#blockheads

Why do we excel in converting every age-old controversy into a mud-slinging-match-with-moral-posturing?

Of course, piracy hurts the publisher and the author and makes them feel cheated for all the hard work that they put in.

Of course, downloading a pirated book is not exactly the same as stealing a car, for if someone stole my car, I can't use it any more. But if someone got an electronic copy of my book (yes, even I have a book), I won't even know. Material, information, conserved transactions, non-conserved transactions and all that.

Ok, so here is a concrete solution to this #chetanblocks nonsense -- a business idea:

1. Someone open a site (say) goodwillcash.com (I haven't checked whether the domain name exists already)
   
2. People can register on this site basically to say that they are real persons
   
3. goodwillcash.com has a comprehensive catalog of authors big and small, which it keeps continually updating
   
4. People then go about reading legal or -er- unofficial versions of books; but something inside them pricks and says, "Oh the poor guy who wrote it all up is getting nothing from me."
5. They then go onto the site and give their favourite author some "goodwill cash". goodwillcash.com maintains a "goodwill cash price" for each book in their comprehensive catalog. If a book is priced at say 200 units of goodwill cash, then every time some impressed reader clicks on a button, 200 units of goodwill cash will be created and credited to the account of the author. A fan reader may pay goodwill as many times as they want.
   
6. Once every year, goodwillcash.com creates a media blitz for every author who has a high goodwill balance in their accounts. A media blitz includes featured articles, TV shows, radio programs (of course, strategic collaborations with mainstream media is part of the business model). Basically, goodwillcash.com issues a "Goodwill award" on all such celebrities who will get paid real cash as part of the award. Where will this real cash come from? Advertisers of course -- who get their sound and video bytes as part of the media blitz.
7. Goodwill awards would be a recurring event like the filmfare awards, etc. and an author winning goodwill awards multiple times gets a super-goodwill award, maybe?
   

So there you have it. Why-should-I-pay-through-my-nose-when-technology-allows-cheaper-access? folks are happy and so are the authors.

I know, I know. You are thinking of clique attacks and cartelization (what if an author hires a large number of stooges to pay him goodwill, etc.) With present-day data mining and social network analysis tools, such things should be detected with not too much difficulty.

Goodwill cash should be handled with proper care so that it can act as a brand in itself. For instance, people should be able to boast of things like, "I got 2 lakh units of goodwill cash for my last book." And they should be able to put such things in their CVs making it easier for them to get jobs or contracts.

Goodwill cash can be paid by people who buy legitimate copies as well. And even when I have paid the same amount of cash for two separate books, I may want to give several times more goodwill cash to one than the other -- simply because I liked it more and value it more than what I paid for it.

Such a set up would especially help authors of textbooks for college and higher education. Textbooks are notoriously vulnerable to piracy as they are expensive and most students don't see a need for them once the exams are over.

Go ahead. Take this idea and build a business and make money. Maja maadi! You don't have to pay me royalty. But some amount of "goodwill cash" would not hurt.. :-)

Children of globalization - III: The myth of the global citizen

Children of globalization - I
Children of globalization - II

For us, the decade of 1990s was such a heady mix of opening up of Indian markets coupled with advances in computer and communication technologies that made futuristic science fiction look like amusing fantasies of the ignorant.

Terms like "information superhighway" and "global village" were dropped in just about any conversation -- be it in a corporate boardroom or at the evening get-together of grandparents.

Some folks who were just entering the workforce naive and fresh off college, seriously believed that we are entering an era where national boundaries are going to dissolve and the entire world is going to be intricately connected as one large union.

Graphical User Interfaces were new and one of the most popular desktop wallpaper for developers using the XWindow system, was xearth. It was simply heady to be at work where the entire world revolved behind all the application windows on the root window.

Surely, in terms of cultural exchanges, the 1990s was perhaps the best decade in recent times -- nay, in all of history. Till then, for us in India, north Indian culture to south Indians (and vice versa) were the benchmark for culture shock.

Foreign lands were like say, Mars or Jupiter. We all knew that they exist and we knew about their characteristics in a bookish fashion; no one really believed that they would themselves visit these planets one day. And anyone who visits or even gets close to them (as close as the international space station, in the case of Mars) and comes back, is treated as a celebrity.

The decade of the '90s changed all that and expanded our cultural horizons like nothing before. Today we see a much greater acceptance of food, music, clothing and other lifestyle elements coming from all over the world. And this movement is definitely not one-way. Cultural elements like yoga, several kinds of Indian cooking, ethnic Indian fashion, Indian cinema, Indian jewelery and stuff like vaastu have caught on popular imagination world-wide.

So, culturally, we are coming closer -- and learning a lot and having a lot of fun in the process. And that is a great thing to happen. I feel lucky to have been born at this time, when for the first time in human history, we can have across-the-table kind of informal conversations with people from different parts of the world. The next generation will take the Internet for granted, but our generation has seen both the before and after of the Internet. We are indeed lucky!

But occasionally, someone or the other comes and declares themselves to be a "global citizen." Invariably, I wince whenever this happens. Because, it typically means that they have given up their Indian passport and got themselves a US passport. Not even, for example, a Nigerian passport; even though Nigeria is part of the globe too.

Culturally yes, I consider myself a global citizen too. For me, human beings are all the same.

Unfortunately, when it comes to anything that requires access and privileges to limited resources, what matters is not what you think of yourself culturally, but what your legal identity is. Today, the only form of discrimination that is allowed in liberal democracies is based on legal identities.

In any democratic country, nobody can deny you a job or a right to property based on your race, ethnicity, religion, language, etc. But they can deny these rights based on your passport. It does not matter whether you consider yourself as a citizen of humanity or as the citizen of a country. So, a change of passport is usually not based out of ideology, but a move motivated by convenience.

That is where establishing one's legal identity becomes a tricky problem with all kinds of ethical and philosophical questions.

There is one school of thought that says that our default citizenship is an "accident of birth." So it is every person's right to choose whatever citizenship they want to, as long as it is US citizenship.. ;-) Ok, the second part of the previous sentence was tongue-in-cheek.. ;-)

There is also another school of thought that says that unless you are subject to unfair persecution in the nation of your birth, taking up citizenship of another country, just because it leads to an easier life, is -- well, a not-so-nice thing to do. Your country of birth may have inefficient systems and life may be harder over there. But if you were not subject to unfair and deliberate persecution, it means that your current state of being in a position to seek citizenship in another country where life is easier, has been implicitly or explicitly facilitated by the society that nurtured you. So, if your society of birth is not inherently "bad" -- just "inefficient" -- then there is a sense of duty on every citizen to bring back wisdom from wherever they have been to, and help improve the society.

Of course, on a bigger scale -- involving the governments of several countries -- this may be facilitated by managing privileges and restrictions mutually offered to citizens of the respective countries. But this process is long and arduous and will take its own sweet time to complete.

Until then, let us go easy on this "I am a global citizen" thing, shall we? :-) It is not that simple an issue..

Synergistic thinking - VI: Nature or Nurture?

Synergistic thinking - I
Synergistic thinking - II
Synergistic thinking - III
Synergistic thinking - IV
Synergistic thinking - V

After a long break, I'm back once again on the topic of synergistic thinking.

Just to refresh: last year, I'd proposed a theory called synergistic thinking, that characterizes a kind of thinking style that may be termed "what-is" thinking. The objective of this kind of thinking is model building or theory formation, as opposed to another kind of thinking called imperative thinking that focuses on skill building or "how-to" knowledge.

Before I begin this article, the standard disclaimer. My background expertise is in computer science and I have little or no background knowledge formal training in psychology. But just as it may be, these series of articles are meant to clarify my thoughts based on observations and experiences about thinking -- something that is of central importance to software engineers and researchers alike. The writing here is based on thinking from first-principles, rather than a more conventional research article based first on surveying "Related Literature."

With the disclaimer out of the way, on to the article now..

While synergistic thinking seems to be more pronounced in some people, it is interesting to probe whether synergistic thinking traits are due to natural factors only, or are they due to the environment of nurture?

The human brain comprises of two separate regions to deal with procedural (or imperative) knowledge and declarative knowledge. Procedural or "how-to" knowledge is the knowledge of "skills" -- like how to ride a bicycle, how to swim -- basically the kind of wisdom that comes from experience. Procedural knowledge is also known to be learnt largely in a non-conscious manner.

Procedural knowledge is learnt by the non-conscious acquisition of patterns of co-variations between events or features. This tacit knowledge acquisition happens not only in the brain but throughout the body. Learning of reflexes is an intrinsic aspect of procedural knowledge -- be it riding a bicycle or driving on the highway. Reflex actions are sometimes handled at much lower levels like the spinal chord to obtain immediate responses.

Imperative thinking in other words, involve the entire body, while synergistic thinking is largely a brain-only phenomenon.

Interestingly, all those whom I've observed to display synergistic thinking characteristics have invariably led fairly sedentary lives. Their idea of relaxation for example, is usually a quiet weekend at home reading or listening to music; and hardly ever something like taking up an outdoor hobby like sport, hiking, etc.

I've noticed this characteristic even in children as young as 2 years. A particularly strong example of this is a young relative of mine who is growing up in the US and visits India once in a while. As a two year old, she hardly seemed to show any interest in routine mischief like climbing up furniture, jumping from them, etc. Instead, she showed an extremely strong tendency towards observation and creating explanations. She could remember specific episodes from her previous visits to India (when she was just 1 year old!) and also make generic axiomatic assertions to explain phenomenon around her. An example: "If you leave the laptop alone, it makes bubbles" -- her explanation for the screensaver. Note the generic "ground truth" nature of that statement. She is not reporting on a specific observation about the laptop making bubbles. She is making a general statement -- whenever the laptop is left alone, it makes bubbles.

Declarative memory that is in charge of "what-is" knowledge like the above, is made up of two kinds of memories -- an episodic memory and a semantic memory.

Episodic memory is responsible for capturing vivid details of specific episodes that we have been personally involved in. Episodes -- or the experience contained within them form the basis on which we build theories.

Semantic memory on the other hand, is responsible for creating and managing a system of axiomatic predicates. Experiences contained in the episodic memory are combined with other knowledge already learnt, to lead to possibly a new set of predicates to fit in with the latent knowledge in the semantic memory.

My theory is that this process of converting the knowledge in the episodic memory into elements of a mental model or worldview, to be stored in the semantic memory -- is precisely the task of synergistic thinking.

Just like procedural knowledge acquisition, synergistic thinking happens in a non-conscious fashion. It is characterized by a number of concurrent cognitive processes working on several sets of episodic and semantic knowledge simultaneously.

A change in the content of our semantic knowledge by the addition of a new nugget of knowledge can cause some "disharmony" (entropy?) because of some potential inconsistencies that it may lead to. Disharmony is bad and needs to be weeded out. But weeding out one disharmonious association may lead to other disharmonies. Hence, several hundreds or thousands of nuggets of knowledge are manipulated simultaneously by the concurrent cognitive processes and disharmony is measured statistically. The thinking is said to have reached a point of "synergy" or "harmony" or "local minima" when disharmony is minimized. Synergistic thinkers are said to get bouts of insights every time they hit a synergy in their heads.

Coming back to the main question of this article -- it is clear to me that some folks are more naturally inclined towards synergistic thinking, while some others are naturally inclined towards procedural thinking. But, is this natural inclination a fundamental trait of the individual, or is it a result of the environment in which they were brought up in?

For instance, maybe the environment does not provide enough opportunity to build skills and therefore the mind is left with no option but to develop theories?

Or maybe it is the case that synergistic thinkers have slight bodily deformations that makes physical skill-building less than enjoyable? For instance, throughout my life, I have never enjoyed physical activity and exertion. Working out and muscle-building has never been "fun". I've never won any running races and I remember how frustrated my dad was trying to teach me swimming. For some reason, my body seems to be built in a way that it does not send enough gratification signals in response to skill building activities. Could this bodily reason be the root cause for my greater inclination towards theory-building and synergy? Or is it that synergistic thinking is so intrinsic to me that the gratification obtained by theory-building is so abnormally high that skill building gratification pales in contrast?

The answer to this question would have several implications in fields like education, medicine and social order.

For instance, if we are just as likely to be synergistic thinkers as we are likely to be imperative thinkers, then education can be seen purely from a perspective of environment building. If we need to teach theory, we build a certain kind of environment and if we need to teach imperative skills, we set it up in another kind of environment.

On the other hand, if people are likely to be intrinsic synergistic thinkers or intrinsic imperative thinkers, then our education models should seriously consider matching thinking types with corresponding types of educational methodologies and career paths, rather than force-fitting all students onto a single kind of examination system.

A taxonomy of entrenched mindsets

As researchers, we often need to be continuously pushing the limits of knowledge, often exploring ideas that are in conflict with existing beliefs. In this process, we sometimes end up encountering or even adopting some entrenched mindsets that act as serious dampeners to the pursuit. As a result, we typically end up slighted, frustrated or bruised so much so that it can seriously take us into the path of cynicism.

Hence, it helps to try to analyse some entrenched mindsets so that we can make a start in understanding them as well as help coming out of deadlocks created by them. So here is a tentative list of entrenched mindsets that I often encounter (at least one of which I've myself adopted in the past, and which I try hard not to get into, nowadays):

The truth lies "out there"

This is a very common mindset that is prevalent in India and other "third-world" countries -- basically those that were subject to colonial occupation in the not-too-distant past. Basically, it believes with utmost conviction that the local population is incapable of discovering any objective truth and anything of consequence is necessarily done "out there" in "those" countries, full of smart people.

Recently I was having a conversation with a professional acquaintance about some topic in graph theory, where I was speculating about some properties of a class of graphs. He seemed interested, and then said, "Interesting! If you had been a great scientist, perhaps you could have made them into conjectures and published them."

I did not have the heart to tell him that I didn't think that one needed to be a "great scientist" to make conjectures. (To "publish" it is a different story altogether.. heh heh.. :-) But I know that it would be a futile endeavour to go down that path. For, no matter how good theories we develop, it would not elicit much more than a "Hmm.. interesting.." remark in return, unless it came from "out there".

The truth lies "back there"

This entrenched mindset perhaps has its roots in the de-colonization movements that sought to restore the erstwhile colonies, their original identities and instill a sense of self-respect among its population.

Unfortunately, some extreme aspects of these still linger along, giving rise to entrenched beliefs that basically says: every possible idea on just about anything, has already been addressed by our elders and written in "the scriptures." Be it a question of economics, mathematics, science, politics, whatever -- it is all there, in "the scriptures."

It is again extremely difficult, if not impossible to work alongside such mindsets.

I am the boss

This kind of entrenched mindsets typically expect the other party to practice obedience, because the current social ordering has made him/her the boss and the other party the subordinate. This usually means that the other party is expected to be subservient and never question any idea, nor offer any new ideas of their own.

Argumentation by these mindsets are typically an exercise in confirmation bias.

I am the victim

This kind of entrenched mindset is the opposite of the above. Here, the person fervently believes that s/he is a victim due to his/her gender, ethnicity, religion, language, economic background or whatever. The person is perennially suspicious of everyone -- especially their bosses or "superiors" in the social ordering. Any talk by the boss is typically over-analysed and just about everything they say is taken as oblique references to themselves, seeking to "put them in their place."

This mindset is actually much more powerful than the "I am the boss" mindset. In peace-time societies, it is so powerful that political manipulators often consciously use this "I am the victim" tactic to gain support or mould opinions in their favour.

Ultra-liberalism

This kind of mindsets typically view research as a means of "liberation" from the "oppressive regimes" of rules and regulations that exist in society. Typically, these mindsets are ultra-sensitive to any kinds of rules -- be they attendance requirements for classes, or compliance requirements for quality certification, or office timings, or parking regulations or network firewall configurations. (I was myself pretty much of this kind when I was a student, which I try hard to keep away from, nowadays.)

The final state of ultra-liberalism is a state of anarchy, where there are absolutely no rules for anything. Unfortunately, the "freedom" provided by anarchy lasts for maybe a few seconds before stuff like muscle and the gun take over.

Freedom enthusiasts should argue against bad rules, rather than ask for a blanket ban on rules itself. The latter sounds quite similar to the "Truth is subjective" assertion -- if we have to "ban" all rules, then should not the ban itself be banned? :-)

"The community decides what is truth"

The above is actually a sentence that I've heard from a professional acquaintance! These mindsets are characteristic of the herd mentality that is innate in all of us. These mindsets are extremely suspicious of any idea, unless the "community" thinks it is worthwhile.

The favourite quote of this mindset is: "The road less travelled is less travelled for a reason." Which basically translates to saying: "Don't take the road less travelled, because the community travelled on the other road."

The road less travelled may be less travelled for a reason; and sensibility lies in trying to understand what the reason is, instead of deciding right at that time, not to take the road less travelled.

When encountered with such quotes, I often take up another quote by Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that the world cannot be changed by a few people; indeed that's the only way that the world has ever changed."

But of course, that is not without its caveats as well.. :-)

Truth is beyond the controlling grasp of individuals and communities alike. Once upon a time, the "community" believed in some models with such conviction that it actively vilified and persecuted people like Galileo or Socrates who held conflicting notions. Fortunately, the researcher today need not fear the fate of Socrates; but community dynamics are still the same as ever.

Analyze this! An epistemological dilemma

Some nights ago, I had a dream in which a friend of mine comes to my home and lives with us for some days. One one of these days, he finds a lot of junk lying around in the utility area and starts tinkering around with them. I am intrigued about what he is up to, but he does not reveal anything.

A couple of days later, he conjures up a device that essentially does reverse osmosis and softens the notoriously hard water that we get in our water pipes.

I look at the device in astonishment and realize that much of the stuff required to build it were already lying around in the house. I take a closer look at the device and before long I've reverse engineered it. Later, I'm feeling sullen, thinking why didn't I think of this myself.

The dream basically made me very sad, and I woke up essentially believing that I'm growing old.

But then later on, it stuck me -- my friend had thought of this idea in *my* dream! While *I* in my own dream, had no idea what my friend was up to, and could only think of building this device by reverse engineering what he already did -- it was still *my* dream!

So, did I get this idea or did I not?

Enjoy your coffee..

Got this nice anectode in my mailbox today. Source unknown:


A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: 'If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.'

Don't let the cups drive you.. Enjoy the coffee instead

Rationality versus Intelligence

We often confuse between the terms "rationality" and "intelligence" and tend to equate the two. When someone says, "It is only rational" -- it is often construed to mean that the act was somehow "intelligent."

I think rationality and intelligence are two different things. Let me define each and explain their difference with a motivating example.

Rationality is the basis for our autonomous behaviour. Rationality is made up of two elements -- a "self-interest" function and an ability for "utility maximization."

Self-interest is defined by our needs and desires. There is a self-interest in all of us based on our need to survive (roti, kapda aur makaan). In addition, there could be self-interest based on our desires (desire for wealth, desire for adventure, desire for knowledge, desire for social prestige, etc.)

Utility maximization is our ability to choose one or more actions from a set of possible options, that helps us realize our self-interest to the best possible extent. Hence for someone who values social-prestige over (say) wealth, lobbying for a glorifying award and the resultant applause, is rational as compared to pursuing an option that pays a lot but without applause.

Intelligence on the other hand, is our ability to build mental-models that explain the world around us. By definition, all mental models are incomplete -- but models that explain more and for longer are considered to be better than mental models that are valid only for bounded universes or for short time periods.

The accuracy with which we build our mental models determines how well we are able to identify options available to us for utility maximization. Without good mental models, we may not even be aware of some option available to us, or of the hidden costs in choosing an option that is apparently attractive at face value.

(On a side note, this definition of intelligence -- as our ability to build mental models -- completely discounts the veracity of logic and reasoning based metrics like IQ, to "measure" intelligence. Logic and reasoning are necessary for building mental models, but are by no means sufficient conditions.)

*~*~*~*~*~*

Here is an example scenario that distinguishes between rational behaviour and intelligent behaviour.

Consider that it is lunch time at the office and the cafeteria has just opened for lunch. You are very hungry and it is only rational for you, to rush to the food counter. Also, the sooner you get to the food counter, the better the chances that you will get piping hot food that not only satiates your hunger, but also tastes good.

So a scenario where everyone rushes to the food counter and crowds and jostles and muscle-around with one another is a perfectly rational behaviour -- as far as each individual is concerned.

On the other hand, if people automatically stand in queue at the lunch counter (without anyone policing them), this is indicative of intelligent behaviour. In this case, everyone has built a mental model that explains not only their own intentions, but of the intentions of all others coming to eat at the cafeteria. Their mental models have shown that there would be a conflict of interest when everyone pursued their intentions without bothering about the others. Their mental models would also have shown that such a conflict would result in a much more diminished payoff for everyone. Finally each of the mental models would have independently come to the "equilibrium" condition that standing in a queue is the best option for utility maximization.

Note that this equilibrium is possible only when everyone adopts a mental model that accommodates everyone else in the picture.

Suppose there were to be a small set of people who simply cannot acknowledge the presence of others or who cannot understand that others have self-interest too. These people would find it totally irrational to stand in queue and wait for their turn -- when piping hot food is right in front of them. Now when all such people rush towards the food, the mental models of all others break. For any given person, standing in line makes sense only as long as others stand in line as well. If there were only one rational-but-stupid person like the above, perhaps he could have been muscled back to conform to the queue. But when several folks display this rational-but-stupid behaviour, there is no incentive for the rest of the folks to stand in line either.

*~*~*~*~*~*

I think voluntary formation of orderly structures like queues, by autonomous agents, is a clear indicator of intelligence in the population. It shows that not only are the actors rational, they are also intelligent in the sense of building mental models. A population that rushes and jostles at bus-stops and railway stations is sub-critical in its intelligence than a population that automatically snaps to an orderly structure.