Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Many people react to the whole problem of “fake news” saying that they’re not so dumb as to believe anything they see or hear. Of course, they’d check up on what they read, they say. The mistake in that stance should be obvious. If that’s all it took to identify fake news, why are so many people falling prey to it? Is it even remotely possible that you alone are the kind who questions and checks while others are suckers who fall for whatever lie is told to them? Danah Boyd points out that fake news operates in a far more subtle manner : “It’s subtle content that is factually accurate, biased in presentation and framing, and encouraging folks to make dangerous conclusions that are not explicitly spelled out in the content itself. That’s the beauty of provocative speech: It makes people think not simply by shoving an idea down their throats, but inviting them to connect the dots.” On the Net, Facebook and Google are most people’s sources of news. They want you to come back, s...

A while back, I’d written about Yuval Noah Harari’s comment from his first book, Sapiens , that capitalism and consumerism are intertwined , that the combo is like the “shark that must swim or suffocate”. The instinctive reaction of many to that is one of revulsion: why is everyone so greedy? Can’t we just be satisfied with our current comforts and possessions? In his follow-up book, Homo Deus , Harari answers those questions by using India as the example: -          India’s population is growing at the rate of 1.2% p.a. -          Simple maths then tells us that unless India’s economy grows by at least the same amount each year, “unemployment will rise, salaries will fall and the average standard of living will decline”. -          Next comes the kicker: even if India’s population stabilizes, and the middle class is satisfied with its current standard of l...

There’s this book, Does My Goldfish Know Who I Am? , on simple answers to great questions kids ask. Neuroscientist Tali Sharot had this answer to an 8-year-old's question about why we don't have memories from the time we were babies and toddlers: “We use our brain for memory. In the first few years of our lives, our brain grows and changes a lot, just like the rest of our body. Scientists think that because the parts of our brain that are important for memory have not fully developed when we are babies, we are unable to store memories in the same way that we do when we are older. Also, when we are very young we do not know how to speak. This makes it difficult to keep events in your mind and remember them later, because we use language to remember what happened in the past.” I tend to both agree and disagree with the first part of the answer. On the one hand, babies learn very fast. How can they do that if they have no way to “store” data and associations? On the ot...

In The Ocean of Churn , a book on events in and around the Indian Ocean, Sanjeev Sanyal wrote about what he calls the “philosophy of history”, or the style of writing history over the ages. Initially, all events were written about as if they were God driven. Others called it Fate, but it was the same concept: humans were merely the actors on the stage; the director was an external entity or force. Next came the Great Man Theory of history, a style where history was narrated as if it was decided by “heroic (or demonic) individuals whose thoughts and actions disproportionally influenced the course of history”. Think Alexander or Genghis Khan or Akbar. To some extent, this was obviously true since kings made the big decisions. Then again, as Sanyal reminds us: “History was financed directly and indirectly by ‘great men’ who liked to highlight their own importance.” The next phase of history is usually narrated to “emphasize grand social and economic forces”. The role of indivi...

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of PayPal and Tesla, expressed his view on the simulation v reality debate : “The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following. Forty years ago we had pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year. Soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality… So given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is there a flaw in that argument?” John Wheeler, the physicist who coined the term “black hole”, made this point in a famous...

I so agree with this line from Santosh Desai’s article : “The selection of Yogi Adityanath as the UP CM is not an easy decision to read and make sense of.” This choice seems so counter to the BJP approach in the Modi-Shah era, namely: “So far, Hindutva has been used as a retractable weapon, deployed with some flexibility. It comes to the fore on occasion, and is otherwise deployed symbolically… The implicit promise is that Hindutva would be assertively deployed to win elections, but the focus would shift to talking about development and governance once victory was achieved.” Why then did the BJP chose this man as UP CM? After all: “The current strategy is working and the landslide win in UP is proof of that. What additional gain can a more muscular display of Hindutva bring to the party?” Desai’s answer/guess? The BJP/RSS is thinking beyond Modi, i.e., beyond 2019 (or 2024, if Modi wins again in 2019). Is the RSS/BJP (correctly) assuming that the man after Modi probably...

See the explanation of brains in vats here … The last blog in the series talked about the brains in vats thought experiment. Now let’s flip that scenario: can we humans create a simulated universe? The easiest way to attempt such a thing is via software programs. Bozhidar Bozhanov writes about just such a programming competition where the aim is to come up with the rules for a universe that finally resulted in this: “One’s universe had to give birth to conscious beings that manage to uncover all the laws of their universe and also figure out they are being imagined.” This isn’t as easy as it sounds: forget a universe that produces life forms; even coming up with rules that don’t cause a universe to collapse are hard! In fact the competition’s so hard that the contestants are given three chances to step in and interfere with their simulations (though there are some constraints on what kinds of changes they are allowed to do) during the course of the game. The universe...

A few years back, I’d written about the talk that Nandan Nilekani , the man behind Aadhar, gave on the reasons for yet another ID at my office. In his book Imagining India , he has one section on digitization/electronification initiatives in India over the decades. The first attempt to computerize the passport department in 1986 “got stuck in a quagmire of resistance from department officials”. That being the general attitude, most attempts in those days were “covert, backdoor operations”. The needle was moving, albeit very slowly… -          Liberalization in 1991 brought out the need for easy ways to monitor our institutions. The Harshad Mehta scam brought matters to a head. The BSE and its brokers fought any digitization measures tooth and nail. Ok then, said SEBI, we’ll just create a new stock exchange, the NSE, which will be digitized from the get go. The NDSL was next and “demat” became the norm. All this increased investor confidenc...

There was this joke going around after the recent state election results that Modi and Amit Shah would have already started working on the next set of states… while Rahul Gandhi would be headed abroad for yet another break. The way Goa and Manipur played out, it looks like that’s exactly what happened. Two states where nobody got a majority, where the Congress got more seats than the BJP… and yet the BJP got invited to form the government. That, of course, is a very gray area: there are no clear rules on who gets invited first. The largest party? The one with the “best” chance of forming a government? How does the governor even decide that? No wonder the case has gone to court. The obvious things have happened for sure: horse-trading, and money must have changed hands. That apart, as Mihir Sharma wrote : “The BJP simply appears to have outwitted the Congress… (Because) whatever actually happened, the Congress moved too slowly, and the BJP moved swiftly.” Why didn’t the Co...

As the results of the state elections came out on Saturday, the one that garnered all the attention was UP. Obviously. How could a state considered impossibly complicated with its castes, sub-castes and religious divide yield such a landslide outcome to any one side? And yet, Amit Shah has done his magic twice, during the Lok Sabha elections and now. Amazingly, the BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate in UP! So was this a “majority vote against a minority veto”? Has the Modi-Shah combo nailed the numbers perfectly to become the “Hindu mascot” without “running after the minority votes”? Is the Muslim vote bank on whom all of the opposition relies no longer sufficient to win? Has “sickularism” finally gone so far that the majority has begun to assert itself? Or is it also because Modi, the orator, promises growth, progress and jobs while the opposition only plays to the fear of the minorities without offering anything positive for anyone? If this is a trend that is here...

(This blog will not appear to have any connection to maths and make you wonder about the title. So let me clarify at the start: it’s meant as a build-up to the next blog that will make the connection clear). Have you heard of the “brain in a vat” thought experiment? Here’s how it goes: imagine that you are not who/what you think you are; instead you are just a brain hooked up into electrodes that can perfectly simulate the experiences of what you think is the outside world. The kicker with this thought experiment? You can neither prove nor disprove that it is true! And since you can’t disprove it, it follows that it is entirely possible that nothing about your perception of “reality” is true either! I don’t know if this is in any way similar to the Hindu concept of maya …but it does sound similar to some extent. I am in that camp which feels that just because something cannot be disproven doesn’t make it true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. And practically speaking, I wonde...

Continuing with the theme of polarized opinions, I recently discovered a few more reasons why things are unlikely to change any time soon. Like last time , this one too is for reasonable people, i.e., not fanatics. These lines by Bertrand Russell are a warning sign as to when things may not be as black and white as you think: “If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.” It's hard to believe, but just because you can see some of the flaws in the views you support doesn’t mean that you can see the merits of the opposing view. To understand and ...

When it comes to feats in space, India is among the best. Mangalyaan got into Mars’ orbit on the first attempt, something nobody else managed on their first try. Not the Americans, not the Russians, not the Chinese. More recently, we put the maximum number of satellites in orbit with one launch: over a hundred, almost 3 times the previous record! And, as it turns out, our guy didn’t goof up his memorable line from space. When Rakesh Sharma, India’s first astronaut in space, was asked how India looked from space, he replied: “Saare jahan se achcha.” Sure, you say, that was a rehearsed answer. Of course, it was. But do you think Neil Armstrong didn’t have his first line from the moon rehearsed as well? Remember that line? “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The first time they hear it, almost everyone asks what’s the difference between the first part and the second part of that line. Yes, there is none! There would have been a difference had Armstr...

In the ultra-polarized world we live in, where the right is on the ascendant and the left won’t give in, where a war (of words, mostly; but not always) is fought daily on some issue, why do you think it is like this? Note : Set aside the fanatics who are impervious to reason for this discussion. First, even reasonable people have this tendency that Seth Godin cites : “Someone gets caught cheating, or breaking a social taboo, or undermining the fabric of our culture in order to get ahead... And the fans of the team rush to his defense. It happens to spiritual leaders, in sports and in politics.” You might think that presenting (reasonable) people with balanced information of the pros and cons would have one of two effects: 1)       A dilution in positions, at least by a little, since they should have a better understanding of some of the opposing arguments. 2)      Or at worst, people would ignore the information that does...

Have you read those books where you get to pick options at different points of a story? If you want the hero to take the injured man to the hospital, go to Page 35. Or if you want the hero to pursue his assailants, go to Page 40. I ran into a variant of that with my 5 year old daughter. There’s this filler on one of the kids’ channels where they tell the same short story each time. It goes something like this: there are 3 goats who must cross a bridge to get to the grass to graze. As the first one tried to cross the bridge, a troll caught it and wanted to eat it. The frightened goat told the troll to leave him and catch his bigger brother instead. The troll lets him go and catches the second goat. It too escaped citing that the next goat is even bigger. When the troll tries to catch the biggest goat, he head-butts the troll and escapes. Upon which, my daughter suggested this variant, “Couldn’t the 3 rd goat just have said catch the next one, he’s even bigger? And then of cou...

The whole Gurmehar Kaur s***storm that’s in the news these days is such a bread-and-circus (non)event. At least not anywhere near as big a thing as it is being made out to be. The easiest part of all this is to the unacceptable death and rape threats made to her just for voicing an opinion. That’s totally wrong. Having said the obvious, look at other aspects which are not so black and white. Take her pic with the placard: “I AM A STUDENT OF DELHI UNIVERSITY. I AM NOT AFRAID OF ABVP. I AM NOT ALONE. EVERY STUDENT OF INDIA IS WITH ME. #FIGHTBACKDU #STUDENTSAGAINSTABVP.” This one is complicated because it involves many issues. Does she have the right to an opinion? Absolutely. Is she right in saying that many others agree with her? Obviously. But is it true that every (or even most) students of India agrees with her? Obviously not. So some counter-responses were only to be expected. Nothing very interesting in any of this. And that should have been the end of it, but this i...