Three Mood Cycles

A little known fact about myself revealed to me very recently is that I am a man of dual emotions. Two emotions that’s it. No fewer no more, contrary to the commonly held notion among friends that I know only one emotion – laughter!

The two emotions are extreme happiness and mild sadness and as a corollary there are three moods one can find me in - extremely happy, mildly sad (it doesn’t show) and busy. Yes, there is no typo in the last sentence the third mood is busy. The mood cycle again flows pretty er cyclically. The mildly sad mood lingers for some time before I make myself busy and then once I am exhausted the extreme happiness mood takes over.

The more I think about it, the three mood framework seems applicable in increasingly more kinds of situations. Or may be it is similar to the tendency to detect symptoms when one suspects to be suffering from a disease, a force fitting tendency that is. Assuming that there is no force fitting bias at play, another interesting observation comes out – the three mood cycle has meta-versions as well.

It’s the existence of meta-versions which probably establishes the validity of three mood cycle hypothesis, because they are observed over a longer time period and therefore are free of local stochasticity#

Since the above mentioned revelation, I have tried reviewing my life events to understand this unique psychological hardwiring. With little success. The main reason being as far back I can remember (all the way back to when I was three years old) is that the duality of emotions has been pretty much there. No evolution/life changing event whatsoever! Perhaps the following additional facts hold the key:

1. Both the mildly sad and busy states are marked by extreme inertia*
2. Mildly sad state is characterized by outward calmness but a high degree of internal unrest
3. All Ideation happens during the early phase of busy mood
4. Busy mood begins on its own and is not assisted by any inspiration acquired in the mildly sad period
5. The transition from extremely happy to mildly sad mood is quite sudden and yet the change is almost unnoticeable
6. The intensity and more importantly the time period of busy stage determines the time duration of mildly sad period. Much like the excesses of the Government during boom time determining the intensity and duration of recession.

Every once in a while one of my friends would ping me to inform he/she read some of my blogs (for the first time) and that he/she thinks I am different person when I write, especially only the serious kinds. The humorous ones are fine with them they concede. The three mood cycles therefore may shock those who know me well. To be honest I was also shocked a bit. But I think it’s a good discovery, it’s interesting to know there are so many things I don’t know myself about!

#One such meta cycle fitting neatly with the hypothesis has been observed in the wake up moods for the last couple of years with the second cycle starting some time in January last year. The mildly sad mood has continued for more than a year now and it seems to be making way for the busy mood, hope this state continues for a long time – in the previous cycle it lasted for only 4 months or so.

*For those who are puzzled – a body is in a state of inertia if it’s resting or moving at a constant speed

The Use of Frameworks in Society

The puzzling question occurred to me first when I was in 9^th standard – Which area of human knowledge will make the greatest strides in future? My biased answer then was astronomy (closely followed by medicine), biased by the volumes of popular science books on astronomy at the Vikram Sarabhai Community Science Center.

The question has come back to relevance in the last couple of years in the wake of the great depression (correction/credit crunch/rough times/ period of uncertainty!?!). The two years at IIMB convinced me enough that all decision problems relating to the art of business can be solved using data and frameworks. Except that whereas in all other fields a careful application of frameworks (with complete or even partial data) gives reasonably reliable results, in the field of economics they result in colossal failures (the more sophisticated the frameworks, the bigger the errors)

I will leave aside all my knowledge of economics to understand the issue - ab initio is an amazing intellectual stimulant. So what can be the possible (and exhaustive) problems with Economics:

1. The frameworks at use are incorrect
2. The data processed is irrelevant
3. Both

The present blog will focus on potential issue #2, answering the first will necessitate analyzing the frameworks, which I don’t want to do before simplifying the problem a bit.

To evaluate possible problem #2, I’ll rephrase it – In order to make it framework centric - ‘(most of) the frameworks at use are immaterial’. To answer this question one needs to answer another question. Are the frameworks developed to understand observed events or are they developed deductively (don’t want to use - a priori) and then observable facts are used as data to validate their correctness. The first approach carries the risk of being too narrow in scope – frameworks looking at the immediate observable outcomes and therefore restricting the number of factors, assuming of course that that which is not visible can not have any effect. The second approach may suffer from the creator/user bias - framework developer/user giving undue importance to certain frameworks and neglecting certain others.

I guess at this stage I have no choice but to look at the major frameworks/theories and categorize them in 1), 2a) or 2b). Meanwhile I need feedback on the process used to understand the issue with economics.

PS: This exercise is a beginning in moving beyond Austrian Economics, which as per my current understanding falls in category 2b

Tales from Ghzbd Vol II (Non Veg)

What’s with the blurred, zoomed in (only on the face) photographs of women writhing in pain! What is the point? You can't fool kids by blurring. Or is it that they don’t want grown ups to stare - anything longer than a peak and get a headache from the dizzying image. End up buying disprin instead of durex !

I have always been a huge fan of cheap Hindi songs. I am of the firm belief that filmy songs have no business being serious or meaningful. If fate is a meaningful concept then moving to Ghaziabad was fulfillment of my destiny – discovering the treasureland of desi khazana. I had no idea what i was missing - satisfied with my tiny collection of bollywood songs, cocooned in the big city life of National Capital oblivious to the vibrant desi music scene just few coss away*

Yesterday I was listening to this beautiful song in which the lyricist in order to maximize the billing per hour kept on retelling the same incidence (from different perspectives though) – basically the adventures of the girl (age - 16) in a chana ka khet. A beautiful song, more so because of the extremely subtle (unbecoming of a desi song) connection of the girl's adventures to the fecundity of the Indo - Gangetic soil. Work of genius!

*The exponential rate change in cultural parameters when moving away from a big city as opposed to the normal linear rate of change in India is a topic that warrants a more detailed discussion (a blog post or a research paper depending on the author’s disposition)

Rocket Singh

I am trying to deconstruct Rocket Singh and I must concede I find it a bit difficult to understand, just can’t figure out the theme. Was it having fewer clients and maintaining a good relationship with them(the movie doesn’t directly tell us the fewer clients part but it is very much implied in the business model chosen by them), was it about the zeal of a new entrant (and the propensity to bite more than one can chew – again not depicted directly in the movie but pretty much implied), was it revenge – in which case the plot is unduly biased against the superboss whereas the boss was equally guilty or was it about humanizing the sales process (the protagonist’s confession on how he doesn’t understand numbers but what makes the salesperson, the customer and his girlfriend happy). I really don’t know, nevertheless there are certain things I like about the movie:

1. The protagonist thinks. That the man applies thought and tries to bring about a change – for better or worse we don’t know – is enough for the movie to maintain a certain degree of interest level.
2. Characterization is consistent and convincing. I did not find any half baked characters except probably the childlike girl friend who is in all fairness not unnecessary.
3. The clandestine operations of Rocket sales corp.

But at some level the movie disappoints by focusing on a rather rare and irrelevant issue of corruption in corporate world. Wish they had just stuck to the revenge + tension of operating a company from within a company plot. I would rather have a sinister protagonist in a successful caper than a moralizing one caught in the middle of an interesting deceit.

James Ostrich Cameron

A species advanced enough to explore and inhabit a faraway planet doesn’t have the technical know-how to extract subsurface minerals without clearing forests! That’s taking temporary suspension of disbelief a little too far. But this is not a trivial inconsistency in the plot of the movie, it is essential to defending the very philosophical premise of Avatar. The premise that ‘nature’ has to be saved irrespective of the wellbeing of humans and that if saving ‘nature’ means everyone on earth dies, so be it (Recall the climax of the movie)!!

The philosophical premise put into practice is the religion of environmentalism. A religion which doesn’t have the benevolent motive to provide purer air and water for men but which worships ‘nature’ upholding it as the highest value, with absolutely no regard for human life. For those who are not aware of the flaw in the environmentalist’s philosophy let me present it to you briefly.

An environmentalist sunders the value (environment/nature) from the valuer (human beings). The guinea pigs have to be saved even if it means not developing life saving drugs, the pelican eggs have to hatch even if it means millions die from malaria; upstream flora can not be inundated by reservoir even if it means men die alternately from droughts and floods, coal cannot be burned even if it means the human civilization regresses back to prehistoric times. As is quite clear from the examples, for the environmentalists ‘nature’ is an intrinsic value and has no relation whatever to human life !

But what if the environmentalist realizes the flaw in his logic that the a man’s actions have to be guided by understanding what is good for him that human life and not ‘nature’ is the standard for valuing anything? What if the environmentalist realizes ‘nature’ can not be intrinsically valued? And what if even after the realization has dawned upon him he chooses to defend environmentalism? - He makes Avatar!

Since he realizes that the professed aim of environmentalists – cleaner air and water is fundamentally a technological issue and that only technological progress and not religious fervor will ensure more hospitable living conditions for humans, he goes on to create a make believe world where this causality just doesn’t apply. He creates Pandora (where the minerals have to lie right under the mother tree) and throws in a bunch of people who both technologically advanced and stupid (to not figure out a way of neatly extracting the minerals) at the same time!

It is not a case of honest error of judgment for James Cameroon. He is consciously perpetuating a false and evil philosophy which he knows cannot be justified without making inconsistent representations or portraying blatantly unrealistic scenarios.

Tales from Ghzbd Vol I

What is more difficult, organizing the commonwealth games or a delhi wedding. Sheila Dixit would have you believe they are quite the same. And I think she is not too far from reality. Before we proceed let me clarify this, I don't have any, and I mean not even an incidental experience in organizing weddings. The support for Sheila dixit isn't politically colored either, it just so happens that for the last one and half months I have been managing a project myself which draws a curious commonality with organisation of a wedding - working with dozens of small-time contractors/vendors.

If you can efficiently manage a project dealing with people who are not induced by money/recognition/threat (yes, we had to play this bluff as well) , who don't even understand the concept of simultaneous activities, who refuse to discuss anything in concrete terms preferring always to maintain a haze ("ho jayega aapka kaam" !), who always seem to be biting more than they can chew then organizing bigger projects with well documented scope, timeline and payment terms is no big deal.

There have been so many specific instances of well planned activities going haywire that I have renounced all faith in project management tools. Many are the tricks these contractors play on you. Ranging from 'i am helpless/my laborers have gone missing' - the most ingenious, you can't help but feel sympathetic - to the most ridiculous 'aujar nahi he/barish ho rahi he'.

And while you think you can play good cop bad cop with them, they are playing you on a different level altogether. The contractor will criticise the lazy laborers while the laborers will crib about what an unorganised fool the contractor is. And this mutual appreciation to disorient you doesn't stop here. While the painter will tell you how shoddy the carpenter's work is, the carpenter will use all his leisure time in pointing out the hundreds of flaws in painting of walls. Needless to mention, had they been in my position neither of them would have paid the other person a single penny for the worthless workmanship.

Of course, no matter how bad the work is if at all there was any work during the day, at e.o.d. you are expected to pay them. Because 'majoor ko dihadi chahiye' otherwise they will stop all work. Not that they will go on an indefinite strike or something, they will just go AWOL, and before you know, the contractor will go missing as well. And if some sunny morning the entire jing bang turns up at the site, you are made to realise that they had not fled its just that the mobile fell into water and wasn't working the entire week.

The one thing I have learnt from my experiences - the scale of a project is immaterial, if you are getting something done always go for turnkey solutions.

Of buliding high expectations

Creative writing, I have always believed is all about timing. And twitter has more than validated the hypothesis. Allow me to explain.

I am an inherently creative person and still somehow I am not very prolific at producing blog entries. One blog post a month just about borders a respectable average. Not to mention that the averaging period is chosen carefully to hide an immensely abysmal performance in the last one year (statistics, lies what is the difference !) . What can be a plausible reason? The Freudian will jump at the naive conclusion that I am deceiving myself - 'has anyone ever complimented you on your creativity, let alone creative writing'! Caution, don't be tempted to accept the simplest explanation (Screw Occam and his rusty razor). So what is the truth.

The truth is that the shelf life of an original idea does not extend beyond a few minutes, seconds in case you awake with a start from the spark of the idea (the latter one is very tricky, not because of 'false awakening' but on account of logistical problems like groping for a pen and paper in complete darkness of night). And therefore, you are more likely to preserve the idea in a scribblar form or worse forget about it than write about it. To conclude, creative writing is all about timing - you should be in a mood to write about an idea or you will never look at it again.

And how exactly has twitter validated the theory? Well it hasn't so far :D It will, in case I start tweeting big time !