Freak Event

Your average marks in the last 3 quizzes was 6. This quiz was no different from the others and you get a 9. Hmm....how do you explain it? Common sense, of course would ascribe it to a better performance. But wait, someone is saying it was a freak, an accident which can not be explained. A highly improbable event almost unlikely to take place in the next 5 quizzes.

This reminds me of an off the cuff remark made by our “Business, Government and Society” professor who had a way of making ‘not so obvious’ logical fallacies, stimulating interesting thought processes. According to him the American constitution was a product of pure accident, that a constitution based on life, liberty and the right to happiness was a freak. After all there has to be one such constitution different from the many variants of socialistic constitutions.

Another blatant abuse of the concept of probability. In this case that of probability distribution. The abuse of probability distribution to explain human action is not a very novel one. Back in my schooldays, in my over-enthusiasm to pick up any book with the word relativity written in it, I read a book on Relativism with a foreword by none other than Dr. Albert Einstein. The author at one point of time explained that even though you think you are exercising your choice in wearing a particular color of shoe or waving the banner of the Republican Party, you are but only a part of the group who have a liking for the new fashion or endorsement of the party's manifesto. A classic case of putting the cart before the horse- assuming the probability distribution to be a cause affecting the choice of allegiance.

Clearly a futile attempt to disprove the axiom of freewill. Little the author knew that any attempt to disprove freewill only in turn evokes freewill. In saying that there exists no freewill one has to exercise his freewill thus contradicting himself.

Free market and Relative grading

Now I accept that I am not the brightest kid on the campus when it comes to acads, does that mean I don’t believe in Relative grading! Well never thought about it! But then no matter what, I have to believe in Relative grading as I am a self professed Capitalist. Right? This article was written after one of those ‘test the consistency of the Capitalist’ discussions.

Is relative grading a form of free market, ‘because the essence of a free market is competition’?

The most common way of perverting and vilifying capitalism historically has been distorting its definition. This is done by switching the ‘essence’ of capitalism. Some common examples are:

1. ‘A capitalist society is any society that relies heavily on businesses to produce and distribute goods and services’ (A typical definition by a student of political economy…the thing taught to us in microeconomics.)

2. ‘Capitalism is the most efficient economic system’ (A typical misguided apologist for free market economy….incidentally its worst enemy)

3.‘It’s a society in which the bourgeois class runs the government to serve its own interests.’(A Marxist)

Before analyzing whether the essence of free market is competition lets discuss the importance of ‘essentials’ in defining a concept. What is a definition? Is it the most apparent characteristics of a thing, is it a description of the collection of all the attributes of that thing or is it the thing itself. None of them. A definition is a description of the ‘thing’ in terms of the essential attribute which sets it apart from all the things which are alike it and the essential attribute which makes a particular object grouped under the umbrella of the ‘thing’ similar to the others in that group. A definition is a description of a thing by essentials.

To put things straight, the essence of capitalism is absence of force in the transactions between individuals. The definition of capitalism is: it is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights. The essential attribute which sets it apart from all other social systems is the recognition of individual rights. This implies that no man or group of men may initiate force against others. In simpler words in a capitalist society all transactions between men are voluntary.

The statement that ‘competition is the essence of capitalism’ wrongly identifies a more visible attribute of free market economy as its essential attribute. The very presence of free market does not necessarily imply competition; it depends on the way the citizens of the society decide to trade with each other.

Relative grading is not a form of free market economy but for a more mundane reason. It is not a social system; it is just a method of performance evaluation.

Chaos Art

This article is more than an article. Actually its two articles, the first one written around 3 years back and the sequel to it a few months ago.

It might appear to be a contraction that a dyed in wool Objectivist has created and mastered an art that apparently implies ‘A is not A’.

The seeds were sown early. It’s a not so uncommon story of a restless mind forced to attend not so intellectually stimulating lectures. But a fascination with ink pens proved to be that adventitious factor which makes serendipities possible.

The invention of ink pen was a stroke of genius, but unfortunately no amount of research and development could make the ink pen change its habit of getting dry when kept idle for a while.

But a discovery by another genius made any such change unnecessary.

In order to keep the ink pen busy, I would scribble aimlessly to come up with a senseless, chaotic figure- a perpetual hatred for fastidiousness makes sure that it IS a chaotic figure. But, on closer observation the figure does starts to make sense. The trick is to observe. Observing a chaotic figure is like gazing at clouds on lonely nights or reading maps on worn out walls with peeled paint.

So to sum up, the appreciation of chaos art entails an ability to find the method in the madness of things.

When I wrote this stupid article a couple of years back I was barely introduced to the philosophy of Objectivism and not unlike many fledgling Objectivists believed the badge of ‘Objectivist’ to be a symbol of pride rather than as an identification of a person who has completely understood and has integrated each and every aspect of Objectivism. Now that I have a better understanding of Objectivism, the ‘apparent’ contradiction can be resolved.

According to Ayn Rand there are two interrelated elements of art which are crucial means of projecting an artist’s sense of life. These are the subject and the style. In chaos art the subject follows the style, because it’s the style that determines what you will end up sketching.

The style of an artist is the way he chooses to present his sense of life and it expresses a view of his consciousness. By sense of life Ayn Rand means a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, in other words it’s a general appraisal of the nature of reality- of men and of nature. It is a counterpart of a conscious philosophy which a person derives by an active process of concept formation. The sense of life of a person is reflected in his habits and his automatic response to the world around him.

So according to her a person whose normal mental state is that of full focus will choose to create a style of clarity and precision, projecting sharp outlines, cleanliness, purpose and a commitment to full awareness and clear identity. While a style characterized by blurred outlines indicates a person who is out of focus. So there was in fact no contradiction. My sense of life was in conflict with my consciously chosen philosophy of life.

Philosophy though can not replace a person’s sense of life which is after all an automatic sum of values; it does set the criteria of his sense of life according to a consistent view of life. So the period of transition from thereon was that of a programming of my emotions from an explicit metaphysics and epistemology of Objectivism. And this is reflected in the evolution of ‘Chaos Art’ over a period of 2-3 years. Now the sketch is no more a nebula which can be interpreted in any manner possible. It is no more like a cloud or a worn out wall- purposeless- but an accentuated and near clear cut figure, not a distortion of reality but a selective recreation, a more focused work of art.

"Who was the most influential of them all"

Even now I am unable to understand the idea behind asking such a futile question. Was it to test our knowledge of history, because the answer to such a question does not tell you anything other than that.

Influence can be both good as well as bad. The degree of influence does not tell us anything about the kind of influence. “Measurements have no value significance – and acquire it only from the nature of that which is being measured.”

That was around a year back during the GD/PI sessions. Today I heard a stronger version of the ‘influence-greatness’ theory, as I call it. It says that the person who is able to speak up his mind, convince and make followers out of people is a great person. Greatness is defined by the degree of influence. The great masses of people who are lost in the oblivion of anonymity are not great regardless of the greatness of their individual acts. And the most despotic of dictators is great because he can rule over everyone.

The argument taken to its logical extreme implies that Hitler was one of the greatest persons of the last century. Whereas the honest businessman who is driven by self interest and has no ambitions to brain wash his fellows is worst person on the face of the world. Now assuming that the examples correctly illustrate the true definition of greatness, the question is what such a concept aims to achieve?

Concepts are tools we use to classify and categorize knowledge, to make it more amenable for usage. The importance of such classification can be encapsulated in a single statement, the one made by Prof. RamC in the competition and strategy lecture – “All knowledge is about classification”.

Now accepting such a definition for ‘greatness’ as given by my friend, the consequences are ghastly. First, there ceases to remain any difference between great leaders like Winston Churchill and evil leaders like Hitler. Second, the one word which appreciates the greatness of all extraordinary achievers such as Edison, Bill Gates or Pele is obliterated forever.

So much for the usefulness of concepts!!

Matki Phod

Today we had a matki phod competition, being the most agile (that’s an assumption I am making) guy in the block I was chosen to break the matki. Well I had never done such a thing in my whole life before, so this was going to be one of those ‘there is always a first time’ experience.

…..It was all madness, people pouring water from the roofs, me shivering in the cold and the two teams fighting over the specifics of the foul I had committed……..

The game plan was not flawless and there were these doubts about how would I carry the stone to the top, or how the person supporting me would be supported and so on. This was after a number of practice sessions, and a couple of crazy falls into poodles of slush.

By the time it was our turn I was in a state of stupid stupor. Yelling war cries to get a feeling of reality, I started off in confusion. I don’t remember what happened after that except for the fact that there was a loud roar from the audience just as I hit the matki which I vaguely recollect as not being one of applause. Apparently I had not broken the stupid matki in the first hit, so I tried to hit it again but the matki was broken.

What happened?

By the time I got up after descending with a fall, I realized that I had broken the rule that you can’t hit the prize before both your legs are resting on the shoulders of the lower level of the pyramid.

But what exactly happened?

The theories ranged from psychological—‘nervousness getting the better of me’, technical—‘the slippery clay and the pouring water played the culprit’ to time motion ones—‘the delay in forming the base of pyramid caused an unnecessary haste towards the end’.

By the way after much negotiation we were not disqualified but penalized an extra 5 seconds. We ended up as the fourth team and a possible third had I not fouled.

The event has reinforced my resolve of committing all the mistakes I possibly can while at IIMB.

Switching Through

One of the many stupid business ideas I keep getting, this one was penned sometime in the first trimester.

Switching through the channels got a glance of Karan Thapar talking to a pack of regular politicians. No two such discussions can be distinguished from each other as the subject of discussion is inevitably related to a recent incident. And incidents incidentally have a nasty habit of being recurrent.

The only reason why a person would want to watch such a superfluous talk (full of vague references to ‘secularism, hindutva, public interest’) is to be reassured about their own ideologies. It’s more of wordplay than any new insight into the people or the ideas they believe in or the principles that guide them. The only audience such talk shows attracts is the ‘interested in politics’ kind.

So I thought about a talk show which will be much worthwhile to watch and will attract the interest of the most ordinary person on the street. A talk show which will be well crafted plot, complete in itself. A plot involving the simplicity of a grandma’s tale, at the same time has the twists and the climax of a Roald Dahl short story.

Most of us are people with mixed premises. There might be a businessman who is really efficient and knows how to make things work but holds a belief that socialism is ‘inherently’ good. His actions embody the explicit premises but his ideology is based on the premises he hasn’t identified and analyzed. The talk show will capitalize on this dichotomy between the actions and ideas. The modus operandi will come later.

There are another set of people, the policymakers and the media men. These are the people who absolutely make sure that they don’t explicitly state their premises. In order to keep the smokescreens of confusion floating around them. The talk show aims at blowing the smokescreen away.

The idea of how to go about the exposing these people, was inspired by a fellow member at a forum. While introducing himself to the forum he added that in order to judge the personality of a new acquaintance he starts a discussion on the Élan Gonzalez incident. Small incidents, real or fictional have that ability to bring out the unidentified or hidden premises of a person. The most profound realizations are usually made through observing and analyzing simple incidents.

Since a fictional story is complete in itself, it can be made quite water tight, ensuring a single correct answer situation. In other words, the story will basically test your principles and not your managerial skills (which are tested by case a study….I was kind of worried about the similarities between the two things). The magic of the interviewer will lie in how he can prod the interviewee into arriving at obvious logical contradictions.

The real trick is to find out:

1. Are there enough prominent people who may be exposed? The answer should be yes, going by the magnitude of crap one hears these days. So the challenge is to identify all those people and the fundamental contradictions which they may be made to realize.

2. If such water tight stories can indeed be created? I guess yes, and it will involve a great deal of research on the interviewee and a great philosopher in the stable.

3. Will the stories be fool proof? Will the interviewee be able to sense what’s coming next and strategize accordingly. Hmmm…. then we will need to have a plan B. Plan B will be relating a recent incident from the interviewee’s life which contradicts what he says. So the idea is to create a story which is similar in content to the life and times of the prominent guest.

4. Can the contradictions be made obvious enough for the audience to identify them. Will depend solely on the interviewer’s skill. So the crucial Q is where to find one.

Will the outsourcing model work? No one of us is an expert at writing stories, or interviewing people or in media business. Who will want to risk his reputation at as crazy idea as this. And the issue is not about finding money, it’s about gaining credibility. After all a talk show is only as good as the interviewer is.

The reason why I stumbled upon the idea was the crap that the Indian talk shows are all about. The idea of …. might work even in a country like America where there is a general interest among people in things other than politics.

Hope it’s a great idea……if yes it’ll be a tough job going about it……if not …too bad.

PS: Clearly the idea doesn’t seem to hold much water, but then it’s not all that bad….at least it has made a good blogging material.

Must be tough being Managers!!

This one is inspired by the madness of BGS lectures...

It beats me why of all people, management students who passionately value the hard work that goes behind wealth creation endorse such bankrupt concepts like social responsibility , responsibility towards the environment and what not. Why would they advocate their own slavery? After all they are going to be the corporate heads of tomorrow.

Either they don’t understand the complete implications or they sincerely believe that their actions as businessmen will necessarily be inimical to everything: the society (why they will be gaining at the expense of the losers), the environment (yeah what about the rights of the cheetah their factories will displace) or the national heritage or the minorities or the underprivileged orrrr….And if that is the case, I don’t understand how they reconcile with their inner voice.

Must be tough being MBA students!!!

"There are no rights or wrongs"

Yesterday, someone happened to mention that I shouldn’t be that blunt in making value judgments as there are no rights or wrongs. Eeverything is right, the difference lies in how you look at the issue.

Hmmm…..I am trying to decipher what the hell that is supposed to mean. After some time I rephrase the whole thing for him.

Me: “Do you mean to say that since real life issues are so complicated that there is always more than one possible correct solution. Because the amount of knowledge you have and the set of assumptions you make and the areas you might focus and prioritize over are bound to be different than those of others”

Him: “Yes exactly, like the different solutions we all came up with for the McGregor case we got for our mancom assignment”.

Me: “But did we differ on the basic premise that Mr. James McGregor needs to keep his business alive and kicking and that he has to make more money out of it”? “And if your answer to that is in the affirmative, than the way you described my problem is factually incorrect. I always make it a point not to take absolute stands on any one particular alternative solution to a real life problem until I am convinced that any further time spent on analyzing the different alternatives is not going to make any incremental profit worth it”.

“You are probably complaining about my absolute stand on principles, which by their very nature must be absolute and invariable, so there I must disappoint you. I am not going blunt my sharpness”.

Intellectual Procrastination

The other day Phadnis and Sirji were trying to appreciate my dexterity in manipulating curves; I mean my skill with understanding things using supply-demand and indifference curves. I tried to explain that although I may be good at playing around with these curves, I believe in a field of economics which does not approve of the premises behind these tools. But I didn’t explain why and how Austrian economics disproved concepts such as constant equilibrium and total utility.

Just to keep the flow of the conversation going I went on to inform them that Austrian economics believes in unrestrained market economy. What I didnt tell them is that it has been logically deduced by such great economists as Ludwig Von Mises that a mixed economy is inherently unstable and the only logical progression (read degeneration) is a totalitarian state.

Speaking to myself…….
“It’s the first time I’ve happened to mention my interest in a hitherto unheard of subject. And I have been lazy enough not to embark on the project of undoing the damage caused by the bleaching action of BGS on their minds, I am quite sure that one of them will repeat in all sincerity one of those bromides that mixed economy apologists have infused into the vocabulary of the developing world intelligentsia”.

And here it comes…….“But the efficiency of the free market is under serious doubt”.
I say “hmmmmmm”, which means I’ll explain to you the real meaning of efficiency some other day.

Will need to change this stupid habit. The habit of being lazy. Lazy to explain things.

The Frozen Splash

This one is close to me. I wrote it on my first midnight in IIMB.

Trying hard to sleep amidst all the hullabaloo of the f-block faccha introduction session; I started visualizing still photographs of the most animated and elegant motions.
The one that struck in my mind was the image of a drop of water falling into a pool of water and the coming alive of a placid substance. Strange how something as fluid as water can bounce back in such a consistent and regular manner when impacted by its own kind.

I don’t how it occurred to me but I started figuring out how such an image captured on a camera can be sculpted. Sculpted without using the obvious tools of a sculptor. A frozen splash of water hung in space, defying gravity and time. A sculpture created by the interplay of unperceivable physical forces creating the magic of the ‘sufficiently advanced technology’.

Like most of the articles I have written this one has remained incomplete but unlike others I have decided to put this up on the blog. For a special reason. I’ll complete the idea on the night when I leave IIMB.

Fair Play

The other day the kids were playing ‘catch ball’ in my drawing room with chairs acting as the net. The only rule I formulated for them, a very simple one was that whoever strikes the net while throwing the ball is out.

One bright player derived a corollary- whoever’s throw falls before it is caught by the opponent team is out. The first kid to feel cheated by the rule protested but was silenced by the majority. To avenge for this, this kid started trying to persuade others into deliberately dropping the opponent’s throws. Surprisingly enough the scene didn’t deteriorate into a chaos.

But still it didn’t quite make sense and I had to chide the kid and stop the play.

But wait! Wasn’t the kid playing by the rules? After all isn’t a sport indifferent to such arbitrary judgments as fair or foul play? Doesn’t anything go as long as you are winning or trying to win?

Hmm…the argument sounds pretty logical except a small fallacy- the fallacy of context dropping. The argument ignores the larger context- the purpose of playing catch ball. The purpose of any game is to reward the better skilled person, in other words reward effort and not the lack of it (dropping the catch), and so the degenerated catch ball was not a sport but an exercise in loosership!

The Opus

One of my favourite articles, this is the oldest of the lot. The writing style is a little crude and the article is awfully long, so if have the patience, do read on.

Do you know what is ‘malus pumila’?Of course you do, but the term 'malus pumila' is alien to you. It is the scientific name for apple, a fruit so common to all of us. The point being made is one cant attach any intrinsic value to knowing the term 'malus pumila' as, not knowing it will not diminish your taste for it, nor would it render you incapable of acquiring one.Let me give another example to reinforce my argument, knowing that there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard have no intrinsic value attached to it because, if you are in a country where the metric system of measurement is prevalent this knowledge is useless.

Of course one may say that the knowledge of the scientific term for apple has no value for a layman but is significant for a student of botany, in the sense that it is elementary and a proficient student is expected know this much. But at this point many make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse, that is, assuming that the one who knows the elementary terminology essentially is proficient in his field.

So to make the knowledge of vocabulary as the basis to gauge ones proficiency is logically incorrect.Because a person might have done a path breaking research on the medicinal properties of apple and still be stumped when asked, what is ‘malus pumila’?

But what happens when students are in fact asked the same question again and again?The students stop worrying about everything else. When the students realize that it is the rote memory that is being rewarded you no longer expect them to think (the tendency to do least work-as perceived, to reap the same reward is one of the reasons…….but we’ll come to it later). Students, to coin a new word, start to vocabularize knowledge.

Vocabulary in this context means: the knowledge that is non-applicable or in more general terms ‘non-amenable to reason or manipulation’. And the term vocabularize refers to the process of assimilating useful knowledge in a way so as to render it non-amenable to reason or manipulation, or in other words accepting truth as uncorrelated list of names.

One of the extreme forms of vocabularization is manifested when students are unable to carry out basic operations in calculus when applied to elementary engineering problems despite the fact they have learnt the subject (calculus) in great detail.

The Modus operandi of vocabularization essentially consists of knowing the ‘end-product’ and understanding the ‘what’. As opposed to the rational method of knowing and understanding the initial conditions and following the dynamics that make the end product possible.

The end product here is any artificial creation of human mind and labor and hence the domain of the discussion is about the way we understand and apply abstract concepts like the calculus and the way we learn (analyse) and later design material objects like an earthen dam or a bridge.The initial conditions are the requirements or the inspiration (the original rudimentary idea of the creator) that trigger the process that culminates in an end product.Dynamics here mean the interpretation and application of the laws of the nature using his imagination and creativity by the creator to come up with the end product.

Vocabularization bypasses the law of causality and accepts the end products as thunderbolts out of blue that strike for ‘some reason’ of their own.This acceptance of an end product presupposes the validity of dynamics and ignores the initial conditions, thus obviating the need to understand the ‘some reason’, hence minimizing work.

From the forgoing discussion it follows that Vocabularization by the students is only a response to the teachers asking the ‘what’ and not the ‘why’. But the objective is only to minimize work (which is not an irrational thing per se)What gives the students the sanction to vocabularize is the belief that an understanding of the ‘some reason’ is unnecessary.

The root lies in the lack of respect for the individual capacity, the habit of escaping from responsibility and taking refuge in the ability of others.From this stems the notion that ‘I am’ not capable enough to comprehend a thing that others accept as such.

That’s why the teacher assumes that the person who writes the book is always correct(He takes refuge in the judgment of the publisher and the thousands others like him.) And tells his students to accept what he has to feed them on his authority. Any question from the students is taken to heart not because it challenges his conviction (he has no conviction of his own) but because it undermines his faith in others.

The creative faculty of the student gets progressively deteriorated, as the only thing he is taught to do is to repeat mechanically the procedures elaborated by others, and study passively the things made by others.In other words the student is trained to learn by observation, observing the existing end products as they exist and reproducing them as an when necessary.

Here the pragmatic person would interject: isn’t this the simplest of all methods which even the least intelligent person can use as it involves nothing more than a keen sense of observation.

The answer is NO. The rational method ensures that every possible end product can be explored as this method presupposes only a reasoning mind and the knowledge of the laws of the nature. On the other hand the person habituated to learn by observation can’t conceive of the ramification of even a slightest change in the initial conditions and needs to observe still more end products to find the one that suits the changed initial conditions. An end product, which may not exist in the first place. But a pragmatic person can’t wait for want of ideas, so the expediency of the situation allows for a poor imitation.

So to view the problem from another perspective the difference in the two methods lie in the amount of knowledge and the degree of understanding and creativity required.The pragmatic is incorrect on the count that to learn by observation is the simplest and the most practical way of learning. So are the students who vocabularize in order to minimize work when in fact they are choosing the most cumbersome way.

The system of learning by observation is faith masquerading as reason. It is a refuge of the second-handers and such a system of learning only produces second handers whose very existence primarily depends on others and unaided are incapable of doing anything.Whereas a reasoning mind, from a rational approach is capable to create new ideas and build things ab-initio. And it is to these reasoning minds who in most cases started form the scratch that the mankind owes the progress from the cave to the skyscrapers.

PS: Unlike most of my other articles, I have not tampered with this one since I wrote it around 4 yrs back. There are a lot of concepts I have learnt since then which apparently contradict the logic presented in "The Opus". I'll shortly come up with a revised version.

The Lone Footballer

Time is the one thing I never take very seriously. Things just happen for me. It’s a disgrace to corrupt the purity of old memories by embellishing them with useless details like date, time and the temperature of the day. But since I am a very logical person and have this habit of keeping things in order, I have to give some order to the editorial milestones of my life. Not quite a chronology but almost it.

Now as the word blogging has almost replaced ‘diary writing’, I can take the liberty to say I have been blogging for the past 3 years. Ideas change and therefore people change. The causality is reversed most of the times, but that’s beside the point. The point is I have changed a lot and you will observe the change through my posts. But again, I have this stupid habit of changing my past, something I did shamelessly in writing my resume for the summer placements. So I revisit my articles and make changes to them to make them conform to my present style. For example the opening paragraph was added and an entire paragraph was done away with just before I put up this blog.

Talking about chronology, that’s how I got the inspiration to write ‘The Lone Footballer’. ‘The lone footballer’, the article serves as the datum in the chronology of the posts. All articles written before I thought of creating ‘the lone footballer’ are BLF and all those written afterwards are ALF.

The paragraph which was deleted offered some kind of a rationalization for the name I have chosen for my blog. Since the explanation was not essential to the purpose of this article I had to remove it.

Reality experienced first hand is curious but is limited. Pure fiction on the other hand lacks the autobiographical element, it doesn’t speak much about the author….may be there is no such thing as pure fiction. The stories in my blog are therefore a mix of real life and my imagination. Degrees vary!

Share your ideas and experiences with ‘The Lone Footballer’.