMR than I am, but the fact that I’m not used to playing so much with so many heroes and facing different situations in the recent past means that I am often a few seconds late in making decisions (and at times, making the wrong decisions as well) and this often costs the game.

Your performance seems to be affected by 2 main things- the amount of practice you have and the amount of talent you have. Now what exactly is talent? There are several Dota players who have played thousands of hours more than professionals but are not nearly as good- due to lack of talent. Talent can in turn be divided into several other things- it’s how quickly your brain processes information while playing, helping in split second decisions; it’s how quickly you learn new concepts in the game and can change and adapt to how the game changes (the developers keep making changes to make adjustments for balance) and it’s how you network with the best players in the world, among other things. 

This isn’t the case just in Dota. In most professions, practice is something of a hygiene factor- the same amount of experience may yield different results in differently capable individuals. However, there is no mistaking the fact the practice improves efficiency irrespective of skill level. And in addition to this, practice can be measured (in the corporate world, as experience or as certifications which require preparation) a lot easier than skill (IQ tests, interviews and so on). One could say that intelligence is a measure of how quickly a person learns from practice or experience, and in a lot of cases- imagination of experiences. Now, while intelligence is mostly a gift (it might be partly attributed to experiences in the past- the way one has been brought up etc.) practice is not and thus, practice requires motivation. It is here that even the most skilled do not make it big. Lack of motivation causing lack of practice and thus lacking the basic working knowledge of many things. After all, one can't be a poet without knowing the alphabet.