What have i become?

Hmm...yeah thats a question i am trying to answer these days and true enough, i read stranger books and watcher weirder movies. How about people i meet, you ask? The lesser i speak, the better. Anyway, here is something i read and thought sounded apt to this situation:

"I COULD NOT BECOME ANYTHING: NEITHER BAD NOR GOOD,
NEITHER A SCOUNDREL NOR AN HONEST MAN,
NEITHER A HERO NOR AN INSECT.
AND NOW I AM EKING OUT MY DAYS IN MY CORNER,
TAUNTING MYSELF WITH THE BITTER AND ENTIRELY
USELESS CONSOLATION THAT AN
INTELLIGENT MAN CANNOT SERIOUSLY
BECOME ANYTHING; THAT ONLY A FOOL CAN BECOME SOMETHING."

Its appraisal time.Let me get back to some serious work now...

Between Leaving and Moving

A few of days back, a friend of mine said she was leaving the company she is currently working. So, i asked her,the next logical question, which is where is she going. She said, she is joining a small startup. I asked, so does it pay better. She said, no! She is a bright engineer and so asked her, why aren't you applying to the bigger companies. You know, the natural progression is to move from one good company to another good company. Her reply to that was, she wasn't relocating to another company like a job shift. She said, she is leaving this one and moving to another. I asked, well what's the difference? Her answer was, you see, for most people, job shift appears like a single atomic transaction. I mean, you leave one job and move on to another, thereby completing the circle and finishing the transaction. She said, that is very different from what she was doing. She said, "its not like one fine day i woke up and decided to leave and hence started hunting out for other jobs and finally landed up in another company". She said, "one fine day i woke up and i saw something. I thought it was far better than what i do. I like what i am doing now, but i find this to be far more interesting than what i am doing". So, she said, " I decided, i will give it a shot and see if i can get there, in that new work place. I talked to them and told them what they are doing seemed interesting and i would like to be part of this venture. So, they offered me a position, with a little lesser salary and of the same designation. But, i readily accepted".

This conversation, was a great eye opener for me. I suddenly realized, why some of my friends, are still enjoying their break from work, even though its been more than a year. I am not talking about people who don't work because they are lazy or find working boring. I am talking about people who have worked for sometime and are genuinly taking some time off from work, before deciding what next to do.

My 2 dearest friends, i can completely understand your state of mind, right now and i thought i should codify this new found knowledge of mine :). I have even called you "jobless" at times,when you have sent those long "planner emails". But, now, i completely understand the difference and the state of your mind. Enjoy your break! Amen!

Shall we talk Philospphy?

Its around 3:57 AM, IST, friday evening(or saturday early morning, to be precise), without a drink and writing about philosophy. Sounds strange or sounds familiar? Well, i am not blaming my lack of nocturnal activities of any kind on a friday evening for this, but the fact that these days i am kept busy reading (or re-reading ) some interesting works of plato and aristotle. Anyway, let me get back to the point of discussion : Philosophy.

When i was in school, I decided I wanted to study philosophy, at some point. But then, practical aspects of life and money, sort of made it impossible to take up philosophical studies, as a serious subject in this country. I followed the other sheeps around my school, went into an engineering college and all that. But what is important here is, I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable was to shock people. You know, Schools and Colleges is always regarded (or atleast i did) as job training where I grew up. So studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do. Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a board pin through your ear,belly, and your tongue which were other forms of impressive impracticality then just coming into fashion.

But I had some more honest motives as well. I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom. You know, all my friends would just end up with some "specific" domain knowledge, based on their coursework. But, I would be learning what was really what.

I'd tried to read a few philosophy books. Not recent ones; But I tried to read Plato and Aristotle. I doubt I believed I understood them, but they sounded like they were talking about something important. Honestly, I learned a lot in my Real Ananlysis class, but I didn't learn much from these gentlemen. And yet my plan to study philosophy remained intact. It was my fault I hadn't learned anything. Then, i was sugested Berkley by someone(dont remember who). I did give Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge another shot in college. Anything so admired and so difficult to read must have something in it, if one could only figure out what. I still don't understand Berkeley, after almost a decade now. I have a nice edition of his collected works. Will I ever read it? Seems unlikely. The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand. I think I see now what went wrong with philosophy, and how we might fix it.

Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter in the way math or history or most other university subjects do. There is no core of knowledge one must master. The closest you come to that is a knowledge of what various individual philosophers have said about different topics over the years. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.

Heard of Formal Logic? It does seem to me very important to be able to flip ideas around in one's head: to see when two ideas don't fully cover the space of possibilities, or when one idea is the same as another but with a couple things changed. But did studying logic teach me the importance of thinking this way, or make me any better at it? I don't know.

There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy. The most dramatic I learned immediately that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I. But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies. Imagine waking up after such an operation. You have to imagine being two people.

The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. Even a concept as dear to us as I. It took me a while to grasp this, but when I did it was fairly sudden, like someone in the nineteenth century grasping evolution and realizing the story of creation they'd been told as a child was all wrong. [1] Outside of math there's a limit to how far you can push words; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings. Everyday words are inherently imprecise. They work well enough in everyday life that you don't notice. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to. But you can always make them break if you push them far enough.


I would say that this has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central fact of philosophy. Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist."

This brings me to an interesting question. How did things get this way? Can something people have spent thousands of years studying really be a waste of time?In fact, some of the most interesting questions you can ask about philosophy. The most valuable way to approach the current philosophical tradition may be neither to get lost in pointless speculations like Berkeley, nor to shut them down, but to study it as an example of reason gone wrong.

Western philosophy really begins with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.There started to be a lot more analysis. I suspect Plato and Aristotle were encouraged in this by progress in math. Mathematicians had by then shown that you could figure things out in a much more conclusive way than by making up fine sounding stories about them. [2]
People talk so much about abstractions now that we don't realize what a leap it must have been when they first started to. It was presumably many thousands of years between when people first started describing things as hot or cold and when someone asked "what is heat?" No doubt it was a very gradual process.Aristotle in particular reminds me of the phenomenon that happens when people discover something new, and are so excited by it that they race through a huge percentage of the newly discovered territory in one lifetime. If so, that's evidence of how new this kind of thinking was. [3] Something similar happened when people first started trying to talk about abstractions. Much to their surprise, they didn't arrive at answers they agreed upon. In fact, they rarely seemed to arrive at answers at all.They were in effect arguing about artifacts induced by sampling at too low a resolution.

Lets just step back to see what really was the goal then. Aristotle's goal, for instance was to find the most general of general principles. The examples he gives are convincing: an ordinary worker builds things a certain way out of habit; a master craftsman can do more because he grasps the underlying principles. The trend is clear: the more general the knowledge, the more admirable it is. But then he makes a mistake—possibly the most important mistake in the history of philosophy. He has noticed that theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of curiosity, rather than for any practical need. So he proposes there are two kinds of theoretical knowledge: some that's useful in practical matters and some that isn't. Since people interested in the latter are interested in it for its own sake, it must be more noble. So he sets as his goal in the Metaphysics the exploration of knowledge that has no practical use. Which means no alarms go off when he takes on grand but vaguely understood questions and ends up getting lost in a sea of words.

His mistake was to confuse motive and result. Certainly, people who want a deep understanding of something are often driven by curiosity rather than any practical need. But that doesn't mean what they end up learning is useless.So while ideas don't have to have immediate practical applications to be interesting, the kinds of things we find interesting will surprisingly often turn out to have practical applications.That's what makes theoretical knowledge prestigious. It's also what causes smart people to be curious about certain things and not others; our DNA is not so disinterested as we might think.The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that they were useless.

So, is there a problem?
And since his work became the map used by generations of future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction as well. [4] Perhaps worst of all, he protected them from both the criticism of outsiders and the promptings of their own inner compass by establishing the principle that the most noble sort of theoretical knowledge had to be useless.

The Metaphysics is mostly a failed experiment. A few ideas from it turned out to be worth keeping; the bulk of it has had no effect at all. The Metaphysics is among the least read of all famous books. It's not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the way a garbled message is.

In the intervening years an unfortunate idea took hold: that it was not only acceptable to produce works like the Metaphysics, but that it was a particularly prestigious line of work, done by a class of people called philosophers. No one thought to go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument. And so instead of correcting the problem Aristotle discovered by falling into it—that you can easily get lost if you talk too loosely about very abstract ideas—they continued to fall into it.

If you write in an unclear way about big ideas, you produce something that seems tantalizingly attractive to inexperienced but intellectually ambitious students. Till one knows better, it's hard to distinguish something that's hard to understand because the writer was unclear in his own mind from something like a mathematical proof that's hard to understand because the ideas it represents are hard to understand. To someone who hasn't learned the difference, traditional philosophy seems extremely attractive: as hard (and therefore impressive) as math, yet broader in scope. That was what lured me in as a high school student.So, whats even worse is, When things are hard to understand, people who suspect they're nonsense generally keep quiet. There's no way to prove a text is meaningless. The closest you can get is to show that the official judges of some class of texts can't distinguish them from placebos. [5]
ecause philosophy's flaws turned away the sort of people who might have corrected them, they tended to be self-perpetuating.

So, is there a solution?
Here's an intriguing possibility. Perhaps we should do what Aristotle meant to do, instead of what he did. The goal he announces in the Metaphysics seems one worth pursuing: to discover the most general truths. That sounds good. But instead of trying to discover them because they're useless, let's try to discover them because they're useful.Lets use, applicability, as a guide to keep us from wondering off into a swamp of abstractions. Instead of trying to answer the question:

What are the most general truths?

let's try to answer the question

Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general?

The goal is the same as Aristotle's; we just approach it from a different direction.

As an example of a useful, general idea, consider that of the controlled experiment. There's an idea that has turned out to be widely applicable. Some might say it's part of science, but it's not part of any specific science; it's literally meta-physics (in our sense of "meta"). The idea of evolution is another. It turns out to have quite broad applications—for example, in genetic algorithms and even product design. Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshitting seems a promising recent example. [6]

These seem to me what philosophy should look like: quite general observations that would cause someone who understood them to do something differently.

One drawback of this approach is that it won't produce the sort of writing that gets you tenure. And not just because it's not currently the fashion.Here's the exciting thing, though. Anyone can do this.

If it seems like a daunting task to do philosophy, here's an encouraging thought. hough the first philosophers in the western tradition lived about 2500 years ago, it would be misleading to say the field is 2500 years old, because for most of that time the leading practitioners weren't doing much more than writing commentaries on Plato or Aristotle while watching over their shoulders for the next invading army. It didn't shake itself free till a couple hundred years ago, and even then was afflicted by the structural problems I've described above.If I say this, some will say it's a ridiculously overbroad and uncharitable generalization, and others will say it's old news, but here goes: judging from their works, most philosophers up to the present have been wasting their time. So in a sense the field is still at the first step. [7]

Hmm... That sounds a preposterous claim to make. Civilization always seems old, because it's always the oldest it's ever been. The only way to say whether something is really old or not is by looking at structural evidence, and structurally philosophy is young; it's still reeling from the unexpected breakdown of words.

Philosophy is as young now as math was in 1500. There is a lot more to discover.


Notes and References


[1] It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can easily imagine. The story of creation in the Bible is not just a Judeo-Christian concept; it's roughly what everyone must have believed since before people were people. The hard part of grasping evolution was to realize that species weren't, as they seem to be, unchanging, but had instead evolved from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time.

Now we don't have to make that leap. No one in an industrialized country encounters the idea of evolution for the first time as an adult. Everyone's taught about it as a child, either as truth or heresy.

[2] Philosophy is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. It was born when Plato and Aristotle looked at the works of their predecessors and said in effect "why can't you be more like your brother?" Russell was still saying the same thing 2300 years later.

Math is the precise half of the most abstract ideas, and philosophy the imprecise half. It's probably inevitable that philosophy will suffer by comparison, because there's no lower bound to its precision. Bad math is merely boring, whereas bad philosophy is nonsense. And yet there are some good ideas in the imprecise half.

[3] Aristotle's best work was in logic and zoology, both of which he can be said to have invented. But the most dramatic departure from his predecessors was a new, much more analytical style of thinking. He was arguably the first scientist.

[4] The meaning of the word "philosophy" has changed over time. In ancient times it covered a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our "scholarship" (though without the methodological implications). Even as late as Newton's time it included what we now call "science." But core of the subject today is still what seemed to Aristotle the core: the attempt to discover the most general truths.

Aristotle didn't call this "metaphysics." That name got assigned to it because the books we now call the Metaphysics came after (meta = after) the Physics in the standard edition of Aristotle's works compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes three centuries later. What we call "metaphysics" Aristotle called "first philosophy."

[5] Sokal, Alan, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity".
[6] Frankfurt, Harry, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press.

[7] Some introductions to philosophy now take the line that philosophy is worth studying as a process rather than for any particular truths you'll learn. The philosophers whose works they cover would be rolling in their graves at that. They hoped they were doing more than serving as examples of how to argue: they hoped they were getting results. Most were wrong, but it doesn't seem an impossible hope.

This argument seems to me like someone in 1500 looking at the lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as a process. No, they were going about it wrong. It turns out it is possible to transmute lead into gold (though not economically at current energy prices), but the route to that knowledge was to backtrack and try another approach.

A mixed Holy Week!

This holy week has been incredible mixed bag of emotions and surprises. Couple of goodies and one BAD BAD thing.

Goodies
------------
1. A long awaited wait of money return - Yes, finally got the house rent advance from my previous landowner after a desperate struggle for over 2 months now. No extra interest for this large sum given to me.

2. Finally got my internet connection - BSNL finally had mercy on me to give me my internet connection just within 45 days after i requested them. An enormous number of fone calls, emails and not to mention the wonderful redressal cell they have. BSNL was chosen after airtel guys promised to give me a new connection after i shifted to this new residence. Airtel customer care is even more interesting. They never bothered to register my request to change my connection. Then i call them up to figure out it is not registered and they booked a complaint. Never got back to me and after upteen number of calls to their call centers, emails and also to their zonal office, they still have not gotten back to me. So i had to give up all hopes on their so called model of "prompt service".

And now for the BAD PART for this week: I lost the current love of my life. Not that we broke up, its just that by the time i decided to express my feelings to her, she had already found another guy in her life. So, listening to all those sad songs, composing some music and of course spending time with my books and movies. Need to eat some chocolates now to help me get outta my depression.

A few lessons!

No philosophy lessons here. This is just a summary of some of my biggest learnings working for almost 2 years in a project(not important) in the same company(irrelevant).

Here are they:

1. Results Matter: It does not make a difference whether the company is in deep shit or in its biggest times of glory. What is important is the results you give to your company as an employee, even if your project does not earn them a penny. They have obviously employed you coz they thought your job profile does not require great skills and that's the reason YOU are there working with them, for them. Your results do matter to them. Thats the only way they can say that the project is useless and can be scrapped.

2. Leaders(Read Managers) make choices and you(Read Engineers) are held accountable: Obviously, your manager does not know even the ABC of your job. All he knows is to give you some high level gyan of how to architect systems and build modular, robust components. You might need to undergo an hour long sermon on Scalability, Reliability and all the "abilities" that any system should guarantee. But, when it actually comes to implementing them, the following are some of the things which are told/asked:

• "What is the ROI?
• This is more of an engineering task, does not have any business value.
• Our business is driven by priorities. These are all NICE to have things.
• Maybe, we can take it up later. Let me check with the Product Management to see if it matches their priorities.

....

When when the product goes out for production and we see performance issues and shit hits the roof, then comes our leader to smartly ask , "Why could'nt we have been able to catch this apriori? We should ensure we have enough review done before releasing something".

3. Make Right choices : Well, this is probably the outcome of the some of the above learnings. It is easy to get caught up doing the urgent. It takes real skill to do the important.

4. Are you an AssLicker? : Hmm...if you are not, then you are probably in trouble. If you lick your leader 's(read only leader :) and not manager) ass, then you elevate him(or her). This forces him/her to elevate his/her leader(read boss). And the process is transitive enough to hit right till the top. This helps you save time to do something productive and also help build a good raport with your leader and probably RESULTS DO NOT MATTER. My dear friend (again irrelevant) may not agree with this, but Engineering freedom is still a dream far from even being dreamt. The new order of the day:

• Your Leader is always right!
  
• You, are always wrong.
• If you have any doubts, go back to rule number #1.
  

Ass Licking(recoining it as elevation of the leader) is the only fast track way to reduce problems at work place, improve productivity and achieve results. Don't think, just act!

Being Single!

Well well well...i have often debated on the benifits of being single. So..thought its time i document my thoughts...and here they go.

DISCLAIMER
The following are some of my (own) reasons for being single. I am not advocating this to anyone, but perhaps if i(or you) wish to marry, this would be a good source of knowing what i(or you) would "miss" and more important, am i(or you) ready to miss these?
END OF DISCLAIMER

1. Great Sleep: Cruise for a night of delicious slumber in soft, cozy and warm flannel pajamas. Snuggling up to another body is nice, but so is having all the pillows and covers to myself.

2. Morning Raga: I usually dont like someone complaining how i look in the morning. And to be honest i look terrible - fuzzy tongue, wild hair or puffy eyes . When I am single, others see the “after” picture, not the “before.”

3.Being Natural: Hmm..how i hate to use those razors. Well, when i am single, i don't have too many complaining of my rugged looks. It does itch at the begining, but eventually folks will just assume i have become a liberal Democrat.

4. Ca-ching! : I shall be the happiest person at the bank on Valentine's Day as i make(read if i make) a deposit while others grumble as they withdraw money to pay for those over-priced gifts and special candle light dinners.

5. Great Sex: My ex was wonderful and lasted for few minutes. I, on the other hand, can last for hours (of course not with the same ex).

6. Commitments: This happens to be one of the serious reasons, actually. Its very hard for me to remain focussed and comitted on a single activity all the time. Afterall, there are too many beautiful creatures around right?

Hmm..i still have a lot more things to write but running short of patience and time.

I thus turned out friendship

And the god said "Your friend is your need answered"?
Need? i said, but i have many with different forms!
He said " He is the one which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. "
But what if noneth loves thy?
Thy feed my friend and wait for peace and there is born the seed for deceit.
He said "In friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed."
But all i got was misery from expectations, evil from desires and shared was my mind for their evil deeds and joy unclaimed.
When i parted her, i grieved. When she parted me, she was joyous.
And i realized, there is no purpose in friendship.
Let thy be my best friend. For in me cannot be expectations from thyself, and neither will i be unjoyous with thyself.
And he said "You shall find your friend in due time..."

Who cares who wins?

Another of those frustrating thingies about celebs winning some shit in some part of the world. Why should "Shilpa Shetty wins Big Brother" be a "Breaking News" in most channels when there are some serious issues in our land. A day or so back was when a hostel collapsed in gujurat while no one seems to showcase it. No signs of any investigation being shown for this while this Big Brother crap seems to hit potentially all channels. What is happening to all those media reporters we had. What becomes more frustrating is when serious channels like NDTV too seem to hype this whole issue.

On an alternate note when racist comments were supossedly passed, the media created a huge hue and cry. Went to the extent of saying "This is a blow to India and Indians". Shilpa Shetty is not Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam or Dr. Manmohan Singh to represent India. She is a freaking film star and coincidentally happens to be born in India. Thats all she has as credits for herself. Lets step back and think about this so called racist comment? Are we indians non racists?
In our colleges, have we not made fun of mallus for their pronunciation? Have we not called andrites as gults? How many bollywood movies have made fun of south indians and sardars. How many santa/banta jokes have we nourished ? And what about our governments? Bombay => Mumbai, Madras => Chennai, Calcutta => kolkatta and the recent "bengaluru". Come on gimme a break. We live in a far more communally diversified environment than any other country. Racism is not just about belonging to different countries. It even stems from all the examples quoted above.

And what about "winning an international event"? Is it like she had to do something extraordinary to win this competition? Whats there to win in an event like this? What does it take? Just staying in a place for a few days? cooking ur own food and washing ur own clothes? My grandparents have done that for over a 50 years or so and no one seems to pay them like 100 thousand pounds for that?

If it was just an indian winnning an international event, every month one or the other Indian wins something for our country somewhere, maybe in sports, maybe in quizzes, maybe in software competitions and what not. But why don't we promote things which actually need promotion like this and promote an overly promoted thing like Big Brother in the first place? Just think about this, we have simply failed in promoting talent while nurtured mediocracy. Lets take sports. Once in a while we promote a Sachin Tendulkar or a Sania Mirza. But is that all we have in this 100 billion populated country?

My question is directed more towards the media? Have we failed in understanding journalism? Or is our news channels just another "sans bhi kabhi bahu thi" sort of an entertainer?

Mafia DON in UP elections?

This is an interesting bit of news i am reading these days that Abu Salem is contesting for UP elections. Fortunately, for the people in UP, Abu Salem cannot become the CM there as his name is not in the voters list. This is by far the most funniest thing i have ever read in the recent times for 2 reasons:

1. EC approves of a former DON to contest for the UP Polls
2. One cannot become a CM in a state as his name is not there in the voters list.

More news available here: http://www.hindu.com/2006/12/29/stories/2006122918451500.htm

the trees

There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.
The trouble with the maples,
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made.
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade.

There is trouble in the forest,
And the creatures all have fled,
As the maples scream "Oppression!"
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
"The oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light."
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
--
rush
(hemispheres)

Children of a Lesser God!

It was the 31st of dec, 2006. The year was dawning to an end. For the influential in this country, it had been a great year when Indians - and of late quite a bit of the world as well - keep talking about the new India's economic prowess and potential... of its 8-9% growth rate, how India produced more millionaires than China last year, and how India may become the world's largest economy after the US and China in the next few decades. As the rich and the well-heeled made preparations to ring in 2007 in style across a new, shining India, a sleepy, poor housing area - Nithari - almost ruined their party. On the 31st afternoon, the noida police dug the seewage of the alleged Mohinder Singh to find some body parts blocking the drainage. This was perceived by many, just as a scene of mass killings by some imbecile. India loosing to SA was greater concern for the rest. For the police in another part of the country, providing safety in Goa was a greater concern since there were many foreigners expected to party there.For some of them who witnessed nithari on the various media channels, it was like watching a horror film.An initial wave of revulsion swept through the country after details of the mass killings in Nithari village of Noida - a suburb of the Indian capital, Delhi - unfolded like one grotesque sequence.But after a while, most Indians came to see the killings as simply a gory crime committed by one or more sick individuals.In the end, most parties and festivities went ahead as planned. Just a few weeks ago when a rich software company(Adobe Software) CEO's(Mr. Naresh Gupta) son was abducted from Noida - not more than 3 miles (5kms) from Nithari - the case hogged the limelight 24x7 and the police worked overtime to solve it. The result? The child eventually returned home safely.

After weeks, months and years of complaints of missing children, the noida police have been found to give least importance to all the genuine hue and cry. Reason? these were parents who worked in farmlands, nearby mines and quaries, construction workers and resided in slums. No media ever went to look into their conditions or figure out what was happening. The skeletons were also dug in a questionable way to find any DNA traces and without any forensic experts, to say the least. Finally, i thought there was light in this situation when they got in CBI to investigate the issue. All the narco analysis and psycho tests conducted do not seem to give them much clue. It is premature to comment at this point on the findings of the CBI, but yesterday's news was devastating when they said the murder count increased to 40 while the noida police claimed it was 17. But, again, the media had better things to investigate: Abishek and Aish's wedding dates.

What is more drastic was the comment Mulayam Singh's son passed on the incident : "Such things are day to day issues and the police will look into this incident carefully".

What i tried to understand from both the incidents(Naresh Kumar's son's case and Nithari) was this: In the former case, the complaint was termed as "cognizable" offense as it is a reported kidnapping case while in the latter it was "incognizable" as it was reported as "missing children". Never knew an alphabetical soup like this could have such devastating effects.

On a second note, a couple of days nithari, 4 children were found dead in a factory in pubjab. Another case of sexual abuse and murder. And two days back, a child was beaten to death by her teacher because she (the child) did not pay her school fees. What better way to welcome the year.

While it is nice to look at the good side of Indian economy and sesex going upto to 14k and the likes, many Indians are also convinced that is the way the Indian story will unfold and all this growth shall be built on the graveyard of such innocent children. Nothing wrong with this optimism - it makes them confident and proud.But can many Indians say with same degree of optimism that there will not be another Nithari when India does realise its dreams?

On Love...

...
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires....

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

kahlil gibran

Am I Ethical - Part 3

Our values are what we prize and our values system is the order in which we prize them. Because they rank our likes and dislikes, our values determine how we will behave in certain situations.The above i discussed in my last post.To make any decision or justify any decision as being ethical, we usually follow one more step. We translate values into principles.This is done subconscioulsy. This we believe helps us in guiding and motivating ethical conduct. For example, honesty is a value that governs behavior in the form of principles such as: tell the truth, don’t deceive, be candid, don’t cheat. In this way, values give rise to principles in the form of specific "dos" and "don’ts."Now, do we we relate these principles to ethics? Ethics is about putting principles into action. Consistency between what we say we value and what our actions say we value is a matter of integrity. That alone determines whether we are ethical in our thoughts and deeds. Consider the following points

1. Not doing what you have the power to do: An act isn’t proper simply because it is permissible or you can get away with it.


2. Not doing what you have the right to do: There is a big difference between what you have the right to do and what is right to do.


3. Not doing what you want to do: In the well-worn turn of phrase, an ethical person often chooses to do more than the law requires and less than the law allows.

Ok, the biggest question we should have answered is why be ethical at all? At the end of the day what is that i achieve in this whole tiresome process?Here are some of the reasons i found convincing. You may add your own or disapprove the below. Nevertheless, i found them useful motivations for being ethical:

1. There is inner benefit. Virtue is its own reward.


2. There is personal advantage. It is prudent to be ethical. It’s good business.


3. There is approval. Being ethical leads to self-esteem, the admiration of loved ones and the respect of peers.


4. There is religion. Good behavior can please or help serve a deity.


5. There is habit. Ethical actions can fit in with upbringing or training.

But seriously, what stops us from being ethical. Again, i found two interesting points:

1. The ethics of self-interest.When the motivation for ethical behavior is self-interest, decision-making is reduced to risk-reward calculations. If the risks from ethical behavior are high — or the risks from unethical behavior are low and the reward is high — moral principles succumb to expediency. This is not a small problem: many people cheat on exams, lie on resumes, and distort or falsify facts at work. The real test of our ethics is whether we are willing to do the right thing even when it is not in our self-interest.



2. The pursuit of happiness.We have often heard this idea that happiness is a basic right of free men. But is this pursuit a moral end in itself? It depends on how one defines happiness. Our values, what we prize and desire, determine what we think will make us happy. We are free to pursue material goals and physical sensations, but that alone rarely (if ever) leads to enduring happiness. It more often results in a lonely, disconnected, meaningless existence. The morally mature individual finds happiness in grander pursuits than money, status, sex and mood-altering substances. A deeper satisfaction lies in honoring universal ethical values, that is, values that people everywhere believe should inform behavior. That unity between principled belief and honorable behavior is the foundation for real happiness.
   

Now to answer the first question about my friend's policy of pre marital sex. In my world, i do not have any issues. But perhpas in his world, he needs to make an ethical decision and not simply rant ethical decisions tipping down from the whims and fansies of his parents or society.

Am i Ethical - Part 2

What happens when ethics collide? How to handle this? Before answering this, let me move on to a different but related concept of virtue and being virtuous. Is being virtuous mean being ethical?

Virtue is the sole good, in so far as it is, considered in itself, happiness for the man. Hence virtue should be desired as a virtue and not for the sum of pleasures which can be derived from it. Virtue is an end in itself and not a means to attaining the good. This mean, being virtuous is a conscious decsion which leads to being happy very much what being ethical tries to arrive at. On the contrary, Ethics are more stricter by definition. They do not necessarily talk about the happiness of the individual but about the happiness of environment(or more so people) surrounding the man. Being virtuous may lead to being ethical but the reverse is necessarily not true.

I have grown up in this school of thought that anything which is virtuous but not vice is evil. For instance, gaining a lot of money may give me happiness but if it is done at the cost of other's then it is not vice. Why are children then taught to be virtuous? Well, the stoic philosophy gives a good explanation for this.Atleast this explanation is something i found useful. But just what did the Stoics mean by virtue and vice? Virtue signifies living according to reason. Since reason tells us that all that happens must happen and that it happens, virtue consists not only in not desiring anything except what happens, but in accepting with eagerness anything that does happen. For the Stoic anything which cannot be reasoned represent the irrational, because they tend to turn away reason from that which indeed must happen. In this opposition vice consists. Vice, hence, is everything that tends to oppose itself to reason, every desire or emotion which opposes itself to the natural development of nature. It is in this complete domination of reason over the passions and the emotions that Stoic apathy consists. In a word, the Stoic must be like a god who, closed up in his reason, passes among men without a care for all that happens. Hence, virtue should always be directed towards a reason and not the other way around. This precisely complements my earlier arguement on the fact that virtue may lead to being ethical but not the other way around. More so, when ethics depend on "stoic irrational" concepts like passions and emotions. This also throws another view point that ethics also come by from emotional aspects which need not necessarily be reasoned. This is true for values also. This again reinstances that ethics cannot be universal and so cannot be values.

Before we understand the collision of ethics and values, let us understand what happens if our values themselves collide. How do we react to such situations. It has been found that we internally build a system of values in which different values are ranked. At any point in time, our decisions in situations as above are based on what priority or ranking we have for these values. Let me try to explain this better. Our values are what we prize and our values system is the order in which we prize them. Because they rank our likes and dislikes, our values determine how we will behave in certain situations. Yet values often conflict. For example, the desire for personal independence may run counter to our desire for intimacy. Our desire to be honest may clash with the desire to be rich, prestigious or kind to others. In such cases, we resort to our values system. The values we consistently rank higher than others are our core values, which define character and personality.

Are we in a position to answer the first question now about ethics and values colliding? Well yes, but as my friend says I would reserve that discuss
for later as i am currently tired to write more :). But the next post on this topic shall definitely answer that question.

Am i Ethical? - Part 1

Well for all those who know me would say.."of course not". Some would add things like "You and ehtics are 2 sides of the coin. You shall never face each other". And what does part 1 mean here? Jokes apart, i was faced with this question sometime back. It all started off like this:

I and my classmate were discussing about pre marital sex. He was saying, it was not ethical and i was saying "ethics is a matter of personal choice". So, he asked me "How do you say that?. Can i be ethical to myself and non ethical to others? What about the values my parents have imparted to me. We cannot afford to do such things in our culture, can we?"

This made me think...and i realized i had a lot to write. Hence i am spliting the discussion into multiple posts. This post is just a start.

Let me first understand What is ethics?

These are some of the answers i got[from friends, folks, surfing on the internet]:

1. A set of principles of right conduct.
   
2. A theory or a system of moral values: “An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain” (Gregg Easterbrook).


3. The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.


4. The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: e.g. Medical Ethics

What the above means is that "Ethics" refers to principles that define behavior as right/good/proper. Such principles need not always dictate a single "moral" course of action, but provide a means of evaluating and deciding among competing options. The above basically means there is nothing universal about this. I shall discuss about the universal nature of ethics later. But the question now is, are ethics and values one and the same? Well, not really.

The terms "ethics" and "values" are not the same. Ethics is concerned with how a person who has belief in some morals "should behave", whereas values are the inner judgments that determine how a person "actually behaves". Values concern ethics when they pertain to beliefs about what is right and wrong. In general, values have nothing to do with ethics.

The next issue is in understaning, how universal are my ethics and values. Most people have convictions about what is right and wrong based on religious beliefs, cultural roots, family background, personal experiences, laws, organizational values, professional norms and political habits. For instance, my friend is convicted that pre marital sex is wrong.But unfortunately, these are not the best values to make ethical decisions by — not because they are unimportant, but because they are not universal. Well then, what exactly are universal ethics? Can ethics actually be universal? It seems like there are somethings which can be considered universal.

In contrast to above items which are based on consensus, concepts like trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship can be considered universal. But there is a catch. Personal and professional beliefs on the these vary over time, among cultures and among members of the same society but the basic concept remains the same. It then leads to say that all of the universal ideas on ethics like the ones above are meant for interpretation of the individual and has nothing implicit in it which makes it universal. For instance, lets take responsibility. There is nothing implicit in responsibility that makes it universal.For instance, there is always a continuous disagreement with some of the above concepts and its universality. No, i am not saying people should not have their opinion. NEVER. There is nothing wrong with having strong personal and professional moral convictions about right and wrong, but unfortunately, some people are "moral imperialists" who seek to impose their personal moral judgments on others.And the others are either forced to accept it or choose to accept it by obligation. This by itself is a contradiction to the above principles. For instance, i may argue the following: The universal ethical value of respect for others dictates honoring the dignity and autonomy of each person and cautions against self-righteousness in areas of legitimate controversy. This basically means i do respect ethics and its universality but then including notions of "respect" but then i do not respect your opinion of not accepting my convictions and believing them. This basically leads to collision..collision of ethics and values. How to handle this?...Well i am not answering that here coz thats a seperate topic in itself. I think its better i reserve it for later.

Valluvar and Tagore on Love

yaanokkum kaalai nilanokkum nokkaakkaal
thaanokki mella nagum.
--
thiruvalluvar ( 31 BC )
kural : 1094
adhigaram : kuripparidhal
inbathuppaal


translation:

when i look, she looks down; when i don't,
she looks and smiles timidly.

adhigaram : Describes an ontology. A semantic classification of the topics covered under this head
inbathuppaal: A collection of topics on love

find it toooooo beautiful and very similar to some lines from tagore's
"the gardener"

if it sets your heart aflutter, i will
take away my eyes from your face.

talk with Talk

It's been nearly a year since Google launched Google Talk. Like so many of Google's non-search gizmos, it's been tagged as "beta" for an eternity. The rub here is that Google Talk hasn't really wowed the public in its infancy.

That's unusual. Google is used to being either a category killer or a silent killer. Look at the perfect simplicity of its landing page, or its AdWords and AdSense advertising programs. Look at the jaw-dropping beauty of Google Earth or Google Maps.

Google Talk? Eh. It's not exactly shabby, but it's not Google's finest hour. That's OK, though; Google doesn't have to hit them all out of the park. Perhaps Google Talk is like those alien baddies in the War of the Worlds remake, buried in the ground and lying dormant until the time comes to arise from its slumber and strike. Integrating the program with Google Checkout transactions, or tying it to AdWords' recent move toward "click-to-call" functionality, might be the elixir to make Google Talk a real monster.

The 30 min mockery

Today one of my friends got a strange email from his mgr as follows:

Please inform me if you are going to be away from your desk (office) for more than 30 min.

Regards,
Your Manager

Now suddenly a thought struck me...what if i were in my friend's position and i wish to go the the toilet and also anticipate it may exceed 30 mins? What should i do? Then followed some beautiful mechanisms to tackle my problem. Here goes....

Suppose i am in toilet expecting i shall be back in 5-10 mins and it takes more than 30 mins for whatever reason and let us say i do not have my mobile or something..then what am i supposed to do? I have the following options:

1. Leave a message on YM for my mgr every time i go to the toilet.
2. On the 29th min, come out of the toilet using the following approach:

a. come 29th min and u zip back my pants and decide to flush or leave it open and come out of the toilet. If you had flushed go to step b else go to step c
b. come out after flushing, wash hands(if u need it) and come over to ur cube(waiting and praying for the arrival of the 31st min hopefully praying no meeting is being scheduled in the next 2 mins),and get back to the toilet. Now follow step d.
c. If u do not flush, come out leaving the toilet stinking hoping no one enters the same toilet u used, and follow everything in step b till you get back to the toilet. Now follow step e.
d. If u find that the toilet u used is empty and u wish to use it(inspite of the nuances you had earlier created) Use it till you are are satisfied and come back from the toilet satisfied. Make sure you also time yourself when u enter the toilet. If u exceed 29 mins, come out and go to step a. If u are done within 28 mins come out satisfied and go to step h. If u do not find the toilet empty, go to step f.
e. If u find the toilet u used and u still find it unflushed, then it could be possible that someone else had come in the meantime, used it and left it unflushed too. Or it could have been left unflushed right after you left on the 29th min too. If you are hygiene loving person, you may wanna flush it and get back to your process before the 29th min or else you may continue on the unflushed toilet itself. Once you are done, come back from the toilet satisfied. Now go to step h. If u do not find the toilet empty, go to step f.
f. While(1) {
flag = search(nearer room, same sex, free toilet) ;
if(flag == found){
go forward and continue the process you followed before u left the previous toilet .
exit;
}
}
Now go to step h.

h. You have successfully mastered the art of following guidelines when leaving for toilet. Please document this gyan so that others can use it. File a bug, mark its priority. Also in the meantime, wait for further meetings/discussions on the same. Make sure you also get it prioritized.

The above algo has obvious flaws but is somewhat very close to what i would do given i am in this situation.

3. [ I love this option. My personal favourite] Come out of the toilet and shout in the open saying i am in toilet and will take another few mins on the 29th min.

What i am interested in knowing is which one would be preferred.

Google Condoms

An interesting read on google's new innovation: Google Condoms

Disclaimer

Like any other insane creature on this planet who has nothing else to do...i too decided to write a book. Do not ask me about what it was as that is not important. What is important is what i write in it. So i finished up my Copyrights page, Acknowledgements, Prelude and other things. The next section was Disclaimers which looks something like this:

Warnings and Disclaimers

1. This book is a work in progress. It contains quite a few mistakes and typos. I would greatly appreciate your constructive criticism. You can reach me at :


2. Reading this book impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery.


3. This book has been found to cause drowsiness in laboratory animals.


4. This book contains twenty-three times the US RDA of fiber.


5. Caution: FLAMMABLE - Do not read while smoking or near a fire.


6. If infection, rash, or irritation develops, discontinue use and consult a physician.


7. Warning: For external use only. Use only as directed. Intentional misuse by deliberately concentrating contents can be harmful or fatal. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.


8. In the unlikely event of a water landing do not use this book as a
   otation device.


9. The material in this text is fiction; any resemblance to real things, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This is by far the most amusing section of this book....

10. Finding the typos and mistakes in this book is left as an exercise for the reader. (Eye ewes a spelling chequer from thyme too thyme, sew their should knot bee two many misspellings. Though I ain't so sure the grammar's too good.)


11. The techniques and methods in this text are subject to change without notice.


12. This is a chain book. If you do not make seven copies and distribute them to your friends within ten days of obtaining this text you will suffer great misfortune and other nastiness.


13. The surgeon general has determined that excessive studying is detrimental to your social life.

Now once you have read the above plz leave a comment as to whether i have missed out on something so that i can peacefully go ahead completing my book.