Viswanathan K's Thoughts

“It will no longer be optional for machines to have ethical systems.” -          Gary Marcus The common theme in Hollywood movies like Terminator and Transformers is a world where (man-made) machines have taken over the world. And turned on us in a battle for world supremacy. So why do people assume that such super machines would necessarily turn evil? Or at the very least, prove to be bad for us humans? I used to think it was just Hollywood’s choice to pick the machines-turned-on-us option (after all, who wants to see a movie where the super machine is benevolent, right? How boring would that be). Until I read 2 different articles with 2 different reasons of why that may not just be a Hollywood doomsday scenario: 1)       How does a programmer code morality in a machine? After all, as Nicholas Carr wrote: “We don’t even really know what a conscience is, but somebody’s going to have to program one no...

I’ve played a lot of Monopoly when I was a kid, and like anyone at that age, neither knew nor cared about the history or the origins of the game. So it was kind of a surprise to me to read this history of the game that talked about how it may have been designed to drive home the downside of monopolies and the benefits of co-operation! Officially (and as per the patents record), Monopoly was invented by Charles Darrow. But it looks like a very similar game was invented by Lizzie Magie to teach: “the philosophy of Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land.” Henry George was disgusted with the economic system of the day where landowners got rent even though they were doing nothing. Whereas the people who worked on that land and produced value (agricultural or industrial goods) made nothing since most of their income got transferred as land rent. So he concluded that “private property in land...

We believe (most of us anyway) that the ends don’t justify the means. So we (rightly) place emphasis on the means we choose. But there is a flip side of going overboard with that approach too: you may never reach your goal! And no, it’s not because we followed the rules while everyone else was breaking them. I realized this aspect when I read this quote from over 30 years ago by the CEO of a textile company called Indian Head Mills: “The objective of our company is to increase the intrinsic value of our common stock. We are not in business to grow bigger for the sake of size, nor to become more diversified, nor to make the most or best of anything, nor to provide jobs, have the most modern plants, the happiest customers, lead in new product development, or to achieve any other status which has no relation to the economic use of capital. Any or all of these may be, from time to time, a means to our objective, but means and ends must never be confused . We are in business solely...

“On the Internet, every headache becomes a brain tumor in four clicks or less.” -          Ron Gutman, HealthTap founder I am not the guy who Google’s about health issues or medicines prescribed by doctors. My reason’s not that I don’t trust Google (after all, Google’s just the gateway to other sites). Rather, huge fan of the Internet though I am, I don’t believe in questioning professionals based on just about anything you can find on the Internet. And also as I read on this article, if you trust the Net on medical issues (aka Dr.Google): “That weird pain in your side could mean appendicitis, food poisoning or pregnancy.  That nasty rash on your arm could be poison ivy, a spider bite or cancer.” Turns out they even have a name for such diagnosis in four clicks: cyberchondria! But I am obviously in the minority here. The 2 in 10 minority to be precise. A survey in the US showed that 8 in 10 Internet users say their last healt...

I read this recent blog by Nicholas Carr (he of the “ Is Google Making Us Stupid?” fame) criticizing Google for its Autocomplete feature (you know where you start typing and Google shows you likely ways you are likely to finish that query) and now its attempt to give you an answer before you even asked the question! So what is Carr’s objection to Google’s prediction algorithms? His minor grouse is that: “Google’s goal is no longer to read the web. It’s to read us.” I am guessing Carr doesn’t like his mind to be read. Even if it’s only by an algorithm. As an aside, if we are that predictable, doesn’t it open up questions about free will? But ok, that’s a topic for another day blog… Moving on to his major grouse: he quotes Eric Schmidt, who in 2006 when he was Google’s CEO, felt that Google should “tell me what I should be typing.” Imagine that: to give you an answer before you even asked the question! How awesome would that be? Well ok, that feels a bit creepy too. ...

Sherlock Holmes asked Watson in A Study in Scarlet : “What the deuce is [the solar system] to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.” Continuing in that vein, Holmes even announces his intent to unlearn this bit of information, “I shall do my best to forget it”. Are Holmes’ remarks the reason why even very knowledgeable teachers struggle to teach their students? Because the student is thinking, “So? What do I do with that new bit of information you hurled at me?” After all, most people think of teaching the way Nobel-Prize winning physicist and professor Carl Wieman started: “When I first taught physics as a young assistant professor, I used the approach that is all too common when someone is called upon to teach something. First I thought very hard about the topic and got it clear in my own mind. Then I explained it to my students so that they would understand it with the same clarity I...

Often people wonder how (other) people can be so evil, so thoughtless? Don’t they have a conscience, they wonder? As someone who is naturally cynical, I’ve never spent much time on that topic: to me, the answer has been that most people are evil, dumb or both. Of course, in my more rational moments, I know that can’t be it. Certainly not all of it, anyway. Surely there must be some other answer to explain how the scale of atrocities by many (and the do-nothing-against-it response of the rest) could happen during Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia? Steven Pinker’s comments on the need to defend dissenters and whistleblowers seems to explain “collective delusions”, which in turn could be the answer to the evil-on-a-grand-scale question: “You look at them retrospectively and you wonder, 'How could everyone have been so mad?' On top of being evil these ideas seem patently ludicrous. How can you have a collective delusion overtaking an entire society? And it looks like one o...

As someone who is a beneficiary of outsourcing, I have surprisingly never wondered whether there is any way to identify which jobs can or cannot be outsourced. On second thought, maybe it’s not surprising: after all, I am the guy getting a job, not the guy losing his, so why would I be thinking about it? Until a Cambodia or a Vietnam “Bangalores” us… So it was kind of illuminating to see this analysis by a Princeton economist, Alan Blinder on the topic. Blinder points out that the trend started earlier in manufacturing, and so the manufacturing sector is now accustomed to competing with foreign labour. Unfortunately, that led to one of those “correlation is not causation” errors: many assumed that the possibility of outsourcing was based on highly educated (highly skilled) v/s less-educated (or less-skilled). This misconception is reflected in the thinking that upgrading one’s skills is the way to keep oneself employed. Blinder believes instead that the litmus test for outsource...

Some weeks back, there was the news about how the US had considered blowing up the moon as a show of strength during the Cold War. This was around the time the Russians put the first man in space and the Americans felt they were woefully behind the Soviets. There followed the (inevitable) denials that it was never a serious idea, that the world (let alone the Americans) never had the firepower to blow up the moon, that even a massive nuclear explosion on the moon would have just been a blink-and-you-miss-it event in Moscow (and that’s assuming the sky was clear and someone was even looking)… On a more recent note, there was a petition filed in the US that the government build a Death Star, you know, the Star Wars kind. Well, the US government had to respond because the petition had collected the minimum signatures needed! Titled “This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For”, the US rejected the petition (obviously) and went on to list the reasons: -    ...

I remember this time over a decade back when we were returning home from Noida and I had to call out directions using (then the best map) Eicher Maps. One would have to do things like holding the map at a weird angle to align it with the direction you were travelling or risk mixing up your left and right turns. Fast forward to today and pretty much everyone uses Google Maps. Speaking of which, I found this interview with Michael Jones of Google Maps revealing. When asked about the biggest change that’s happened to maps, he said: “The major change in mapping in the past decade, as opposed to in the previous 6,000 to 10,000 years, is that mapping has become personal. It's not the map itself that has changed. You would recognize a 1940 map and the latest, modern Google map as having almost the same look. But the old map was a fixed piece of paper, the same for everybody who looked at it. The new map is different for everyone who uses it...So a map has gone from a static, st...

A couple of my friends at work who earn (obviously) today’s salary will at the same time expect prices to be at the same levels as our parents’ time. And so they will feel pretty much any non-essential spending is extravagant. It would be OK if they restricted their thoughts to their own lifestyles but no, they will also remark on others going to a multiplex instead of a theater, criticize the purchase of a high end car…you get the idea. Me, I don’t belong to that school of thought. So I could so relate to Sumana Mukherjee’s comment in an article about frugal living taken too far: “…it is important to recognize that there is of course a thin line between thrift and deprivation, prudence and cheapness, and being economical and being miserly”. The other extreme is spending like there is no tomorrow. I am not advocating that either. And then there are those philosophical souls who keep telling you that money can’t buy you happiness. Sure, that’s true, but as I read in som...

Shashi Tharoor’s proposal to name whetever new law might (or more likely, might not) come up after the recent rape victim and the reaction from political quarters got me thinking. Forget for a minute whether or not this was just a publicity stunt by Tharoor. Instead focus on the statement itself: isn’t it the sort of comment that many influenced by the West, urban Indians would have voiced? In other words, isn’t it the way “people like us” think? Next, look how our politicians shot his proposal down saying there is no provision to name laws after people. Since when did politicians know or care about any provisions or laws? Apparently it is OK to name every money draining scheme after Queen Sonia’s dead hubby, but hey, naming a law after the person who might be the trigger for that very change? That’s outrageous! Competent or not, sincere or not, this incident shows that people like Tharoor who is much more similar to people like us than the Laloo’s and Mayawati’s of this...

Think of slavery and the image you get is of people taken in chains kicking and screaming to some far off land to toil like animals for the rest of their days, right? So did I…until I heard of this case of people voluntarily becoming slaves. But wait, it gets even more weird: these guys even paid monthly fees to remain slaves ! So what was going on, you ask? The guys we are talking about lived in ancient Egypt between 190 BC and 130 BC. They chose to become temple slaves, a “privilege” for which they paid a monthly fee. So was this a tale of religious insanity? Not at all: this was a very level headed choice these guys were making! The slave contracts that Egyptologist Kim Ryholt unearthed and deciphered showed that 90% of the people entering these contracts could not name their father. Which would suggest they were children of prostitutes. And that in turn meant they belonged to the lower classes. Therefore, the Pharaoh could use them for forced labour, you know for diggin...

The brutal rape and eventual death in Delhi has raised the cry for the death penalty for the perpetrators of the crime. That reminded me of a talk show long back where a member of a women’s organization spoke against the death penalty for rapists. Her reasoning made perfect sense back then. And it makes sense today as well. So it would be good to revisit that angle with a cooler mind. So what was her reason? She pointed out that once you put death penalty on the table, judges would become even more demanding when it comes to rape cases. That in turn would reduce the conviction rate even further than the pathetic level today. To which I would a few more reasons: -          There would be an endless appeals process: And if we get another president like Pratibha Patel, the appeal would never get handled one way or the other, and no death penalty would ever get executed. -          As a country, we a...