Viswanathan K's Thoughts

We hear of and see cryonics in the movies: “It’s a technique used to store a person’s body at an extremely low temperature with the hope of one day reviving them.” The technology is in its infancy, but this article by Rachel Nuwer raises interesting questions about the scenario when the person awakens in the future (assuming the technology worked). First off, she says: “They would immediately face the challenge of rebuilding their lives as strangers in a strange land. How that would play out depends on a host of factors, including how long they were gone, what kind of society they returned to, whether they know anyone when they are brought back and in what form they return.” What about money problems when they return? Looks like people have been thinking of a solution for that problem! “The Cryonics Institute invests a fraction of patient fees – currently $28,000 with life insurance – into stocks and bonds. The hope is that future returns can help revived persons get b...

It all started when Bell Labs hired William Shockley to come up with a replacement for the vacuum tube. Following lots of trial and error, blind alleys and false hopes, in 1947, his team of Brattain and Bardeen invented the transistor. Impressive it was, but not quite the transistor we know of today. While Shockley had been part of many attempts and ideas, he wasn’t part of the concept of the Brattain-Bardeen transistor. He was torn by the fact: “My elation with the group’s success was tempered by not being one of the inventors.” Angry and insecure that he hadn’t been part of the idea that worked, he worked secretly trying to improve it. His secretive efforts yielded an improvement to the Brattain-Bardeen transistor resulting in the modern-day transistor. The team had no doubt been successful, but trust had been destroyed. Shockley, the team supervisor, became impossible to work with. The team dissolved. Shockley himself was passed over for promotions given all the bad blood...

Have you heard of the term, “ confirmation bias ”? The original experiment that led to this term would help understand: 1)       At the outset, you are told that a certain rule applies to triplets of numbers in a series. The triplet (2, 4, 6) fits that rule. 2)      To find out if you figured out the rule, you have to come up with another triplet and are allowed to ask if that triplet fits the rule or not. 3)      There is no limit on how many questions you can ask. Sounds simple enough, right? Does (4, 6, 8) fit? Yes. Does (24, 26, 28) fit? Yes. Is the rule “any 3 successive even numbers”? Wrong! Does (6, 10, 14) fit? Yes. Does (10, 22, 34) fit? Yes. Is the rule “the middle number is the average of the first and third”? Wrong again! The rule is proving surprisingly difficult to figure out, isn’t it? The correct answer was simply “any ascending series”! Why was that so hard? Because we humans tend to loo...

For some weird reason, Book 3 of Game of Thrones is split into 2 parts. So what’s the central theme of this book? There are two themes actually. The first one is building the foundation of what will follow, writes author George RR Martin in his acknowledgments: “If the bricks aren’t well made, the wall falls down. This is an awfully big wall I’m building here, so I need a lot of bricks.” The second theme is about how wars are fought not only on the battlefield but also by intelligence, alliances and marriages. Anyone who thinks that wars are won (only) on the battlefield is left fretting like Tyrion Lannister: “I thought I won the bloody battle. Is this what triumph tastes like?” One shouldn’t be too moralistic about the means, says Tywin Lannister: “Every lord has need of a beast from time to time.” What’s the point doing all the right things and ending up like Rhaegar, says Ser Jorah Mormont: “Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorabl...

In its article on the Protestant work ethic, Wikipedia says : “Protestants, beginning with Martin Luther, reconceptualized worldly work as a duty which benefits both the individual and society as a whole… The Protestant work ethic is often credited with helping to define the societies of Northern Europe.” And Catholics? The Catholics themselves joke about their attitude towards work (think of countries like Italy and Spain when you read this): “How can work be good when it’s God’s punishment on us?” (Adam and Eve didn’t have to work in Eden until they ate the apple). Does this difference in the attitude towards work explain why Catholic countries have far more lotteries than Protestant ones, wonders Gabriel Zaid (half tongue in cheek, I guess)? After all, winning a lottery is “to reap without working”, says Zaid . Continuing in that vein, Zaid says: “It was the culture of Catholicism, after all, that invented the probability calculus.” Do you see the connection?...

My 7 year-old daughter has this habit of explaining how she drew something: “You start by drawing a circle, then the ears, erase a bit of the top of the circle to make space for the hair…” All such descriptions will always end with the word: “Simple!”. After yet another (un-asked for) description of how she drew something, again ending up with that smug “Simple!”, I couldn’t resist responding: “Obviously, it must have been simple. Otherwise, how would you have been able to draw it?” Without batting an eyelid, she snapped back: “It’s simple for me . It would be hard for you .” ~~ One time, as I tried to tempt her to watch something on National Geographic instead of her usual cartoons, I said: “The host will challenge people to do crazy things. You interested?” Her response was instantaneous… and honest: “Yes. I am always there for anything crazy.” ~~ There’s this professional artist in our apartment who took art classes for the kids. Unfortunately, ju...

Why did Hitler attack his ally at the time, the Soviet Union? When did the Nazis make the decision to kill Jews en mass ? Your answers were probably: (1) Because of Hitler’s megalomania; and (2) Pretty much from the beginning. Wrong, writes Peter Frankopan in his bestseller, The Silk Roads . Believe it or not, the common thread to both decisions was… food. Or rather, Germany not having enough food. From the 1930’s, Hitler was concerned about Germany’s “inadequacy of domestic agriculture”. So he wanted control of Ukraine and its fertile soil. That was one of the key drivers for the Nazi pact with Stalin: to secure food (via Ukraine). Sure, securing oil from Russia and ensuring Russia did not attack Germany too mattered. Right after the agreement, Hitler attacked Poland (an event that set off World War II). Why Poland? To have a “direct” line from Germany to Ukraine. As the Soviet Union proved to be unreliable in its supplies to Germany, Hitler began to wonder whether it m...

As I wrote earlier, Airbnb did to the hotel industry (on a smaller but not insignificant scale) what Uber has done to the taxi industry. In both cases (hotels and taxis respectively), there were genuine issues with the existing system: 1)       Hotels and taxis were regulated industries which made entry of new players difficult; 2)      Artificial scarcity was maintained in supply to keep prices high; 3)      Taxis would often refuse to go to certain locations, even though that was illegal in most countries . (In others, they would not go by the meter). Supporters of Uber and Airbnb usually cite these and other reasons to say that the existing industry got what it deserved. But of course, the old system had good reasons why it was regulated, and those checks have been lost in the alternative that has come up, writes Tim Harford in Fifty Things that made the Modern Economy : “Many countries have rules to prot...

I was reading this description of the book, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh and it got me thinking: “How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past.” Atheism is considered an invention of the European Enlightenment? Really? Have they never heard of entire religions founded on the basis of atheism and agnostism (Jainism and Buddhism)?! But those religions are from the East. And most Westerners only know, well, the West. Daniel Kahneman even coined a term for this tendency to form conclusions based on what you see without checking if there are other things to look at: What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI)! The WYSIATI problem has been recognized in many psychology and social science “conclusions” based on tests done wi...

Like all parents, we have to keep reminding and goading the kid to pick up her toys and keep them up after she’s done playing. For many of us to whom tidiness comes naturally, says Zohan Lazar : “Messy surroundings can be spiritually draining.” But mess has its own advantages, as per one researcher, Kathleen Vohs. Like increasing the odds of being creative. How? By increasing the odds of serendipity: “When things are tidy, people adhere more to what’s expected of them. When things are messier, they break free from norms.” And so, for some people,: “Mess is an organizational strategy.” But: “Mess may help us create ideas, but tidiness helps us act on them.” While that sounds like it makes sense, I am wary of any of these recipes/formulas for creativity. If there were a formula for creativity, wouldn’t big companies have institutionalized them? And yet, isn’t it true that most innovations come from small companies, not the established ones? Now before ...

The first Game of Thrones book ended with (ex) King Robert Baratheon’s born-of-incest-between-the-Queen-and-her-brother “son”, Joffrey on the throne. In the second book, we see that the “boy king” is too young to maintain alliances (let alone rule), a psycho who alienates his subjects by his wanton cruelty, and a moron who won’t listen to his top advisors. Perhaps such folly is only to be expected in a teenaged king, as Theon Greyjoy wonders: “Boys believe nothing can hurt them… Grown men know better.” But grown men cannot let a lunatic, even if he is the King, destroy everything. Which is why Bronn wonders if Joffrey should be assassinated and replaced by his younger brother: “Seems like he’d do whatever he was told, as a good king should.” Others like Lord Varys intend to survive regardless of what happens: “The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling.” Given that Joffrey was not even Robert’s son (see...

In Mary Shelly’s famous 1818 story, Frankenstein’s Monster , how the monster is created is left hazy, “an ambiguous method consisting of chemistry and alchemy” . Today, with our understanding of DNA, our ability to clone, to write custom-DNA and then to make it come alive by growing it in the womb of an existing species, we are much further down that road (Saving grace so far? The custom DNA still needs to be grown inside the womb of an existing species, which puts constraints on how different it can be from the mother). With great power comes great responsibility. But biology seems to operating the way Dr.Ian Malcolm lamented in Jurassic Park : “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” A recent example of this was when David Evans in Canada resurrected a virus called horsepox using genetic material they ordered from a company that synthesizes DNA. Harmless though it is to humans, it a close cousin to sm...

You’d think that the famous poet, Lord Byron, a playboy to boot, would marry for love. Instead he married Annabella Milbanke in a “rare display of reason over romanticism”, writes Walter Isaacson in Innovators as a way to “pay off his burdensome debts”. The marriage then was doomed from the start (even more due to the wavelength mismatch: his wife was tutored in maths!), and they divorced after the birth of their daughter Ada, later famous as Lady Ada Lovelace, the “software” brain behind Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Ada thus had both poetry and math in her genes, a combo that deeply influenced her approach to computing machines. As I wrote in an earlier blog , she thought a computing machine could “store, manipulate, process and act upon anything that could be expressed in symbols”, not just numbers . She wrote: “(Such a computing machine) might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity.” Poetical science: she was indeed (both) ...

A couple of years back, I wrote a blog on why it is difficult to end a war . Why wars start is a much easier question (obviously). We know of wars benefiting the economy of the country going to war. Provided they win, of course! But what if you were not even a combatant nation and yet reaped the benefits of a war between other nations? Michael Schaller points out such an example in his book, Altered States . Between 1945 and 1950, the US had been unable to get the Japanese economy going. And then the Korean war broke out. Suddenly: “Toyota received a military order for 1,000 trucks. Within a year it had sold 5,000 vehicles to U.S. forces and boosted monthly production to over 2,000 units. Workers' annual wages doubled.” Years later, President Kamiya described those orders as “Toyota's salvation” because the company used its profits from the sales and technology transfers to modernize its operations and began passenger car production. Other Japanese companies ben...

This is how the so-called Feynman Technique to learning stuff is defined: 1)       Step 1 : Write down the concept you want to understand on a paper; 2)      Step 2 : Explain the topic on that paper. Not how you’d explain things to your smart friend, but to a toddler . This part is key as it ensures you avoid jargon. And it helps identify the gaps in your understanding (they’re the areas you can’t explain to a toddler); 3)      Step 3 : Go back and re-learn the gaps you identified. Then try explaining them again. Repeat until you can; 4)      Step 4 : Read your explanation. Does it sound easy to understand? Is it confusing? Based on the answers, you may need to revise the explanation. Anyone with a kid ends up having to follow the Feynman Technique to some extent or the other! I guess I’ve made some progress on this because the ultimate compliment my 7 year-old has paid me till date was whe...