Viswanathan K's Thoughts

It was a British coin tester who found out that the emperor Ashoka even existed! His name was James Princep, writes Devansh Malik. Before 1837, sure, there were references to Ashoka in some Buddhist texts, but were they historical fact? Or just stories? “There was no historical proof, no documented history, nothing.”   Princep was born to rich parents and seemingly destined to be an architect in Britain. Then, at age 20, a severe eye infection struck damaging his eyes so badly that architecture was no longer an option. His father used his wealth and connections to get James the job of testing coins in Calcutta. It was at the Calcutta mint that Princep met Horace Wilson, a Sanskrit scholar who had translated the Rig Veda. “Through Wilson, James developed a deep fascination with Indian history and culture.”   When he moved to the mint in Varanasi, Princep began to notice something about the older coins of India. First came the punch-marked coins (any odd shape, but ...

K N Hari Kumar, a former editor of Deccan Herald wrote 3 articles on how/why India has manged to stay a democracy. Take all our neighbours, he says – Nepal’s Gen Z triggered overthrow of the government, Bangladesh ousting Sheikh Hasina, Pakistan in eternal army rule mode, the meltdown of the Sri Lankan government, and Myanmar always under military rule – and you see why the question of the stability of Indian democracy arises.   He then turns to the US. The very man who refused to accept an electoral defeat, initiated riots, came back to become President again 4 years later. So much for a “centuries-old, stable democracy”. And everything the man is doing now disproves the idea that “the advanced Western nations were immune to the kind of instability and radical transformations”.   Sure, he acknowledges, there has been a lot of “democratic backsliding” in India in recent times – Ram Mandir, lynchings of Muslims, CAA act, the purge of “urban Naxals”, removing Article 37...

Why did humans develop hierarchies? Why couldn’t everyone stay equal to everyone else in the group? Brian Klass looks into the commonly accepted theories on the topic in his book, Corruptible .   The first theory is the one most of us are familiar with. Once humans discovered agriculture, they began to have surpluses. By definition, some people had more surplus than others – inequality had gotten started. Further, agricultural surpluses in turn required storage systems, accounting systems (to maintain records of who had how much excess), and protection systems (to protect the surplus) all of which led to specialists in different roles – hierarchies had begun. Klass calls this the “peas theory” (pun intended) – it all began with agriculture.   The other theory is more nuanced. Assume two groups of hunter-gatherers. One lived in the Amazon basin where food was plentiful in all directions. If someone forced you off your land, no big deal – you just moved somewhere else an...

Brian Klass’ book, Corruptible , has many interesting and, at times, counter-intuitive points on the fact that people in power seem to be (become?) corrupt.   For one, he says people in power often have to make repeated decisions in scenarios where there are no good choices. But if all choices are bad, how does one make a decision, and not let the bad aspect of the decision not haunt one? “(One way is to) disregard compassion and focus on hard-nosed costs and benefits.” Here’s Klass point with all this. Does power attract people who have that mindset to begin with? Do kinder folks avoid power since they don’t have the stomach to pick from among a list of “unbearable moral choices”?   Two, he says, enforcement matters. The same set of people behave differently when the enforcement is strict v/s lax. Think of how the same Indian can behave when in Singapore v/s India.   Three, the system in which the person operates matters: “A decent person inheriting a b...

America’s erratic actions and constant policy shifts make a lot more sense when viewed from the lens of what Noah Millman calls the “Thucydides trap”. “(It refers to) a situation where a rising power and an established power facing a possible power transition each make moves that, while individually rational, ultimately lead to a catastrophic war that proves ruinous to both powers’ fortunes.”   With Obama, America tried a “pivot to Asia” approach to counter China, i.e., increase the focus on China and its neighbouring countries, reduce the focus elsewhere (The pivot to Asia is why the US didn’t do much/anything when Russia invaded Crimea in 2016; why Obama signed the nuclear deal with Iran). Obama was being pragmatic – it was clear that the assumption that the only road to economic prosperity went hand in hand with democracy and other Western systems was not true. China was prospering without democracy; and showing signs of not wanting to be part of a system dominated by the...

Wheat or rice? Here’s how the world production looks on that question, writes Tomas Pueyo (Red = rice; Green = wheat): A key point here: rice and wheat are not harvested in the same places. It is an either/or option. The reason for the distribution? “Rice grows in hot, wet, flat, floodable areas, whereas wheat prefers cooler, drier, better drained areas.”   Another consequential point here: “Rice generates twice as many calories per unit of area. This means that rice nourishes families on half the land that wheat requires. Which means population density in rice areas can be twice as high as in wheat areas.” This explains why (see map above) coastal China, a huge part of the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia are so densely populated.   Rice cultivation requires a lot more work than wheat: “Preparing paddies, raising seedlings in nurseries, transplanting every single seedling by hand into flooded fields, managing water, pumping it, weeding, harvesting, and thr...

Just like TikTok took the US (and world) by storm, Chinese education apps like Gauth and Question.AI have taken the American education app sector, writes Lily Ottinger. Both apps say they can solve problems in “all school subjects”.   Is this encouraging cheating, where kids stop doing homework? And what do equivalent Chinese apps offer in China? Well, for one, the apps for China and the rest of the world are different, even when made by the same Chinese company. Give the two apps (Chinese and non-Chinese), say, an integration question to solve and the Chinese one will list the steps to solve it while the American one will tell the answer, then show the steps. The Chinese one will give hints and tricks to solve such questions, the American ones won’t (unless you upgrade to the paid version). The Chinese apps also graph the problem to make it easier to visualize.   What could be the reasons for the differences? Well, Western education places more emphasis on homework, ...

My wife has been saying for a (long, long) while that we should go re-activate or close or pull out our money in PPF and SBI. We haven’t transacted in either for a long time, so it was almost certain they were dormant. We don’t expect the process to be easy or clear, but finally we decided to initiate the process.   We to the nearby SBI branch. We went in, saw a token generator, and went to get one. It wasn’t working. Ok, so you’d expect a queue somewhere, right? Except the only queue was in a counter to open new accounts! Weirdly, lots of people were seated with no apparent hurry or urgency. Waiting (for what? For who?), filling forms, no urgency, no impatience, no irritation… it was almost surreal.   My wife then saw an employee walking by and asked him how to get a token. He gave a wide smile, you know the kind rural folks give urban denizens when they come to a village… Oh, you poor ignorant people. Then he said, “The token system doesn’t work” and helpfully added,...

In the previous blog in the series, we saw all the difficulties in explaining the evolution of language. Now to one possible explanation, from A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett.   The book goes into a seemingly unrelated topic, altruism . In all species, one can see altruism towards kin (children, siblings etc). Many species also show reciprocal altruism (you scratch my back, I scratch yours). Humans go far, far beyond both. People help strangers without any expectation. They give to charity and do philanthropy. At the same time, as a species, we can be outrageously cruel . Only humans do genocide, wipe out entire groups.   Back to the topic of language: “It is not a coincidence that our language, our unparalleled altruism and our unmatched cruelty all emerged together in evolution: all three were, in fact, merely different features of the same evolutionary feedback loop.” He elaborates.   Language may have started off as intended only for ...

In A Brief History of Intelligence , Max Bennett asks: “Is language an evolutionary invention or a cultural invention?” He investigates.   In the 1800’s, a scientist named Broca identified a region of the brain (called Broca’s area ) which was necessary to speak. People in whom that area was damaged could not speak anymore.   There was another kind of patient who could speak but the sentences made no sense whatsoever! Analysis identified damage to a part of the brain, and the condition was named Wernicke aphasia after the man who identified it.   Two different areas of the brain for understanding speech and for speaking . And they are wired together. Sounds like we found the reason why humans have speech, but not other species like apes. Unfortunately, that is not the case.   Turns out those 2 areas of the brain evolved in a common ancestor, i.e., even apes have Broca’s area and Wernicke area. So it was not the evolution of these 2 areas in the...

Another popular tourist spot in Hong Kong is the Big Buddha. Constructed only recently (1993), the Buddha sits ensconced on a lotus. Surrounding him are six bronze statues offering flowers, incense etc representing various virtues. It is called the “Offering of the Six Devas”. Getting to the statue involves either a bus ride to Lantau Island or a cable car. We took the cable car – it is faster and more scenic. Plus, the one we took had a glass floor, so we could see the water and greenery below on the trip.   I have now seen a few such massive Buddha statues now – at Wuxi (China), two in Ladakh, and now the Big Buddha. All of them have steps leading up to the statue, though there were few steps in Ladakh. This one has 268 steps. The Po Lin monastery is nearby, quiet and serene.   For a popular tourist destination, the entire place is surprisingly quiet and uncrowded. Nice place to go to for the statue, the view, the quiet. ~~   We didn’t have any clear plans f...

When India’s GDP numbers were announced for the last quarter, the IMF said those numbers didn’t sound very accurate. Nithin Sasikumar wrote this excellent article on the concerns raised. He put two disclaimers right at the beginning. #1 : “Now I should point out that the IMF didn’t call us untrustworthy. They simply said that we can do better at how we calculate GDP.” And #2 , his post is not about the politics of GDP calculations.   Before going into the issues and concerns, he starts by explaining what GDP is, and why it is so important to calculate correctly. Simply put, you take all the economic activities in the country in a year (“sales from IPL tickets in Jaipur, biscuits being sold in Pune, setting up of a new factory in Chennai”) and sum up their values to get the GDP. It gives an idea of the overall state of the economy. It becomes one of the criteria for governments to frame policies, decide what to spend on, how much to increase taxes, and for the RBI to deci...

The next item in Hong Kong was Disneyland – our 14 yo daughter was fast approaching that age beyond which Disneyland would not attract her. Of course, she’d been to other amusement parks like WonderLa in Bangalore and Universal Studios in Singapore, but Disneyland is the bigger brand. Also, we’d been putting off a Disney visit when our daughter was still small, fearing she wouldn’t remember anything and/or be too short for most rides.   The rides at this Disneyland were pretty tame – no roller coasters, for example. Which was a good thing for me, since I am more terrified than thrilled in the rides. Though my daughter would have enjoyed it more if the rides were wilder.   We’d bought the fast-track tickets to go faster through the queues. Unfortunately, those tickets are applicable for specific rides only, not the entire park. The queues being as long as they were (but they are still much better than the US, I am told), we went to whichever rides those tickets entitled u...

Art. I thought its purpose is beauty, aesthetics. Not always, writes Sam Kahn. Once upon a time, it served another purpose: “The presumption is that art must shock—that the violation of taboo is what gives art its charge; and that, actually, shock and the overturning of societal norms is art’s highest purpose.”   Art-as-subversion later turned into art-as-a-call-to-arms: “Somewhere in the 19 th century the notion develops that a work of art can be most effective when it’s ugly , when it deeply mirrors certain social realities and presents them in such a way that the audience is spurred to immediate action.” This became the norm to such an extent that: “Great art was linked to revolutionary politics, or at least to a certain revolutionary spirit, so that every significant work of art was assessed in large part by its ‘influence,’ which really meant its ability to serve as a wrecking ball to various social norms.” So much so that: “Works of art are always hailed as ‘revolutionary,’...

We went to Macau the next day. Like Hong Kong, Macau is a handover (from Portugal) and thus is treated as an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China. Like Hong Kong, it has its own currency (Macanese pataca)! The Chinese yuan is accepted, but the Hong Kong dollar is preferred. Like Hong Kong (but unlike China proper), Macau too drives on the left. And you need to clear immigration to pass from Hong Kong to Macau and back. China with SAR’s is complicated.   Macau is famous for its casinos. If you thought Macao is the Las Vegas of Asia… well, actually, Macao is a much larger gambling market than Las Vegas – it crossed Las Vegas’ gaming revenue numbers as long back as 2010. That said, a lot of things are indeed copied from Las Vegas, including the name (Cotai Strip where the luxury themed casino resorts are located). The Cotai Strip has Londoner, Parisian and Venetian themed resorts – the collated pics from the Net will help get an idea of what that means: We walked around...

For this vacation, we went to Hong Kong with a day at Macau. But before I go into the details of that, some assorted titbits on the Hong Kong.   Hong Kong is an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China ever since it was handed back from the UK in 1997. It is governed under the “one country, two systems” principle, in line with the 1984 agreement with the British which was made prior to the handover (China guarantees Hong Kong's economic and political systems for 50 years after the handover).   As a result, you have this weird situation where Hong Kong has its own currency (Hong Kong dollar). While the Chinese yuan is accepted, it is not the preferred currency. Lastly, Hong Kong drives on the left unlike China (proper) which drives on the right!   Hong Kong is the world’s 3 rd largest financial hub (after New York and London). The biggest Chinese tech companies, from Alibaba to Baidu to TenCent (WeChat) are all listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. ~~ ...