The flagpole of entitlements and obligations

Since the last few years, I've been interested in how the web is affecting our lives and changing the way we think. While trying to understand this, I came across the question of how our sense of "entitlement" and "obligation" affect the way we think.

The reason I came across this dilemma itself is a different question. It had to do with the wide disparities I observed in the emphasis placed on different aspects of online privacy and security, by different people.

Nevertheless, this post is not about online privacy and security, but on our sense of entitlement and obligation. Here is a theory that I've developed:

The Flagpole Model

Imagine that inside each of us is a tall flagpole. A flagpole has some element of it over the ground and some element of it buried underground.

The part of the flagpole that is overground is our sense of entitlement. It is what we think the external world owes us.

The part of the flagpole that is underground is our sense of obligation. It is what we feel we owe to the external world.

The flagpole deeply affects our strategic disposition with which we approach the world. When we are predisposed with a sense of entitlement, we tend to be aggressive, obdurate, righteous, judgmental and assertive. When we are predisposed with a sense of obligation, we tend to be empathetic, compassionate, cooperative and accommodating.

Each of us are born with a certain ratio of the flagpole above ground and the rest underground. Our innate sense of entitlement versus obligation is visible approximately when we are two years old. Take a set of two year old kids and we will probably see that the distribution of pole-lengths above ground is a Gaussian bell curve. That is, there are a small number of kids who would have an innately high sense of entitlement, and a small number of kids who would have an innately high sense of obligation. Most of the kids would be somewhere in the middle, with an almost equal sense of entitlement and obligation. They are more or less, as selfish as they are friendly.

As we grow up, our culture and system of education gently adjusts our flagpole over the years.

In some cultures, the flagpole is pulled up as people are reminded about their rights and entitlements by their culture that celebrates gumption. In some other cultures that celebrates compliance, the flagpole is pushed in and people are reminded more about their duties and obligations, rather than rights and entitlements.

Stability of a system of flagpoles

Given a society where everybody has a flagpole inside themselves, there is often a clash of entitlements. This beings us to a concept of "stability" of the society.

A society is said to be stable if a sense of entitlement by someone can be matched with a sense of obligation or duty on the part of others. In other words, the total amount of flagpole lengths that is above ground should match the total amount of flagpole lengths that is underground, for the society to be stable.

If we see a society where some folks seem to have inordinately high levels of entitlement, and the society still seems to be stable without any upheavals, it means that their high sense of entitlement is matched by several others in the society living with an inordinately high sense of duty or obligation.

If a society comprises of all people with a high sense of entitlement, it will result in conflict and clashes, till a point when some of the flagpoles are forcibly pushed underground.

Alternatively, what happens to a society where everyone lives with a high sense of obligation? On the face of it, such a society will appear to be stable too, since a sense of obligation will not seek anything from others. But such a society is not evolutionarily stable in game theoretic parlance. It means that a small set of incumbent actors with a high sense of entitlement can easily overwhelm the society. In addition, such a society is prone to a variant of the tragedy of the commons that is also well known in game theory. Since everyone in the society has a high sense of duty, selflessness and service, there is a temptation for everyone to slowly increase their own sense of entitlement over time, as it can be easily matched by a sense of obligation on the part of someone or the other. A society with an inordinate sense of obligation is also not in Nash equilibrium. As long as everybody else remains in a state of heightened sense of duty, there is a rational incentive for any given actor to give up this state and adopt a heightened sense of entitlement instead. That is one of the sources of my skepticism about the widespread practices of "bhakti" and "devotion." A society comprising of all "bhakts" may be very peaceful and empathetic, but such a society is not likely to exist for long.

Phase transitions

The sense of entitlement and the sense of obligation are like Yin and Yang. If we try to increase one of them without limit, we end up with the other. As the saying goes: "If you go too far into the East, you end up in the West." Or the Andy Grove quote: "Every successful organization contains the seeds of its own downfall."

If as a society we emphasize too much on one of the above senses, there appears a point at which there is a "phase transition" and the flagpole goes in the opposite direction of the emphasis.

If our environment emphasizes too much on a sense of duty then there comes a point when our sense of entitlement becomes close to zero. A sense of entitlement is very important for survival. Once it becomes zero, there is no mechanism for our body to convince itself to even live. But then, nature does not allow us to reach a zero sense of entitlement, without putting up a good fight. When our sense of entitlement becomes too low, our primal survival instincts surface and starts a desperate push of the flagpole upwards, resulting in rebellion, defiance and revolt.

When our sense of entitlement becomes too much, there comes a point when we start feeling hollow from within. A sense of obligation is very important for our notion of self worth. Our sense of self worth is based on how much we are needed by others. When we have lived all our lives pursuing only our self interest, there comes a point when we start feeling "soulless" and superficial living only for ourselves. This starts a desperate push of the flagpole downwards, explaining why some very wealthy people suddenly turn spiritual or go off into depression and abdication.

The entire history of the world can be seen from the lens of how this flagpole has been manipulated within ourselves and over others. Much of leadership, governance and persuasion has been about fiddling with our and others' flagpoles. 

Mindfully connecting with ourselves

Several times in the past, I've written about my traumatic and depressive childhood, stemming primarily from what I consider to be severe philosophical defects in our approach to education and social life in general. Our schooling primarily emphasized on conformance, passive compliance, operational-skill building and performance within strict boundaries. It didn't emphasize on elements like curiosity, insight-building, contemplation, argumentation, empowerment, problem-solving skills, etc.

And the emphasis on conformance was so high that, curiosity to ask questions beyond what is taught, or any form of non-conformance was seen as something immoral. Let me emphasize on the word "immoral" again.. Like for example, in our English-medium school, speaking in Kannada or any of our mother tongues was considered "immoral" enough to be subject to punishments like being humiliated publicly, beatings, being locked up in the bathroom, and such.

I've often compared this kind of schooling with "slave-training," and it indeed stems from what our society has been through over the last several centuries. This form of schooling (and even our approach to governance, law-making and law-enforcing, for example), is still very very rampant all over, even today.

Recently, I heard a statistic -- suicide rates in Bangalore is pretty high and comparable with that of Sweden. Except that in Sweden, suicides are primarily caused by physical reasons (inadequate light in winters), while in Bangalore, suicides are almost wholly due to social reasons. That should put things in perspective!

It is one thing to appreciate the beauty that is latent in a harmonious, obsequious and compliant lifestyle, but it is yet another thing to adopt it as a philosophy of life -- by stifling away curiosity, accepting ideas without judgment, and compromising the search for truth with faith in our beliefs.

Our state of affairs pained me and continues to pain me at such a deep level. It provokes a visceral response whenever I see or are asked to conform to some ritualistic activity or notion, or to go with the herd.

Perhaps naively, several years ago, I had decided that even though I'm pained no end to simply lead a normal life here, I will not run away from here, but instead, do my bit to bring about some change in our society. I'd been inspired by several parables like the following:

A man walking on the beach saw that the tide had turned at the beach and the sea had receded, leaving behind several thousands of fish that were suddenly separated from water and writhing in the sand. There was a boy who was diligently picking up one fish after another and throwing them back in the water. But there were so many of them.. "It is no use," said the man.. "you will never be able to save them all." The boy picked a fish, threw it back into the water, and said, "Well, I saved that one!" and went about his activity.. 

After looking around aimlessly for several years, I thought I'd found my calling -- in doing my bit towards re-educating and re-wiring our society. It was of course a naive belief. Our current ideas are so deeply entrenched and so rampant, it was not before long that I've encountered all kinds of things that has pained and outraged me no end.

Soon, it became clear that I need to be dispassionate, objective and not react emotionally to keep myself sane. And slowly I began to ignore what I felt about things and subdue my emotions in order to keep my judgment engine working.

Every morning, I developed a ritual to tell myself several times over: "How you feel about things, does not matter.."

It worked for a while and helped be become level-headed and dispassionate. How I felt about stuff, indeed didn't matter to the world at large. Only hard-headed argumentation showing and demonstrating flaws in our current beliefs, could send some messages across.

But, how I felt, did indeed matter to me -- to my body. An emotional reaction is a physical response to stimuli. My body was reacting when someone spoke in a patronizing, head-patting tone or made a moral issue over some kind of unfamiliar idea, without applying their minds to it. But I had told myself that my body's response didn't matter and had subdued my emotional responses.

This in turn had started to affect my health in a slow and insidious manner -- affecting everything from general health to overall efficiency in leading a routine life.

Finally, fighting stereotypes and societal stigma against mental health, I went to several psychiatrists. But it only made things worse. The shrinks turned out to be preachers in the guise of doctors, preaching me back into conformance and submission -- and prescribing drugs to keep my emotional response subdued. They worked under the assumption that there was something wrong with me and I need to be "corrected" to fit in back into the society. They were the epitome of the very ideas that I was fighting against!

I realized what I was doing wrong. My emotional response may not matter to the world -- but it is not wrong or immoral to respond emotionally! There is no need for it to be subdued! My emotional responses are innate -- it is nature speaking! My body was protesting against injustice in its own way and by subduing it, I was subjecting it to even more injustice! The problem that I was fighting against, indeed lay outside of me, and here I was, punishing myself for protesting against beliefs that are indeed wrong! Those beliefs preaching unquestioning submission and conformance -- they are what are immoral, not the ones who don't conform to them!

Needless to say, I threw away all those prescription anti-depressants. There is no way I was going to punish my body for a crime that it didn't commit.

Some time ago, I met this person, let me call him P. Ironically, he is a preacher by profession. But he taught me something, which even the psychiatrists could not. He taught me to "mindfully" and amorally (not immorally) connect with my emotional self.

Till now, either my emotional response was coloring my judgment or it was being forcefully subdued by my judgment engine. It was as though they were both at war with one another -- trying to prove who is more powerful. My judgment engine was "unmindfully" engaging with my emotional engine.

Mindfulness is the opposite of this -- it is a means to obtain internal harmony before trying to bring about external harmony. It is a way by which we can allow our emotional self that also controls our physical response, to express what it is feeling, without passing a judgment or without jumping to conclusions based on what it is expressing.

Mindful connections with ourselves requires us to feel fully and wholly our emotional responses to stuff that are stored away in our episodic memory. But this has to be done in a fully conscious manner -- knowing fully well that this is only a physical response -- not a semantic response. These emotions are not to cloud our judgment and our balance in perspectives. They just need to be expressed.

Meditating in a mindful manner is all about the concept of mindfulness. It has got nothing to do with watching our breathing, posture, etc. (which are the stuff of what I was preached about meditation. I could never understand why focusing on our breathing will help us in giving an answer to why do we have such a slave mentality and how to get out of it.)

With the help of P, I've been practicing mindfulness for some time now. It has been a very painful and tumultuous journey so far. So many episodes, right from my childhood came hitting back at me in full force. So many pains re-emerged so much so that my body started paining in all those places that I'd been hurt earlier. I remember once my school principal had pulled me up by pinching my shoulder and had started slapping me. That pain came back in full force! I was even limping for several days after one such mindful connection sessions.

The only difference now was that, the "I" was separate from what was happening inside me. I was a mindful spectator of myself -- watching what was stored in my episodic memory and how it had affected my emotional self. I could see how deeply hurt I was -- at a moral, emotional and spiritual level. Except that this hurt was not controlling my judgment anymore. I could see this hurt in a dispassionate and objective fashion by turning my level-headed judgment engine towards observing myself. I could see how at an emotional level, I could not trust anyone -- including anyone who called themselves a friend -- including P, who had taught me mindfulness. Indeed, I could not trust myself fully to not breakdown and lose my head in the face of some kind of emotional stimuli.

Connecting with myself was so painful, it had literally knocked me down several times. I'd slept for almost entire parts of weekends (when I used to practice this). I was urged not to let myself be knocked down, which makes the experience unmindful, and instead, try and keep myself awake and observant.

After several such sessions, one day I suddenly saw myself as my childhood self, emerging from deep within all these stored up episodic memory. I could literally visualize myself as emerging from under a huge rock face that was all my episodic responses, weighing down under me. I could visualize myself hiding under the bed in my childhood home, in sheer terror -- precisely the way I used to react at the prospect of going to school in kindergarden.

I suddenly realized that my entire life till now has been shaped and built by this terrified boy hiding under the bed. Who I am has been shaped by things that are so deep down, that I had no other strong enough emotions at this level, to balance my understanding of the outside world. My distrustfulness emanates right from those days hiding under the bed as a 3-year old.

I do not want to associate yet another emotion towards this discovery. I state the above observations dispassionately, without judgment towards myself or towards the external world. I state this publicly on this blog, in the hope that it can help others mindfully connect with themselves and discover what's been driving them all along.

All of these only reinforce my judgement that we are deeply messed up as a society. Even at a philosophical level, we are damaging our children by not nurturing their thinking and problem solving skills, and instead stressing on performance, compliance and operational skill building. Creating craftsmen from our children is fine, but it should not come at the expense of not creating thinkers from children who want to become thinkers.

We teach children to respect adults, but never teach adults to respect children. But most importantly, we do not realize that the adults treat children this way, because they themselves were treated like this -- this is a problem that has been imposed on us for several centuries. I do not like to call this "abuse" -- because none of these actions were intentional. Even the principal who terrorized us in school, perhaps genuinely believed that this is the "right" way to discipline children. By calling this "abuse" and harassing the adults, we are in fact as a system, abusing a similar terrified child inside these adults, that is hiding under a bed itself.

The only way we can "fight" this problem is by spreading compassion and genuine respect -- among children and adults alike. We have to build a society where people of any age, gender, ethnicity or whatever, can freely express themselves. At least for a start, we should build safe places or supporting communities, where people can express their emotions without fear of being judged or admonished. The child in us never dies -- who we are as adults is just the persona created by our child within, as defenses to deal with the external world.

Who we really are, is the child within. Unless we can "re-parent" the distrustful child and get our emotional and judgment engines to trust one another, we cannot hope to bring about any major changes outside.

Existential, Logical and Epistemological thinking

It is quite well known that cognition or "thinking" happens in several layers. One of the most popular theories today is by the works of Kahnemann and Tversky about Systems 1 and 2.

System 1 is our intuitive brain. It performs fast, subconscious computations and jumps to conclusions. It also embodies our emotional state, intentions, desires and dispositions in its computations. It can compare across dimensions and is innately "rational" -- that is, it is driven by self-interest and biased by who we are.

For most of our lives, we live by System 1. However, System 1 occasionally requires the services of "System 2" -- which is our conscious and deliberate reasoning process.

System 1 includes all activities of a perceptive nature. This includes, for example, reading a word written in a language we understand. System 2 on the other hand, is semantic in nature. It tries to understand the meaning of what is being asked for and does justice to it.

Consider the following example that shows dissonance within System 1 requiring the services of System 2. In the following set of words, say out loud whether they are written in upper case or lower case:

UPPER
LOWER
upper
LOWER
lower
UPPER
upper
lower
LOWER

We see that our System 1, first tries to just "read" what is written, rather than answer the question. System 2 then kicks in to make deliberate judgements based on what the question requires us to do. Answering this question requires a degree of "self-control" on ourselves to refrain from just reading out what we see, and to address what is being asked of us.

System 2 requires much more energy to run and is far more slower and inefficient than System 1. Also, System 2 is "lazy" (I'd like to use the term "rational") in the sense that, if System 1 already has computed an answer, System 2 would rather ratify the answer with an explanation, instead of invest resources in recomputing the solution.

The post-facto rationalizations we make to justify an impulse buying of say, a car or a camera, is an example of System 2 in action, ratifying the decisions taken by System 1, rather than computing the merits of the decision on its own.

Basically, System 2 is an "imperative engine" -- it performs logical inferences and derives conclusions from premises.

But -- and this is important -- it does its work within the confines of a mental model. The mental model comprises of the underlying premises on which inferences are made. System 1 often implicitly provides the "box" or the mental model within which System 2 performs. The post-facto ratification is an example.

This brings me to the point of this post, where I would like to propose the existence of a third layer of cognition. Rather than just calling it System 3, let me give specific names to each of these layers.

System 1 is the "existential" layer of cognition. It is an embodiment of our Person. Its thinking is driven by who we are, what we like, what we are afraid of, and such. It is oriented towards making quick, intuitive "blink"-type decisions.

System 2 is the "logical" layer. It can perform deliberate, systematic logical entailments from premises. It innately knows the rules of logic and can build an argument towards a conclusion. However, System 2 works within the confines of a mental model -- the axiomatic framework within which inferences are made. The mental model within which System 2 performs its computation, is often influenced by System 1. In that sense, System 2 is more of a "rationalizer" of the decisions of System 1 and System 1 can often "manipulate" System 2 to rationalize its leaps of intuition.

Sometimes however, we need to think beyond the confines of a mental model, and question the premises within which our System 2 is doing its thinking. This is where System 3, or the "epistemological" layer kicks in.

Consider the following question: What is 423 x 7? Answer this without using any pen or paper.

This is a typical problem that involves the operations of System 2, where we mentally calculate how to add 423 to itself 7 times.

But then, System 2 does not ask what is meant by 423, 7 and what is meant by 'x' in the question? We just assumed that their interpretations are known. Suppose I were to say that "423" and "7" are strings and 'x' is the concatenation operator, and the answer is 4237.. this constitutes a re-interpretation of the problem in a different model.

Consider the following problem:

Let's say, it is your birthday today and your friends have planned a surprise party for you. You come home in the evening after work, and your friends are all in there and yell, "Surprise!" And, you show surprise on your face. 

But suppose, you come to know of the surprise party that your friends have planned for you. When you come home and they yell "Surprise!" can you still show surprise?

The answer is yes! Because, your friends don't know that you know about their surprise.

Suppose your friends know that you know about their surprise? Can you still show surprise? 

The answer is still yes! Because, you don't know that your friends know that you know about their surprise!

This kind of a problem is characteristically different from that of "What is 423 x 7?" It requires deliberate thinking -- but deliberate thinking of a totally different kind than that used in System 2.

Epistemological thinking requires us to question our premises and perform multiple interpretations as part of its thinking.

The epistemological layer is required in many strategic situations where we need to think across different mental models. We not only have to question the basis of our own premises, but also have an understanding of what other interpretations can exist for the question at hand.

Most questions requiring us to reason about ethics and morality have this characteristic. Consider the following question:

A 10-year old argues in court that he should be allowed to be adopted by the rich childless couple in the next neighbourhood as requested by them, as they can provide him with a better life, and they also want him as their son. Besides, he argues, he cannot be held responsible for his "accident of birth" -- he did not choose his parents while being born. How should the court rule? 

This problem is complex simply because there are several models within which it can be interpreted, each giving different answers about what is the "right" thing to do. We can keep adding several additional points to this problem, making the decision sway in different directions. Suppose, we added a dimension to this problem that the current parents of the boy were living in penury and had problems of abusive behaviour. Or, perhaps that the current parents of they boy were middle class, hard working couple, who just couldn't match the wealth that the rich couple could afford. Now what?

Most strategic thinking, requires us to invoke the services of System 3, while rational thinking requires the use of System 2.

System 1 coupled with System 2 is "rational" -- in that they can both work towards fulfilling self-interest (managed by System 1) in a way that results in utility maximization (managed by System 2).

However, the activities of System 3 are synergistic and is about "enlightened self-interest."  Its aim is not to maximize utility for oneself, but to find a harmonious interpretation across several mental models to result in overall net gains in utility.

In other words: strategizing for a win is System 2, while strategizing for a win-win is System 3.

Does language "shape" or "distort" thought?

The question whether language affects thought has been of immense interest since several decades. There are several variants to what is meant by language "affecting" thought and let me give my perspective on this. (The terms Language and Thought are used in capitalized form when referring to them as objects.)

There are two basic forms of hypotheses regarding Language and Thought [1].

The "mould" hypothesis thinks of Language as mouldable clay that can be cast into some "form" by means of Thought. What this means is that, while Thought is necessary to form a cognitive structure, without Language (the clay) there is no Thought. The only way we can see Thought is by its footprints in the clay.

The second hypothesis thinks of Language as a "cloak" or "dress" for Thought. Here, Thought is supposed to exist on its own and is packaged by Language whenever it needs to be communicated. In the cloak hypothesis, the stuff that Thought is made of, is universally innate in all of us and we just need to cloak it in Language in order to communicate.

One of the early forms of the mould hypothesis is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. A strong form of this hypothesis is called "linguistic determinism" which says that language determines what people think, essentially that thought has no place without language. A weaker form of this hypothesis is called "linguistic relativity" which basically asserts that language influences our thought and what we think is relative to what language we speak/think in.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is mostly equated with linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism has failed to gain traction because of lack of enough supporting evidence. It however caught the fancy of science fiction writers like George Orwell, who introduced the notion of "Thought Police" in the book Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Thought Police of Orwell's book held a powerful grip on the vocabulary used by the population. Terms representing personal freedom and liberties were completely removed from records and spoken language, so that no one really thinks them.

Such intense forms of linguistic influence theories were rejected by the scientific community as there is ample evidence to suggest that Thought does exist without Language. For instance, we often get into a state where we do not have the right words to express what we are thinking -- which basically shows that we are thinking without words.

Linguistic relativity though is an issue that cannot be easily settled. Linguistic relativity says that the language in which we speak influences the way we think. Let me return to linguistic relativity in a while, after we briefly visit the cloak hypothesis.

The cloak hypothesis contends that the stuff of Thought is something that is innate to all humans irrespective of the language they speak. In the cloak hypothesis, any notion from one language may be translated to any other notion in some other language, as Language is merely a packaging layer over Thought.

The cloak hypothesis is especially popular among philosophers of science. It is easy to see the universal nature of scientific theories -- the laws of physics for example, will be the same, no matter which language it is expressed in.

The cloak hypothesis also fits in well with Analytic Philosophy, that is widely seen as the underpinnings of philosophy of science. Prior to the 20th century, Western philosophical thought was dominated by the works of philosophers like Kant and Hegel, and was based on the notion of Absolute Idealism. It states that what we perceive as different objects in the material world and concepts in the mental world, are basically part of a unified whole containing everything. The only element that exists really (is "simpliciter") is the unified whole, so speaking about any concept in isolation is meaningless.

Analytic philosophy on the other hand departs from this position and claims instead that concepts do exist on their own (are "simpliciter") and there may be an infinite number of such concepts that exist on their own. It is just that the mind cannot readily "see" these concepts and their characteristics.

For instance, consider the concept of a prime number. Prime numbers have been shown to have several characteristics -- some proven, some unproven and several (potentially infinitely more) unknown. But then do prime numbers really exist or are they simply a fabrication of our minds? When there were no humans, and dinosaurs roamed the face of the earth, were there prime numbers? If we do not have the linguistic ability to express the concept of a prime number, will they then cease to exist, or will their properties change? Will prime numbers have different properties when expressed in English versus when expressed in Kannada?

Analytic philosophy argues that prime numbers do really exist and existed during the time of the dinosaurs too. It is just that the dinosaurial mind was not evolved enough to discover them. Even the human mind has not discovered their complete properties and every time we find something new about prime numbers, it makes news among mathematicians.

Accordingly -- it is Thought that influences Language, rather than the other way around. Because our minds could conceptualize the notion of a prime number, we invented linguistic constructs to express it.

The conceptual world is explained by what is called the "Plato's Cave" analogy. Imagine we are trapped in a cave and the conceptual world outside is casting some light and shadows inside the cave (our minds). Based on what we see inside our cave, we theorize and discover properties of the world outside.

Our ability to think something is determined by the ability of our minds to conceptualize it. The stuff of Thought is conceptual modeling, while the stuff of Language is grammar and vocabulary to express elements of conceptual models.

The cloak hypothesis is also supported by Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar and Pinker's theory of the Language Instinct. Both of these theories argue that humans have an innate capability for learning linguistic constructs. And this innate ability comes from our innate ability for abstract conceptual modeling.

But we are still left with some recent nagging questions concerning linguistic relativity..

Linguistic relativity states that while language does not determine how we think, it does influence how we think.

Among the most recent results in this is a recent paper by a cognitive scientist from Stanford named Lera Boroditsky, on how languages shape thought. Boroditsky details a number of very interesting experiments conducted in different parts of the world, showing how language used by the community influenced their thinking.

In some languages like in most Indian languages, the gender of a person is an integral part of any sentence involving that person. Hence, in these languages, we cannot say something like, "I went to a movie with a friend," without specifying the gender of the friend. Which in turn directly or indirectly influences our mind to think about the gender of the friend in addition to other pertinent thoughts about the sentence.

The paper also mentions about an Aboriginal community in Australia, where sentences in their language have cardinal directions as an integral element. Rather than using relative terms like "left" and "right" the language uses absolute cardinal directions like north, south, east and west. So rather than saying, "The one sitting to the left of me is my cousin," one would say "The one sitting north from me is my cousin.." This means that our mind needs to think of and about cardinal directions in just about every situation.

So the language in which we express a thought influences the kind of concepts that are brought into the working memory of our brains. Even though the central concepts representing the semantics of an uttered sentence would be the same across languages, the quirks of each language causes it to bring in other peripheral concepts like gender or cardinal directions, into our working memory, in addition to the central concepts.

So how does linguistic relativism reconcile with the cloak hypothesis and Analytic Philosophy?

To connect these two elements, we need to bring in another notion -- that of a mental model.

A mental model is an abstract, incomplete, but consistent view of the world around us, representing the axiomatic basis of our thought processes. We always think within the framework of a mental model and our brains may store several mental models.

Mental models are built from our experiences and our interpretations of our observations. Every time we parse something, it is done within the framework of a mental model, and the semantics extracted goes to augment the mental model.

Linguistic constructs that a culture develops is indicative of the shared mental model that characterizes the culture, rather than the other way around. For instance, the gendered nature of our languages shows how important gender is in our shared worldview. Rather than the language forcing us to think about gender, it is our propensity to think about gender that has developed such linguistic constructs.

In this way, yes, Language does influence the way we think. But I would argue that it is more accurate to say, Language "distorts" our thinking, rather than Language "shapes" our thinking. Thinking shapes our language, but linguistic quirks distorts our thinking.

The primary building blocks of our linguistic constructs are directly shaped by conceptual modeling abilities, while the way language influences thought is by bringing in extraneous concepts into our working memory, which are only peripheral to the issue of concern.

References:

1. Bruner, J. S., J. S. Goodnow & G. A. Austin ([1956] 1962): A Study of Thinking. New York: Wiley

Understanding Saturation and Stagnation

Adversity is one of the primary factors that molds the culture of a population. Just about any aspect of a society's culture -- be it the way they dress, the food they eat, the social protocols they follow -- have some roots in past adversity that the society has had to face.

Some kinds of adversity are of an instantaneous nature -- the cause and effect of the adversity are clearly visible. For instance, adversity due to cold weather or hot deserts or volcanic action or earthquakes, are clearly visible. Cause and effect are both apparent from the adversity.

However, there are some classes of adversity that are of a more insidious nature. This article talks about two such kinds.

The first is the kind of adversity that arises due to saturation of resources in a population. Resources at first, appear to be plenty and not much thought is given to what happens when the resources deplete. Most of the thought would have gone into utilizing the resources.

Saturation is a process that builds up slowly and has no one root cause. There is no one place that saturation starts -- it is everywhere. From an individual's perspective, saturation starts as a mild irritation. This irritation persists and slowly grows till an extent that it is no longer possible to ignore it or live with it. And this process typically takes such a long time, perhaps even over generations, that the physical cause of saturation is lost. Most of our response in turn, would be directed against the irritation than the source of the saturation itself.

The dangers posed by saturation is best illustrated by the parable of the boiled frog. Whether literally true or not, the idea is basically the same -- we do not equip ourselves sufficiently to deal with slow moving dangers and when the extent of the danger is apparent, it is too late to do anything.

Be it fuel crisis, depleting forest cover, increasing pollution, depleting water table, terror threats or climate change, slow moving dangers are everywhere. Because their threat is not immediately apparent, they tend to get trivialized or rationalized away by citing more immediate, pressing crises. Unfortunately, there will always be immediate, pressing reasons at any time to rationalize away slow moving dangers. And neglecting the slow moving threats can undermine all that we do to keep ourselves safe in the immediate and present state.

The second kind of insidious danger is that of stagnation. Stagnation is a state where our mental models of the world around us, have ceased to evolve. Stagnation ironically, usually sets in when we experience long periods of relative stability in our society. When a society does not face large crises for an extended period of time, our worldview does not have much motivation to change. And when the society does indeed face a real crisis, its response to the crisis is often woefully inadequate or incompatible with what is required to address the problem.

As an example, consider the earthquake that struck Latur in 1993. It was a magnitude 6.4 quake, which resulted in a loss of more than 9000 lives. However, a much stronger earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck Seattle in 2001, resulting in just 1 casualty.

But, as the saying goes: earthquakes don't kill people, buildings falling on people, kill them..

Seattle had bigger and more multi-storeyed buildings than Latur and in the face of such a strong quake, it should have resulted in a much higher casualty. But then, building technology in Latur had not evolved to face up to the threat of earthquakes, while technology in Seattle had evolved. This stagnation in building technology and practices is perhaps because Latur was not as prone to earthquakes as is Seattle. But the stagnation resulted in a greater tragedy when the crisis did occur.

The same is true of a lot of practices related to safety. I remember once when we went on a sailboat over the sea, we asked the guide whether we will be given life jackets to wear. To which, he laughed and gave this all too familiar reply -- that he has been sailing from the past 22 years and nothing has happened, so just trust him.

A lot of safety practices look unnecessary and even amusing; and most of the time, they are redundant and do not matter. If we stagnate ourselves and neglect the importance of safety, in the rare cases when they do matter, they make a difference between life and death.

Stagnation, like saturation is not immediately apparent. It is hard to tell when our mental models have stagnated and are not keeping up with the time to face potential challenges.

However, there is a telltale sign of a stagnated population. This is when a population looks for "social" solutions to just about every problem, almost impervious to the more fundamental physical reality underneath.

As an example, I was reading a news article recently where the parents of a sailor who was drowned in the choppy seas in a storm last October when their ship ran aground, were asking for the "guilty to be punished."  It is almost as if the storm had nothing to do with his death -- it has to have someone guilty to be the cause of his death.

If our worldview provides only social explanations and looks only for social solutions to all problems, it probably means that we have not been jolted enough to think deeper about the physical reality and its underlying challenges. And that should be an ominous warning sign..

Understanding joint ownership of conserved and non-conserved entities

Here is a sharp distinction in definitions that I've found in my professional world. This pertains to the concept of "joint ownership" of something.

I have collaborated with several companies and usually when it comes to this issue of joint ownership of the fruits of collaboration, things get messy.

By one definition of joint ownership, which I have predominantly seen coming from MNC companies is that, if two parties jointly own some entity, then neither of them can use the entity without the permission of the other. And for this reason the companies are keen to buy off full ownership of the entity from collaborators.

On the other hand, I have seen this alternate definition of joint ownership, predominantly coming from local companies -- especially startups. This says that, if two parties jointly own some entity, they are both empowered to use it in whatever way they want and does not need the other's permission for anything.

This disparity in definitions was intriguing and I tried to understand the source of this disparity. And here is what I've realized.

The former definition of joint ownership (that were in use primarily in the MNCs that I've interacted with) was developed by lawyers in the brick-and-mortar era where the object of ownership was predominantly a material entity. For instance, companies jointly owned an airplane or a warehouse or an estate, and such things. The property of material entities is that their usage is a conserved operation -- or a "zero sum" game. That is, if I jointly own a car with my friend, my usage of the car will hamper his usage of the car at the same time. So, we need to co-ordinate our activities and inform one another of our plans to use the jointly owned entity. Not doing so, is clearly crude and impolite.

But the second definition of joint ownership has been conceived in a completely different environment. All of the local startups that I have interacted with, are software companies. The thing with software is that it is not a material entity -- it is an information entity. And the property of information is that it is a non-conserved entity. If I give a piece of material to someone, I won't have the material with me anymore; but if I give a piece of information to someone, both of us will have the information. Same is the case with software. If two of us jointly develop a piece of software, we can both own it completely. Its usage by one of the parties will not hamper its usage by the other parties. So, there is no point asking for permission from the other parties, to use something that is wholly owned by you.

Established legal practices are seldom changed because each change brings with it enormous unknown implications which need to be understood. So it is quite rational for an established MNC to just use existing practices without having to go through reinventing legal modalities for information entities. But for a startup that is primarily working in the information space, the most natural thing to do is to adopt the newer definition of joint ownership.

There is another angle why companies insist on explicit permission. They are worried that one of the collaborators may use the entity in a way that adversely affects the businesses of the other collaborators. But this can be addressed by a non-compete usage agreement for software entities. It is not necessary to pose a hurdle in the form of explicit permission for every usage.

This is one clear case of change in rules between the erstwhile brick-and-mortar businesses and the information era businesses. Who knows how many more such paradigms are being fundamentally altered?

Challenges in expanding the pie

In this country, we face an acute problem of saturation. Just about anything has intense competition. Scarcity (natural or artificial) is rampant and it is not uncommon to see people fight desperately over stakes that are trivial when compared globally.

And hence, about a decade and half ago, when I started my career, I adopted a personal philosophy: expand the pie, don't fight for a share of it.

It was evident (to me) that unless we make the available pie bigger, any amount of competitiveness is eventually going to hit a barrier. And being literally resourceless and broke, the only option available to me for helping in expanding the pie, is to take up a career in applied research.

Several years down the line, looking back at a very turbulent journey so far, it is time to reflect.

Firstly, do I regret anything? Absolutely not! It has been an absolutely invigorating journey and even successful in bits and pieces. Second, do I think that "expand the pie" belief was untrue? Absolutely not, again. Time and again we keep seeing news stories of us getting into saturation mode (fuel, power, garbage, jobs, traffic, etc.) and unless we build a vast culture of pie expanding enthusiasts, we only stand to face huge crises in the future.

But then, expanding the pie is easier said than done. We cannot start looking at ways of expanding the pie after we are hit by a crisis. We should be well prepared long before. The best times to prepare for war are in times of peace, as the saying goes.

Here are some of my experiences and lessons learned in trying to expand the pie:

You will encounter vested interests 

We have all the technology required for providing voice telephony using the Internet as the backbone and reduce international telephone tariffs to a small fraction of what they are today. Yet, that does not happen.

When we expand the pie and create a new solution that threatens to obsolete some existing technology, expect to get your idea killed. Expanding the pie is way more involved than just creating new technology.

And before ranting against huge telecom corporations, ask yourself what would you do if you have painstakingly built a company over several decades, which employs hundreds of thousands of people and you are suddenly faced with the prospect of a disruptive new idea that can make your company collapse in no time?

Beware of the fear of the unknown 

Expanding the pie necessarily means venturing into the unknown. We may think we are adults, but we don't realize that we are adults only when we are in familiar mental territory. The moment we are in the unknown, our primal fears surface in ways that we cannot even fathom.

I have not seen a single researcher worth his salt, who has not been paranoid at some time or the other. Scientists may appear emotionless, and indeed you may even find several of them advocating dispassionate and objective thought. But, the process of development of science is anything but dispassionate and objective.

Also, the way people react to the unknown is very unpredictable. They may suddenly become unusually defensive or offensive, get into a closet and refuse to communicate, take big decisive actions rather on an impulse, and so on.

Your intentions will be misinterpreted 

Come to think of it -- the herd is moving in one direction and fiercely fighting over that little piece of bread, and here you are walking away in a different direction...

Of course, your intentions will be misinterpreted. You will be seen with suspicion, your integrity will be questioned, people will put up safety nets against you, call you weird, will secretly want to see you dead, and what not.

Expect it. At least then, you will not be hurt too much when you encounter it.

Remember the Gandhi quote without the last line

Remember this saying?

First they laugh at you
Then they ignore you
Then they fight you 
Then you win..!

Remember that well, except the last line. Replace it with, "And then you claim victory..!"

When you expand the pie, you will not necessarily get a share of it.

Gandhi himself did not live long enough to really see the independent India that he fought so hard to bring about.

When you develop good ideas that successfully question status quo -- it will eventually get adopted. But you will most likely not be in the picture there (even if you are alive and kicking..)

Expect to be muscled around, handed ridiculously one-sided contracts to sign, being told that your ideas are obvious and trivial, being sweet-talked while your students and coworkers are getting poached, the list goes on..

Be aware. Don't compromise. Be ready to lose what you have and always remember that your real wealth is within you -- your ability to think and develop ideas. Keep working on that ability and see to it that it never gets sidelined in all such worldly nonsense.