Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The only time we had equality, writes Yuval Noah Harari in 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century , was when we were hunter-gatherers. Why? “Because they had very little property. Property is a pre-requisite for long-term inequality.” Agriculture was the beginning of inequality. Increased industrialization accelerated things. But then, ironically, industrialization also contributed to the reduction in inequality. Admittedly, in a roundabout and twisted way. First, as the number of workers grew, they could form groups and unions and make demands. Next, when employee skills and intelligence began to matter, they were paid better and treated better. And as the demand for workers increased further, it opened employment doors for all “races, classes and genders”, eventually even other countries via outsourcing. All of which helped reduce inequality globally. After the fall of communism, it looked like greater prosperity and thus reduced inequality was going to be the global norm.

Remember the basis for coming up with the idea of dark energy? It was the accelerating universe. And how did Perlmutter and Riess come to the conclusion that the expansion is accelerating? Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains . There’s a certain class of supernovae, the type Ia, for which we know the energy emitted over time. The farther away it is, the dimmer is appears. Thus, from its brightness, one can infer the distance. In addition, the farther away it is, the longer it took to reach us. So indirectly, from its brightness, one can calculate how long back it occurred. At the same time, one can determine its color. Just as the sound of a moving ambulance get shriller as it comes closer, the observed color of the supernova changes since it (and space itself) are moving away from us. The color can thus be used to infer the rate at which space is moving away. Combine the above two points (time of the supernova v/s rate of expansion) for multiple supernovae at differen

Dark matter. Dark energy. They are supposed to make up most of the universe (20% and 75% respectively), leaving just a tiny 5% to the “normal” matter and energy we humans are made of and deal with on a day-to-day basis. But what are dark matter and dark energy? Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder answers . Let’s take “dark matter” first. Based on the amount of matter we can see either visually or via our detectors that use signals other than visible light, the stars on the edges of all spinning galaxies should get thrown into outer space. On a bigger scale, galaxies should never have formed in the first place. So what is this force that keeps stars and galaxies from flying off? The answer: gravity. Wait a minute, didn’t we just say that there isn’t enough perceivable matter to produce the needed gravitational force? Yes, but the key word is “perceivable”. The objects producing the “missing” gravity are not perceivable, so they’re called “dark matter”. Not “dark” as in sucking up ligh

After the Maharashtra and Haryana elections, Karan Thapar wondered if state elections focused on issues like the state of the economy, the effects of demonetization, and rural distress in general? Whereas the national elections, held just a few months back, was based one on national security, thanks to the Balakot strikes? Thapar got it all wrong. Shekhar Gupta in his YouTube talk wondered if it was a sign that voters voted for a strong man at the center in national elections. Whereas at the state level, they vote based on other criteria. Further, continued Gupta, a year back, BJP and allies ruled 70% of India’s territory. Today, post-Maharashtra and Haryana, that figure is down to 48%. Is this a sign that we’ve crossed Peak BJP? Before I continue, I’ll take a deviation. But don’t worry, this diversion will join the main thread of the questions raised above. Many people ask why the right is so angry. Even though they’ve been in power for the last 5 ½ years. And another 4 ½

I would so like hope my daughter to develop the reading habit. So far though, no luck. She’s 8 now, and the only time she’ll read is in the school bus if her friends are reading on the bus too . Ages back, I’d heard of some parents who used to read the Harry Potter books to their kids, and remember thinking, “Really? Who would read such a big book aloud?”. But now, in desperation, I decided to give it a shot. She found the first 3 books very interesting. The stories weren’t predictable. Friends fought with each other and made up. Mean kids didn’t always get their comeuppance. Adults didn’t believe Harry because hey, he was just a kid. And the details of the Harry Potter universe, from muggles to mudbloods to house elves to squibs was fascinating. The book would raise many questions and answer them only at the end. And there were always questions that didn’t get answered at all. All this was a new experience for her, a different type of book, a fascinating world of its own.

Now at the peak of his popularity, Napoleon demanded he be made Consular for Life. Another plebiscite, this time a 99.8% outcome. As his grip on absolute power tightened, it sparked off assassination attempts. He used one such attempt to frame a Duke, a link to the erstwhile monarchy, but most importantly: a nobody. So why did Napoleon target a nobody? Rumour said it was because the two men shared a mistress… but who can really say? Regardless of his reasons, the killing of the Duke evoked panic in the erstwhile royal line. Fearing that they’d all be killed, they sought British help to take back France. And thus started another string of wars between France and Britain. In the meantime, Napoleon brought back hereditary monarchy a decade after the French Revolution! Yet another constitution was framed, this one to declare him the “emperor”. In his coronation ceremony, he placed the crown on his own head. A “gangster move”, the podcast said admiringly. Emperor Napoleon soon re

They thought they’d get rid of Napoleon by sending him to Italy. Instead, Napoleon turned the army around and posted huge victories over Austria and Italy. He was a soldier’s soldier, a hands-on commander and a great general who got the big picture and planned well, and allowed his soldier to loot after victories: he was very popular with his troops. This very popularity would contribute to the myth of him being short. He was called “le petit corporal”. Translated literally, it meant the “little corporal”. But in French, it was just an affectionate phrase. Napoleon was 5’ 2”, but that was in French inches . With no standardization of units, that was the same as 5’ 7” in British units. A pretty good height in that era. But this was ammunition for British mockery, and they attributed his ambition to his trying to compensate for his short height, so much so we even have the phrase “Napoleon complex”. Napoleon realized he couldn’t beat the British, so he decided to choke off the

As I was reading the book, The Awesome Egyptians , to my 8 yo daughter, I ran into this incident where Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly entered The Great Pyramid, stayed there alone for quite a while and came out “pale and shaking”. This sounded fake. Or was it? No biography of Napoleon would ever answer such questions categorically, so I turned to the all-knowing Google. Voila! It pointed me to this podcast named, I kid you not, Our Fake History ! My hopes up, I was thrilled to see it had a 2-part series on Napoleon. The podcast started by pointing out that Napoleon was a larger than life figure. There were innumerable myths around him, some that served him and others that served his enemies, some true and others false. The series promised to explore all of them: Was he a short-statured egomaniac? Or a wise-cracking bon vivant ? A jealous lover? A great general? A destroyer of ancient monuments? And did he create that clever palindrome on Elba? Napoleon was a nobody b

Let me start by expanding a term used throughout this blog: STEM. It stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths”. Now for the provocative question: why are boys better than girls at STEM? Here’s an economist, Alex Tabarrok’s take on the subject. He talks of the so-called “gender-equality paradox”: “Countries with the highest levels of gender equality tend to have the  lowest  ratios of women to men in STEM education.” Yes, that means those famed Scandinavian countries! The usual explanation for this is that “less is riding on choice of career in the richer, gender-equal countries”. In other words, the benefits of a higher paying STEM job in those countries gets eaten away by high taxes, and in any case, the state takes good care of you regardless of career choice… Another reason for the STEM question is that males have a higher variability . “ Variability” means that there are lots of boys who excel at things and equally, there are lots of boys who are terri

The NRC (National Register of Citizens) was a list of the citizens of Assam (only). The road to the current Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) began when the BJP decided to update the NRC for Assam. The intention was to identify all illegal immigrants who had entered after the Bangladesh war in ‘71. Inconveniently for the BJP, the updated NCR found 60% of the illegal immigrants in Assam to be Hindus. The BJP had done something lawyers are taught not to do: Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. But that’s law, and this was politics. And not for nothing is Amit Shah called admiringly (by the BJP’s supporters) the modern-day Chanakya. The surprise of the NRC findings led to a very calculated response that combined well established facts with the right’s worldview. First, the facts. Fact #1 : In 1950, Nehru and Pakistan’s head, Liaquat Ali Khan had agreed to protect and give full rights to the minorities of their respective countries. Fact #2 : The Muslim perc

My 8 yo daughter can’t understand the difference between a couple of hundreds and say, a lakh, or a crore. The only context in which she cares about these numbers to even try and compare them is, of course, money. Then again, this inability to visualize the magnitude of difference between large numbers is a human-wide problem. Adults can’t do it either. Hence the endless analogies, like mapping the life of the planet (4.5 billion years) onto a 24 hour window, and then trying to impress you by pointing out that “modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second”! So perhaps it’s too much to expect from kids. But we’re talking of kids here: Anything you think is easy, they absolutely won’t get. And they’ll have their enlightenment on whatever you have no hopes about. Recently, I told her that one of my friend’s kid was supposed to go on a school trip to the US. But given how much it cost, most parents dropped out. And so, I told her, the trip was cancelled. “How mu

The Middle East. Tim Marshall explains why it is the way it is, in his wonderful book, Prisoners of Geography : “The middle of what? East of where? The region’s very name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it.” The Arabian desert and scrubland is the dominant feature of the entire region. Ergo, people have lived on the periphery of that region for centuries. Until, that is, the Europeans came along and created nation states and legally fixed borders. But why did Europe get involved at all? It wasn’t like oil was either known of or needed back then. Aha, it started as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire looked imminent. In 1916, while World War I was ongoing, the British and French drew up a map on how they’d divide the region (and thus the Ottoman Empire) if they won the war. The line is called the Sykes-Picot line: north of it would be French control, south of it would be British control. Since then, “Sykes-Picot”

The twists and turns, betrayals and horse-trading leading to Uddhav Thackeray becoming Chief Minister of Maharashtra are worthy of a face-paced novel or political thriller. Santosh Desai sums it up perfectly: “The real lesson from Maharashtra is not about any one political party’s victory or defeat… Everyone’s greed and opportunism have helped cancel out everyone’s else’s greed and opportunism.” Sharad Pawar’s NCP comes off as the one on whom the least criticism can be hurled. The Congress, on the other hand? “The Congress’ claims about its commitment to secularism lie in tatters. In the current context, its attempt to position itself as a counterpoint to the BJP is rendered laughable given its willingness to partner a party that has historically been to the right of the BJP.” Wait a minute. Didn’t the Shiv Sena say it was abandoning its Hindutva agenda, “betrayed its long-time alliance partner but showed a willingness to move beyond its core ideological position in ord

In her terrific book on (middle-class) parenting, All Joy and No Fun , Jennifer Senior has a chapter on how (over)involved parents are in their kids’ activities. Apparently, there’s even a term for it: “overscheduled kids”! It refers to all those play dates and extracurricular activities, almost “as if (kids had) all suddenly acquired chiefs of staffs”. And the term for this aspect of parenting? It’s called “concerted cultivation”. Most Indians can relate to all this, but it’s bit surprising that the same is increasingly true of American middle-class parents as well. In fact, in the US, there’s an increasing backlash now against (hold your breath) meritocracy! Huh? Joan Wong put together 10 academics’ take on what this is all about. One panelist, Agnes Callard, makes an interesting point on two types of merit: “(backward-looking) honor and as a (forward-looking) office”. Most people are OK with the first, it’s the second one, the future-looking one (aka college admission) t

Everyone complains that we live in a world of lies and fiction, where truth is hard to differentiate from everything else. There’s even a term for it: the “post-truth” age. But, asks Yuval Noah Harari in 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century : “If this is the age of post-truth, when, exactly, was the halcyon age of truth? In the 1980s? The 1950s? The 1930s?” Habits like denying the very existence of certain countries is an age-old tactic. In 1931, Japan created the fake country of Manchukuo to justify their conquest of China. China itself claims Tibet was never independent. And the British occupied Australia saying it was “nobody’s land”, thereby wiping out 50,000 years of Aboriginal history. All of which is why Harari says: “Humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions.” It’s been that way long before Facebook and WhatsApp, Trump and Putin: “For millennia, much of what pas

The most famous thought experiment in quantum theory, Schrodinger’s cat, raised a highly problematic question: At what size does the weirdness of quantum phenomenon give way to the “normal” behavior we observe all the time? Nothing in the maths of quantum theory put a size limit. Nor does the maths explain what constitutes an “observation” of a quantum entity. Could only living entities could make an observation? Or did instruments count too? The accepted answer today is something called decoherence, writes Charles Seife in Decoding the Universe . “Decoherence” refers to any interaction between two items in the universe (light, matter, anything else). Every such interaction constitutes a measurement made by nature. An extraction of (there’s that word again) information. The tinier or colder or more isolated something is, the longer it can stay without interacting with any other piece of nature, i.e., the longer it takes before another part of nature can “measure” it. But ev

My 8 yo has never taken to Lego , something that always pricks at me. Thankfully, the Spock in me knows that you can’t force a kid to play with a particular toy, so I never push her on this. Just when I’d abandoned all hope, she took to this Android game called Multicraft . It’s like a very crude, digital version of Lego , and very limited in features since it’s a free game. Call me a geek, but once I saw the game allowed her to build (digital) structures like buildings and bridges, zoom in and out, and view objects from various perspectives, the engineer in me was happy. Good, I thought, she’s getting trained on using tools like CAD… Plus, you know how they say we might be living in a simulation and not even know of it? This might be her baby steps in creating such a simulated worlds… She’d save stuff she built and give each “world” (a term from the game) a name. Better that she be a creator of (digital) worlds, I thought, than her having “Now I am become Death, the des

Cersei Lannister’s line from the first book/season of Game of Thrones sums up the theme of the series: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” This willingness to kill any character in the story anytime is one of the most appealing things (oh c’mon, this is fiction) of the series. On that front, author George RR Martin acknowledged the influence of The Lord of the Rings : ““The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is a thousand times greater, because now anybody could die,” Martin says. “Of course, that’s had a profound effect on my own willingness to kill characters off at the drop of a hat.” What were (some of) the other inspirations for Martin? “The Wall” was based on Hadrin’s Wall (Roman empire); Lord of the Rings: ergo, a story world that is similar and different from the world we know + a “restrained use of magic” through the story; Martin’s own TV writing experience: End every chapter in

Moving on, Charles Seife next looks at the theory of relativity in Decoding the Universe . One of the most famous dictums of that theory is that “nothing can go faster than the speed of light”. Except that’s not what the theory says. That statement is an oversimplification: “Some things can go faster than the speed of light. Even light itself can break light speed, in a sense.” Huh? Both those statements have been proven in multiple experiments, and no, they don’t necessarily involve quantum mechanics! Even good old non-quantum experiments have shown those two statements to be true. The exact details of those experiments aren’t relevant to this blog, so I won’t get into them. Regardless, don’t such experiments prove that the speed limit imposed by relativity is being violated? It gets a bit murky, but this is what most scientists say relativity really says: “The true rule is that information can’t travel faster than the speed of light. You cannot take a bit of inform

A while back, we gave my 8 yo daughter my old smartphone so she wouldn’t keep taking our phones to play games. It didn’t have a SIM card, so it was really a computer + camera she had, not a phone that could make calls. And now she finds some kids in the apartment having smartphones with SIM cards, ergo the demand that she be given one too. So far we’ve stood firm but the question is when she will have one, not if . Since I’d started thinking about this topic, I decided to listen to this Short and Curly podcast on the next question that comes with giving a smartphone to your kid. Should you put tracking apps on your kid’s phone? Is it right and necessary? Or are you becoming like the KGB, Stasi and every surveillance state in history? It’s a tough choice: trying to balance privacy v/s safety. Kids feel they can take care of themselves, that they are not animals to be tracked continuously. But how do you as a parent know if the kid is mature to be out there without supervi

Indian child labour activist, Bhuwan Ribhu, points out there are over 3,00,000 missing children in the country. And there are over 1,00,000 children in various institutions. Matching them manually is obviously a practical task. In July this year, he launched a pilot program to match the digital databases using facial recognition technology. The outcome was very good: “We were able to match 10,561 missing children… They are currently in the process of being reunited with their families.” Given the severe shortfall in police (144 officer per 1,00,000 citizens) as opposed to, say, the EU (318 per 1,00,000), India needs to try and find different ideas to bridge the gap. Including, as it turns out, turning to facial recognition technology.   Delhi adopted it in 2018, along with Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. And now the central government wants to expand the scope: “It wants to construct one of the world's largest facial recognition systems. The project envisions a future in