tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15576934874610607612024-03-14T01:59:08.042+05:30Ramblings Of A Lonely SoulUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-13858525861437534612014-02-06T08:13:00.000+05:302014-02-06T08:14:09.260+05:30MBA Entrance Coaching on The Cusp of Disruption - Part I<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>[Inspired by the
article “</i><a href="http://hbr.org/2013/10/consulting-on-the-cusp-of-disruption/" target="_blank"><i>Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption</i></a><i>”]<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>A Note on Disruptive
Innovation<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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“New
competitors with new business models arrive; incumbents choose to ignore the new
players or to flee to higher-margin activities; a disrupter whose product was
once barely good enough achieves a level of quality acceptable to the broad
middle of the market, undermining the position of longtime leaders and often
causing the “flip” to a new basis of competition.”- HBR article, Oct. 2013</div>
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<br /></div>
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The
quote sums up just what disruptive innovation is, how it works, and how it has
changed industry after industry as new technologies have brought with them new
business models and different ways of competing. This article is my attempt at
explaining how disruption has wended its way through a traditional service
industry and predict its impact in a business as usual scenario.</div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Introduction<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
hope to establish that</div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li>The
CAT coaching industry is undergoing a dramatic upheaval with the spread of new
distribution channels</li>
<li>Traditional
coaching will soon be niche/ made obsolete</li>
<li>Pure-play
e-commerce sites will be the new leaders</li>
<li>The
business model of those remaining in business is going to be vastly different from
the one which opened up this industry</li>
<li>The
market is going to grow rapidly as these new distribution channels hit the
mainstream and increase consumption of CAT coaching</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;">I
strongly feel that a business which is unwilling to acknowledge the changing
reality is headed on a path of losing market share in a booming market. An
organization which does not realize that their competitor is an e-commerce
company rather than one just like themselves is in the throes of Marketing
Myopia as discussed by Theodore Levitt in his McKinsey award-winning HBR
article (1960; reprinted in July 2004).</span></div>
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<br />
I
shall now proceed to establish the above.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IN; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
CAT coaching industry is undergoing a dramatic upheaval with the spread of new
distribution channels</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
“<u>We hold these truths to be self-evident</u>,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness”. –The United States Declaration of Independence.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In an ideal scenario, this should be
self-evident. Ten years ago, testfunda.com did not have 485, 923 registered
users (numbers as of 28-01-2014). Six years ago, testfunda.com did not even
exist, while CAT coaching did. A website named totalgadha.com has tried out
online CAT training and supplemented it with a classroom program, rather than
the other way around. Analytics did not become a core offering for training
until the advent of TCYonline.com which sold just that, filling a market niche.
Pagalguy.com, a site which was originally meant to be a forum and disseminate
news, has started offering CAT material on its website. Mindworkzz.in did not
offer comprehensive coaching for CAT with live online classes at cut-throat
prices compared to the industry stalwarts.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Yet,
these changes have been largely ignored by those who have been in this industry
the longest. It is not for lack of awareness that this has been so. The
management at the traditional coaching institutes are rational, and are acting
according to what they perceive to be strategic. The new distribution channels
are currently too small an opportunity/threat. The scenario is a classic case
of <i>The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New
Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“The
technological changes that damage established companies are usually not
radically new or difficult from a<i>
technological </i>point of view. They do, however, have two important
characteristics: First, they typically present a different package of
performance attributes—ones that, at least at the outset, are not valued by
existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers
do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade
those established markets. Only at this point will mainstream customers want
the technology. Unfortunately for the established suppliers, by then it is
often too late: the pioneers of the new technology dominate the market.” –
Disruptive Technologies: Catching The Wave, HBR, Jan. 1995.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
innovators taking advantage of the new distribution channels are currently not
appealing to the mainstream of the established coaching institutes’ customer
group; they are merely nipping at their heels. The innovator companies are
addressing two market segments: the overserved customers and the non-consumers.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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Who
are the overserved customers..<br />
<br /></div>
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“Overserved
customers consume a product or service but don't need all its features or
functionality. Three specific indicators point to this customer group:</div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li>People
complaining about overly complex, expensive products and services.</li>
<li>Features
that are not valued and therefore are not used.</li>
<li>Decreasing
price premiums for innovations that historically created value.”</li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
.. and the non-consumers?<br />
<br /></div>
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“Nonconsumers generally fall into one of these categories:</div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li>Consumers who lack specialized skills or training, forcing
them to turn to experts to solve important problems.</li>
<li>Consumers who lack adequate wealth to participate
in a market. </li>
<li>Consumers who can use a product or service only in
centralized and/or inconvenient settings.</li>
</ul>
<br />
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Because nonconsumers lack the ability, wealth, or access to
conveniently and easily accomplish an important job for themselves, they
typically have to hire someone else to do the job for them or they have to
cobble together a less-than-adequate solution.”</div>
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(Source: <a href="http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4300.html" target="_blank">A Diagnostic for Disruptive Innovation</a>)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Hence, the industry stalwarts do not take them seriously. Given
their current business model, the markets served by these disruptors is
unappealing. For a company with $200 million in revenues, a 10% growth requires
tapping a $20 million opportunity. A disruptive market opportunity with
forecasted size of $2 million is simply not worth exploring, and is indeed
worth ceding. For an upstart with $20 million in revenues, that $2 million
opportunity is tempting indeed. It is when the disruptors move up-market with <i>sustaining</i> innovations and increasingly
grab market share from the established players that the consequences become
obvious, by which time it is too late. The books The Innovator’s Dilemma and
Seeing What’s Next by Clayton Christensen contain numerous examples of this in
industry after industry.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Eventually, as the theory predicts, the disruptors will
improve in the performance dimensions valued by the most demanding customers,
moving up-market through sustaining innovations and forcing the established
players to cede increasingly higher shares of their market, which brings me to
my next prediction:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Traditional coaching
will soon be niche/ made obsolete<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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As established players flee the disruptors and move more and
more to the higher-end of the market, to meet the needs of the most demanding
customers for whom the disruptive innovation is still not good enough, they
will increasingly become a niche player than a mass-market player. When the
disruptive innovation can fulfil the demands of the highest tier of the market,
the niche player too becomes obsolete. </div>
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The best example to illustrate this is the story of Nucor
and the mini-mills and how they drove the integrated steel mills out of
existence. For further reading, refer <a href="http://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/pdf/TheInnovatorsSolutionChpt2.pdf" target="_blank"><b>Disruption at Work: How Minimills Upended Integrated Steel Companies</b></a><b>.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A caveat is in order, however. Traditional coaching relies
on increasing their numbers in order to stay profitable and grow. Beyond a
point, they would rather fight than flee up-market. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Pure-play e-commerce
sites will be the new leaders<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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The new distribution model which is changing the industry is
e-commerce based, where the delivery of CAT coaching is via the internet, in
asynchronous or synchrous format, with videos, tests, analytics for feedback
and virtual classroom sessions. Once this technology is “good enough” to hit
the mainstream, it is going to be as disastrous for the business model of the
established “physical classroom based” coaching institutes as the mini-mills
were to the integrated steel mills once they upped their quality.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Considering the pace of change of technology, and the new
wave of SMAC related growth, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that
this might indeed happen within the next five years or so. (As with any quantitative prediction, the
numbers have no justification whatsoever). An increase of Private Equity/
Venture Capital activity in this phase, entry of tech-savvy entrepreneurs might
accelerate the growth of the disruptors, causing a “strategic inflection point”
in the industry even sooner. *</div>
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<br /></div>
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(Refer <i>Only the
Paranoid Survive</i> by Andy Grove. A strategic inflection point is something
that changes the industry forever. For Intel, one such point was when a flaw in
their chip caused a hue and cry in the market and they spent half a billion
dollars in replacement chips. Intel had shifted from being a B2B to a B2C
company according to market perception, due in large part to their ”intel inside” marketing campaign). In the
context of the CAT coaching industry, a strategic inflection point would be
online resources for preparation becoming more valuable than the offline
alternatives.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The business model of
those remaining in business is going to be vastly different from the one which
opened up this industry<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Intel has survived two disruptive innovations: the
replacement of the memory chip with the microprocessor, and the introduction of
the low-priced Celeron chip in price-conscious markets to ward off low-end
threats. IBM has transitioned successfully to an IT solutions provider. Buggy
whip manufacturers have survived the collapse of the horse-drawn carriage and
the rise of the automobile. Clearly, their business model has changed as well.
The institutes which emerge from the disruptive wave are going to be very
different in terms of how they handle the new technology in their business. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A possible model might be to handle online distribution the
same way the successful bands in the music industry did. Prior to file sharing
on the internet, bands used to perform live in order to promote record sales.
Now, bands give away their music for free and make money in live concerts.
Perhaps the coaching institutes who emerge successful would have the role of
their online and offline presence switched too- with their offline efforts
promoting online sales. Or, the
disruptors could partner with the established players to bolster the latter’s
strength online, while cashing in on their brand value to grow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The market is going
to grow rapidly as these new distribution channels hit the mainstream and
increase consumption of CAT coaching<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Online distribution removes two major barriers to the
consumption of CAT coaching: the constraints of time and space. Quality
coaching is simply not available to those who choose to live away from the main
coaching hubs, or who cannot commute to these hubs at the time live classes are
held. With increasing internet penetration and better technology, online CAT
training could address these main barriers to non-consumption, thus growing the
market. Also, by reducing cost of operations for the companies and increasing
economies of scale in distribution, the new distribution channel, and resultant
competition, may reduce the price of quality coaching, increasing consumption,
and as a result, the market value of the CAT coaching industry, further.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
At the low-end of the market, it becomes possible to offer
only particular modules, say Geometry Advanced, to those who wish to buy their
education piecemeal. Since such individuals are currently non-consumers, this
is another opportunity for growth.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Hence, both non-consumers and overserved consumers will
participate in the market, increasing the total consumption of CAT coaching. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Conclusion<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Clayton Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation can
be applied in the CAT coaching industry to predict the effects of online
distribution on institutes with the traditional business model. It remains to
be seen how, if and when the mainstream players of today address the disruptive
threats to their business.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I will attempt to use theory from Clay Christensen’s book <i>The Innovator’s Solution</i> to explore the
available options for the incumbents to adopt the new technology and compete
against the disruptors.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 69.75pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A final note. Predictions are always a tricky business. Good
theories can only get us so far. Hence, predictions should always be taken with
a pinch of salt. Bill Gates famously predicted that the internet is a bubble,
but on realizing its importance changed his views and pushed for the
development of the Internet Explorer, eventually replacing the incumbent
Netscape Navigator as the means to browse the World Wide Web. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Influenced by:<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>The Innovator’s Dilemma</i></li>
<li><i>The Innovator’s Solution</i></li>
<li><i>Seeing What’s Next</i></li>
<li><i>Only The Paranoid Survive</i></li>
<li><i>Made in America</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
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</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-49346899081332392332012-09-19T16:22:00.000+05:302012-09-19T16:22:13.362+05:30Anthem<div style="text-align: justify;">
Anthem is another of Ayn Rand’s works. One of her early
works, in fact. Read it today in no time, in e-book form. That’s something that
would have made her furious, had she been alive. She was unable to get past the
notion that words are property.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I don’t believe in IP, as you may have guessed by now. It’s
one of the three major flaws in Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the others being her
position on anarchy and her abdication of her principle of consistency in
answering how governments can exist and be financed in a free society. </div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That apart, <i>Anthem </i>was
a wonderful read. If Atlas Shrugged is awesome, Anthem is beyond awesome.
Nowhere else, in my entire reading, have I come across a greater defense of ego
and “I” than in Anthem. It transported me into a different world, as a good
work of fiction should. Contemplating the philosophy in that book, I realized
that I have a confession to make.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It has been gnawing me for quite a while, ever since I
started to think, to reason. Throughout schooling, I have been taught to think
in terms of “we” instead of “I”.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“We want to play.”</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“We would like it if you could explain this concept again.”</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“We wish you all the best.”</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was the same even in college.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Very recently, someone phrased a question to a professor
inside the classroom the same way.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“We would like to know if...”</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So many times, I’ve been subjected to this “we”.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“We feel that...”</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“We would like you to...”</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Numerous times I’ve been frustrated with this word, and felt
disgusted with myself for thinking, and sometimes, inadvertently, talking in
such terms.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now I know its origins, the evil behind it, and what it
seeks to do. Words have meaning; they have the power to help one in reasoning,
in conceptualization. Destruction of words can destroy one’s ability to
understand the concept represented by that word. I don’t want to engage in
concept destruction by having a faulty vocabulary. And <i>that</i> is why it matters whether one has a good command of the
language or not. It shows the power of that person’s reasoning mind. The surest
way to destroy a mind is through the destruction of concepts, of words that embody that
concept. 1984, a novel by George Orwell, is supposedly on that.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The more I read, the more knowledge I gain, the more my eyes
open, the better I understand reality. The more I write, the better the sinking
in of the concepts I’ve grasped, the better my articulation of what I’ve
understood. It is to this end that I write, it is that end which this blog, as
an outlet for my writings, serves.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-29792041848094288532012-09-17T17:02:00.000+05:302012-09-17T17:04:47.928+05:30Atlas Shrugged<span style="text-align: justify;">Man as a trader, exchanging value for value; living for the sake of one’s own happiness; selfishness as the highest moral virtue; never seek or grant the unearned; never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for the sake of yours; judge; discriminate; hold reason above all else; never compromise on principles; hold reality as the ultimate arbiter; if you arrive at a contradiction, check your premises; to earn profits is virtuous – these, and more, philosophical statements are the essence of Atlas Shrugged, a novel expounding the moral code of a man. </span><br />
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I started reading Atlas Shrugged sometime in mid-July, and completed it about 2 weeks ago. I’m no neophyte to Ayn Rand’s philosophy- I’ve read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness- but, this book really opened my eyes, changed my perception of myself and gave me the ammunition to re-form my moral code without the contradictions it was earlier riddled with. I’ll elaborate, but first, something about the book. </div>
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I can very well understand why it has been called Ayn Rand’s masterpiece. It is a great work of art, a brilliant philosophical treatise, and all that, but more than that, for me, the book was a learning experience unsurpassed by any learning I’ve had prior to it in my life, except, perhaps, from Ragnarok Online. Or rather, it integrated all my previous learning, blasted apart the contradictions in my thinking and helped me understand morality, and how to be moral in a way nothing else has. The way Ayn Rand has understood the common contradictions in our thinking, and the masterful way in which she has addressed them in order to make us aware of our faults- that is the significance of this work to me. </div>
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Face reality. Nobody lives in this valley by faking reality, says John Galt to Dagny Taggart. If I face reality, I’ll have to admit to the philosophical contradictions present in my thinking and demonstrated in my actions.
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<br /></div>
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I’ve faked reality quite often, when reality was hard to accept. I’ve turned a Nelson’s eye where I should have judged, discriminated, and acted according to my moral values. Now I consciously try to avoid faking reality; I face reality especially where it is hardest to face, because I know it to be<i> right</i>. </div>
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Never grant the unearned. I’ve always balked at <i>asking</i> for the unearned, demanding from others that which I had no claim to, but I’ve never had a problem in <i>granting</i> the unearned, giving others that which they had no claim to, out of a spirit of generosity/altruism. There existed a contradiction in my thinking. How is it right to grant the unearned when it is not right to ask for it? I abdicated my responsibility to answer that question. Now, faced with it, I can answer: it is not right. Never grant, nor ask for, the unearned. </div>
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<br /></div>
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After answering that question, I found that I was also guilty of asking for the unearned! Facing reality, I am now correcting myself. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Live life as a trader, exchanging value for value. It’s pretty obvious, at least in matters related to money. It’s not so obvious when it comes to other exchanges between individuals. If an exchange is voluntary, what lies at its root? Reverse valuation. Each individual values that which he receives over that which he gives. Each individual has to <i>offer</i> value to the other in order to<i> gain</i> value from the other. </div>
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There’s a lot of value I’d like to gain from quite a few people, but I have nothing to offer them in return. My need is not a claim on their value. The moral thing to do would be to bring myself up to a position where I can offer them value, thus gaining what I want and making both of us better off. And where I really can’t offer anything of value, I’ll have to sigh and face reality- there’s some value I can’t gain due to the inadequacy of my offering. </div>
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Facing reality on this is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Is there an alternative? Not if I want to live as a man, with a moral code that doesn’t have contradictions. I do.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-53348422478501971032012-06-03T09:43:00.000+05:302012-06-03T09:44:37.807+05:30Ayn Rand, Morality, and Personal Decisions<p>
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I have been heavily influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy
since about the same time last year. Earlier, my philosophically-oriented
friend used to say I spout her philosophy, due to the similarities he found
between my way of thinking and what she expounded, but I never really
considered myself to be influenced by Rand, for I had read none of her works
except Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.<br /></div><br />
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All that changed after reading Introduction to Objectivist
Epistemology. I went around dazed for a long time, trying to understand, trying
to fit my world view to the new lens I had acquired. I succeeded at last after
months of deep thought, but I still had misgivings on my understanding of
ethics, morality, justice and social principles.<br /></div><br />
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As part of a course here at IIT-M, I decided I’d do a book
review of her The Virtue of Selfishness, partly because it’s a small book and
partly because I really wanted to fill in the gaps in my understanding. I read
it at a time when I was already in emotional turmoil, and it made my head spin.
Life would never be the same again.<br /></div><br />
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It’s not that I imbibed philosophy from a book; I was
already thinking along similar lines, and the book brought it out, made it
explicit, and guided me in my thinking. People generally scorn at learning life’s
lessons from books; for me, learning is learning regardless of the source. My
major learning comes from seeing how two people I know think, and I’m not
embarrassed to admit that. </div><br />
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Morality, at its best, is selfishness. Morality is the
guiding light behind all our actions, yet we never really think about it and
try to formalize it. In fact, conventional wisdom has it that morality is
subjective, ought not to be defined, but in a broad sense consists of not
hurting others and helping them out. It is such vague ‘definitions’ of
morality, which try to obscure the truth from our mind, that Ayn Rand totally
trashes.</div><br />
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Morality, as defined by Rand, is a hierarchy of values chosen
by man in order to pursue his rational long-term self-interest. The term
selfishness means concern with the self. It is this concern with the self that
should drive all our actions. Sounds obvious, but the point is often
misrepresented and misunderstood. The competing paradigm of morality is one of
altruism, which preaches selflessness. It means the giving up of a greater
value for a lesser value in order to serve a larger public purpose. Under such
a moral code, the moral thing to do would be to give up your sight so that 2
blind men can see, your lungs so that a smoker can continue his disastrous
habits, your kidneys to save 2 people the discomfort of dialysis, and your
heart so that another person can live on. By sacrificing your life, a greater
value to you, you can benefit 6 others, a lesser value to you, and serve the
public good. That’s the tenet of altruism, and its proponents, however
hardcore, never seem to practice what they preach.</div><br />
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Our minds have, somehow, been conditioned to accept altruism
in its milder forms. By sheer instinct, we cannot avoid being selfish, but the
propaganda of altruism has the effect of distorting our thoughts and view of
reality enough to push through the altruist agenda. Common phrases such as rich
people should give back to society, companies should follow corporate social
responsibility, we need to save the environment, etc. are all a part of the
altruist view of morality.</div><br />
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Coming back to selfishness. If it is the exact opposite of
altruist morality, then it should be definable as the choosing of a greater
value over a lesser value, to serve our own selfish needs. And yes, it is
definable that way.</div><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">GETTING BACK TO
GROUND LEVEL</b></div><br />
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After spewing out a lot of abstract concepts, let me explain
how exactly I can be selfish in my daily life with an example. The example isn’t
simple; a simple one wouldn’t suffice to explain the depth of the concept.</div><br />
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Let’s say I have a friend I hold dear but who, I think,
doesn’t reciprocate my feelings. English being a sexist language, I’m going to
use ‘he’ to denote the friend hereon. I think he doesn’t reciprocate my feelings
because he wronged me in some way and refused to acknowledge it, failing which
I find it indigestible for me to continue the friendship.</div><br />
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My philosophy is the answer to the question “What should I
do?”</div><br />
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The selfish thing to do would be to give up the lesser value
for the greater value in order to pursue my rational, long-term self-interest.
The question now boils down to: which is the greater value?</div><br />
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What is a value anyway? It is merely something for which you
act to gain or keep it.</div><br />
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In this scenario, what are my two values? One is the
friendship, which I seek to preserve, and the other is my feeling about what
has happened.</div><br />
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Ideally, I should give up on my feelings of the moment and
value the friendship more since its loss would hurt me more than swallowing my
feelings. The moral thing to do would be to give in, make amends and resume the
friendship, which may grow stronger after such rifts.</div><br />
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No.</div><br />
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Not so, and not so obvious.</div><br />
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Morality is a code of values which helps me act according to
my rational, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">long-term,</i>
self-interest. Had the long-term part not been there, the above solution would
be moral.</div><br />
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The right question to ask is, should I continue to be
friends with he who doesn’t value my friendship enough to right the wrongs he
committed? For him, his ego in not giving in is a greater value and the
friendship at stake is a lesser value. In other words, he values my friendship
less than his pride, even when he knows he has done wrong.</div><br />
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By holding such a friend dear, I’d be doing an injustice to
my long-term self-interest. It is better for me to acknowledge that the
friendship is at an end, suffer in the short-term and be more careful in placing
my trust in people in future.</div><br />
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Greater value correctly identified: Giving up on those who
don’t reciprocate since they’re not worthy of you.</div><br />
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Lesser value correctly identified: The beautiful friendship
you had, and which you can save by swallowing your feelings of the moment and
accepting the fact that you need them more than they need you.</div><br />
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The moral thing to do in this hypothetical example is to
break that friendship, suffer a short-term setback, while being more careful in
future.</div><br />
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This illustrates another point about morality. Being moral
does not equate to being happy all the time. Morality is merely the tool you
use to strive for happiness. This answers questions such as what’s the point in
being moral when it only makes you unhappy. It’s the time horizon which needs
to be looked at: ephemeral happiness now at a huge cost or incur a greater cost
for a more lasting happiness in the future. Such decisions add up, their
effects amplifying over time.</div><br />
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Some things are worth giving up on, even though they are
dear. That’s an amazing lesson I learned.</div><br />
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In the other side of the example, it is easy to determine
the moral thing to do. If that friendship matters, accept your mistake. If not,
save your ego.</div><br />
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This illustrates another point about morality. Moral values
are not absolutes. There is no decree that you choose friendship over ego or
vice-versa. It is your choice entirely, based on your values, your subjective
appraisement of what you desire.</div><br />
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I hope this example has sufficiently conveyed how morality
is the right lens to use for personal decision-making. It feels good to blog
again after well over a year. Thank you, readers, and comments are most
welcome.</div><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-21691009495755509142011-03-25T09:54:00.004+05:302011-03-25T10:03:12.427+05:30B-School Admission Criteria: A Critique, Part Two<p>Continuing from where I left off yesterday.<br />
<br />
<b>THE PROFILE</b><br />
<br />
Now, the profile weightage, which is the winner of the most flawed of all criteria. This includes weightage for the following parameters:<br />
(a) 10<sup>th</sup> standard marks<br />
(b) 12<sup>th</sup> standard marks<br />
(c) Graduation marks<br />
(d) Post-graduation marks, if applicable<br />
(e) Work experience<br />
(f) Extra-curricular activities<br />
(g) Achievements<br />
<br />
<b>What is the rationale behind this? </b><br />
To quote IIMB, “<b>IIMB has found over the years that students who perform well in the academic program are typically those who have a</b> <b>consistently good academic record</b> during their school, high school and graduation level, besides exhibiting sufficiently high aptitude as measured by the CAT. Therefore IIMB uses multiple parameters, namely academic performance in school, high school and graduation programs as well as candidates’ scores in CAT to judge the suitability of candidates for the PGP program.”<br />
<br />
And, “Evaluation by multiple criteria is also consistent with <b>empirical research</b> on recruitment and selection that shows greater efficacy of recruitment processes that use multiple criteria. Multiple criteria are used to arrive at a composite score for every candidate, which is used to select candidates for the subsequent stage.”<br />
<br />
That’s the rationale in a nutshell. There are quite a few holes in it. I’ll start with the basics.<br />
<br />
<b>1. </b><b>What do marks have to do with an MBA program?</b><br />
An MBA program is not one in which you write exams, get marks and graduate. It is supposed to prepare you for the business world. Businesses don’t use marks as a test; they judge performance. They don’t want you to write solutions to hypothetical problems with inadequate data for making the right decisions; they expect you to actually solve real ones.<br />
<br />
Marks are awarded by an examiner based on his judgment of your answer (i.e. subjective evaluation). In business, the mark equivalents, bonuses and incentives, are awarded based on the tangible value added to the company through your work (i.e. objective evaluation). I add that these are general statements. There are exceptions, but they don’t significantly affect the purpose of my observations. <br />
<br />
In sum, if we accept that an MBA program is supposed to prepare a student for a corporate career (an implicit assumption) then marks have no relevance whatsoever. <br />
<br />
<b>2. </b><b>The problem with empirical research</b><br />
Empirical research is research based on observations or experiments. The problem with empirical research is the problem of induction. I’ll introduce it in an easy to understand manner by using The Black Swan Theory. <br />
<br />
<b>The Black Swan Theory</b><br />
Let’s say you have observed 4000 swans and found all of them to be white in color. You publish the result of your empirical study as: All swans are white.<br />
<br />
All it takes to refute your conclusion is for me to show you a black coloured swan. If I can successfully do that, then I can confidently say “Not all swans are white.” This finding of mine would totally invalidate the conclusions you formed from your empirical research. Incidentally, black swans do exist. <br />
<br />
Basing anything on empirical research alone without logic is like building a house without a foundation. It looks fine, till it collapses. <br />
<br />
If the empirical research on which IIMB bases its selection criteria is someday invalidated by a new study, they would have been ‘unfair’ in their selection process. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst problem is that they would have created a self-fulfilling prophecy, which we shall see in a while. <br />
<br />
Also, even if using multiple criteria makes the process more efficacious, the question of what criteria to use still remains. And here, we get into the criteria of marks, and why it is flawed selection criteria. <br />
<br />
<b>3. </b><b>What do marks project?</b><br />
I studied in a really good CBSE school. My school marks have always been average among my school peers. I never did learn by rote (save for Hindi in 10<sup>th</sup> standard). I used to understand and analyze concepts and their implications. I have sometimes even gone beyond what is ‘required’ in order to get marks out of my curiosity. I used to love studying some subjects, though I didn’t score greatly in them.<br />
<br />
Do my 10<sup>th</sup> and 12<sup>th</sup> standard scores reflect my academic development? Not performance in useless tests, but real intellectual development. The answer is an emphatic NO. What do they actually reflect? The mood of the examiner, the presence of certain ‘keywords’ in each answer, my level of boredom at that time and in a small way, my knowledge about the questions asked. As a judge of my caliber, they are merely some meaningless numbers.<br />
<br />
College was even worse. I could graduate with a B. Tech. in Biotechnology without knowing anything relevant whatsoever about biotechnology. How? Because I just had to write some answers to some questions on an exam paper and clear the cut-off, and I am now an engineer with a specialization in biotechnology.<br />
<br />
I don’t have a ‘consistently good academic record’, so IIMB concludes that I won’t perform well in their academic program. I may have, I may not have. They’ll never know. But I can say this with certainty: if I did do well, it would not be ‘in spite of’ my poor academic record. And if I didn’t do well, it would not be ‘because of’ my poor academic record. <br />
<br />
Doesn’t past performance matter? <br />
<br />
<b>Monkeys on a typewriter</b><br />
If you have a billion monkeys typing away on a billion typewriters for a period of a billion years, by sheer chance, one among them may produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, let us take this impressively performing monkey and tell it to produce the complete works of Homer next. What are the odds you would give it? <br />
<br />
Clearly, past performance does not matter when things happen by sheer chance. <br />
<br />
But IIMB claims to have found a correlation between their selection criteria and student performance at IIMB. To again quote their selection document, “<b>IIMB has found over the years that students who perform well in the academic program are typically those who have a</b> <b>consistently good academic record</b> during their school, high school and graduation level, besides exhibiting sufficiently high aptitude as measured by the CAT. <b>Therefore IIMB uses multiple parameters, namely academic performance in school, high school and graduation programs as well as candidates’ scores in CAT to judge the suitability of candidates for the PGP program</b>.” So why not use those criteria for selection?<br />
<br />
From these statements, we can see that IIMB has made a basic logic error which any scientist, statistician, academic researcher, or real economist knows he should avoid: <b>correlation does not imply causation.</b><br />
<br />
<b>First, the correlation</b><br />
If, when A happens, B happens, can we say B and A are correlated? For example: It rains on election days. Are elections and rains correlated? Should rains be regarded more highly when they occur on election days? <br />
<br />
Now let us look at this statement:<br />
“IIMB has found over the years that students who perform well in the academic program are typically those who have a consistently good academic record.”<br />
<br />
Does this imply that good academic performance at IIMB and past academic record are correlated? Should past academic performance be regarded highly? (There is actually a correlation, but not for the reasons you may think. I’ll address it in a while).<br />
<br />
<b>Second, implying causation</b><br />
A happens. Then, B happens. A caused B. This is called post hoc ergo propter hoc logic. B happened after A, therefore B happened because of A. Example: The performance of bank stocks is correlated with interest rates. RBI hiked repo rates. The BSE Bankex (Banking index) fell 1%. Therefore, the banking index fell 1% because RBI hiked repo rates. If you think that statement looks correct, try the reverse: The BSE Bankex (Banking index) fell 1%. RBI hiked repo rates. Therefore, RBI hiked repo rates because the banking index fell 1%. Now you’ll see the absurdity of this logic much more clearly. <br />
<br />
As we see from their selection document:<br />
“IIMB has found over the years that students who perform well in the academic program are typically those who have a consistently good academic record. Therefore IIMB uses multiple parameters, namely academic performance in school, high school and graduation programs as well as candidates’ scores in CAT to judge the suitability of candidates for the PGP program.”<br />
<br />
First, they assume they have found a correlation between past academic performance and IIMB performance. Second, they determine there is a causal link between the two i.e. good track records in school and graduation implies good performance at IIMB (if they didn’t think so, they wouldn’t try to get more students with a good track record). And finally, they reward consistently good academic records, thus ensuring they get more students who have it. They have successfully created a self-fulfilling prophecy.<br />
<br />
<b>Self-Fulfilling Prophecy</b><br />
Let’s understand this concept with an example. I use one loosely based on one from the book <i>Outliers</i> by Malcolm Gladwell. An anthropologist found that most Canadian hockey players were born during the first three months of the calendar year. Upon researching, he found that the selection criteria employed an age cut-off date of Jan 1.<br />
<br />
What this means is that if you are born on January 2<sup>nd</sup> 2005, you are eligible for the hockey tryouts in the Under-6 category in 2011. You’ll be the oldest in the group, and much more physically mature than someone born on December 31<sup>st</sup> 2005 (who is over 5 but under 6 on that arbitrary cut-off date and so competes in the same category). <br />
<br />
The extra physical development the January born player has passes off as talent. At that age, size really matters. So even if the January and December born are equally talented, or the December born is slightly more talented, the January born gets selected.<br />
<br />
Selected players are given rigorous training, due to which they actually <b>become better.</b> If the coach then measures that January born player against that December born player, he will think his selection is validated because that January born player is much better than that December born. Thus, the slight initial advantage of that January born player due to his being born just after that random cut-off date, turns into an <b>actual advantage</b> because of the training he gets. <br />
<br />
The coach then observes over the years that people who perform well in the rink are typically those who were born in the month of January, besides exhibiting sufficiently high aptitude for hockey as measured by the selection tryouts. Therefore, he decides to give people born in January an additional profile weightage in the selection tryouts, which boosts the initial advantage they got by being born in January, after that random cut-off date of Jan 1<sup>st</sup>. This profile weightage will make even the less talented January born players to appear more talented than they actually are.<br />
<br />
With the odds so markedly stacked against the February to December born players, they eventually stop trying, and even when they do try, they lose out unless they have a really massive skill advantage and they get the opportunity to exhibit it during the tryouts. <br />
<br />
While the coach thinks that he is picking the best among the players, he is actually only picking the best among the January born players! But, all his observations still validate his selection criteria! Such is the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy. <br />
<br />
Won’t some really talented February or March born players surmount their handicap and make it through the tryouts? Yes, that’s a possibility. We’ll see how the coach handles that.<br />
<br />
If typically only the January borns play good hockey, but I show the coach a February born player on his team who excels, won’t that make the coach change his mind about his selection criteria? No, it wouldn’t. He would say that player is statistically insignificant. If he employs smoothing techniques, that player would be the noise he would eliminate from his data set. <br />
<br />
The mind only sees that which it wishes to see. If you think only January borns make good hockey players, you’ll dismiss all data to the contrary as ‘noise’, ‘outliers’ or ‘statistically insignificant’. This is called the confirmation bias: seeing only the information which supports your preconceived notions, regardless of whether that information is true or not.<br />
<br />
I’ll now proceed to relating this analogy to IIMB profile criteria.<br />
<br />
Having compared the arbitrary January 1 cut-off date to ‘consistently good academic record in school, high school and graduation’, I have to show why this criteria is also arbitrary i.e. has no basis in logic. <br />
<br />
My personal example won’t suffice to prove this. In fact, attempting to use it as a ‘proof’ would be a fallacy. Why? Because I’ll then be guilty of using a local example to dispute a global criteria.<br />
<br />
For example, if Chennai has a spell of cold weather for two years (it actually being a hot city) I cannot cite that as a ‘proof’ that global warming is a myth. Nor can I cite it as a proof that there is now global cooling. It is obvious how ridiculous such a statement would be.<br />
<br />
(It is ironic that we accept the reverse to be a proof: If Chennai has an unusually warm climate for two years, it is ‘because of’ global warming, and if Chennai has a cold spell, then Oh! It is because global warming caused local cooling due to certain natural phenomena. Warming or cooling, global warming can never be proved false if we accept such proofs. Alas, the mind sees only what it wants to see.<br />
<br />
Here, it should be noted that some global warming zealots try to use logic to prove their beliefs. They say: global events have local consequences but local events do not have global consequences so the second example above is true while the first one isn’t. My answer is: you see it that way because you have already accepted the ‘global event’ i.e. global warming and you now see Chennai becoming warmer (or even colder) as the ‘local consequence’. You assume A precedes B, and so when B happens you say it happened because of A, applying the fallacious post hoc ergo propter hoc type of reasoning. Another example of the mind seeing only what it wants to see!)<br />
<br />
I had to digress to address the critiques of that example, since failing to do so would have given an entry point for the global warming cult to attack my logic. They never rest in their bid to unleash some eco-fascism couched in the name of science and utilitarianism. <br />
<br />
I won’t use my personal example to show why ‘consistently good academic record’ is not an objective criterion. Rather, I’m going to introduce another concept here to create doubt on the efficacy of the criterion. <br />
<br />
<b>The Survivorship Bias</b><br />
I’ll explain the concept with an example related to the criteria we’re analyzing: marks. <br />
<br />
First, I’ll assume that people who do well in school (as measured by marks) do so because:<br />
1. Their parents force them to (most likely)<br />
2. They love to score high marks since it gives them an identity or sense of worth or respect (somewhat likely)<br />
3. They love their studies, and also do well in tests (least likely)<br />
<br />
All these categories of students move on to college and do well there in terms of marks. After this stage, most of category 1 students move on in life. Some are forced into preparing for CAT. Some among category 2 see it as the ultimate exam, and revel in the challenge so they too prepare for it. Some from category 3 love the learning opportunity and they too prepare for CAT.<br />
<br />
In the end, 375 of them make it to IIMB, helped along by lots of luck as we saw earlier. By analyzing these candidates’ profiles, what can we conclude?<br />
<br />
IIMB likes to conclude that their consistently good academic performance is linked to their performance at IIMB. But what is IIMB actually doing? It is fooled by the survivorship bias.<br />
<br />
<b>It sees only the students who make it in, not the entire sample of students from which these students emerged.</b><br />
<br />
If they cared to see the entire sample, they’d find students with the same ‘consistently good academic performance’ but yet not in IIMB. Since they only look at the qualities of the survivors (i.e. the students actually in IIMB), they miss the point that there are candidates with the same qualities as the survivors outside of IIMB, <b>and that it is not these qualities of the survivors which matter for their academic performance at IIMB</b>.<br />
<br />
If the people both inside and outside IIMB have the same qualities, then <b>how do these qualities predict someone’s performance there? </b>It cannot.<br />
<br />
I’ll make it simpler. All students have a pen. IIMB selects some students, who then write great essays. Can IIMB then say that it is because their students have a pen that they write great essays? Could it not be the case that they write great essays because IIMB trains them to write great essays? As we saw with the coach example, the initial advantage becomes a <b>real advantage</b> due to training. Looking for explanations elsewhere misses the whole point. When you’re fooled by the survivorship bias, you tend to attribute success to certain qualities of the survivors, missing the point that it is not these qualities which mattered for their success but something else altogether. If only these qualities mattered, then everyone, not just these survivors, would be as successful. <br />
<br />
It’s a little tricky to understand, but well worth the effort. When you get stuck in understanding certain logic, draw a parallel. For instance, this statement of mine: If the people both inside and outside IIMB have the same qualities, then how do these qualities predict someone’s performance there? A parallel would be: If everyone in the world had a great pair of lungs, then how does this predict someone’s sprinting ability? Yes, it is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition, and definitely not the predictor of a sprinter’s ability. (I have addressed why consistently good academic performance is not a necessary condition earlier).<br />
<br />
This is the survivorship bias. You tend to notice the qualities of the achievers and erroneously conclude that it is these factors which made the achievers what they are. If I find the same qualities among non-achievers, your conclusion goes out the window. This is why statistics without logic is dangerous. You tend to get fooled by what you see. Retro-fitting logic to statistics doesn’t work so well either, but it can be helpful at times. <br />
<br />
I have also shown how school and graduation marks have no relevance to an MBA program. Even if marks objectively measured your subject knowledge, my knowledge of physics and engineering has no relevance to my management potential. A good doctor need not be a good actuary. The exception is math, but since CAT tests your current level of math, why go back to scores from your history?<br />
<br />
Thus, we have seen that the rationale behind using marks as a criterion is sufficiently flawed.<br />
<br />
<b>4. </b><b>The final nail in the coffin</b><br />
Even if marks mattered, how will they be judged? Not all universities are the same. Not all boards are the same. Marks over years vary due to the difficulty level of the paper, the type of correction, the test-taking ability of the students (on aggregate) that year etc. Apart from that, a student who did very well in an easy paper may do equally well in a tough paper. We cannot judge his ability based on the difficulty level of the paper.<br />
<br />
The solution? More statistics using student data accumulated over the years! Let’s commit more of the same mistakes!<br />
<br />
Logic without statistics is fine, but statistics without logic is dangerous. There is no logic behind academic profile weightage. However good the statistical tools employed, the final results are bound to be flawed.<br />
<br />
<b>THE WORK EX MYTH</b><br />
MBA education at top B-schools abroad is prohibitively expensive. Only working executives can afford it. Not wanting dissatisfied freshers (students with no work ex) with huge loans on their backs bringing down the B-school’s image, they started to enroll only working people who could afford the fee or the loan burden. <br />
<br />
Indian B-schools only saw that foreign B-schools demanded work ex. Without thinking through the logic behind it, they simply aped the west, and concocted their own logic: that work experience matters for getting the most of an MBA program. Some went a step further and admitted only those with work ex (and ironically, also charged prohibitively high fees), completely fooled by the trend abroad.<br />
<br />
And so the myth of work ex was born. Just like the myth that engineering plus MBA is a great combination (which sprouted up because engineers who hated engineering jumped into the non-technical field of management and did well there because a failure to do so would have meant a career as an engineer; and then people applied induction to deduce that engineers make good managers), a new myth was created: work experience is essential for an MBA.<br />
<br />
Aside from the myth’s impact on a fresher’s chances of admission to an MBA program, most of the impact is social.<br />
<br />
A 22-year old female engineer works for 2 years (2 years is a ‘magic number’ for work ex) in a software company, does her MBA by the age of 26 and spends 1.5 grueling years as a management trainee, only after which she gets married and contemplates starting a family. The full-time residential requirement at MBA programs affects personal life. Late marriage becomes the norm. The same is true for men, but the social impact is most distinctly felt for women. <br />
<br />
<b>The other problems with the work ex criterion</b><br />
<br />
<b>1. </b><b>Work ex is measured in units of time</b><br />
A year of data entry work is apparently ‘more valuable’ in terms of MBA admission than 10 months of BPO tech support work, which in turn is ‘more valuable’ than 8 months of Project Engineer work at an IT company, which in turn is ‘more valuable’ than 6 months of managerial work ex at a tech startup, and so on. You get the point. It is not the quality of the work ex which gets measured, but the quantity. <br />
<br />
IIMC had a unique criterion this year: rewarding work ex in IT and Telecom sector more. Is it because mainly IT and Telecom sector employees populate B-schools? Seems like they want to firmly plonk their self-fulfilling prophecy in place: more IT and Telecom employees do MBA, they do well because they come with IT and Telecom background, so let’s reward IT and Telecom work ex more. This may not be the actual reason (for instance, recruiters may actually prefer candidates with work ex in these sectors) but this whole thing sounds fishy to me.<br />
<br />
<b>2. </b><b>Informal sector work ex is not counted</b><br />
Let’s say my friend makes around Rs. 1 lakh/- a year doing Internet Marketing part-time, while still pursuing his under-graduation. He finishes his studies and gets into Internet Marketing full-time, increasing his earnings as well as his learning in this new field. He is an entrepreneur, with no company to his name. He has no joining letter, no salary sheet, no visiting card, nothing. All he can show is a screenshot with his earnings and a bank balance. According to the proof of work ex criteria, he is unemployed. <br />
<br />
If he does this business for 2-3 years, he can’t show it in his B-school application form and he will get summarily rejected by all B-schools simply because a person who doesn’t seek employment in the formal sector for such a long period of time is not ‘serious enough about his life’ to be considered for an MBA program. The same fate awaits successful day traders, vendors and all the self-employed who don’t have a ‘proof’ of their work ex. <br />
<br />
I say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Joining letters, pay slips etc. are mere bureaucratic red tape. (On that issue, one of the most annoying parts of the admission process is asking for attestation for mark sheets, admit card, score card etc.) Judge the self-employed on their terms.<br />
<br />
<b>3. </b><b>Quality of work ex is not measurable</b><br />
This is why B-schools measure quantity. No one can objectively measure the quality of an intangible attribute. However, ignoring things just because they are not measurable is a fatal flaw, since these things do have a measurable impact. (Incidentally, this is a flaw of neo-classical economics). The best way to measure quality of work ex, if it must be measured, is during the interview. Subjective evaluations have their place there, since the whole interview is in itself a subjective evaluation of a candidate’s entire life in 5-30 minutes.<br />
<br />
<b>4. </b><b>Incentives to cheat</b><br />
Now let me make this clear before I start: <b>I am not criticizing the B-schools for this.</b> Incentives to take the easy way out always exist. This criterion of work ex just adds to the already existing incentives. How?<br />
<br />
I took a break from formal academics after graduating in May 2010. I didn’t seek employment in the formal sector. This practice is generally frowned upon, since only ‘not-so-serious’ people ‘waste their time’ away from college and workplace. I like the implicit assumption here: that college and workplace don’t ‘waste your time’ but doing something on your own does.<br />
<br />
The ultimate purpose of formal education is to make money. If you don’t accept that, I challenge you to opt out of placements in your engineering/MBA (and to prove me wrong, all students have to opt out of placements). We make money so that we can live a life of our choosing. And we may also make money by living the life of our choosing. The point is that a job or education is not an end in itself to be looked upon so highly: the lifestyle you choose is. If I say no to the means (work) because I get the ends directly (leisure or my choice of lifestyle), can I be faulted for it?<br />
<br />
But B-schools apparently value conformity (much like socialist bureaucrats) more than individual choice: You study in school and college, you go to work and you come here to do your MBA. We don’t want people who do things differently; because we are so trained in conforming that we cannot look beyond it. It is the same with the classical music snobs. All those who prefer rock and roll are tasteless, because they don’t conform to these snobs’ tastes. Just to be clear, I have nothing against either type of music, just people’s attitudes.<br />
<br />
Some of those who took a break from the formal sector take the easy way out: fake some work ex. This is only because there is an incentive to cheat. <br />
<br />
But all said and done, this enforcement of conformity, though subtle, plays havoc with the students’ minds: chase your dreams or conform. Most choose the latter.<br />
<br />
What’s the link between extra-curricular activities and MBA? Nothing. Some say it is just a way to start the interview, by making the candidates comfortable by asking questions in their areas of interest. I’m all for making candidates feel comfortable. The problem is that it actually doesn’t. People who have no extra-curricular activities feel threatened. People who do have them feel like they have to know all about it since they have mentioned that they like it. It’s akin to the principal of a school saying attendance at his Saturday afternoon speech is optional. He may really mean it, but that’s not the way the teachers and students see it. Can we blame the B-schools for that? I don’t know.<br />
<br />
And seriously, what do your achievements in sports or music have to do with your admission into an MBA program? How does an ‘achievement’ give the impression that you’re talented, and that you’ll apply this talent in a different field? It really doesn’t. As I mentioned earlier, a good surgeon need not be a good actuary. <br />
<br />
With so many flaws in profile based selection, why do B-schools even choose to adopt it? I can think of two reasons: they’re ignorant and just want to continue business as usual, or they want students who conform to their tastes. Both aren’t objective selection measures.<br />
<br />
The entrance test and the profile weightage are the supposedly objective selection criteria, which I have addressed so far. In my next article, I’ll examine the subjective criteria: the interview, group task, group discussion, essay writing, etc. I’m taking it up separately because it is my subjective evaluation of these subjective criteria.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-50599616882632628212011-03-24T19:03:00.007+05:302011-03-24T19:14:23.520+05:30B-School Admission Criteria: A Critique, Part One<p><b>Disclaimer:</b> I have spent well over two years trying to gain admission into a top-notch B-school in India, because I think an MBA education is necessary for my career progression.<br />
<br />
<b>A small note</b><br />
Until a month or so ago, I never paid much attention to the logic behind the admission criteria of top B-schools. All I knew was that such criteria existed, and in order to gain an admission, I needed to satisfy them.<br />
<br />
While going through the rigmarole of admission processes in 4 Symbiosis institutes in Pune, I happened to buy a book called <i>Fooled by Randomness</i> by Nassim Nicholas Taleb at a roadside bookstall. Reading that book changed my thinking. It made me realize the uselessness of B-school admission criteria.<br />
<br />
That knowledge can now be yours, for free, if you take the time out to read this somewhat lengthy article.<br />
<br />
Even non-MBA aspirants can gain from reading this. How? I am outlining a way of thinking here, which can be universally applied, i.e. in practical situations faced in daily life.<br />
<br />
I hope you gain as much pleasure and understanding reading this as I did from writing it.<br />
<br />
<b>THE PROCESS</b><br />
B-schools give weightage to a lot of different criteria. Such division of weightage among ‘relevant’ parameters is considered to be a positive.<br />
<br />
While the relative weightage of the criteria differ, all B-schools have the following criteria:<br />
1. Written Assessment Test (WAT) or Computer Based Test (CBT) with Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)<br />
2. Profile of the candidate (Academics, achievements, work experience etc.)<br />
3. Interview (Group/ Personal)<br />
<br />
Other commonly used criteria:<br />
1. Essay writing/ Précis writing<br />
2. Group discussion<br />
3. Case study analysis<br />
4. Extempore<br />
5. Group task/ group exercise<br />
<br />
The final selection is based on an overall composite score, with minimum qualifying marks in the interview.<br />
<br />
<b>So, what’s wrong with this process?</b><br />
At first glance, everything seems fine. All the above criteria appear to be objective, and will ensure that the B-school gets a great candidate overall, with competence in a lot of relevant aspects.<br />
<br />
Delving into them a bit though, we start treading murky water. All the above criteria fail as a test for measuring a candidate’s potential in handling an MBA program and a career beyond. The rest of this article will be devoted to explaining why.<br />
<br />
<b>First, the assumptions</b><br />
The obvious assumption I have made is that the B-schools employ these criteria in order to get the ‘right’ talent for their institute. They may have other motives, but if so, it remains a secret to the aspirants.<br />
<br />
As an MBA aspirant myself, and speaking on behalf of all aspirants, I can safely say that we assume that the selection criteria is intended to get the ‘best’ students.<br />
<br />
<b>Debunking the Process</b><br />
First, the WAT (or CBT) with MCQs in the areas of Language Comprehension, Quantitative Ability, Reasoning and Data Analysis. The mark allotment and weightage given to each area differs, but all entrance exams have these. Some also include a General Awareness (GA) section.<br />
<br />
To explain the logic behind these parameters, I have to digress a little. The primary aim of schooling was to educate children in math, logic and language. These 3 are regarded as the fundamental skills every man needs (that school has an etymology that translates into luxury is a different issue). <br />
<br />
An MBA program is most probably the last formal education a student will receive in his life. To weed out those who have had at least 17 years (2+10+2+3) of formal education and still have not acquired these skills, B-schools employ such objective tests of math, logic and language (English). I’ll come to the GA part later.<br />
<br />
I am in favour of testing for these skills, but not on the method employed in using these test scores. <br />
<br />
<b>Note:</b> The relative weightage to be given to each section is subjective, and cannot be argued against provided there is not too huge a bias in favour of or against a section.<br />
<br />
Let’s look at two types of entrance tests: a paper pencil (PP) based one (say SNAP, with +1 mark for a right answer and -0.25 for an incorrect answer) and a computer based one with ‘normalized’ scoring (say CAT).<br />
In the case of SNAP, everyone gets the same paper, which translates into an equal opportunity for all to prove their mettle vis-à-vis his competitors in that paper. The only unknowns at play are luck (which cannot be controlled) and preparedness of the candidate. It is a good way of testing.<br />
<br />
<b>Note:</b> No man is perfect. No test designed by man can be perfect. A good test is therefore one which is the least imperfect.<br />
<br />
The problem with SNAP (leaving GA apart for now) lies not in the test itself, but in the interpretation of the test score. Say SIBM-P has a cut-off score of 118, and calls candidates at and over that threshold score for due process. They think candidates who meet the cut-off are worthy of further consideration.<br />
<br />
<b>But how is a candidate with a score of 118 so much better than one with 117.75 that one gets an interview call and the other does not.</b> Clearly, he isn’t.<br />
<br />
I don’t deny that for the sake of convenience, the admissions committee has to pick some random cut-off number, which will invariably be a round number. I only say it is not an objective measure of a candidate’s ability.<br />
<br />
Yes, the candidate with a 117.75 is <b>out of luck.</b> It can’t be helped. Or can it? I say yes. Let us now look at how the marking system in SNAP is skewed in favour of risk takers. <br />
<br />
<b>The problem with negative marking</b><br />
Why negative marking? Obvious answer: to minimize guessing, so that only real ability is rewarded. By penalizing a candidate for incorrect answers, they hope to ensure that people who make it to the cut-off do so due to their competence, without the help of lucky guesses.<br />
<br />
But negative marking actually has the opposite effect: it rewards the guessers and penalizes the talented.<br />
<br />
How?<br />
<br />
Let us say you’re a salaried employee working as a coder in an IT company. You work hard, spend frugally and save your money in a bank. Would you gamble with it, knowing that you may lose all the fruits of your labour? I assume not.<br />
<br />
But say your job is to gamble with other people’s money. You then do it probabilistically, with expected value calculations, hedges and stop losses in place. This is called investing.<br />
<br />
Getting back to the SNAP scenario, consider two students A and B, both at a score of 100 due to sheer effort. <br />
<br />
A is prudent, B has the investor mindset. A does not guess the answers he doesn’t know. His score stops at 100.<br />
<br />
B is a risk-taker. He decides to randomly guess 10 answers. He is risking a maximum loss of 2.5 marks for a maximum gain of 10 marks. And his expected value is positive, at 0.625 marks.<br />
[Expected value: (0.25x1-0.25x0.75)10= 0.625] <br />
A net positive, just from guessing!<br />
<br />
But wait. If guessing can be so rewarding, why doesn’t B just guess all the questions he doesn’t know? If he is intelligent, he won’t. An intelligent investor always has a <b>stop loss</b> in place. <br />
<br />
<b>Understanding stop loss</b><br />
Let us say you own a share worth Rs. 100/- at present market conditions. You expect it to rise in value, to a maximum of Rs. 110/-, at which point you will surely sell it, which, incidentally, is called profit booking (realizing the gain). In case the market moves against you, you don’t want to take too much loss on your investment. So, you place a stop loss order at Rs. 97.5/-.<br />
<br />
The moment the share price touches Rs. 97.5/- (called stop price), your broker sells your share for you and gets you out with a loss of Rs. 2.5/-. (This is a simplified version; sometimes your broker may be unable to sell at the stop price and you may make a greater loss). Your net risk is 2.5% of your investment. Your net reward can be up to 10% of your investment. Does the risk seem to be worth it? It depends on how much risk you can stomach.<br />
<br />
Consider a few more scenarios with the same analogy:<br />
Current Stock Price: Rs. 100/-<br />
Stop Loss: Rs. 95/-<br />
Expected Profit: Up to Rs. 20/-<br />
Expected Value: Rs. 1.25/-<br />
Risking up to a 5% downside for up to a 20% upside.<br />
<br />
Current Stock Price: Rs. 100/-<br />
Stop Loss: Rs. 92.5/-<br />
Expected Profit: Up to Rs. 30/-<br />
Expected Value: Rs. 1.875/-<br />
Risking up to a 7.5% downside for up to a 30% upside.<br />
<br />
Current Stock Price: Rs. 100/-<br />
Stop Loss: Rs. 90/-<br />
Expected Profit: Up to Rs. 40/-<br />
Expected Value: Rs. 2.5/-<br />
Risking up to a 10% downside for up to a 40% upside.<br />
<br />
Current Stock Price: Rs. 100/-<br />
Stop Loss: Rs. 87.5/-<br />
Expected Profit: Up to Rs. 50/- <br />
Expected Value: Rs. 3.125/-<br />
Risking up to a 12.5% downside for up to a 50% upside.<br />
<br />
These scenarios I have outlined are basically the same as guessing in SNAP. I stopped at a gain of 50 since SNAP has only 150 questions and B has already answered 100 through his talent. <br />
<br />
B has decided to place a stop loss at 97.5 because of his subjective assessment. A has placed his stop loss at 100 by not taking any risk. <br />
<br />
If B thinks the cut-off is surely more than 100, he is definitely motivated to guess some answers. He either makes it, luck being in his favour, or does not make it, luck being against him. <b>If the cut-off is above 100, A has no chance of making it, while B does.</b> The risk-taker has been successfully rewarded by SNAP.<br />
<br />
More worryingly, if B has access to past data regarding cut-offs in SNAP for various institutes, he can do a time-series analysis and estimate the current cut-off (if he knows what he is doing, he can do it with remarkable accuracy). Armed with this estimate, and depending on his score due to talent, he can determine the optimal level of risk he needs to take. And if he can eliminate one or two choices per question he guesses, with 100% certainty, his expected value will shoot up!<br />
<br />
Thus, we see how the intelligent risk-takers are rewarded and the prudent non-guessers are punished.<br />
<br />
<b>Lesson:</b> Negative marking makes luck play a more important role and worse still, luck helps only a few (the risk-takers), than all. A better way to eliminate the role of luck would be to give everyone an equal opportunity to use it: stop penalizing incorrect answers. <b></b><br />
<br />
<b>The problem in no negative marking</b><br />
If guesses are not penalized, then everybody is incentivized to guess. No candidate’s score will therefore be an accurate measure of his talent! Is not having negative marking worse than the problem it is trying to solve?<br />
<br />
No.<br />
<br />
Consider the following table: </p><br />
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width: 400px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="133">Type of candidate</td> <td valign="top" width="133">Scores </td> <td valign="top" width="133">Reflect</td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="133"></td> <td valign="top" width="133">Negative marking</td> <td valign="top" width="133">No negative marking</td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="133">A (No Risk)</td> <td valign="top" width="133">Talent</td> <td valign="top" width="133">Talent/More than talent</td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="133">B (Risk-taker)</td> <td valign="top" width="133">More than /Less than/ Equal to talent</td> <td valign="top" width="133">Talent/More than talent</td> </tr>
</tbody></table><i><br />
</i><br />
<p><i>When there is no negative marking, both A and B have an equal opportunity to use luck.</i> And their scores will definitely be at least equal to their level of talent. When there is negative marking, A’s score reflects his real talent while B’s score may not. Also, under negative marking, <b>if you don’t know who A is and who B is, how will you judge who is merely talented, and who is talented plus a risk-taker?</b> You can’t. Whereas, under no negative marking, you can more accurately discount the influence of luck of each candidate’s score. (If you do that in a negative marking scenario, you penalize A, and make his score go <b>lower</b> than that which he got by talent). <br />
<br />
Sure, discounting the influence of luck (under no negative marking) may still harm those who were favored less by luck than the discounted value and benefit those who were overly favored by luck. But it is less imperfect than the current negative marking system. <br />
<br />
(I have to make a confession here. There is a statistical concept called “Regression to the Mean” which can be used to take my explanation of luck further, but I haven’t understood it sufficiently well to attempt to invoke the concept here).<br />
<br />
And so I say, since luck influences your chances of an interview call anyway, everyone should be given an equal opportunity to use it, and not just the risk-takers. There may be outliers who make it on sheer luck, but that is true in both negative marking and no negative marking scenarios.<br />
<br />
Consider this example: while it is entirely possible that among a large group of music illiterates hitting 60 keys on a piano randomly, one may produce the starting notes of a symphony, the chances of him performing at Carnegie Hall are very, very slim. His lucky performance does not invalidate the ability of the talented performers. That is, a test should not be judged based on outliers. (There is a concept in statistics called smoothing, which tries to capture patterns while eliminating the effects of the outliers. While this has some defects, it holds good for analyzing data sets where the effects of noise (here, luck) on the actual data need to be minimized).<br />
<br />
Also, it is more ‘fair’ to those MBA aspirants who just need to be good at their 3 fundamental skills in order to do an MBA, such as those who do not want to specialize in finance. They don’t need to cultivate the investor mindset for their profession; they shouldn’t be forced to do so just to take an entrance exam.<br />
<br />
<b>Moving on to CAT</b><br />
If even a PP based test like SNAP suffers from a lack of objectivity, what of CBTs with normalized (scaled) scores like CAT and NMAT? NMAT has rightly decided to stop penalizing incorrect answers (and has allowed multiple attempts), so I stick to CAT.<br />
<br />
Statistics is reliable only at the macro level. It doesn’t truly represent any individual sample. Let’s say you flip a coin twice in succession. According to statistics, you should get 1 Tail (T) and 1 Head (H) in any order (A more technical statement would be that the results converge to that). The possible outcomes are {HH, HT, TH, and TT}. Of these, {HT, TH} individually satisfy the condition. But {HH, TT} do not, although when taken together, they do. After 4 experiments, if all the 4 results (collectively called as the sample space) materialize, we will have 4[1H and 1T] as predicted by statistics. When this experiment is repeated a number of times, the ratio of H to T converge to 1:1, though you will find numerous strings of {HH} and {TT}. <br />
<br />
What we understand from this is that while statistics ‘work’, they can still misrepresent an individual sample. A statistical scoring technique which is 99.95% reliable will tend to mess up the scores of 5 out of every 10,000 candidates. At over 2 lakh test takers, around 100 may get short shrift. And you won’t know if you’re one among them.<br />
<br />
The more complicated something is, the greater the chances of failure. Do you trust an opaque algorithm to evaluate you accurately?<br />
<br />
The problem is exacerbated with the presence of negative marking. <br />
<br />
For CAT, where a 0.01 percentile could be the difference between an IIM-A call and no IIM-A call, how many deserving candidates are excluded because they ran out of luck? (I would not say the converse though, that many <b>un</b>deserving candidates got an IIM-A call because Lady Fortuna smiled on them. You need both talent and luck to get an IIM-A call, and frankly, you can’t differentiate between the two. And beyond a threshold level of talent, talent doesn’t really matter for your performance).<br />
<br />
A better selection system would be a lottery for all those who passed a threshold percentile. Skip the illusion of objective selection, acknowledge the role of chance. It’s much more ‘fair’ to the candidates than the current system.<br />
<br />
<b>How does CAT compare students across time slots?</b><br />
They use ‘similar’ questions to judge the caliber of the test takers in each slot. Based on this, all scores are brought to the same scale. I have my reservations on the use of these ‘similar’ questions, and how they are scored. I’m not critiquing it; since they keep their methods a secret it is not possible to critique it.<br />
<br />
Consider two similar questions to understand my point. <br />
<br />
<b>Q1.</b> Suppose I have a pack of cards, each of which has a letter written on one side and a number written on the other side. Suppose, in addition, I claim that the following rule is true: <i>If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
Imagine that I now show you 4 cards from the pack: E 6 K 9<br />
Which card(s) should you turn over in order to decide whether the rule is true or false?<br />
<br />
<b>Q2.</b> You are a bartender in a town where the legal age for drinking is 21 and you feel responsible for the violations of the rules. You are confronted with the following situations and would have to ask the patron to show you either his age or what he is drinking. Which of the 4 patrons would you have to question?<br />
<br />
1. Drinking beer<br />
2. 2. Over 21<br />
3. Drinking soft drinks<br />
4. Under 21<br />
<br />
While both these problems are ‘similar’, the second question is much easier to answer. (The answers are to check 1 and 4 in both cases). Why? Because it is easier for us to associate with people than cards, though the logic is the same. My question now is: how will these types of ‘similar’ questions be evaluated?<br />
<br />
<b>How well do entrance tests test your 3 fundamental skills?</b><br />
It can be argued that any question in math, reasoning and data analysis helps test for your math and logic skills, but what about language? Does the answer to this question really test anything useful?<br />
<br />
A baby deer is called a ____.<br />
(a) Foal<br />
(b) Fawn<br />
(c) Calf<br />
(d) Joe<br />
<br />
That apart, in many questions, the answers are subjective. The ‘right’ answer is anybody’s guess. This is also true of the decision-making caselets in XAT.<br />
<br />
Imagine you are driving a motorbike, wearing a helmet, and at a red signal, you are asked by a traffic cop to produce your license. You don’t have it with you at that moment. Do you…<br />
<br />
(a) Plead with the cop saying you have it at home and you would produce it if only he lets you go get it? (And actually do so if he lets you go).<br />
(b) Stall and wait for the signal to turn green and just zoom away on your motorbike.<br />
(c) Pay him a bribe which is less than the fine.<br />
(d) Pay the fine.<br />
<br />
Which is the ‘right’ decision to take? Clearly, it depends. If I am sure I could zoom away, I would. If I’m uncertain about that, I would either plead or pay a bribe (depending on whether my time or my money is more important at that moment). I would never pay the fine, if I could avoid it. Now, which choice should I tick? (The worst choice of all, pay the full fine, would probably be the ‘best’ one from an admission point of view though. Does ticking that tell the examiner anything about my actual decision-making ability? What are the odds that a person does in real life what he says he will do in an exam paper?)<br />
<br />
<i>A test of decision-making is probably the worst contrivable, save for the test of general awareness.</i><br />
<br />
What’s wrong with testing a candidate’s general awareness? Surely a manager should know what’s going on around him. In fact, everyone should know what’s going on around them. Why not test for it?<br />
<br />
I counter-question: <b>How</b> will you test ‘general’ awareness with ‘specific’ questions? Can specific questions test for general answers? <b>A specific question can only test for a specific answer. </b>Only open-ended questions can test your general awareness. Let me explain the difference with an example.<br />
<br />
Specific question: What was India’s real GDP growth in the last fiscal year?<br />
<br />
Open-ended question: What do you think of India’s real GDP growth in the last fiscal year?<br />
<br />
The first type of question tests your memory; the second type tests your awareness as well as gives an insight into your understanding of the data. A rote learner can answer the first question, but not the second. A ‘generally aware’ person can most definitely answer the second question, and he may be able to answer the first one with approximate statistics. Whom does the GA section of the entrance exam benefit? The rote learner! The one who mugs up a CSR yearbook excels, a real thinker who doesn’t care for the exact numbers (which, in any case, are made up and manipulated so much that they may as well as be fictitious) is penalized. The insidious practice of rewarding rote learning over thinking continues well beyond school and under-graduation!<br />
<br />
<b>An even more saddening criterion</b><br />
There are institutes whose <i>placement eligibility criteria</i> include test scores on ‘business awareness.’ That’s taking stupidity to new highs. I wouldn’t be surprised if they churned out rote learners by the dozen. I pity the thinkers who aspire to be real managers but make the mistake of pursuing their MBA in such institutes. I’m glad I’m not among them. (Full disclosure: I got rejected by one such institute).<br />
<br />
All in all though, there isn’t much to criticize of the entrance test. It is the most objective among all the selection criteria (though still flawed). <br />
<br />
To be continued....</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-41518588514522653772010-11-12T13:16:00.007+05:302010-11-12T13:24:47.040+05:30The lure of money<p>Money makes the world go round, it is said. Money (lack of) also causes a lot of pain and anguish. Money, in places like casinos, also attracts a lot of the affluent, who are drawn by the risk and reward associated with it. It also attracts a lot of young students, mentioning no names (ahem), who want to base their entire lives associating with money.<br /><br />The flow of money has led to the burgeoning of an entire industry based on it- the so-called financial sector. The finance job today is what the IT job was yesterday and a government job the day before that. We now have some of the best brains in our country vying with each other in order to get into a top-notch B-School and get a finance job after that.<br /><br />If you step back from all the hype and look at it analytically, it doesn’t make sense. How do you use money to make money? (Can you use washing powder to make more washing powder?) What good does it do for the rest of us? And if we take it that you can’t get something out of nothing (that’s what makes the Big Bang theory so ridiculous) then where does all the money and wealth in the financial sector come from?<br /><br />If I were tweeting, I’d just end this here by answering the last question in 4 words: It comes from you.<br /><br />The financial sector works in curious ways. To be a big shot in finance requires as much talent, if not more, as getting into Microsoft Research Labs. The promise of huge salaries, astronomical bonuses, plus the nature of the work involved (what we call as soft power) attracts a lot of talent.<br /><br />If an oil company attracts a lot of engineers by giving them huge salaries, common sense tells us that the oil company is merely sharing the profits it makes from selling oil with its employees. A finance company, on the other hand ‘sells’ nothing to make profits. To understand how they make profits and pay such salaries, we need to delve into the nature of money itself, because money is the commodity around which this entire industry revolves.<br /><br />If you are a salaried employee making money working for someone on something, money is the paycheck you receive at the beginning of the month for work done by you in the previous month. This money is given to you by your employer, out of the money you all (your company) made selling your code or bananas to someone else, who in turn sold something else to someone to make the money with which to buy your goods, who in turn did the same. This exchange forms what we call the economy, the buying and selling of goods and services using a medium of exchange called money.<br /><br />The financial sector doesn’t work this way. It relies on a group of people to make the bits of paper we call money. This group of people produces this paper money the same way newspaper companies produce newspapers- using an apparatus called the printing press.<br /><br />So, you see, while you have to earn your money by working for someone to sell something of value to someone else, a group of people earn theirs by just pressing a button and making it. They are modern day alchemists- they turn lead (paper and ink) into gold (currency notes).<br /><br />These pieces of paper are then passed onto banks.<br /><br />Imagine your favourite movie is going to hit the theatres, and the theatre owner calls you up and gives you first day first show gallery seat tickets for you and your girlfriend at 95% discount, plus free popcorn. Would you pass up the chance?<br /><br />In much the same way, the group of people who print money pass it on to bankers at a humungous discount (say you pay Rs. 6/- to obtain Rs. 100/-), the catch being that they pay this small amount once a year. They also get free popcorn- the right to give this newly minted paper money to people of their choice at a slightly less humungous discount (say you have to pay Rs. 16/- to obtain Rs. 100/- from the bank), the catch being that you pay that amount every year. The amount given is called a loan, and the extra amount you return is called interest.<br /><br />The guy who gets the loan uses it to buy something, invest in a trade, start a business etc. with a view to make a profit and repay the loan with interest to the bank. He can do that only by selling something of value to you and taking your paper notes in exchange, which you have earned by producing something of value for someone else. <br /><br />But in all this, the banker’s job is to collect and give out this paper currency, and collect and give some paper as interest. And the group of people who mint this paper- their job is to keep printing, to keep the party going.<br /><br />The people who get loans from banks don’t always use the money to produce goods or services to sell. They exchange this paper money for other bits of paper called stocks, bonds, gilts, securities, derivatives, scrips etc. because these bits of paper can later be sold to get more paper money. (To explain how and why of this would be an article in itself).<br /><br />To sum up, a group of people print money, give it to banks, who lend this money to investors, traders, etc. some of whom immediately use it to buy different bits of papers, and as the paper money changes hands, the new owner keeps using it to buy different varieties of paper bits, and the party continues. Meanwhile, more money keeps getting printed, loans keep getting made and people become rich swapping one type of paper for another.<br /><br />That’s basically what the financial sector is all about: a party where a group of people turn water into wine, give the wine to their guests, who in turn play games swapping one type of wine for another, and occasionally lending a few bottles to others to drink and enjoy. When they want some solid food, they swap wine for food with the common man, who profits a little.<br /><br />But, there really is no such magic, though they’d have you believe there is. Water is not actually turned into wine. It’s all deception, a mere illusion kept up by skilled sophists to keep the masses from getting suspicious. But as the saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. The truth has a way of leaking out and percolating.<br /><br />PRINTING YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY<br /><br />I’ll illustrate with an example based on RO, a game I used to play. I hope my Non-RO friends understand this too, for it is very complicated to explain using real world examples. In RO, you hunt for items, sell and trade to earn zeny, the currency of RO. A group of people are granted the right, by Gravity, to type “/zeny 1, 00,000” to generate as much zeny as they want. While you work hard (or bot hard) to earn your zeny, someone else conjures it up- out of thin air- by typing a command.<br /><br />At the psychological level, this is de-motivating but there is more. These people, having the potential freedom to create unlimited money, have lesser regard for it. They’ll pay higher rates to buy items which they want from the market. Eventually, merchants will start to set shop at this high rate on the goods where there is high demand. The average Joe now has to work harder and generate more zeny to buy this same item, all because this group of people produced zeny by typing a command and used it to jack up prices. Sounds cool?<br /><br />What of the merchants now earning more zeny for selling the same goods, don’t they benefit? Well, no, though it seems like it. It takes a little explaining:<br /><br />For the purpose of clarity, let’s call the group of people who create free zeny for themselves (and their friends) as counterfeiters. Say they have increased the price of elunium. The first few merchants to sell them the elunium at the new, high price profit a lot. On seeing this, more people start botting or hunting for elunium.<br /><br />Since, if you are hunting for elunium, you are not hunting for oridecons which you used to supply to the market earlier, oridecons now become scarce, and oridecon buyers are forced to offer a higher price for it in the hope that it would induce someone to hunt for it.<br /><br />The new person to hunt oridecons because it is suddenly more profitable, stops hunting wind of verdures which he used to supply earlier. Now the same scarcity comes into play, and the wind of verdure buyer offers a higher price for them in order to induce someone else to fill this supply gap. So now, a witch starsand hunter switches to wind of verdure, inducing this scarcity in witch starsand, thereby increasing its price. This incentivizes a poison spore hunter to switch to starsands, and this cycle continues, gradually increasing the prices of all the items in the market.<br /><br />This phenomenon is termed as inflation.<br /><br />Let’s say our counterfeiters have a month long water-into-wine party, buying not just elunium but also valk flowers, blank cards, diablos set, vesper cores, stone bucklers etc.. You can imagine the scale of inflation which will be caused.<br /><br />The current world economy is somewhat like this, but there are quite a few gangs of such counterfeiters rather than just one.<br /><br />Imagine if a counterfeiter keeps creating zeny and buys all the items in the market at whatever rate you charge. Wow, you’ll be rich! Or so you think. Because he’ll pay a billion zeny for a pupa card, if you want one for yourself, you’ll either have to hunt for it or offer 1.1 billion. Another person who demands it will then have to offer 1.2 billion, and so the inflation continues.<br /><br />In effect, there comes a point when all that zeny in your virtual bank account still can’t get you a pupa card, the card becomes worth much more in terms of zeny than all the other goods you have sold in order to earn zeny and feel rich. At this point, zeny loses value and you realize that if you want a pupa card, you’ll have to swap a roda frog card for it. You’ll have to keep a chat room open for hours until you find someone who wants to swap a roda frog card for a pupa card. The economy now moves into the most primitive state: barter. When there is so much zeny that it loses all value as a currency, we call it as hyperinflation. <br /><br />This is no ivory tower high theory, by the way. I just explained what happened in an African country called Zimbabwe using the example of RO. Zimbabwean dollar now makes for good toilet paper.<br /><br />Let’s say everyone has the power to create zeny using the /zeny command. When everyone’s a counterfeiter, you’ve all entered into the overpriced toilet paper business. And since zeny exists only as bits in a virtual world, you’ve only managed to create pixel dust- you get nothing out of nothing, not even e-toilet paper.<br /><br />THE CURRENT COUNTERFEITING SYSTEM<br /><br />Imagine a world where everyone can use the /zeny command. The catch is that if you use it, you’ll be jailed for life and the counterfeit mafia will strip you of all your assets. In this world, although you can potentially counterfeit by yourself and print your way to prosperity, you can’t do it because you’ll lose everything, including your freedom, if you do.<br /> <br />This is how one gang of counterfeiters takes over a country, (and also a group of countries in some places) using the country’s largest and most well-organized weapon of mass destruction: the government.<br /><br />By now, you’ve cleverly figured out that we could just stop giving away our goods and work in exchange for this future toilet paper made by the money mafia. But alas, you can’t. In a brilliant stratagem, the money mafia devised a means to prevent this. It’s called taxes.<br /><br />They will force you to accept this paper currency they print, and then give them back a portion of it as taxes. They won’t accept anything but this paper as a tax, so you’re forced to use this counterfeit money in order to pay your taxes. If you don’t comply with the tax regulations, they come knocking at your door, forcibly extort the money they deem as their due, and impose a penalty on you. Using the threat of violence and incarceration, they get their way.<br /><br />You now live in such a system.<br /><br />SCIENTISTS AND THE MAFIA<br /><br />You would think that intellectuals would be against such practices. But no, they’re actually for it. Scientists in general don’t have any skills individual employers want to buy. They live in an ivory tower, surrounding themselves with the leftovers of people long dead, and looking at the rest of the world in a supercilious manner, and always addressing the mass of humanity with arrogance characteristic of them, the people who advance the world through their work, and all us mere mortals are merely pawns to be moved in their game, and in their hubris and megalomania, they try to control and dominate the lives of others, the simple folk, thrusting their ideas down our throats.<br /><br />They require money and what money can buy to advance their research, so they go to their totalitarian counterparts in the government and demand of them money to fund their research, to be obtained from the traders and the workers. So, they need you in order to rob you of the fruits of your labor, and they also need you to do the menial research work for them, but they show scant respect for you, and live in the ivory tower all their lives, becoming uncaring, unemotional folk divorced from the rest of humanity.<br /><br />They speak out only to sing praises of the king, for he is their friendly Robbing Hood who robs everyone to fund the nonsense these scientists call research. <br /><br />THE FINANCIAL SECTOR<br /><br />The financial sector is the first merchant to receive counterfeit money. They play pass the parcel with it, until the music stops and one person is left holding toilet paper. The loser, in most cases, will not be a finance person, by the way. He is the fall guy, the dumb person who risks his neck due to herd instinct. And sadly, the fall guys are mostly always salaried professionals who get their entire life’s savings wiped out. It is the salaried employee who gets envious of all the money the finance guys are making, and tries to mimic them himself, led by glorious visions of instant riches. It’s a con game, and if you don’t know who the loser is, it’s probably you.<br /><br />CONCLUSION<br /><br />A finance job is nothing to be boastful about. The job is supported by the counterfeit mafia and its violent friend. But, the lure of money is strong; morality be damned. <br /><br />In all fairness, most of them don’t think of what they’re doing in this manner. But that doesn’t change the facts.<br /><br />The only saving grace is that, some people who are aware of what is really going on in the world of finance, try their best to warn others and protect them from the consequences of these insidious activities, while at the same time producing real wealth by managing the finances of their clients in order to help them escape the disastrous effects of the system.<br /><br />What’s happening right now, during the great recession, is a battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron, with Megatron in possession of the All Spark (the printing press) which Optimus Prime is trying to wrest from his hands and destroy. The battle has been actively waged since 1634, and there does not seem to be an end in sight.<br /><br />So remember, in the world of finance, there are the good guys who want to protect you, and the bad guys who want to rob you. Forgive the bad guys, for, as Jesus said, they know not what they’re doing.<br /><br />And lastly, don’t get fooled. When you read finance news, take it with a pinch of salt, and see if the reasoning is logical. Devise your own bullshit filter and run all articles and opinions (including this one) through it. Don’t associate glamour with finance. Most of what glitters is fool’s gold.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-30865730212224813412010-10-15T14:19:00.005+05:302010-10-15T14:35:47.712+05:30The five-year growth story<p>October 16th 2010 marks the 5th anniversary of the day I started writing. Little did I know then that this was a habit I’d carry forward. Little did I know then that I’d someday be able to write pages and pages about a single topic, that someday I’d have so many friends who’d take pleasure in reading my works.<br /><br />For sticking with me through my highs and lows, for critically reviewing and commenting on my writings, you deserve a story.<br /><br />Some of you have taken to writing recently, so I’m going to tell you how it came to be that I started writing, and how that habit has shaped my life in these last five years.<br /><br />Life’s not a movie like The Dark Knight, where, right from the first scene the action is captivating and engaging. My tryst with pen and paper began quite nondescriptly. While I was in class XII, my parents kept forcing me to study, so while sitting all by myself with text books I started to write on my writing pad.<br /><br />Where I got that idea from, I don’t really know. If I were to guess, I probably got the idea since I was used to writing even then- fanfics, a diary for a while when I was a kid, and even copying out stuff I liked from the internet (net was a novelty then).<br /><br />And that’s how it all started.<br /><br />Those were pretty stressful times for me, so my writings became more frequent and lengthier. I think practically all students dreaded the thought of approaching board exams; the peer pressure, the parental pressure, and the constant threat from the teachers that if you failed to perform well in the class tests, cycle tests, unit tests, mid-term exams, term exams, early morning tests, late evening tests, assignment tests, Revision-I exam, Revision-II exam, Revision-III exam et al. your hall ticket will be withheld. I come from an upper-end school where the focus was more on overall development than on just marks, but it was still a harrowing experience. I shudder to think of the mental torture some children face now- burdened by all the above mentioned exams, plus tuition classes, coaching classes for IIT-JEE…<br /><br />I’m not slighting the students who liked this type of education; I’m just saying it wasn’t meant for me. Some swimmers thrive in the challenge of swimming across the English Channel, but no one wants to be thrown into the middle of the sea and told that his life depends on his swimming to safety all by himself. The former is a challenge you willingly take upon yourself, the latter is sheer agony.<br /><br />Lucky for me (and you too if you like me) I managed to swim to the shore rather than sink. I didn’t do badly in my exams either- passed out with a 69.5%.<br /><br />Those were probably the worst times of my life though. But there’s a silver lining to every cloud. Because I was constantly put through the wringer, I had to write more and more in order to keep myself sane. That helped shape my writing ability. Some of my first articles took shape then.<br /><br />Just because something good came out of it doesn’t justify it though. Being struck by lightning may give you an eureka moment, but to wish for being hit by a bolt of lightning in order to get your eureka moment is ludicrous. If ever you raise kids, please don’t put them through this torturous process- unless they like it of course, in which case it’s a challenge and not a torture.<br /><br />So yeah, back to my story. You’ll have to excuse my rambling on and on about nothing; that’s why this blog is titled Ramblings of a Lonely Soul.<br /><br />The day my board exams ended, I was literally jumping with joy. I jumped into my room, switched on the PC and lost myself in a virtual world known as Ragnarok Online. For nearly the next one month, I led a different existence. The material self was just a conduit for my inner self to explore a world beyond the material realm. Some would call it ‘just a game’, but it was more than that for me. For the first time in a long time, I truly felt free. And believe me, once you taste that kind of freedom, there’s no going back.<br /><br />What makes Ragnarok Online (RO) so special? Of all its attractions, the main one is freedom. You can be whoever you want to be. You are free from all the prejudices attached to your person. It is an egalitarian society with equal opportunity for all (and there are no discriminatory laws to coerce people in the guise of equal opportunity). It holds the promise of riches, no matter what your background or position in society is. If you have what it takes to make it big, you can make it big. There is nothing between you and your aspirations except yourself. It’s the classic learning grounds for entrepreneurs: you start with literally nothing, and build an empire through sheer effort and smart work. Unlike failure in life, here, if you lose, you actually lose nothing materially. So you can afford to take risks and learn. If you take it seriously, you can do serious business in the game, and at the same time build your own networks, develop yourself growing with friends, learn teamwork, learn time management, learn how to build a community… the opportunities are endless. And best of all, you can apply this learning in your life.<br /><br />According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, Part II: Legacy, the most important thing parents teach children is the link between effort and reward. This link is very important because without it, life appears random. In RO, this link is never out of your sight. The people who make it big are the people who put in the most effort. What better way to learn the lessons of life than by experiencing them yourself?<br /><br />In a classroom, a teacher can recount her experiences or tell you a story to teach you values, but when you have the opportunity to be your own teacher, to learn by yourself and to seek out knowledge from the people you regard, to get a wholesome values education in your own way, and in a way you love to learn, how can the two be compared? The latter beats the former hands down.<br /><br />I can confidently say that everything I learned in life, I learnt through playing Ragnarok Online. If we know about clay, we know about all the products made of clay such as earthen pots. We don’t need to separately study the properties of the earthen pot as long as we know the properties of clay. Rather than even learn the properties of clay, suppose we were to experiment with clay, would we not learn better about its properties, than by looking up clay under ‘C’ in the encyclopedia Britannica? When this sort of freedom to learn and experiment is available in the virtual world, who wants to waste their time learning by rote things which are quite useless in our daily lives.<br /><br />The best education I ever got in my life, until the time I started preparing for CAT, was through my close connect with RO. The true value of this education is priceless. In money terms, it cost me nothing except broadband bills.<br /><br />To tell you the truth, when I first started playing, I didn’t know what a profound impact it’d have on my life. There are people I know who hate the game because they think it has ruined their lives. They’re like an amphibious fish with wings, restricting themselves to the water they have grown to think as their society. One glimpse of the world beyond their comfort zone brings forth an inner struggle between the thirst for freedom and the mind-numbing conformity they have accustomed themselves to. Unfortunately, in their cases, conformity wins over freedom.<br />Just because someone tells you that games are bad for you, doesn’t make that the gospel truth.<br /><br />When the printing press was invented, everyone promptly decried it, saying it will cause the end of civilization. Every scientific breakthrough has been thoroughly criticized even before it was used. Internet? Research loses value. Search engines? Google makes us stupid. Social networking? Makes you a soulless zombie in cyberspace. Wikipedia? Oh, it’ll never work.<br /><br />We can find countless examples of great technologies decried even before they were put in use. Games are one such technology. And let’s face it: if students are attracted to games, it means they don’t find their schooling to be of great use. Games show you an alternate way of learning which is fun too. If schooling was fun, why would anyone play games instead of attending school?<br /><br />The typical argument against games goes like this: If you play games you’ll never come up in life. You have to study hard and get into a good college, and in college you have to study hard to get into a good job or else you will end up as a loser in life. So study instead of playing games. If you substitute games for any other hobby of yours, the argument remains the same.<br /><br />Breaking this argument: How exactly does studying hard in school and college correlate with a ‘good job’? What exactly is a good job? Something to flaunt? Something which pays well? Something which makes you happy? And what’s studying hard? Learning the 23rd root of the sum of the Fibonacci series up to the 23rd term? Learning to recite by rote the names of all the Presidents of India and the precise date and time in which certain ‘events of great importance’ happened? Learning how to calculate the escape velocity of a particle? How does learning all of this help me write that C++ program which gives me my daily bread?<br /><br />Would I not be better off if I learnt to cooperate with others, built my communication skills, my ability to work as a team as well as alone, in the way I love- by playing an MMORPG? I can acquire technical skills from my place of choice: internet, books, tutorials, coaching institutes, finishing schools. So, where does studying all the muck they serve up for us in school and college help? They typically don’t, yet we spend so much of our lives there, without raising this question.<br /><br />I love my school- they gave me as much freedom as they could within this education system. I hate my college- they tried to take away from me the few freedoms which the education system allowed me. Learning through games was my answer to my lack of education in the educational institutes I went to. It’s an answer available only to a privileged few: guard this privilege jealously, don’t trash it just because it made you a non-conformist. Your true education is learning that you have to keep learning, no matter how much you learn, and that you have to decide for yourself on what you need to learn for your life. No one teaches you that, you’ll have to learn that by yourself too.<br /><br />As a practical exercise, list out all that you learned in school and college which you deem to be useful for you, and list out all that you learned on your own time away from these so-called places of learning which have been useful for you. Compare the time spent to learn the things in both lists, and also look at whether you could have learnt the useful things they taught you in school and college on your own, in much less time.<br /><br />I’ve probably spent 5000 hours playing RO, in which time I learnt more than I did attending classes in school and college my entire life! And I’ve probably now spent about 2500 hours on CAT preparation and learning economics by myself, which gave me a much higher level of learning than everything else combined.<br /><br />Thankfully for me, I didn’t let conformity win. Being practical, I knew I couldn’t break free from the system then, so I willed myself to go to college, to be confined within 4 walls for 4 years (at least it wasn’t a life sentence) in order to obtain my freedom for life. That seemed to be an excellent bargain to me. If you live in a society which values your ability to sit still on hindquarters for 8 hours a day, 250 days a year, for 18 years, then you’ll have to sit still on your hindquarters for 8 hours a day, 250 days a year, for 18 years, if not more. When in Rome, do as Romans do.<br /><br />If I had been prescient back then, I would have definitely tried my best to make it into an IIT, so that I could really learn while still preserving my freedom. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about college and education at that time. And I definitely did not know that I’d end up in Hades after school.<br /><br />But having tasted freedom, I was not to be cowed down by my 4-year sentence. I’d bide my time, escaping conformity whenever possible, chasing my freedom. I had no such plan then, but that’s what I did in the months between the end of school and the beginning of college.<br /><br />I was a free bird. I explored, learnt, enjoyed and I was able to be myself. For those few months, I really lived.<br /><br />All good things must come to an end. And so, on August 23rd 2006, I willingly gave up my freedom, to be reclaimed with interest 4 years later. What followed would change me forever.<br /><br />The initial days were agony. Imagine sitting in a classroom from 8 am to 5 pm listening to the most boring tripe ever taught. And imagine having to copy this tripe from a book onto a notebook, at home, to be submitted as a ‘homework assignment’. There were a few people who eased the pain; to them I should be grateful.<br /><br />My co-sufferers helped a lot too. I learned to call them friends. We stood up to all the silly conventions we could stand up to. We broke from our chains wherever and whenever we could. Some were afraid to reclaim their freedom initially, but we early fighters gave them the courage to break their own chains and join us in our quest for freedom. If only the world understood that people just want to be left to themselves, to be free to do what they want, it would be a much better place.<br /><br />And if only we understood that it is we who have to stand up for our freedom, to give it up out of fear of retribution is not a choice, we’d have truly learnt our history. For what is history if not an endless struggle by the peoples of the world to be free from oppression? All clashes of civilizations can be traced to the individual love for freedom. Indeed, it is this love of freedom which makes us human.<br /><br />It is a paradox that in order to be free you have to remain incarcerated. We Indians have got so used to bondage, having worn chains since the start of Imperialist rule that we suffer in silence. And like the baby elephant conditioned to think that it is bound to the tree by a chain tied around its leg, we too believe that we are bound, though we have the strength to rip apart those chains and even uproot the tree and fling it far away!<br /><br />Bound though I was, I used my time well. I broke rules without getting caught (at least, not caught often). I nurtured my creativity, defended my freedom to play games, socialized with defiance. The last part seems puzzling? In the penitentiary I was in, socializing was a no-no. We were supposed to emulate Gandhi’s three monkeys with regard to the opposite sex: see no girls, hear no girls, and speak to no girls.<br /><br />Is it any wonder then that my drive for freedom grew more and more as I was given less and less of it? A thing easily obtained has no value. When I had to fight tooth-and-nail to get my way, I started to love my freedom more.<br /><br />And so, I freed myself while still bound. I started to love life, in a way you can only love that which has been denied to you. I enjoyed the time I got to write, I reveled in RO, I developed beautiful friendships, all of which made me grow personally, made a promising bud blossom into a spectacular flower.<br /><br />I lived two parallel lives: free and bound. Then came the time for me to grow myself professionally. I decided to crack the CAT.<br /><br />It was during the month of December in 2008 that I decided to take up that challenge. It happened in an interesting way. It was in the semester holidays after my 3rd year 1st semester exams. A bunch of my classmates were planning to do a mini-project at a place called Biozone. I went along to take a look. I didn’t like the place- it was too small, plus they took theory classes which I definitely did not want, and the factor which decided my disinclination to join was the cost of Rs. 3000/-. Fancy spending that kind of money there.<br /><br />In the current University system of engineering education, which is completely (almost) theoretical, impractical and outdated, these project centers and finishing schools are supposed to fill an important gap between the procurement and application of knowledge. They are the life blood of students who wish to acquire practical, industry-oriented skills. When these places become just another centre for routine and mundane coursework, they lose all their charm. Then they just exist in order for the students to buy a project to show as their own, a high demand these days since most ‘engineers’ couldn’t care less about their project, so long as it helps them clear their course.<br /><br />Interestingly, some lecturers prefer their students doing a project at a project centre than at a company. I say this as an opinion backed only by my experience- the few people in my batch who did a project at a company scored very low marks in their project, compared to the ones who did it at a project centre. It’s a sweeping statement, but I sure got that impression after comparing project scores.<br /><br />I’m not making a point about all engineers. The ones who really want to learn, do so on their own. Such people gravitate towards the great temples of learning in India and abroad, which exist alongside these institutes for ‘manufactured education’, a few classics amidst a sea of Mills & Boons and pulp fiction. A true engineer yearns to belong to these great institutions.<br /><br />I know this guy who’s a full out geek. He has learned all kinds of geeky stuff from how the system clock on your desktop works to how to discredit the theological teachings of certain religious institutions. He won’t let me call him a nerd, so I’ll settle for geek. And to prove my point, take his example. His resume includes all sorts of stuff not taught in any traditional institution. But the traditional institutes of manufactured education don’t develop his potential. He has to acquire his technical skills auto-didactically, the way I have to learn. He’s taught himself everything under the sun, ranging from philosophy to theology to string theory to programming.<br /><br />Why is he so good? He doesn’t have any extra advantage in terms of educational opportunities; he just used the internet well. Like the chef says in the movie Rattatouille, “Anyone can cook.” Anyone can learn so long as they have access to the internet. It’s a great leveler. When you encounter such people, you feel what Thomas Friedman says: The World is Flat.<br /><br />Coaching centers and finishing schools fill the needs of a great multitude of young Indians who have graduated from sub-par institutes. I only hope the day does not come when these centers in themselves become sub-par institutions, killing the only learning portal for a majority of graduates.<br /><br />As I left Biozone, I decided then and there that I would enroll for the CAT 2009 course at T.I.M.E. Few days later, I was in. Classes were during weekends. I took this decision all by myself, and I must say that it was one of the best decisions in my life. And I was willing to pay Rs. 20,450/- for it.<br /><br />From this point onwards my love for freedom and learning grew more and more. If there is one good thing to be said about my college life, it is that I had a truly great time during the college tour and symposium. Those were enriching experiences. All my other great moments came on my own time, or in my CAT classes.<br /><br />Then, disaster struck. A tragedy befell me in mid-2009. I didn’t know it was a tragedy then, I learnt that in retrospect. I had got too close to a girl I ought not to have got too close to. For the sake of her privacy, I mention no names. Tragedies are not to be regretted, however, for they serve a purpose. I learnt a lot from this tragic experience.<br /><br />To save you the trouble of reading a long and boring tale about a random person, I’ll KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!):<br /><br />She was someone whom I’d categorized under a group called Friends. She turned out to be what I’d not categorize as Opportunist. In short, she took advantage of my generosity and sympathetic nature to extract all the resources she possibly could from me, and left me once the supply line of credit dried up, to seek newer, greener pastures. Oh, I could tell you tales, but I’d rather not spoil this blog with such sorry tales.<br /><br />From this lesson I learnt to be selfish, which is stupid. Just because one flower is dirty doesn’t mean all flowers are. We still enjoy the other pretty flowers.<br /><br />In the last semester of college, my repugnance to that place increased so much that I felt I was coming out of hell every time I left the place. It was as if they wanted one last chance to torture me, the sadists that they are, so they tried all the tricks up their sleeves to make me crack. But I wouldn’t, and came out unscathed, much to their chagrin. I was a free spirit once again.<br /><br />There is an anecdote (I can’t establish its veracity) about the Buddha, that when he went for alms to a house, the lady of the house hurled all sorts of epithets at him for begging and he calmly and serenely listened to her and asked for alms once again after she had exhausted herself ranting. And the lady asks him how he could ask her for alms again after all that she had spoken about him. He calmly points to her cow and asks her, if she had given him that cow and he had declined her offer, where that cow would be. When she impatiently replied that it would obviously still belong to her, the Buddha said the same applies to everything that she said.<br /><br />It is much the same with all those college staff who berated me. I didn’t accept their Michael Mann-esque treatises on my moral character, so to whom do they belong?<br /><br />On May 14th 2010, I became a free man once again. The next day, our class held a farewell party, which still holds pleasant memories for me. We were all graduates, about to blaze our own trails in life. We could command respect from society, because we were engineers, the people who make the world, and though we may make bridges which collapse when cars ride through, we are hierarchically several steps above those lowly arts and science graduates, whom society treats with contempt.<br /><br />The day after that, I wrote a scholarship exam at T.I.M.E., and based on that score, I got a Rs. 3000/- scholarship on my CAT 2010 course fee. The day after that, the boys of our class met at my home in the morning and played cricket. That was the last time we played cricket together. That signaled the end of college life for me.<br /><br />I don’t see any reason for engineers to be regarded highly, or for other graduate courses to be belittled. Such judgments of value are so unbecoming of a person. It is not the degree you hold per se which is important; it is the value it has added to you, and the skills you’ve learnt while studying that are important. Some people just don’t get that. Given the right amount of practical experience and non-formal education, you can bypass this entire system of education.<br /><br />Another popular education myth is that engineering plus MBA equals financial nirvana. That’s a completely flawed perception. The dean of a popular B-School in the city was candid enough to say as much in a talk he gave to promote his institute and his new book. Some people are quite vocal at attacking this myth, yet it persists.<br /><br />Typically, an engineering student gets stuck as a ‘code monkey’ in an IT firm, or as a ‘customer support executive’ in a BPO. The only way they see to rise in the organization is to acquire an MBA. After a while, students spot this trend and don’t wait for their career to stagnate before jumping onto the MBA bandwagon. That’s why you see so many engineers jumping into a B-School right after graduation. There really is no unwritten rule which says engineers do well after an MBA. Managers do well; they just happen to be engineers too. There’s no added advantage to being an engineer. In fact, there is a downside to it: there are simply too many young, male engineers in India. Once jobs dry up, it’s not going to be a job market conducive for engineers. The return on investment is ultra-low, particularly when placements are not assured and you happen to have studied in a sub-par institution.<br /><br />I may have come across as a hypocrite, since I’m also an engineer aspiring to do my MBA. But, as far as I’m concerned, the reasons are different. I need management education for the job profile I’m targeting. My core interest is finance and (macro) economics, though I’m open to other streams too. The learning from an MBA course is necessary for me to launch my career the way I want to. I’m studying what I wish to study, picking up a course which I chose myself, and which I feel will help me throughout my professional life.<br /><br />When you really want something, the whole Universe conspires to help you achieve it. We can call this the Law of Attraction. I have had the yearning to pursue my true calling, the field of business and finance, for quite some while now. I didn’t know anything about that field, but opportunities opened up for me, and I started learning. To start with, all I had was passion to learn. The rest just fell into place naturally. So I strongly feel that it is the passion with which you chase your dream which matters. The learning will automatically happen. The opportunities will find you.<br /><br />Consider another instance from my life as an example. As I was starting to explore economics, to find out how the world works, I came across traditional economics, and hung onto the words of certain sycophants not worth their Nobel prizes. Had I not had someone to guide me onto the right path, to steer me away from classical and Keynesian “All hail the King” economics, I’d have got fooled. Thankfully, I got exposed to the works of great economists, people who spoke truth to power, who thrashed out their economic principles in irrefutable logic, who recognized the evils of central planning and interventionism, people who have nailed the theory of the trade cycle, people who have always been champions of liberalism and the free market. I am speaking, of course, of the Austrian school of economics, the intellectual giant the world desperately needs to lift itself out of financial calamity. Were it not for this exposure, I shudder to think that I’d right now be eulogizing the advocates of ‘helicopter money’, ‘paradox of thrift’, ‘multiplier effects’, and the utterly servile advocate of statism, big government deficits and stimulus spending, who now happen to be all over the mainstream media, thrusting rotten economics down our unwary throats. I’m sorry if you didn’t understand that. The point is that the opportunities to learn found me. There was someone to say neti, neti, (not this, not this) and guide me onto real economics.<br /><br />Ways and means presented themselves to guide me. I can quote at length several such instances in my personal life which convinced me of that, but I am sure you’ll come to the same realization if you contemplate.<br /><br />The journey of my education really began when I picked up Austrian Economics. Everything else that I’d learnt earlier paled in comparison. The two great learnings I’ve got are from CAT preparation and Austrian Economics.<br /><br />As my intellectual journey continued, so did my spiritual journey. I started to take to Indian philosophy in a big way. I still do. My spiritual journey complemented my intellectual journey. Best of all, I was learning autodidactically.<br /><br />I kept my own hours, scheduled my own study sessions. No one to boss me around or dictate to me what I have to learn. I set my own coursework and went about completing it systematically.<br /><br />From May to September 2010, I focused more on CAT than on other things, and learnt all I could to prepare myself for all the entrance exams I’ll be taking up. The high point of this time was the trip to Jaya’s place, which I’ve recaptured in Memories.<br /><br />From this month onwards, I started revising the basics and covering all that I’ve already learnt (which isn’t all that much), plus taking tests often in order to prepare myself for the test-taking atmosphere.<br /><br />“What will you do if you don’t crack the CAT?” is a question I am often asked. My answer to that last year was just two words- “Next year.” Now, the answer’s changed. I’ll be joining any B-School which I feel is ideal for me. Once I’m in, it’s up to me to prove my worth. My learning is not just for writing an exam, it’s for life.<br /><br />If CAT were a knowledge-intensive exam which tested my general knowledge about the world and current affairs, all the knowledge I acquire would only help me to ace that exam. It would be quite useless after that. Knowledge, especially of this kind, gets outdated fast. Had I spent a year preparing for such an exam, no doubt the time spent would have been wasted away had I failed to crack that exam.<br /><br />But CAT is not like that. The paper aims to test the skills I’ll need in order to be a manager. So whatever I learn, even in case I don’t crack CAT, I can apply in my life.<br /><br />Over these past 5 years, I feel I have changed much more than would be expected. From school to college, no doubt everyone changes, but from college to career, the transition takes time. The switch from college to job, everyone goes through, but I find that most people haven’t yet started thinking in terms of career growth at that time. Granted that most people drift into their careers, I still think I should be glad I chose mine through rational deliberation.<br /><br />In all this, I haven’t mentioned one major factor influencing me throughout: people. All the people I learned from, all those whom I call my friends… if it weren’t for you all, there would be no blog, no articles even and I’d have missed a chunk of what makes me what I am. To write for the sake of my friends to read and appreciate and comment is my devout passion. By reading this, you’re making it happen.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-81135560405386848612010-10-09T12:06:00.005+05:302010-10-09T12:22:49.791+05:30Ascent<p>Yesterday, I spoke to an old friend of mine for 10 minutes. Nothing so unusual about that, but it was for me. It was remarkable because she made me think: think about the big questions in life such as career, personal life, family, friends etc. Nothing remarkable in that either- everyone thinks about these, but it was remarkable for me because it changed my thinking.<br /><br />What she said struck a chord. Here I was, going on a totally different track than I was used to. I needed a wake up call to slow down my pace of life.<br /><br />For the past several months now, I have been pushing myself hard to prepare myself to enter a B-school. The pace has been hectic (but enjoyable), and the ride anything but smooth. I had cut myself off from almost everybody, surrounding myself with books. Slowly, I stopped writing, -one of my favourite activities- stopped reading books, just spent my time preparing, setting higher and higher targets. I couldn't sprint at this pace in a sustainable manner.<br /><br />Then, I started slowing down, taking each moment as it comes, scrapping all my grand and elaborately constructed study plans. I did whatever I felt like doing at the moment, without pushing myself to devote such and such time to such and such topics. Surprisingly, I fared better. Unsurprisingly, I felt much better.<br /><br />Yesterday, when she told me to not lose my friends, I understood. She was speaking from her own personal experiences. I'll not lose my friends, and I'll go a bit further than that: I'll get back to writing.<br /><br />Kashyap is someone who is defined by the company he keeps, the books he reads, and importantly, his emotional outpourings in the form of articles, blog posts, diary entries et al. Renouncing all that in order to compete in a rat race is not a holistic way to live life. Eventually, these things will catch up with you. I can't go very long without putting pen to paper, nor can I do without all those things which define me, just as a race car can't sacrifice pit stops to save time.<br /><br />That doesn't mean I'm pulling out of the CAT race. It just means I'm learning to balance all aspects of my life. I can run a 100m race at full speed, but not a 10km one.<br /><br />I do have to admit, though, that all this effort was worth it, and if I had a chance to do it all over again, I'd do things no differently. But, for pointing some things out to me, due to which I started thinking things over, and for kindling these thoughts, I owe you one.<br /><br />Thanks. You know who you are.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-58421793430515694172010-04-04T07:35:00.004+05:302010-04-04T07:45:19.994+05:30Failure<p>I admit I have failed. I have no qualms whatsoever in admitting failure. To quote Michael Jordan, "I have failed over and over and over again and that is why I succeed." I can recognize failure and live with it. To me, its worth losing a battle to win a war. After all, these defeats are our teachers. They teach you what victory can't. For a major victory, you need to have many defeats worth of experience under your belt. That's why serial entrepreneurs eventually succeed.<br /><br />Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from failure. So in essence, wisdom is the sum total of all your failures. That's why a truly wise person is not young. I'm wise for my age, but I still have a long way to go.<br /><br />I recognize the hand of destiny guiding me along my path. I trust in that hand to lead me to more experiences to enhance my learning. Victory or defeat, come what may, is a learning experience.<br /><br />If you introspect, you'll realize that your failures paved the way for all your major successes. It's so for me. A person who has not failed has failed to try anything new!<br /><br />Every experience starts at the beginning with failure, when you're new to it. So, how can you ever become good at something if you don't fail at it? You don't fail only if you keep on doing something which you have already mastered, in which case you are living in a cocoon.<br /><br />So, don't be afraid of failure. Don't reward failure either, although you can celebrate and cherish it.<br /><br />I end by quoting Thomas Alva Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-75817148474241859792010-03-17T14:43:00.008+05:302010-03-17T15:24:05.759+05:30The decline of man<p>Humans have supposedly evolved since the end of Ice Age- through Stone Age, Iron Age, etc. aided by discoveries and inventions such as fire, wheel, metal works et al. We have recently passed through the Industrial Revolution, mass production, moved on to a technological age, and are now in the middle of an Information Revolution, shifting from blue-collar to white-collar jobs, where knowledge workers are most sought after.<br /><br />Man, through the ages, has become better at manipulating nature and is now so adept at it that he is able to live in a completely artificial environment. We fly objects heavier (denser) than air, we’ve built an underwater hotel, constructed an artificial island, drilled deep into the Earth to extract natural resources, and even gone beyond the Earth: landed on the Moon, sent probes to Mars, built an International Space Station and ousted the Moon from its hitherto privileged position of being the Earth’s only satellite.<br /><br />We have advanced so much technologically that we have our own virtual world, can view three-dimensional images from a two-dimensional screen, even store 3D images (hologram). We may even be on the verge of determining the origin of the universe (LHC).<br /><br />All this proves that man is getting smarter over time; it is no more a Darwinian Survival of the Fittest world. In fact, society is judged by how well it protects its weak. The common man now leads a much more comfortable life than even the kings of old. We have shed all our resemblances to the primitive man. A new age for man has arrived. A smarter man in a better planet.<br /><br />Is that really so?<br /><br />Has man really become smarter over time?<br /><br />Consider three dimensions of man- physical, mental and spiritual.<br /><br />In the physical realm, man has definitely grown weaker in recent times. The average urban youth expends less energy than his predecessors. Muscles atrophy without use. An anthropologist has confirmed this trend, stating that even Olympic gold winners are physically no match for the ancients.<br /><br />Still not convinced? Picture an ancient monument built with stone. Can modern man match those structures without the aid of current technology? We as a generation are physically weaker than our ancestors.<br /><br />True, we may be physically weaker, but that’s only because the evolutionary advantage conferred by physical strength is less now. We need to exercise our brain more than brawn.<br /><br />Our intellectual capability has not increased over time. Rather, our technological dependence has. We are outsourcing our brain’s work to computers. You might argue that this is natural progress from the abacus. And we still have to design algorithms. So we are at least intellectually on par with our ancestors.<br /><br />Let us look at three fields- art, science and mathematics.<br /><br />Artists of note- Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso- are all dead and gone, the last of whom, Picasso, passed away in 1973. To date, they are still legends in the art world. No famous artist since their time has come up to their league.<br /><br />Still, this doesn’t prove my point. History seems to recognize artists only after their time. But, in this inter-connected world, where fame spreads faster, we still haven’t heard of any great artists. Art is dead anyway, so let us look at classical music.<br /><br />In Western classical music, there is still no one to match Beethoven (who composed even after losing his hearing!) or Mozart. In Indian classical music, Tyagaraja is still revered. Great singers sing his compositions.<br /><br />Shakespeare still reigns supreme as the bard of English literature. Homer’s works are still considered epic. To date, Ramayana and Mahabharata are the most comprehensive epics which contain answers to deep philosophical questions.<br /><br />There exists no profound modern works with as much depth as our religious scriptures, which, if you know where to look, contain the answer to every question.<br /><br />In fact, we have deteriorated so much that we cannot even decipher or understand these great works!<br /><br />Take science. We have made a lot of progress, true. Science accepts and discards new theories based on new evidence, after careful evaluation. It is not a clear progression- it is a series of continuous progressions and regressions which ultimately produces a fundamental breakthrough.<br /><br />The greatest breakthroughs in science were all made by the previous generations: the theory of relativity, the law of gravitation, Newton’s laws of motion, electricity and magnetism, Archimedes’ principle, the list goes on...<br /><br />That’s not the complete picture. We have advanced in quantum mechanics, gone beyond the atom, propounded string theory, bent light, and may soon discover the origins of the universe. So, we can confidently say that we have advanced in science.<br /><br />Yes, we have advanced so much in science that we can now destroy the Earth much more easily than before. The combined nuclear arsenal of all countries can annihilate all mankind.<br /><br />When man shifted his attention from pure science to engineering and technology, he lost his scientific temper. The burning curiosity to discover the world we live in has faded away. Man now works on ideas which have a monetary value. Experiments are now conducted not to advance research, but to monetize it. We live in a world where every researcher wants to patent his ideas, to use it to gain an advantage over the common man, rather than contribute freely to the cause of human scientific advancement.<br /><br />Where science serves as a vassal to money and power, there will be no true science. Art for art’s sake and science for science’s sake is the way to progress.<br /><br />Living in the modern world, we have become slaves to money, fallen into a rut, dulled our faculties with boredom and drudgery, thus deteriorating our mental ability.<br /><br />What is the single most important breakthrough in the field of mathematics?<br /><br />Zero.<br /><br />Like science, mathematics was also subjugated to money. It bred the financial services sector. It complicated the world so much that at one point, it became a tool of greed and deceit. And the world came crashing down…<br /><br />People threw good money after bad money, without knowing what they were doing, in a mad rush to get rich quick, led by the nose by unscrupulous corporate entities who disguised the true nature of the investment. The value they got out of this?<br /><br />Zero.<br /><br />Advances in mathematics- risk modeling, quantitative finance, actuaries- are all for money. It has complicated the world so much that it made people rush into investments without regarding the fundamentals. Investments were made on faith, because no one could comprehend the fundamentals.<br /><br />The entire world deserves a big F in mathematics. Progress in mathematics has only led to a collapse- of investor confidence, of people’s hopes of financial stability. It has swallowed up retirement savings, made people lose their faith in their government and corporates; in short, it has led to a loss of trust, the foundation on which society is built.<br /><br />Have we advanced or deteriorated? Are we really better human beings now?<br /><br />Morally and spiritually, we have again degraded. Fat bonuses and golden parachutes to unethical executives, all paid from taxpayers’ money. Increase in the number of broken homes, violent crime, drug, alcohol and cigarette abuse, widespread corruption, a see no evil hear no evil attitude to tales of sexual harassment.<br /><br />Atheists who call God a delusion, anti-theists who mock all theists and consider themselves supreme, godmen who cheat the gullible masses, communalists and jihadists who seek peace through violence, sadists who take pleasure in the slaughter of innocent animals, proselytizers who pay money for conversion, spiritual guides who tweak the scriptures to serve their own selfish needs.<br /><br />Taken by and large, all this seems to point toward the decline of man. We are physically weak, morally corrupt, intellectually inept and spiritually disinclined.<br /><br />Is this the future of humanity? Is it all downhill from here?<br /><br />Maybe not.<br /><br />There have been no great wars since 1945.<br /><br />There have been no dire famines in a long time.<br /><br />Life expectancy has increased due to advancement in medical technology.<br /><br />There are much fewer dictatorship regimes.<br /><br />More and more people are embracing the social cause.<br /><br />There is resurgence in traditional practices like yoga, ayurveda, meditation, pranayama etc.<br /><br />More people are environment conscious.<br /><br />Maybe we are at cross-roads, where we have to choose between more darkness and a new dawn.<br /><br />Maybe we are now waking up, and will choose the right path.<br /><br />If a wound does not cause pain, we do not acknowledge its existence. We realize the pain now. This may lead to healing.<br /><br />Evolution is never a straight path forward. It is a series of few steps forward and a few steps backward. We move back and forth and in the end we advance a little. We may soon advance.<br /><br />It is said that the hour is darkest just before dawn. The dark hours of humanity may now be behind us.<br /><br />We are soaring in the skies, rising through the dark clouds, beyond which lies a brilliant sunshine.<br /><br />We are approaching our Utopian dream.<br /><br />Someday, we shall achieve it.<br /><br />So no, I refuse to believe in the decline of man.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-40278506376042774152009-11-15T08:07:00.002+05:302009-11-15T08:37:04.952+05:30An extract from my diary<p>I feel so peaceful after reading a travelogue about the Himalayas. I'm surrounded by the sound of silence with no sense of urgency, which reinforces this tranquility. These moments of bliss have to be enjoyed with the people you love. I'm enjoying it alone.<br /><br />I went for a walk in the park in the morning. That was peaceful too. I was the only person there. Nothing to block my view of nature. You see nature in all its pristine glory if you take a walk just after it rains. A rainbow would have completed the spectacle but I didn't even notice its absence when I was drinking in the sights. <br /><br />I hear birds chirping outside the window now. I have the three windows on the left side of my room open, the door closed, and I'm sitting alone and writing this, undisturbed. Outside, I hear a child talking. <br /><br />A more creative person or a naturalist will probably appreciate this peace more than I do. I can truly appreciate this to the best of my ability now. I can understand why artists are a breed apart. They get this in a way no one else does. I'm neither happy nor sad, just floating in a spiritual trance. It is a sort of euphoria which you can rarely enjoy, and it is also very fleeting. I love nature.<br /><br />I write like I am possessed with a writing spirit. Didn't feel like taking the pen off the paper. The words come through in a rush. I don't feel like doing anything now. I'm in a sort of reverie. I don't even feel the need to do anything. I can go on writing. <br /><br />I have no sense of time nor emotion. It feels like I'm floating in a timeless zone in the middle of nothingness. It is a place devoid of anything, but with no void to fill, no emptiness. It just exists, as do I and the world around me. I didn't have to go into meditation to achieve this. All I had to do was write, and drink in the beauty of nature, staring out of my window.<br /><br />Right brain users are blessed indeed. They don't need to adhere to any norms. They are able to appreciate life and nature more (and music too) which is a rare gift. A gift which is very hard to cultivate, as I've found out. If it involves doing something, I can surely get it. As it is about art, beauty and nature, it is a little harder to get at. You can only get it if you don't try hard to get it. You have to let go and suspend yourself in a trance. I feel I have had the first glimpse of this boundless joy. These memories shall stay.<br /><br />I slept really well last night. A deep sleep which lasted for nearly 11 hours. Sleep is pleasant when you don't have to get up early the next day and work. You can really relax and rid your mind of all commitments and stresses generated during the day.<br /><br />You have to enjoy these days when everything is in your favour. The weather is extremely pleasant, you have all the time in the world, you're in blissful solitude surrounded by silence. These times are sent to us to teach us a lesson- to not take life seriously but to enjoy each passing day. They also make you spiritual. Such moments clear your mind. You're fresher than a blank slate.<br /><br />There is no future, no past. I'm living in the moment, opening myself to this experience, for who knows, soon it may be no more.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-34334025840628369582009-11-05T23:40:00.001+05:302009-11-05T23:46:53.791+05:30The Real Me<p>I'm not the kind of guy to wash my dirty linen in public. I didn't want to blog about personal things when I first started blogging. I've been true to that till now, barring a few exceptions. Somehow, recently, there is this inner urge to just let go and express everything in my heart here, in plain sight for all my friends and well-wishers. As I sit in front of the PC and mull things over, this urge is getting stronger. So here I am typing, at 10:55 PM, a night before a day before my University exams (7th sem) start. What follows is going to be totally random, without any unifying theme.<br /><br />I'm thinking about a blog post by Scott Adams in which he highlights the best defects to have. He says: " I assume other people want me to go away as soon as I show up. It’s probably not always true, but I like to play it safe. A little bit of me goes a long way. That’s why I try to leave before I use up my welcome. It’s a tight window."<br />Carl: “Hi, Scott."<br />Me: “Gotta go.”<br /><br />I'm reminded of this because I feel that way now. I feel I've used up the entire welcome mat, dirtied it, trashed it and torn it into quark sized leptons. It's like, I'm the nerdy guy in the comic strip who desperately tries to win a date with a female who eggs him on to make an utter fool of himself.<br /><br />I'm also thinking about something I read in a friend's blog: "Before leaving to church one day I decided to ask my friends if they wanted me to pray for anything. All my friends immediately replied asking me to pray for something or the other for them (absolutely nothing wrong with that), all except for one friend. He asked me to pray for everyone’s health and happiness, not just for himself. It really touched my heart that he thought of others and wanted to pray for them. It made me realize that goodness and love can even be spread through our thoughts and prayers."<br /><br />In Sanskrit, we have a prayer for it. Loka samastha sukino bhavanthu. (All the world's people should be healthy). I'm not quite sure of my translation, but it's something along those lines.<br /><br />For the past two weeks or so, I've been contemplating love. As i delved into this, I realized a lot of things. I realized that, firstly, I'm not the type of person who attracts love. Reticence isn't an asset for love. Secondly, love is more about responsibility and commitment than a wondrous feeling. I'll not get into the rest here.<br /><br />I'm also thinking about this: "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."<br /><br />I've been fascinated by the words 'No man is an island.' That fascination is still strong even though I've mulled over it so many times.<br /><br />To close this totally random ramblings of a lonely soul, I quote one of my favourite sayings-<br />"People are often unreasonable,<br />illogical and self centered;<br />Forgive them anyway.<br /><br />If you are kind,<br />people may accuse you of selfish or ulterior motives;<br />Be kind anyway.<br /><br />If you are successful,<br />you will win some false friends and true enemies;<br />Succeed anyway.<br /><br />If you are honest and frank,<br />people may cheat you;<br />Be honest and frank anyway.<br /><br />What you spend years building,<br />someone could destroy overnight;<br />Build anyway.<br /><br />If you find serenity and happiness,<br />they may be jealous;<br />Be happy anyway.<br /><br />The good you do today,<br />people will often forget tomorrow;<br />Do good anyway.<br /><br />Give the world the best you have,<br />and it may never be enough;<br />Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.<br /><br />You see, in the final analysis,<br />it is between you and God<br />It was never between you and them anyway."<br /><br />If you've read till here, give yourself a reward. You deserve it.<br /></p><br/>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-22338550987482214322009-10-30T09:06:00.005+05:302011-01-05T14:27:24.518+05:30Of games, and of gamers Part II<p>Ever since I stopped gaming, I've become quite preachy about gaming. When I used to play, I used to go by the quote "Everything I know in life I learned through playing Ragnarok Online." Now, I'm advising my friends to control their gaming impulses and do something productive instead. Double standards, you may cry, and perhaps you are even justified in saying that. There is a reason for this change. Read on. <br /><br />This blog post was actually triggered by a RO text file I have on PC, in which I've copy pasted a few lines from some random guy's signature in some forum I visited long ago:<br /><br />"Those who accuse us for being mindless gamer freaks are nothing but naive human beings. They think they know us, and they judge us, but <em>in reality</em>, they know nothing about our world. They are not aware that we are mathematicians; we compute to manage our financial assets and create the greatest character build throughout the whole Midgard. They are not aware of the flawless hand-eye coordination that we possess and use in order to battle against enemies that lurk around us. They are not aware of the relationships that we bridge, and that we mix trust, honesty, loyalty, and camaraderie (friendship) into it. They are not aware that we are artists and poets who bring creativity to brighten up our own little community. They are not aware that we are tacticians who are the best in developing strategies for wars against our foes. They are not aware that we do live to the fullest, just not in the way they, the society, think we should. We should not let them bring us down. This is a campaign to keep our passion burning despite what others might say! ROK on guys!"<br /><br />All in all, this is something every gamer can identify and agree with. Here's where I deviate: A virtual world which has all the good aspects of a real world one can expect in a game, is still a virtual world. <br /><br />If you say your reality (you, me, the Universe) actually exists and is not in itself an illusion- let us not get into that now by the way- then, does it not make more sense for you to enter one world fully (reality) than have a leg each on two different worlds (reality and fantasy).<br /><br />For the sake of argument, let us assume that we cannot explore either world to our heart's desire in this life. So, choosing between a game and reality is akin to choosing between a 10% progress bar in two games and a 25% progress bar in one. This one game has to be played whether you want to or not, it is the game called life. So why not stick to just one reality than fragment your time with multiple worlds. <br /><br />I can find an obvious counter point to my own argument: Your reality does not encourage your unique creativity, humour, computational skills and the friendships you formed. A fantasy game which brings all these collectively to the table as well as entertains, is an enriching real-life experience which will stand you in good stead as you develop as a human being. <br /><br />True. I've been lucky enough to have had this experience too. That's why I don't denounce gaming or subscribe to any of the social stigmas concerning gaming. My approach (the reason I stopped playing) was from an economic perspective. If, instead of playing, I use that time to build my career, I'll have a more fulfilling real life. Once I gain financial independence, my whole life is in my hands. I can probably enjoy much better games too, after retirement. That made sense to me. <br /><br />Instead of advancing two progress bars side by side, I'm advancing just one, a bit faster. That's just my choice. As Robert Frost says-<br /><br />"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— <br />I took the one less traveled by, <br />And that has made all the difference. "<br />(The Road Not Taken)<br /><br />UPDATE: Just got this comment from the person I took the quote from: <br />"Hello, I am the writer of the passage you quoted. Isn't it funny, I randomly remembered that I wrote this a while back, so I tried looking for it, but I couldn't find it on my hard drive. I took my chance and googled a few lines I could remember, then I stumbled upon your blog. Huh. LOL. Just a few words from me: Kudos to you for choosing to advance only one progress bar! :) Yay! I sooooo wanted to do that before, to quit, and just quit, but I really couldn't. So hats off to you! I guess my life is so just so intertwined with the game that it's virtually impossible. Heck, I even met my future husband in that game. (Seriously.) So this is what I decided to pursue: BALANCE. I admit, I wrote that passage a while back when I was less mature. However, I am happy to report that even though I am still playing the game, I am also pursuing a very successful real life career (which pays for my car, my lattes, and my stilettos! lol!). Anyway, enough of my babbling. To sum it up, glad you found your happy ground. :) -tari saralonde P.S. No, I'm not a random "guy", I'm a random "girl". :)"<br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-46381731606188822962009-10-15T13:10:00.005+05:302009-10-25T19:49:05.822+05:30Deepavali<p>The grandest festival celebrated in India: Deepavali. Fondly referred to as the festival of lights. Unfortunately, the grandeur associated with this festival is falling short in cities. City slickers are far removed from the roots of their religion and hence view it with disfavour. To office goers, all deepavali means is a two day holiday. People don't seem to appreciate this festival as much as they should.<br /><br />Here are the main reasons people give to not celebrate deepavali:<br />1. Bursting crackers causes pollution.<br />2. I don't believe in festivals.<br /><br />I'll address point no. 2 first. All humans celebrate festivals. For instance, did you know that Olympics was originally a festival of the Greeks? Now it is celebrated the world over. By watching the sporting events, you are celebrating a festival. All sports started as festivals. The icing on the cake is, if you're into sports, you are celebrating someone else's festival while scorning your own. And you probably do not know how Deepavali originated. <br /><br />Deepavali is our festival to celebrate the triumph of good over evil. To many, it now symbolizes the triumph of Lord Rama over Ravana, but there are other roots for the festival too. If Deepavali was westernized, it would be the celebration of the end of WWII and all that it symbolized: triumph of the Allies against the Axis of Evil, a victory for democracy over fascism and nazism. And the ones you see mocking our religion now would probably celebrate such a festival, blindly imitating the west. <br /><br />Anyway, if you really do not believe in any festival, why don't you work during festival days. Decline your company's holidays and go to work. If you don't believe in festivals, why act like you do and waste productive time mocking those who do. <br /><br />Some say bursting crackers causes pollution and therefore we should not indulge in it. Fine. Your electricity usage causes pollution too, so how about living in a hut with no lights, fan or AC? (Electricity is produced by thermal power plants which burn coal as a fuel. This releases black smoke which settles over the surrounding area and also pollutes the land).<br /><br />There is, however, a rational argument against bursting crackers which I concede. You say it is unnecessary pollution which can be avoided. I'll accept this viewpoint, but also show you why I differ. <br /><br />Firstly, there is no such thing as 'necessary pollution'. Pollution for economic development is a westernized idea, which we have blindly accepted without question. You don't really need to go to shopping malls to shop, or buy products wrapped in fancy plastics. Those things pollute, but you accept it saying it as a part of development. You can argue over this, but that sparks an entirely different debate so I'll present another idea to support my view.<br /><br />The per capita pollution of the developed nations is the highest in the world. Here's a simple equation to put that in perspective.<br /><br />More money= more purchasing power<br />More purchasing power=more consumption<br />Consumption=Pollution<br /><br />Also, if you look at pollution statistics, you can see that basically every activity pollutes, directly or indirectly. A Google search releases as much as 7g of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And there are millions of Google searches being made every day. Now THAT is pollution. <br /><br />Volcanic eruptions cause massive pollution and they occur very frequently (if you count the ones which occur underwater too). Plus, factor in the pollution caused by all the wars going on in the world now. <br /><br />Now, think over this: Does all this pollution caused all over the world make you happy? No. Will enjoying a spectacular fireworks display with your family to celebrate an auspicious occasion symbolizing the triumph of good over evil make you happy? You answer the question.<br /><br />Don't be fooled into giving up your happiness for the sake of the environment. <br /><br />Have a happy (and safe) Deepavali :)</p><br /><br /><p>Update: The air pollution levels were down in Chennai this time. Also, the noise pollution levels were down. The change was apparently due to the preference for aerial fireworks as opposed to the 'vedis'. These were splendorous, comparatively environment-friendly, more interesting to watch: a win-win scenario in all.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-45520042892567780962009-08-29T05:55:00.005+05:302009-08-29T06:13:09.659+05:30First Anniversary<p>On the 25th of August last year, I took the first step. I started my blog. For the first few months, I was just swatting flies due to lack of content. Soon, I started learning and my writing started to evolve. 36 blog entries later, I can really see the difference. This difference also reflects on how I've grown as a person. A lot has happened in this past one year, events that have cumulatively changed my life. And you, my blog readers, have been aware of the subtle emotional undercurrents I've had. <br /><br />I got an overwhelming response for 3 out of these 36 entries. The times I went off on a different theme- my life- my friends liked it. Those 3 entries were <em>A Letter to God, The Reply and Happy Birthday to Me</em>. Little did I know when I started my blog that I'll be sharing my personal life here. I was against it, as a matter of fact. Now, my inhibitions have been lowered. I'll write about myself.<br /><br />Rather than I talk about myself, I'll let someone else do the talking. A few days ago, I was chatting with one of my friends, and she happened to mention that she's very intuitive. I asked her to predict my character. This is it in her own words:<br /><br /><em>"You love being alone, but can't be without people either, only few people who care about you. Friends, friendships and love are very important to you but you don't show it out. You will do anything for a friend or for someone you love. If something happens, the first person you'll blame is yourself. You want to achieve something great in life and you are capable but you doubt yourself and you compare yourself with others all the time and that can be a setback."</em><br /><br />I'll add one more thing she told me. When I told her about my pathetic love life (don't ask) she says she believes I'll find someone who loves me and cares about me, and that she will chase after me....<br /><br />HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BLOG!<br />(I know it's a few days late but it's the month that counts :P)<br /><br />PS> Read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It deals with intuitive reasoning.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-91254492464466884282009-07-20T18:51:00.002+05:302009-08-29T05:55:33.088+05:30Philosophical Musings<p>I was reading Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage recently. It was boring at start, but it gets quite interesting as you turn the pages. He talks of how it's bad to be at peace with your self- something which I found out for myself too. He says you stop chasing your dreams when you feel secure. I know that feeling. You enjoy the moment so much that you feel your dreams can wait. It is only when you are unhappy that you truly chase your dreams. I found that out for myself too. Wisdom comes from within, knowledge without.<br /><br />Here's an interesting thought experiment: How do you know that any event which you were led to believe happened in the past actually happened? You were not there to witness it. You can't be sure it happened. So, why do you believe in it? Because someone told you it happened, or you read about it somewhere. You accept such tales without question. What if they did not actually happen, what if it was all an elaborate plot to fool you? Theoretically, it could be done. If it was, then your reality is far removed from that which you perceive. Your thoughts are based on your perception of reality. Therefore, they are flawed, and so are your beliefs.<br /><br />In such a scenario, of what use is knowledge, when it will only serve to strengthen your warped view of reality? Your beliefs could very well be wrong or misguided. In that case, should we attach any importance to our beliefs? Pause for a moment now to think over it before you read on.<br /><br />Ideas and beliefs keep changing over your lifetime. That's natural. It is a consequence of age or maturity, as we like to call it. That doesn't make a discarded idea any less important. Indeed, warped reality is a positive motivator. I realize that this is an arbitrary claim, but bear with me for a while. Some people set seemingly unrealistic goals for themselves and achieve it too. (Read The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). In their reality, it is a realistic goal. Realistically, it's unrealistic. Which leads me to conclude that realism is in itself an unrealistic belief, that life is neither black nor white but different shades of grey.<br /><br />If such is the case, we need to hold on to our beliefs even more strongly, since they enable us to perceive an otherwise unintelligible world. A flawed perception of reality is better than none at all. And when our flawed perception makes sense to us and we achieve something that we deem to be productive, it proves my point. It is better to be wrong and still do right than to flounder.<br /><br />Consider the following example: A child plays with other children of his age and develops athletic skills. This child grows into a sportsperson, representing his class, then his school, followed by city, district, state and finally his nation in some particular sport. At the start, the child is competitive only with his peer group and tries to become better than similar aged children. Soon, his talents are noticed and as he is encouraged, his talent grows. His range of competition broadens, and he is exposed to others who are equally competitive. <br /><br />If this child is told, when very young, that he has to compete with all the other kids in the world, he will surely have nightmares about the heavy expectation put on his shoulders, expectations which he is not confident enough of achieving. The child's reality actually changes as he faces different levels of competition, yet we can assuredly say that this is a necessity. In other words, as reality grows, beliefs change. This change is for the better.<br /><br />Even fantasies are unreal, yet we indulge in them. They are a means of escapism and entertainment. Similarly, we can treat beliefs as a means to an end- the end being what we want to make of our life. <br /><br />It is said in the Hindu religion that the world is an illusion and the ultimate goal of man is to break free from it and enter the ethereal plane (for lack of a better word) where all life is a spirit; from which we can understand that even living an illusory life is worthwhile. Therefore, I conclude that this question can be left unanswered.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-39560991157979699392009-06-28T05:45:00.001+05:302009-06-28T05:49:29.059+05:30Happy Birthday To Me<p>I turn 20 today. As I look back over the years, how I’ve changed, how I’ve grown, I’m filled with mixed feelings. I’ve come quite far in this journey called life, but what have I got to show for it? I’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge- all of which are of no practical use. I’ve questioned why certain people do certain things and come off worse than the people whom I questioned. I’ve tried to understand this world using logic, using emotions, using philosophy and religion- and I’m back right where I started. <br /><br />Sure, I’ve touched the lives of a few people whom I call friends, most of whom read this blog (which is why I blog!). Apart from that, I haven’t much else to show for my 20 years of existence. If I were to die today and God asks me to justify my time spent on earth, what would I answer? That I just lived like a parasite, squandering the resources of the planet without contributing anything, and worse, leaving behind my carbon footprint? That I’ve failed over and over and over again, but unlike Michael Jordan, haven’t succeeded? But there, I’m just making it harder on myself.<br /><br />I’ve had a few private successes, but nothing I can gloat over or get recognized by society. Like, I’ve battled with and against various pixelated images on my computer screen. I’ve won quite a few virtual rewards. I’ve succeeded in making quite a few good friends, but people now judge friendship by the amount of people you have on a social networking site- friendship is a numbers game today.<br /><br />On the down side, I’ve screwed up more often than I can recollect. The time when a birthday gift to a girl exploded on my face, the time when my terrible penalty kick cost our team the game, the time when I fought with a friend over a game of DotA, the time when I grossly misjudged another friend, all those ego clashes, the list goes on.<br /><br />Terrible as that may seem, when I weigh it against all the wrongs done to me, it balances things out. A triple backstab worthy of a manta style divine rapier Rikimaru- betrayed by 3 mutual friends who conspired against me on the same day. People who say they will get back to me later and never do. Someone who calls me a friend but thinks hard before spending a few odd rupees on a call. Someone who treats me as a Rent-A-Friend; there for you when you want him, on hold and waiting at other times. Someone with an inflated sense of ego who won’t compromise or say sorry for anything. This list is vast too.<br /><br />This is a classic example of the working of Karma- whatever you do comes right back to you. So I deserve all that. This is also why I sometimes lack in sympathy when someone tells me their sufferings. I view it as bad Karma- either that or God is testing them. According to me, unless you live in misery and sorrow, you cannot understand happiness. Pleasure and pain are two sides of the coin.<br /><br />Life’s going to get a whole lot tougher and challenging henceforth. I’ll soon be leaving the nest in search of my own, living within my own thoughts most of the time. I’m entering the final year of engineering, the last year of my life as a full time student. But this is good. Facing the unknown challenge is what keeps my adrenalin going. <br /><br />There is also going to be a phase shift in my attitude. I’m no longer going to be Mr. Nice Guy. (Thanks to my two best friends for making me realize all that I’m doing wrong). No more returning deliberate missed calls. No more friendships with undeserving people. The flowerbed may look thicker with weeds, but it’s just the few flowers which really matter the most. I’m weeding my garden, throwing away all my emotional clutter. I will now sail free over the ocean of life, flowing with the current, appreciating whatever tidings it may bring. <br /></p><br/>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-44088370312204926372009-06-24T09:49:00.002+05:302009-06-24T10:11:36.996+05:30Games and Violence<p>Is aggression and violence in games making the players take to violence in real life? Some old fashioned people would directly answer yes, without considering any evidence, simply because they don't like games and therefore would say anything degrading games. They would condemn violent games without taking a second look at them. Personally, I view violent first person shooter (FPS) games with distaste; they give me a headache and are not at all a means of relaxation and recreation, which is what a game means to me. But then, I'm not denying that they are recreational to others- they are.<br /><br />Saying that violence in games makes the gamers naturally aggressive is going over the top though. Drawing a parallel, playing NFS should then make drivers reckless. However, this has never been raised as an issue. And it would have, if games mirrored reality. Even though road accidents are as common as a one rupee coin, no one blames games for them. Why? Because it's not the gamers who have a high likelihood of causing an accident. Indeed, with reflexes acquired from skilled driving in games, they may possibly have a better chance of averting a high speed disaster.<br /><br />Therefore, blaming games for inciting violence is a very biased way of looking at the issue. Gamers know the difference between fantasy and reality. No one wants to play a game resembling real life- no one would possibly want to play a game where a sprite sits in class or office all day long and then comes home to do homework. No, thank you. It'd be more interesting to spend some time shooting down aliens on a console and then going back to the actual homework. <br /><br />Games are merely an escape from reality; they allow us to immerse ourselves in a fantasy world. And violent games have their appeal because they are far removed from our peaceful daily life. Also, killing some noobs releases all the pent up tensions from a hard day of work, and makes us relaxed. Thus, these games are beneficial too!<br /><br />That said, I don't like the amount of blood and gore in some games. It's a major turn-off for some people, especially girls. Here's when you see games mirror reality: the people who can't stand blood in a game can't stand the sight of it in RL too.<br /><br />To sum up, to say that violence in games causes violence in real life is like saying playing contact sports causes aggression. If that were so, we'll all have to grow up playing tiddlywinks, and who knows, maybe boys will fall in love with barbie dolls too :-)<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-52012372245378041502009-06-16T00:56:00.003+05:302009-06-16T01:23:31.274+05:30A Question<p>Here's an interesting question: Do I want to win in life, or do I want to be happy?<br /><br />When I was marching towards victory, I haven't been very happy (satisfied maybe, for having achieved some milestone). But for the past year, I've taken it easy and I've been very happy. And I like this happy life. So, do I want to win?<br /><br />Let's argue this in another way. You've worked hard these past 3 years, so it's O.K. to take time off to be happy. But there will come a point when I have to take up the mantle again. That time will come when I can no longer revel in my past accomplishments. Till then, I'm doing fine.<br /><br />I haven't been doing any self-analysis or retrospection for quite some while now. I'm so at peace with myself that I don't want to do it. Heck, I've decided to play without rules. Having fun has become one of my goals. I just want to live in the present and be happy. The future can take care of itself for now.<br /><br />People tend to envy the ones who win. But, is it really a good thing to win? The ones who do spend so much time and mental energy on it that they don't have any left to appreciate the finer aspects of life. In other words, the high achievers don't live a very balanced life.<br /><br />Picture this: An independent guy who can do his own cooking, all the menial chores, can maintain his garden, is healthy and sociable with his neighbours, respected as a dedicated worker, a family man with spirituality, religion and altruistic tendencies. Add in a loving wife and kids.<br /><br />Now, contrast this with a high achiever who puts in 70-80 hour weeks, a brilliant decision maker and efficient manager, successfully running a business in a field with cut-throat competition, is respected for his analytical ability and business skills. Is it uncommon to associate such a person with a small social circle, a not so happy married life, too important to do his own cooking and household chores, not highly concerned with anything that is not materialistic, even a lifestyle disorder. I think not. <br /><br />Which sort of person would you like to be? It should be noted that there are achievers who have a satisfying personal life. In that case, I guess they weren't stars in school or college but mediocre people. Only then would they have realized the value of leading a balanced life, of having fun without thinking of it as wasted time, or attaching an opportunity cost to it.<br /><br />That's the sort of person I'd like to be. I know the value of human relationships, money and power. I want to be a person who is better than most in my field, yet not the best. The best guys never have it easy. Eminem is a living example. I want to be a freelancer. That way, I can say no when my heart says no and my wallet accepts.<br /><br />I shall work hard to achieve this ideal: to be successful, to gain money and power, at the same time leading a rewarding personal life filled with love, family, friends, spirituality and altruism.<br /><br />This is an excerpt from my diary, written in mid May. I wrote this because I read this question in a book on relationships. And guys, I'm posing this question to you too. Decide whether you want to win, or be happy. Ask of yourself this question whenever you embark on a new venture, and review your priorities often. Be clear on what you want to do, focus on what you want, and may success be with you. <br/></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-7350449502770643132009-06-13T15:59:00.002+05:302009-06-13T16:36:53.882+05:30Random Stuff<p>I have this word file called important in which I copy paste all the well, important stuff which I find on the internet, which I know I'll want to refer to in the future. Not links, phrases or paragraphs which appeal to me. I'll share these:<br /><br />"You can’t turn people into puppets with hypnosis, but it does tell you how to get in synch with them in a way that they are more likely to trust you and want to have you around. That’s handy in every walk of life. And you can tell if what you’re saying or doing is having a positive or negative impact as you are doing it. That helps a lot too."<br /><br />This one is from the Dilbert blog, from a very, very old post on Hypnotism. This was the first thing I saved actually (or the first thing which I saved after the nth purging of my PC from viruses). It especially struck me because I was seeing someone having this very same hypnotic quality, and I noticed the effect of that on me. <br /><br />"When you're feeling alone, like no one cares, read this cuz its absolutely true: Every night , someone thinks about you before they go to sleep, At least fifteen people in this world love you. The only reason someone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you. There are at least two people in this world that would die for you. You mean the world to someone. Someone that you don't even know exists loves you. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look. Always remember the compliments you've received. Forget the rude remarks."<br /><br />Although it sounds a bit like wishful thinking, I just liked it.<br /><br />"SHED- separate the treasures, heave the trash, embrace your identity from within and drive yourself forward."<br /><br />This was from some site which propounded reducing the material clutter around you to achieve a sense of spiritual liberation. I know it sounds corny, but it does make sense.<br /><br />"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails, while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."<br /><br />Truly mind-blowing quote, but no idea where I read it. Maybe it was in someone's sig in one of the many forums I frequent.<br /><br />"Five simple secrets of success (People skills necessary for success)<br />Rapport, empathy, persuasion, cooperation and consensus building"<br /><br />Don't mind this. I'm into management, leadership, self-help and corporate training in a big way. I probably picked this up from one such book.<br /><br />"Relationships do not end when a person dies. Some other aspect of it deepens and begins. Your relationship isn’t over, it is just no longer externalized. The pain involved is the consequence of love. That’s what love costs. Some people say the price of love is too high. They will take many incarnations to get by that fear, which is fine. However, there is a point in which fear does not lead our life anymore. We are willing to love even if it is painful at times.<br /><br />Love is the only rational act of a lifetime. Everything else pales in comparison. Things that are motivated by love can still turn out badly in the physical world, but the intention for love does not turn out badly, it can only bring a deeper capacity for love."-Stephen Levine<br /><br />Profound. If that touched you, google Stephen Levine or get your hands on Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.<br /><br />"Immanuel Kant- Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge.<br /><br />The mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles <br /><br />The concepts of the mind (Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless—thus the famous quotation, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."<br /><br />That's a bit of psychology/philosophy. I do have varied tastes. Having obtained some knowledge of this realm (as much as Wiki provided), I feel Kant's school of thought is sound. I agree with Freud too, in certain things, but I'm in disfavour of the Jungian school of thought. <br /><br />"Just because you do the same thing day after day everyday, doesn't mean life is boring. The trick is to find what is interesting in the repetition - to find meaning for every iteration. Then, and only then, will you discover that there is actually something new in what you have been doing, and you never really saw it because you never really looked."<br /><br />Reminds me of my own blog post on Repetition. It's true in essence, there is a meaning in every iteration, if only you care to look for it without thinking of it as a drudgery.<br /><br />"No offences , but over my schooling , engineering and MBA , <strong>there have been numerous occasions when students from the reserved categories have made it while far smarter and deserving ones have been left in the cold. It’s all too moving to read about the son of the rickshaw puller who made it to Infosys , but what about the guy from the general category who had double the brains but could not get into a decent engineering college because the rickshaw puller’s son got in through the quota</strong> ? I am sure that one day, there will be little kids dropping years to get into nursery class."<br /><br />And THAT is why I really hate India, the whole damn country is ruled by greedy politicians who mess with the education system and wreak havoc in the lives of millions of students year after year. Reservations in IIT and IIM? The dream institutes for many brilliant minds, who work hard and long, only to be beaten at the end by the son of a biscuit who proudly presents his SC/ST/BC certificate (thus degrading himself calling himself a 'backward person', and without even having as much self-respect as to care about his own status), walking away with the seat of a more deserving candidate. <br /><br />That was from the blog of an ex-IIM guy by the way. On another note, I don't condemn the people who make use of their 'free' seats. I'd do the same if I were in their place and have the same lack of dignity and self-respect. <br /><br />There's lots more, but I'll save that for another time.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-68365653185003840652009-06-10T08:49:00.007+05:302009-06-10T13:24:17.506+05:30God, Science and Atheists<p>Suppose I were to say that a bridge, a perfectly engineered structure, was created without an engineer, that it just happened to exist and I discovered it. The scientific community will ridicule that saying a bridge can't be created by nature without human intervention. Yet, these very same people propound that a 'supernova explosion' created the universe. (The Big Bang Theory)</p><br /><br /><p>Has any scientist ever created anything using a bomb? The mightiest bomb ever created, the nuclear bomb, destroyed 2 cities and still continues to do so after well over 50 years. So, can the scientific community kindly explain how a 'big bang' created the universe, to the tiniest detail- we, the Earth are all just the tiniest details if we are to believe the expanding universe theory- without some Almighty's assistance?</p><br /><br /><p>If a single particle exploded to form the universe, who programmed or triggered the explosion? Or do you claim it happened just like that? By sheer chance.</p><br /><br /><p>Even believing the supernova explosion theory, God had to create that explosion. What are the chances of your toaster exploding if you just stand still and wait for it to happen? And even if it does explode sometime in the next 10,000 years, what are the chances that this explosion will create, not destroy. </p><br /><br /><p>Clearly, there are unknown forces at work which you scoff at because you can't understand them. Or you are too drunk by the power of science and blinded by your arrogance to notice a force more powerful than you ever imagined. Even if you do notice it, you tell yourself it doesn't exist since you won't believe in things you don't understand and won't try to understand the things you don't believe in. That's a vicious circle of ignorance you are in. Or is it that you prefer this ignorance because you don't want to acknowledge that there is someone more powerful than you?</p><br /><br /><p>"A group feeling is a wonderful thing." Humans are social animals; they like groups. It gives them a feeling of belonging. They even risk personal safety and comfort for the sake of the group. That's why you have people willing to die for their country, willing to die so that someone else enjoys freedom, soldiers who throw their bodies at a bomb to protect their friends. </p><br /><br /><p>Why do all that? When a person dies, he's going to leave this world anyway. How does it matter what the world does when you are no longer a part of it? The most natural thing to do, then, would be to protect your own skin rather than giving it away for a 'cause'. What's the glory in dying for the country? The 'country' is just a piece of land. Is that land worth more to you than life? Apparently, it is for so many. </p><br /><br /><p>From a scientific point of view, patriotism is utter bullshit. But no one dares to say that in public still, because a hardcore patriot may hear them and make life hell for them. Thus, this very unscientific feeling is spared from contempt.</p><br /><br /><p>Soldiers believe in a cause, something unbelievable which in the long run doesn't even exist and are called heroes. Theists believe in God, and are said to be deluded, while God is very much existent and his presence can be proven. Jesus brought about Christianity, bringing hope and faith to many. People started believing in a new cause- a cause which didn't require them to sacrifice their life, but to lead it in such a way that they become a better person and benefit humanity. Hindus have to lead a life of Dharma, and our Karma affects our afterlife. </p><br /><br /><p>Religion is a good cause, one which-<br />1. gives a group feeling; people of one faith<br />2. benefits entire humanity, not just the people in a small piece of land<br />3. is open to anyone, regardless of their age and physical strength<br />4. guides you along your path, towards your destiny<br />5. gives you meaning in life and opens you to the path of spirituality<br />6. is peaceful and preaches love and altruism</p><br /><br /><p>Is that not a better cause to live for? (Not die for, note that!) So, who are the real heroes?</p><br /><br /><p>But, we are now in a society that wants to go against religion, against the very thing which unifies all humanity and is the reason for human kindness and the superiority of humans over the animal kingdom. We are now in a society where people think it cool to not belong, to defy God, to defy the tenets by which humans are bound. We have people who use science as a weapon and crusade the world trying to prove God doesn't exist, deceiving themselves by saying it repeatedly, blocking their inner voices which screams at them to acknowledge God. </p><br /><br /><p>We have self-proclaimed atheists, who are mostly emo kids saying vile things over the Internet, emboldened by anonymity to say such puerile things against religion which they would dare not utter in public. And we have some atheists, who actually don't believe God exists. They are poor souls lost in life who move through it without any meaning and die without even understanding the true purpose of life. </p><br /><br /><p>And then there are agnostics. These are people who believe in themselves more than they believe in God. These are the people who, while acknowledging that God may exist, don't really care about it either way. They observe both sides, and draw their conclusions from facts and logic, rather than from the blind ignorance which characterizes atheists and the over-zealousness and the ends justify the means attitude which characterizes some religious zealots. </p><br /><br /><p>I'm a believer. I choose to be one. Not because someone wants me to believe. Not because I was born one. I believe because I want to believe. I believe in God because I know God exists and looks after us. To the non-believers I'll say this: If you want to prove something wrong, you can disregard 100 people's logical arguments for it and still think you're right. Unless you open yourself to the possibility of God's existence, you will live in ignorance of his doings and continue to live in your ignorant bliss. </p><br /><br /><p>But I'm no bigot. I'll say this in favour of atheists. If you are altruistic and believe in doing good for humanity, believe in love and more importantly believe in yourself and are driven to do good deeds by your own free will, you are following your own religion and although you may blind yourself to the presence of God, you are probably better off than the theists who follow a religon because they fear God. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-6198117381574578292009-06-04T18:58:00.002+05:302009-06-04T19:02:59.360+05:30I'm BackI read this somewhere in this vast cyberspace, and I couldn't help but laugh on reading it. So here I am, sharing it with everyone else. Beware, geeky stuff ahead!<br /><br />Engineering vs. Computer Science : A Perspective<br /><br /><p>Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. he showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob and a lever. "What do you think this is?"</p><br /><br /><p>One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16 element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer, with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back in a week and I'll show you a working prototype."</p><br /><br /><p>The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."</p><br /><br /><p>"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, poultry. the specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes and waffles; pork divided into sausages links and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs and various omelet classes."</p><br /><br /><p>"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object, and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."</p><br /><br /><p>"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required also."</p><br /><br /><p>We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message, 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."</p><br /><br /><p>"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel Pentium Pro with 32 Mb of memory and a 2Gb hard disk and a 17" super VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!)"</p><br /><br /><p>The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they lived happily ever after.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-52976561647759938042009-03-30T18:20:00.003+05:302009-03-30T19:27:16.200+05:30Thoughts on Gaming<p>Recently, while researching MMORPG's, it struck me that they were valuable tools for economists and other researchers in conducting studies. They could study the economy, growth, relevance of prices of certain common rares to inflation, the way of currency generation and currency sinking[1], how a balance is maintained and how the economy moves during a sudden imbalance.</p><br /><br /><p>Psychologists could take a survey of the players to understand the mentality of the gamers, or even go so far as to recommend them as a therapy for depression, withdrawal etc. A parallel can always be drawn between real life and virtual life. Also, due to the anonymity of the online world, it is easier to obtain contributions from normally reserved people.</p><br /><br /><p>Game developers are the most benefited from MMORPG research. While developers of other game genres get feedback or criticism from their fan base only after their games go up for sale, MMORPG developers receive steady, real-time feedback with which they can rectify mistakes and pull back dissatisfied gamers, as well as lead the game the way their players like it. This minimizes their losses and maximizes their revenue.</p><br /><br /><p>I stumbled upon an article in Ars Technica which says that indeed such research using MMORPG data is on the anvil. Thanks to a partnership with Sony, a team of academic researchers have obtained the largest set of data on social interactions they've ever gotten their hands on: the complete server logs of Everquest 2, which track every action performed in the game. The data contained is a massive 60 TB!</p><br /><br />The article can be found here: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/aaas-60tb-of-behavioral-data-the-everquest-2-server-logs.ars<br /><br /><p>However, I feel that real-time assessment is easier and much more lucrative, mainly because delving into past trends is a hard job, and also because the future of that game will be vastly different from the past[2]- though this point is not valid for researching into the game economy. You might say that it is not valid for assessing player mentality either, but take into consideration the fact that the player's interest or love for the game grows with time (usually). Thus, their attitude towards and in the game vastly changes, just as time spent on the game fluctuates due to RL.</p><br /><br /><p>A unique phenomenon that is observed in MMORPG’s using a cash shop or item mall system is that while the players grumble about having to pay a subscription to play the game, they are willing to spend quite a sum to obtain these cash shop items. The revenue from these items far exceeds the subscription revenue. The general trend is now an f2p (free-to-play) game earning from the item mall.</p><br /><br /><p>Gamers are attracted to different types of MMORPG’s, and gamers in the same MMORPG have different ways of playing, different reasons to play- indeed, the reasons are as diverse as the players themselves! It is fascinating to see how a virtual world so closely parallels our real life. If you are someone with a passion for analyzing such scenarios, I suggest you look up the Daedalus Project on MMORPG research, cyber culture and MMORPG psychology.</p> <br />Here’s the link: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/<br /><br /><p>MMORPG players carry over their experience, relationships and knowledge obtained through the game to real life, enhancing it and in some cases changing it for the better. I should know; it was so for me. So here’s to all you guys and gals who experience this wonderful virtual world. Happy playing:)</p><br /><br /><p>[1]- Every MMORPG has a way of currency generation, which is mostly from selling loot to NPCs (Non-Player Characters). Currency sinking is the way in which the game takes away currency from the players. This is very essential to prevent steep inflation and improper systems could lead to total imbalance. Generally, currency sinking is through buying consumable or restorative items from NPCs, for leveling up skills, for upgrading armor and weapons etc.</p><br /><br /><p>[2]- This holds true for a game researcher especially. However, it is useful to study past trends and correlate with the present to get an idea of where the game is heading. A game can’t keep expanding and adding new updates- there is a point beyond which this will lose appeal. Also, the soundness of the game mechanics can be gleaned only from studying the game history.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557693487461060761.post-49616083324036230932009-02-23T13:49:00.002+05:302009-02-23T13:54:11.368+05:30Entertainment (R)evolution<p>Entertainment is a way of amusement, a means by which to forget the worries of life and immerse oneself in a fantasy world- be it through a play, a book, or a movie, or, more recently- through a game. </p><br /><p>The entertainment industry is keeping pace with technological innovations. They are cashing in on the broadband penetration, animation and multimedia advancement, easy availability of high resolution video capturing devices, etc. There has been a sea-change in such a short period that I think we can call them (the current entertainment media) New Age Media. </p><br /><p>The new age media has displaced the conventional ones- namely, the print media. Today, people are more interested in movies and games than in books. One of the oldest and most revered forms of entertainment is slowly fading away into insignificance, much to the chagrin of the literary folks. Parents too are aware that time spent by their kids reading is slowly being replaced by movies and games. Many look askance at this trend. However, before coming down heavily on the new age media, let us first examine the evolution of entertainment. </p><br /><p>For the sake of argument, assume that the earliest form of entertainment was verbal- talks given by wise people, visual- dance and art, and abstract- music. Along came a means of recording spoken conversation. This was great! The wise men could now supplement their discourses with text, saving themselves time and energy and also improving their reach. Some looked askance and condemned this because they were afraid this invention would make them obsolete. Nevertheless, this invention revolutionized entertainment, and still exists in the form of books.</p><br /><p>The next major revolution in the field of entertainment was the invention of still photography, followed by motion picture technology. Images could now be captured and replayed. Opera lovers condemned this form of recorded entertainment. They believed that theirs was the only ‘cultured’ way of entertainment. The pictures were for the ignorant and foolish masses. However, motion pictures had a lot of scope, and film-making boomed. Today, we even have film schools- an educational institute dedicated to the study of an entertainment media!</p><br /><p>Even today, movies are criticized for showing violence and nudity, but they have mass appeal and some (documentaries) are even educational. Man has adapted the available media to suit his needs.</p><br /><p>The next big thing was AI. Computers, programming, high level languages and creativity contributed to the next big concept- Artificial Intelligence. AI brought with it a new form of entertainment- gaming. It has dazzled people of all ages, spawns across many genres, and has created an entire industry based on it. Heck, it continues to thrive even during the global recession.</p><br /><p>Many people were (still are) against games because they are so addictive. But now, they are waking up to the fact that it is here to stay. This just goes to show that the gaming industry is evolving just like the film industry did. The whole concept of entertainment is changing. Unlike movies or books, games are not passive. They are aggressive sports, which trigger a lot of different parts of the brain. This means that gaming is definitely not a form of relaxation (not to be confused with recreation).</p><br /><p>The point to be noted here is that what’s acceptable today was disputed earlier. We have grown used to certain things over time. Likewise, I’m sure gaming will soon become an acceptable activity. If there is one thing history can teach us, it is that we live in a dynamic society where change is the only constant. It is better to flow with the tide than to resist it. So, let us all usher in the New Age Entertainment Media with a smile:)</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0