Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Philosopher Karl Popper wrote in his book, The Open Society and its Enemies , about the paradox of tolerance: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Today, depending on your point of view, one of two things has happened: -          What Karl Popper warned about has happened, as exemplified by the rise of the Right. -           Or the Right is the set of people who have risen to “defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant”. Regardless of your take on the topic, “identity politics” and “questions of religion” have fueled the rise of the Right and the fragmentation of the Left, in India and the West. The “Old Left” is dead, ...

My dad always spoke highly of the German Field Marshall from World War II, Erwin Rommel aka the Desert Fox. In his book Messy , Tim Harford talks about how being messy can help you in many way (“Messy” is used in both the literal and figurative sense through the book). One of the benefits of being messy is that you could win far more! And guess who Harford talks about at length as an example of winning through messiness? Yes, Erwin Rommel. During World War I, when he was a Lieutenant, Rommel learned a lesson during a dangerous skirmish with the French that he made his philosophy for warfare: “On the battlefield opportunities arose from confusion, and (he) tried to generate more opportunities by creating more confusion. His rapid movement and bold independent action created a feedback loop: the enemy would be confused; that would produce unpredictable openings; Rommel would seize those openings, creating more chaos and further opportunities.” But wouldn’t that confusion work b...

Many older people will rue the “good old days”. Some aspects are obviously individual preferences; which means they are subjective and hence there’s nothing to argue about on those points. How about something more objective, something that is not just an opinion? Steven Pinker looked at the evidence of the amount of violence over the years in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined : the book’s title makes obvious the conclusion he came to. But that seems so counter-intuitive when ISIS, Ukraine, Gaza, terrorism, violence against children and rapes are in the news/our minds all the time. Most people would agree with Michael Ignatieff’s description of today’s world: “The tectonic plates of a world order that are being pushed apart by the volcanic upward pressure of violence and hatred.” Pinker wrote an article summarizing his book’s points . So how does he explain all such news? “News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. W...

When I ran out of books to read to my 6 year old, I took out Calvin and Hobbes with the idea of reading her a few strips that night and find something she’d like later on. But boy, is she hooked! So what’s appealing to her? The naughtiness, obviously. Calvin’s imagination is highly relatable. And as a girl with a stuffed toy, she finds the idea of a stuffed boy that comes to life as simply awesome. But what surprised me was her appreciation of Bill Watterson’s drawings, especially when he draws Calvin’s expressions. I guess the ability to appreciate drawings is a side-effect of the art work that she does as part of her yoga classes near home. At school, she’s been learning addition. So I read her this strip: Never one to let go off a chance to show off, she added 3 + 8 on her fingers. Then with an even-I-know-the-answer smugness declared that the correct answer was “11”. The icing on the cake though was when she added, “Obviously, the answer has to be greater than 8 (sinc...

Academics are left leaning in most countries. As Jonathan Haidt wrote : “Most people know that professors in America, and in most countries, generally vote for left-leaning parties and policies.” A recent survey in social psychology showed a left to right ratio of 14:1! This would by typical of the ratio in most academic circles. But does that even matter? Yes, because of the not-too-uncommon perception that professors are right because of their degrees and qualification (the halo effect) rather than the strength of their arguments. That’s when it hit me that academics being left leaning is a non-issue in the sciences: nature is the way it is; and your opinions don’t change the truth. And in sciences, facts, theories and experimental data will win the day…eventually, if not immediately. But does the left leaning matter in the social sciences? Yes, says Haidt, because it leads to a “political diversity crisis”: “(Such a lack of diversity would mean that academics) contin...

Ed Yong wrote about this tech called CRISPR, which allows unprecedented levels of control on editing specific genes. The keyword is “specific”. Butterflies have become a popular choice for using CRISPR on. Why butterflies? Yong explains : “Butterflies all evolved from a moth ancestor, so how did a presumably dull-winged insect give rise to a kaleidoscopic dynasty of some 18,000 species, each with a distinctive pattern of colors and shapes plastered on its wings? Also, what are the genes behind these patterns? How did a limited set of DNA come to produce patterns of such astonishing diversity and often-baffling complexity?” Scientists have suspected that just a handful of pattern defining genes with names like optix, doublesex, and cortex produce most of that variety. But how could they prove it? How they wished that they could edit or delete those genes and see the effect. It would confirm or refute their theory. And now CRISPR provides them with exactly that level of preci...

In his terrific book, The Brain , David Eagleman writes: “Your senses set boundaries on what you can experience… But what if the brain could understand new kinds of inputs?” New inputs would come from accessories that we attach on or implant to our bodies. Yes, like a cyborg. Whenever I’ve thought of this idea, I’ve felt the problem is that: 1)       We don’t yet understand how the brain works; 2)      And without knowing that, how would we know the “format” in which the input signals from the new sources/sensors/implants should be sent to the brain? But it looks like there’s a way around that, by using this ability of the brain: “(The brain) rewires itself to adjust to the inputs… It’s this property of the brain – its plasticity – that enables a new marriage between our technology and our biology.” Ok, how far can that ability of the brain take us? “Would the brain be able to understand crude, non-biological signals, ...

In an earlier blog, I had described the Moral Foundation theory . To recap, the theory explains why truly moral people often disagree: 1)       Morality is based on your take on 6 parameters (Care/harm; Fairness/cheating; Loyalty/betrayal; Authority/subversion; Sanctity/degradation and Liberty/oppression); 2)      The above axis often clash (should Care trump Fairness?); 3)      People give different weightages (even zero) to the different axis. One of the areas on which the right and the left differ is patriotism. The right values it a lot based on their belief that what their country stands for (democracy, socialism, capitalism, religion, whatever) is worth defending. The left worries that patriotism will turn into jingoism and lead to wars and suffering. Hence the different stances… and as the Moral Foundation theory explains, neither stance is entirely right or entirely wrong. Since nations don’t start...

In an earlier blog on secession , I listed the rational criteria that regions should use to make such a choice. But in real life, how is this tendency? Are nations on the verge of splitting up? Or did they stay united? Does splintering create too many tiny countries that then form groups like the EU and NATO, sometimes to create a market, at others for protection? One view is that things don’t look good. No area, no matter how small, seems immune to the possibility of secession: -          Teeny tiny Belgium is not stable thanks to the deep-rooted differences between Dutch speaking Flanders and French speaking Wallonia; -          Venice has petitioned the EU to hold a referendum to secede from Italy. -          Catalan forcibly conducted a referendum even though the Spanish central government had declared it illegal. Personally though I agree with Tyle...

When Donald Trump became the US President, lots of Americans said they were considering moving to Canada. Of course, nothing of the sort happened, but it does raise a related (but much bigger in scope) question: if things are bad, is that grounds for seceding? I don’t ask that in the context of the US, but world-over. Scotland from Britain? Calatan from Spain? Quebec from Canada? Kashmir from India? Kurds from Iraq and Turkey? Tyler Cowen tried to come up with a valid “criteria” for exactly that question. While not perfect, it still made for interesting reading. Cowen starts with this: “Secession is a check against potential tyranny. If the rule of a centralized authority becomes too oppressive, part of the larger unit can break away and move toward freer and more democratic policies.” He cites Estonia breaking away from the Soviet Union in 1991 as an example. Estonia didn’t just secede, they now have a better form of governance. How about leaving because of “differences...

One time, I found this description of the book, Ivan the Terrible on Bookbub : “Explore the life of Ivan the Terrible — the infamous Russian tsar who more than earned his daunting moniker . But beneath Ivan’s exterior of brutality may have lurked a complex, even sympathetic leader…” The phrase “daunting moniker” caught my attention. It reminded me of this blows-your-mind-away monologue by Christoph Waltz as part of his portrayal of a Nazi Colonel named Hans Landa in the movie Inglorious Basterds. Here, I quote the parts of relevance: “Monsieur LaPadite, are you aware of the nickname the people of France have given me? … “The Jew Hunter.” … Heydrich apparently hates the moniker the good people of Prague have bestowed on him. Actually, why he would hate the name “the Hangman” is baffling to me. It would appear he has done everything in his power to earn it. Now I, on the other hand, love my unofficial title precisely because I’ve earned it.” Set aside the moral aspect of t...

As Aadhar increases in scope, supporters consider it necessary, says L.Viswanath : “We have Aadhaar getting linked to ration cards, NREGA payments, PAN cards, bank accounts, mobile SIMs, mid-day meals in schools, school admissions, university admissions…the list is endless. In a country plagued by corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, the hope is that Aadhaar will help eliminate fraudulent identities, thereby saving the direct and indirect losses to the nation.” Conversely, opponents don’t cite concrete use-cases of how it might be abused apart from throwing phrases (“Orwellian state”) that sound scary. Until its opponents provide such details, supporters will win the argument by simply asking why Aadhar should be restricted only to subsidy schemes, as Subhashis Banerjee points out : “Admittedly there are substantial leakages in these schemes, but surely the need for de-duplication and strict record keeping and audits are as much, if not more, in the domains of tax co...

Back in 2008, Chris Anderson wrote an oft-quoted article on what he called the “End of Theory” (exaggerated for effect) in science. Here’s the summary of his article: -          The scientific way has been to come up with models that describe reality; then test those models for any errors or mismatches with what is observed. -          Conversely, he said: “Scientists are trained to recognize that correlation is not causation, that no conclusions should be drawn simply on the basis of correlation between X and Y (it could just be a coincidence). Instead, you must understand the underlying mechanisms that connect the two.,,Data without a model is just noise.” -          Then came Anderson’s kicker: in an age where we were getting enormous amounts of data about just about everything (aka Big Data), he said that “this approach to science — hypothesize, model, t...

I never thought of ex-world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, as a multifaceted person. Boy, was I wrong as I found by reading this interview he gave recently . Today, a Chinese game called Go is considered a better test of “true” machine intelligence than chess. Why then was chess the focus area for so long? Says Kasparov: “I don’t think the founding fathers of computer science had the same affection to Go or   Shogi   because they are not familiar or had very little knowledge of these games that were played in other parts of the world.” But regardless of whichever mental game we pit man against machine, Kasparov feels the human would succumb to the “terrible psychological pressure” of playing to win. (Recently, Google’s AI beat the human world champion at Go). But would machines and their perfect analysis rob us of “beautiful” games? Possibly, says Kasparov. Remembering a great game from his past, he said: “You look at the time I spent, I played, almost blitze...