Diary entry for May 27

Thanks to a comment by I-HEARD-YOU, here is what I wrote in my diary thingy on 27th of the last month.

Nothing personal in it, and no swearing!

Vikas Ruhela is a senior from college, an intellectual character, and a cool photographer, who discussed a few things with me and who was made to click this photo because apparently, neither me, nor my Galaxy ace are good enough for this.

Thoughts on thoughts

I normally think and discuss with friends, or acquaintances, or anyone who will listen/speak. But owing to a bit of staying at home for the last few days, all ideas I get are forgotten before I get the chance to discuss them. This means no great discussions, and no additional ideas. Additional ideas are the ones I thrive on. Might as well call them derived or (mentally) copy-pasted ones :-)

Watching a few other bloggers, I decided to start writing a diary thingy. I got the content for my last post (movies and all) from around 2 days of diary entries on movies and video games. This post comes from a few more days of thought. I don't know how accurate it will feel, because it hasn't been tested with discussions, so to speak.

By the way, word for the day: maybe.

What exactly are thoughts?

Nothing in and of themselves. Thoughts are simply signals from the brain, to some body organ(s) or (for the purposes of this post) to itself.

Let us say there are two kinds of thoughts: voluntary and involuntary. Feeling hungry is involuntary, but actually getting up and cooking something requires voluntary thought. It is borderline voluntary, but it is voluntary in my opinion.

We human beings have been blessed with the ability to let our brains communicate with themselves. This means that instead of just eating, sleeping, excreting and otherwise surviving, we think about ourselves and our surroundings, both physical and in time.

That is not to say that it is only humans who think. Dogs and cats too feel things like affection and anger, but I do not think that they can think at our level.

Thoughts and our quality of life

How we evaluate the quality, or level of our lives depends on the kinds of thoughts that we have. Two people in the same situation might think drastically different things about themselves. A bank robber now in prison might think of his bad luck. Another bank robber in prison might consider himself lucky because at least he is alive. Not the best example, but hopefully good enough.

I had problems thinking about this before, but then I thought about so many people in rather developed countries who still face depression. They do not have any scarcity, but still feel unfulfilled.

How highly we think of ourselves and our situations depends on who or what we compare ourselves with. As a not-even-amateur actor, I can compare myself with a friend who simply cannot lie, or with the Amitabh Bacchan. In which case do you think I will be happier?

I am not forcing everyone to just stop thinking about improving and all, but that you will face disappointment if you want everything to be perfect. Especially when perfection means different things for different people. And no matter what we do, our lives are a work in progress all the time. 

The biggest curse

As I maybe mentioned before, we humans are thinking beings. As such, what we think matters a lot to us. So, the biggest curse anyone can have in this world is not being able to think what they want.

Looks like a silly statement, but it is true. We like to think of good things. We like to feel good. But a lot of times, reality tries to convince us otherwise. Maybe this is why ageing hurts. At 23, I definitely want to be a child. Or at least a teenager anyway :-)

When a poor, malnourished child is hungry, it hurts him/her because he/she would rather be playing or doing something else at least. When a handicapped person feels bad for not being able to play some sport, it is because they want to feel the rush and enjoyment of playing, not the helplessness of their condition.

Maybe this is why choice, or the what-if nature of our minds boggles us. Also, maybe this is why many doctors who deal with problems of the mind would rather have their patients stay as they are. 

The good part about the curse

I don't know what you think about it, but the best thing about being emotionally fucked up is knowing that someday you will be able to laugh at it. We all have had the time in our childhoods when we were sick, and thought we were gonna die. This has to happen because our minds can only see so far, like you can only see a few tens of metres ahead with the help of your car headlights at night. The silly part is, at times of crisis, it is foggy so your visibility gets greatly reduced.

Everyone has only one brain, and it has limited capacity, so it can only process so much information. When a lot of that information is emotional or otherwise disappointment, it becomes really hard to focus on the good parts or at least trying to improve the situation. Maybe this is why emotions like love and anger are said to make us weak, or at least distracted.

Needless to say, having a clear mind is one of the best feelings in the world. Thinking that one has everything and needs nothing more, at least in the current moment is a state of mind that we should get more and more into. The question is, how? The answer eludes us. Too damn bad.

The need for constant (positive) reinforcement

Since we live in the real world^TM, it is obvious we come across more bad than good, or at least more superficial/needless than useful. And since our minds are nothing but reflections of what we see and feel, it is obvious that we tend to focus more on the bad than the good.

Instead of keeping up with this vicious cycle, I think it is better to constantly remind ourselves about the good in our lives. No matter what it is. The local team winning a game, a friend's phone call after a few months, or the neighbor who always smiles. 

In addition, it is also great to visualize things from a positive perspective. Thankfully, this is a situation in which the Anna Karenina principle is useful. You can fuck up a presentation or meeting in infinite ways, but the way to get it right, at least while visualizing is to believe in yourself and think that you are going to do it with confidence and grace, or whatever it is that these silly MBA-types do.

Maybe this is why sportspersons and performing artists and military people practice so much. After doing something over and over and over and over again, it kind of becomes second nature, that is, implied reinforcement in the belief that you are going to pull it off no matter what.

Not only ourselves, but we need and get reinforcement from others too. In fact, I will go as far as saying that positive reinforcement and the need for it is what makes us social beings. In most of the world's cultures, young people are supposed to seek blessings from elders. In a way, this is just a way of letting the elder and more experienced person reinforcing in you the fact that what you are doing is right in their opinion.

Another kind of reinforcement

I read somewhere about it being customary in the British army to tell new recruits to keep a watch on their seniors, and select one senior without telling anyone who that is. Then, whenever in a real time situation involving a decision and clueless-ness at the same time, the new recruit has to think what his/her favorite senior would do and the end result is more likely to be better.

Maybe this is why young people are encouraged to pick role models, and perspective role models, like movie stars and sportspersons are encouraged to keep their shit together. My personal opinion is kind of different, because I do not have a role model as such, and I think most people don't. Also, maybe this is why we believe in God. God is a kind of inbuilt good/bad filter for out thoughts and actions. I am not a non-believer, but I think this is the relevance of God in our lives. 

This kind of thinking, that is, thinking what someone else would do in certain situations can save your life, and more importantly, save your mind. I can't give any examples right now, but suffice it to say that whenever faced with an unknown situation, the best thing shy of being able to ask someone for help/guidance is thinking what they would do if they were in our place.

Spread it all around

The thing about all good things is that they normally increase when spread. This positive reinforcement crap is no different. Just like commenting on other people's blogs and then watching new, mostly encouraging comments on yours.

So, next time you get the chance, make sure you compliment your family members, neighbors, coworkers, the next person in the train. Ok, maybe not the next person in the train.

One more thing I would add is that you crying over your situation only makes you look silly. People are not interested in some idiot who just laments about life. One way around it is to focus only on the good parts, but another, way better way is to have a laugh at your situation. Have you read Jon Varga's blog? Or John Gray's blog? A few days back, Gray made his scerlosis problem seem funny. So funny that I initially thought it was a kind of joke. If you cannot do that, then at least try looking and narrating it from a third person perspective.

Taking the edge off

What is it that makes us feel pressure whenever we start something? Most would call it a fear of failure. What is this fear thingy? It is nothing but our insecurity regarding losing something that we have. That something is normally our self-esteem or pride (or the fear of letting someone down), and sometimes something physical like money or some bonus or a raise. Mostly, these two things are linked because, for example, people realize their self worth only in proportion to their performance at a silly office.

Assuming that you have nothing to lose really takes the edge off. Or, in most real situations, thinking what is the worst that can happen, can work wonders too. Our fears are mostly amplified versions of the worst of the results of the permutations-and-combinations games that our brains play. Thankfully, around 99.999999% of people reading this are not bomb squad specialists :-)

The best part of having a nothing-to-lose mentality is that it makes you less vulnerable to your self-imposed limitations.

Sayonara

This is all for today. Hope it was worth the read.

Do you have any thoughts on thoughts?

How to watch movies

So, the title should have been something like How "I" watch movies, but.. whatever.

I don't watch a lot of movies, so the onus is on watching only the good ones, and in the best manner possible :-)

Where to watch movies?

I try not to go to a cinema/theater/multiplex etc., because I am lazy, and because I am a miser. But when friends and family put too much pressure, I have to oblige, with lawyer-like conditions. An example: No more movies for this year. On an average, I go to the movies twice a year, once with family and once with some friends.

There are two options then. Either download via torrents or watch movies part by part on youtube. Torrents are kind of illegal in most parts of the world, including India. The thing about youtube is that movies normally have too many parts, and the bad video quality. But movies are things involving emotions and comedy, and the occasional thrills and action. What the hell has video quality to do with that?

Also, number 1 rule of doing something illegal: don't blog about it. If you got the idea, good.

Going with the only-good-ones logic, any movies that I go to have to be really, really good. Mostly great reviews or recommendations are required. The last one I watched was Jolly LLB, with my brother and a cousin, only because of the very different idea.

A problem with this approach is that I miss movies that are not purely commercial, but why the hell should I care? People are free to recommend good documentaries too. But my friends mostly fail me on this.

One more problem comes around when a movie is highly recommended by many people, and it fails to live up to my expectations.

Why I can't enjoy most movies?

First of all, remember what a movie is: just a simple story. A video game is a movie too, but it lets you play a character. So, making movies and video games, and of course writing books is a kind of story telling. Yes, I know, sweeping generalizations and all.

Almost all movies come in a simple plot style. There's a backstory, a plot-changing event and then the reaction to that. For example, in Kung Fu Panda, the backstory is the dream that Po has about fighting with the 5 masters against a wolf (and alligator?) army. The plot-changing event was when Master Oogway selected Po as the dragon master. And the rest of the movie followed in reaction to that. Maybe this is the reason why movies that don't follow any chronological order of events seem fun to me sometimes (don't remember the word for that)

The thing about this approach of story telling is that in addition to being boring, it can take some time before the plot-changing event occurs. And people get bored in that time. People leave the theater, switch channels etc., you get the idea.

Some movies are very different in this regard, in that they do the plot so well that people just can't leave. Like the Dark Knight.

Another thing is that sometimes you don't really need the backstory. For example, not many people get bored watching sports movies. Reason: if someone is watching a sports movie, they are pretty interested in it to be let off by initial boredom. It will take some really twisted and intentionally bad sports movie to make people dislike it. Or I am too much of a sports movie fan. :-)

The premise here is this: if a movie can fit in a backstory and the plot-changing event within the first 20 minutes, there is a high probability people are gonna like it.

Is there a law against writing content matching the headings?

If you are wondering about the part titled Why I can't enjoy most movies, you are probably right. Thing is, I always keep on looking for inconsistencies in the plot, the characters, the props, the smallest of things basically. This makes me enjoy it less.

Another thing is the tendency to predict the next scene, the next action, the next dialogue etc. Especially if I am made to watch someone else's favorite movie or series.

Two great KK-esque movie viewing anti-patterns

So, some movies are _dumb_as_shit_. And surely you can't spend two hours or even more on such stuff. I am sharing two remedies here, since there are two 'k's in KK :-)

First, in case of movies that are too boring to watch, but too interesting to leave, what works best is watching for 15-20 minutes (or until you establish the previously written precondition), and then reading the plot summary on wikipedia or imdb. This is what happened when I tried to watch Green Street Hooligans 2. When there was no football for more than an hour, and no going to matches or anything like the previous part, I was left with no option but to look at my great friend wikipedia. Sometimes uncyclopedia helps too.

Another case when this approach works really well is when you need to watch really emotional movies. I have never been able to watch Mother India beyond the scene when the hero (Raj Kumar) tries picking up his mother's load, but realizes he is an amputee.

The second approach is to watch a movie for 5 minutes, then skip 20 minutes, then again for 5 minutes, rinse and repeat. Then trying to predict what happened is fun. Works really well with movies like Dabang and Yamla Pagla Deewana.

Please feel free to recommend any movies etc.

Real life needs Moneyball

Disclaimer: I possess NO knowledge of baseball whatsoever. Neither is this a baseball-related post.

Moneyball is a concept used in sports, especially baseball, and has an eponymous movie starring none less than Brad Pitt. It is something that apparently is being taken up by other sports too.

To all my real-life  friends: Yes, I saw the movie. Twice. On TV of course!

Money + balls = Moneyball... wait, what?

You probably know how the league system in today's professional team sports runs. I think it is a great lesson in mixing people's interest in something and generating commercial benefits out of it, not necessarily in a bad way. Here's my stab at it. The word team is equivalent to sports club, the word mostly is equivalent to.... uh.. mostly.

Different teams playing the same sport at the same level in a playing hierarchy play against each other. See an example of hierarchy as I meant it, called the system here. Winning means gain of points for the winners, and losing mostly means the losers' points stay as they were. Teams are mostly (always?) defined according to their geographical location, more specifically the location of their venue (mostly stadium). Each team plays each other team twice: once at their venue and once at the other team's venue. At the end of the season (mostly of near-annual duration), the points of each team are calculated and the one with the most points wins the league/trophy etc.

Most leagues, especially the professional ones, work in a way that teams can trade players for money and sometimes other things.

At higher levels in league hierarchies/systems, there is a lot of money involved in terms of players' and other staff's wages, marketing, TV rights, player-named shirts and other merchandise etc. This money comes from fans. As one of my friends, the great and funny Hemant Dhir, who was quite active in college politics once told me, a few people are always interested in the thing (here it being some particular sport), but are neutral when it comes to picking sides (read teams). These people are the ones all marketing tries to lure, because more fans means more money. The best way to gain such followers is to win more. Since  (playing is all about winning, and also since) money (or the lack of it) is the root of all evil, all teams want to win more and more. That is, winning more is the best marketing strategy for teams to attract more fans, and by extension, more money.

Now, like any kind of business, all teams know that in simplest terms, the best way to make more cash is to invest more cash. Teams invest in players, non-playing staff and facilities for players like kits and equipment etc. It goes without saying that mostly players are the most  costly to get, and the most well paid part of a team. So, teams spend the most on players. And of course, the teams with the most money end up buying the best players!

But, again, since it is business, teams need to be sure of the players they are investing in. For this, a set of heuristics is considered according to the sport and a player's specific attributes in terms of skill and physical prowess. The problem with this approach is that while every team wants a good player, only one can have him/her at a time. So, there are two ways to get a player: either pay more than others, or change the way you measure players.

The second way seems a bit odd, but it is exactly what Billy Beane did at a team called Oakland Athletics, building on the theoritical foundations laid down by Bill James.

I don't know much about baseball, so if you are interested in it, please use internet search. About a bit of moneyball in soccer, see this page that I linked before too. Or, you can just watch the movie :-)

Sports aside, what is Moneyball?

The world loves statistics. Any and every consumer product that we use has at least some part of  its time, effort and/or budget allocated to statistical research. Apparently, getting the right balance between minimum quality and maximum payoff from customers is a big deal. 

Statistics in itself is a pretty useless thing. What is useful is the inferences that can be drawn from the loads and loads of data that is with us. Archives lying in a big library or in a database on some server need to be analysed in order to find patterns in it. These patterns can be extrapolated to get useful insights, which can be used to improve existing processes for better results etc.

It might seem too complex, but we as individuals do the same thing. When we need to get tickets to some game, we first contact friends who watch too many games and are cooperative. If these ones can't get it, we look for the ones having either one of these qualities. And if it still does not work, we just contact as many friends as possible and hope we get tickets anyhow. By the way, this was just an example, and not the best one. Buying tickets, either online or offline works too :-)

The catch here is that like in life as usual, perspective matters more than actual information. Sometimes we keep worrying about silly, nonexistent things, while other times, ignorance is bliss and it helps us coast through almost anything.

In the same way, in statistics, what you look at and what you ignore will be different from what someone else looks at and ignores. This difference will ensure that what different people learn from the same information and how they use it will be different. (I am trying to shorten my sentences, its a work in progress)

For example, the amount of time that we spend on working or studying etc. is a heuristic. The more it is, the better results we expect to get. But is this heuristic accurate? Mostly: Yes, always: No. For someone trying to uproot weeds off their garden, the amount of time spent on it is a very good indicator of progress. But for someone researching on something, it might not be as good an indicator because it usually takes a few weeks to a few months (sometimes even years) of work just to know that you've been wasting your time on a dead end.

So, for the purpose of this blog post, Moneyball is an approach to look into better heuristics rather than the statistical status quo. The rest of this post is me coming up with some examples on use of better heuristics.

Decisions we make as individuals

It is obvious that the amount of work we put in, or the money we invest, or the things that we do are directly related to the result that we get.

What is not really obvious is something that Paul Graham says: if you are doing what everyone else is doing, you will get what everyone will get. Too bad I was unable to locate the exact place where he wrote that, so no link and not an exact quote.

Going against the wind, or doing something that most people are not doing, is normally thought of as something silly. And it sometimes is. But it is the only way to get unusual results. Had Mark Zuckerberg and his friends joined some silly software company after graduating, instead of continuing on their dorm room project, we would have no facebook. They would be a normal programmers, working for a paycheck and blogging about ruby-on-rails or something on weekends. And I would have saved a lot of time from not having facebook. Not exactly right, because in that case some other social website would have come up.

This is the reason why politicians and advertisement campaign managers always want something different in terms of content. Same old stuff never gets attention. 

The need for reinventing ourselves

A big corollary of trying-to-do-different is the need to constantly reinvent ourselves. In most sports, a new player will play their heart out, but get out of form after a few games. Reason: they have now been analysed by other teams/players. 

You know something thats really good at reinventing itself? Viruses. Almost everyone has heard that flu has no medication. Some say existing common cold medication is just an attempt at fighting the symptoms and waiting for the virus to subside by itself. You know why this happens? Because every organism has a certain genetic structure. It usually takes some time (a few hundred generations at least) before any organism evolves. But in case of viruses, it happens within a few generations. Add to that a few days' or weeks' lifecycle, and drug research, something that takes at least a few years for a drug to come up, just can't keep up.

Decisions we make when we choose other individuals

Here are two situations when we get the chance to choose other individuals: choosing a suitable mate and choosing a employee,coworker or business partner.

The choosing-a-suitable-mate part makes me seem like a student of anthropology, but all I know about it is the spelling: a-n-t-h-r-o-p-o-l-o-g-y. Apart from that, have you ever noticed how animals, including humans choose mates for reproduction? We all have some heuristic or a set of heuristics that we look for. In humans, the most used factors are beauty and resourcefulness in that order. While these would have been good about two hundred years before now, these are not exactly deal makers or breakers now, at least to me. In this time of technology and knowledge, intelligence and understanding should matter more, but what the hell.

Same goes for situations when we choose people to work with. This does not look like an exact science, more like a work in progress. Some people just want trust to be the sole factor for choosing employees, coworkers and business partners, while some others consider only skill or expertise. Yet some more consider previous reputation of individuals as the most important factor, and there certainly are factors I am not even thinking of. While I don't know what exactly the deciding thing should be, it is funny that people and organisations with very different choosing and hiring ideologies are successful across different fields. So, this is something that needs more thinking, certainly more than the coin toss or dice roll (take your pick) we have been doing upto now, especially when success is an important thing, or just an assumption.

Analyzing police performance

Police and its role in India has been a point of debate since British times. While people might argue about the role of police everywhere, here is something I think about them.

Police in India at least is judged on the basis of the number of cases they get and the number of cases they solve. This means that a police station getting lesser cases is one in a place with good law and order credentials. But what if the police at that place are insistent on not registering any cases just to look good? What if instead of solving cases, the police just focus on getting the opposing parties to a compromise, mostly by the use of force?

What can be a better way to judge the police's work? For one, just like the government tries to audit everything, it should audit police work too. If the crime statistics in some area are just too good to be true, they probably are. If it takes a media report or public pressure to get a case registered, surely there are more such non-cases that need attention at that place.

Funny thing, the Supreme Court's ruling in the 2006 PIL, Prakash Singh vs. the Union of India looks to be full of Moneyball-like points, but has been gathering dust in almost all states. (I can't even think of any state that is implementing it)

Two pointers, both stolen

First, Siddhesh Agashe, in a blog post titled The Over The Top Economist, writes about economics:

.. Firstly, it is highly theoretical with no applications in the real world. Even the basic supply demand relationships do not work in the real world. Ask any baniya(businessman) in Delhi and he will give you a simple economics law – “The price of any good is determined by the bargaining (not purchasing) power of the consumer” If the store keeper finds you to be a new one time customer not adept at bargaining, he will charge you exorbitant prices covering his entire margins so that he can provide huge discounts to the not so friendly aunty of the neighborhood (who is also a repeat purchaser btw). This philosophy of the local kirana stores is responsible for kicking ass of all fixed price modern retailers. 

Clearly, it is Moneyball at its best.

The second small thing became clear to me while I was sitting with two people who were arguing over something. Now, they were polite and both seemed right as each spoke their points, but the equal or bound-for-a-tie nature of their arguments bought me to something: it is not the right point that wins an argument, it is the louder person. Not something I would like to stress too much, but the older I get, the more office politics and yelling bosses I see, the more I support this one.

Randomness is a pattern in itself

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough." 

                    - Alice and the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

In short, if you don't know where you want to go, all roads will take you there. You would think I read the book, but you would be wrong :-)

I wonder what Lewis Carroll's blog would have looked like if he lived in our times. Maybe minimal or no design but great content. (Him having a blog is almost axiomatic to me)

Wikipedia defines randomness as lack of pattern or predictability in events. 

But a way to think of randomness, in any field or manner of thought is not being able to predict what lies in front of you.

At the most basic level, there are only two choices or possible outcomes: either there will be some thing, event etc. that we expect, or something else. The something else part can be anything. Maybe the opposite of what we expected, or (a bit recursively) something else.

So, what does this mean?

First a Punjab Police joke:

How do you catch a tiger without a gun or any other trap for that matter? 

 - Newton's Method: Run faster than the tiger in the direction it is running, and you will eventually get close to it and catch it. 

 - Einstein's Method: Run in the direction opposite to the tiger, at the speed of light. Due to some obviously obvious relativity physics thing, you will end up in front of the tiger. Cool! 

 - Punjab Police's Method (refer to their service rules for further details): Catch a kitten, and beat it up until it says, "Yes, I am a tiger!"

And yes, I have no idea about relativity, but since it is "said" that only 12 people understood Einstein at that time, I am in the majority! Consensus can.... lets just keep it at that.

What I am trying to say here is that true randomness is something that eludes and will continue to elude us, just like the speed of light or something.

What the hell does it really mean?

It means that whenever we try to predict things without a good enough knowledge of what will happen, we will fail. What is good enough knowledge? To be sure about something, I think we need to be sure of what that thing will be. Cent percent surety would mean being witness to that situation beforehand, and assuming such a thing is possible, we wouldn't need predicting then, no?

Some might think on the lines of when do we predict.. A better question would be on the lines of when do we not predict?

As people, we think if we could pass a test, or if it would rain today, or what that person from the opposite desired sex thinks about us. Where should we invest our money, when should we get out from an argument, or why read blog posts from people who do not even know what they are writing about. If you are thinking about the last part of the last line right now, you are probably right :-)

Organisations/governments need to predict the weather, know about the economy 6 months into the future, and whether or not they are going to be victims of silly bomb blasts targeting normal folks rather than the leadership or the military.

Even if we had proper or sufficient information/knowledge/data, could we guarantee about using it properly?

What now?

As Russel Peters says in a made-up Indian accent, nothing!

As I already wrote before, randomness is a pattern in itself. If we don't know what might happen, it does not matter what the outcome is. The problem is choice. And it will take a few years of medicine research to fight the mental problem called "what if".

As far as I am concerned, I am gonna take all my predictions with a grain of salt from now on. At least the ones I make consciously.

Randomness, predictability, disorder, entropy, probability et. al. can ... again, lets just keep it at that.