Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Today, almost every kid uses ChatGPT or similar AI to do homework and assignments that involve research and writeups where there is no right or prescribed answer.   I’ve read several articles that ask the pre-ChatGPT era folks whether (1) they can remember even one such assignment they did ever having any use in real life? And (2) Since the answer to that is almost certainly No, what is the harm if kids today use ChatGPT for such assignments?   One counterpoint to the “what is the harm” is that it was never the specifics of any such assignment that was useful in life. Rather, its intent and benefit was to teach one how to search for information, cross-check multiple sources, and then how to collate things into a meaningful answer.   Paul Graham writes of another problem with kids (and adults) using ChatGPT to frame entire articles and long form answers. Writing well, he says, is a skill relevant to most workplaces and it isn’t easy. But now, hey, we can all u...

Karthik Muralidharan has a chapter on the healthcare system in India in Accelerating India’s Development . Unsurprisingly, across India, the majority of healthcare providers are private players.   In the private sector, both in rural areas and in poorer urban areas, the private sector practitioners are not MBBS qualified. “How then do they learn what to do?” By being in roles like compounder, ward boys or assistants. Many also “learn” from pharma representatives who tell what medicines do as well as their dosages. You’d think the pharma guys would exaggerate the effectiveness, but that tendency is balanced by their need to maintain long term relations. Overall, the private providers do have a decent amount of medical knowledge.   How effective are these unqualified practitioners? At least for primary care, they are comparable to MBBS doctors. But as things get complex, an MBBS is definitely better. How to measure the effectiveness of medical practitioners isn’t ob...

From present day perspective, it is astonishing how far west Buddhism had spread, as William Dalrymple describes in The Golden Road . Most of us probably didn’t know that were such gigantic statues of Buddha in Afghanistan until the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas. But Buddhism had spread even beyond Afghanistan at its peak.   In 2022, archaeologists in Berenike on the Red Sea found the head and torso of a magnificent Buddha in the storeroom of an Isis temple (Egyptian god). The statue hadn’t been transported from India – it was made of stone found in Turkey and was in a combo of styles – part Indian, part Roman-Egyptian. In that same temple, they found a stone memorial of the trinity of Hindu gods. There were also bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Sanskrit. Indian influence had spread very wide indeed.   The trade between Egypt and India was enormous. How do we know this? From the tax records of the Romans (who ruled Egypt). While sea travel and trade had its...