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The Instagram Addict

My 14 yo daughter has noticed what I do in my office calls. Unlike my wife, I am usually on group calls, not one-on-one calls. This means that the parts relevant to me in the call can vary wildly. Between hardly needed to needed periodically to being the presenter. Accordingly, how much attention I pay during those calls varies wildly. As you might have guessed, my daughter picked only the data points that made me look inattentive or worse.   Let me elaborate on the “or worse” part. Sometimes, a question will be sprung at me in the middle of a call and I would not even have heard the question! Upon which, I follow the time-tested practice of blaming it on bad network connection, and ask them to repeat the question. Such instances became Exhibit A for the prosecution daughter.   At other times, I have been on my phone during calls, scrolling through various social media. Not only did these become Exhibit B, but they also got me branded (with exaggerated finger wagging ...
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Brain #2: Airport Network Metaphor

  In Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain , Lisa Barrett describes the structure of the brain. The brain is a network of neurons, around 128 billion of them in case of humans. The neurons continuously fire and communicate with other neurons they are connected to. And here’s something not everyone realizes: “Your brain network is always on.” Put differently, that means neurons are not triggered into action only when something happens inside or outside the body. Rather, they are talking with each other continuously. But the strength of the signal will change based on triggering events and also, yes, frequency of usage of those pathways.   A metaphor that Barrett uses to describe the brain is the airport network. Just as every combination of airports don’t have direct flights between them, similarly all neurons don’t communicate with all other neurons. Instead, both have “hubs” – a small number of points that connect to a huge number of other points. The rest (majori...
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The Problem of Quitting

We understand the importance of perseverance. But, as Seth Godin wrote : “You can pull out every stop, fight every step of the way, mortgage your house and your reputation–and still fail. Or, perhaps, you can quit in a huff at the first feeling of frustration.   The best path is clearly somewhere between the two. And yet, too often, we leave this choice unexamined.”   It is that choice that Annie Duke has written a book about called (what else?) Quit: The Power of Knowing when to Walk Away . I haven’t read the book but her interview with David Epstein was interesting.   The biggest problem to quitting is the sunk cost fallacy: So much time and effort has already been spent, so wouldn’t quitting mean all that effort was in waste? Projects don’t get scrapped even when the cost and delays have spiraled out of control. Stocks that we bought and can’t bring ourselves to sell at a loss. There are endless examples. She has an interesting perspective on that: “Wha...
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Brain #1: Purpose and Optimization

For what purpose has the brain evolved? As humans, we are biased when we encounter that question, writes Lisa Barrett in Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain . We wrongly assume that the purpose of the brain is to think: “After all, thinking is the human superpower, right?”   Wrong, says Barrett. Long, long ago, unicellular life found itself in competition with others over limited resources, the importance of any capability to sense what lay where was an evolutionary advantage – Did XYZ lie to the left or right? Gradually though, raw sense organ signals weren’t enough. Choices had to be made – was it likely one could catch the prey? Make a wrong choice repeatedly and one would die of starvation. Thus: “Energy efficiency was a key to survival.”   So Barrett concludes: “Your brain’s most important job is to control your body… by predicting energy needs before they arise so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive.”   But this created...
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Info from Telecom Towers

During Trump’s last term, he declared war on Huawei, the Chinese telecom equipment (and phone) manufacturer saying they were installing backdoors and spying. So how secure are telecom networks? That is the topic Jordan Schneider discussed with his panellists and it is very interesting.   Since Huawei got banned in the West, China instead went after Western telecom providers and hacked them to get access to all kinds of data! No, they can’t hear what you say. No, they can’t read what you type on encrypted chat apps like WhatsApp. But: “The telcos have the location data, call records, voicemails, and they can do many things without our knowledge or control.”   Everyone carries and uses their smartphone everywhere. Even soldiers (except in specific areas or operations where they are forbidden). Why? Well, to stay in touch with family and friends. Plus, telecom networks are far better than military telecom infra anyway in terms of coverage! This creates new scenarios, not just wr...
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Defining Poverty

In the recent budget, there was a reference to “multidimensional poverty”. What exactly does that mean? Nithin Sasikumar explains it well. Note : As is his style, he is explaining what the concept is; not assessing the data used to come to any conclusion on poverty levels in the country.   When we think of poverty, we think of income, whether it is enough to cover basic expenses ( roti, kapada, makaan ). This is the classical definition of absolute poverty – below a certain income, one is considered BPL (Below the Poverty Line). The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t look at other aspects: “ But, say you live in a house with a leaking roof, you don’t have access to clean water, there’s no electricity, and you have a child who hasn’t seen a classroom in months because the nearest school is too far off. Are you not poor?”   It is to include these other aspects (besides income) that the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was created. So what is it exactly? “India’s...
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Anesthesia and Consciousness

Since I work on anesthesia machines, I loved this fascinating piece by Devansh Malik on anesthestic agents and what exactly happens when anesthetized.   The story starts in the 1840’s, when a popular pastime (in the West) was to inhale ether or nitrous oxide at what was called the “laughing gas parties”: “You’d inhale a bit, feel euphoric, do something embarrassing and everyone would laugh. Simple pleasures of life.”   Then people noticed something weird – people inhaling these gases didn’t experience pain (even when they hurt themselves badly). This led a dentist named Horace Wells to wonder if it might have the same effect on the tooth. He had a colleague extract his tooth under nitrous oxide and was happy he didn’t feel any pain. A public demonstration unfortunately didn’t work and the patient did experience pain. Another dentist named William Morton tried it again, with ether during a tooth extraction. It worked. “ Shortly after, a surgeon there removed a tumo...
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