Archis's Blog

August 22, 2011

Why doesn’t anyone speak of Law-enforcement in India?

Filed under: philosophy, Politics, Preaching — archisgore @ 2:13 am

I wrote once before about Raj Thakery and had a lively debate with a friend. My objection was simple – he broke a law, and he was not held accountable for it. For all my admiration for Batman, I certainly respect the fact that he is always portrayed as an anti-hero by the writers. A moral conflict that is never really quite resolved.

This month it is the Jan Lokpal Bill in vogue. I understand that the laws we have are not sufficient. I understand that there is a need for anti-corruption law reform. But what we really, truly, desperately and urgently need, is the ability to enforce the law. I took some time to go over the Jan Lokpal Bill discussion on the site, and most of it sounds like one of my algorithm-proving design documents (first we send an integer as a parameter, then we check the integer for non-negativity, thereby ensuring it is always >= 0.) My computer, fortunately, is 100% reliable in performing that integer non-negativity check, which is why the algorithm works. That isn’t how India works though. We have rules. We have the law. It isn’t being followed.

I wrote before about Middle-class morality, and how we like to believe we’re better than everyone else. There is a  reason why Gandhi was such a hard-ass on most people. Before criticizing someone else, he was willing to criticize himself. After he was done with identifying all his own faults, we would narrow down on exactly what it is he wants out of others. The fight with the British was distinctly different from what is happening today, and it didn’t quite begin as an Independence struggle. If I remember correctly, “Quit India”, was a  late-comer to the party once he realized every other recourse had been attempted and proven unsuccessful.

The original conflict, the same as in South Africa was, “If we are under the British rule, we are British citizens. Consequently, we must be subject to British rule. We must enjoy all the rights, previledges and responsibilities of British rule. We want British rule. We _demand_ British rule to the last letter of the law.” This isn’t all that different from the American argument either. It started with demanding a colonial representation in the British Parliament, we they were to pay British taxes. When the Brits refused, did they make demands for independence from the British rule.

What is happening in India is similar, but not the same. Unlike the British, there are constitutional laws designed to protect us from corrupt officials. There is law designed to achieve a lot. What is lacking, is the implementation of the law. Now logically speaking, if the law were implemented, we would never find ourselves in this predicament to begin with. The Parliament represents the Will of the people. Some would claim that isn’t true. I had an argument with my mom about this yesterday, and I must disagree. The Prime Minister is right. The Parliament has no obligation to table a bill they don’t want to. If that is not the will of the people of a constituency, the MP would be afraid of not being reelected. It is a self-regulating system. The interpretation against Anna Hazare, that they are holding the country hostage is not all that far-fetched. Democracy is a hard pill to swallow when it doesn’t go our way.

Enforcement:

The first thing I did to uncover more, was to read the FAQ on the website www.indiaagainstcorruption.org. One of the more disturbing statements on that site was, “The government’s agreeing to Anna’s demands was a democratic (not coerced) victory because the tiny fraction of the people of India who participated in the action represented the hearty desires of the masses against corruption.” I find that statement a bit presumptuous. I could say Osama Bin Laden’s tiny fraction who participated in the action against the US represented the hearty desires of the masses. In fact that’s exactly what Osama himself claimed. If we are to be a democracy, and a representative democracy at that, we can never presume anything. If an inconvenient law, rule, measure is taken against us, we must live by it because that is what we are signing up for. First, we must look at the election process – a lot of measures which benefited the masses have made it for 60 years. If the masses want it, it happens.

So either of two things is happening. Either election process is screwed up – in which case, if the very laws that are supposed to protect our democracy are not enforced, what makes you think any array of new laws would be enforced? Or, as the government is saying, the lack of introduction of the bill is, in fact, the will of the people.

There’s a reason I say this. Are the masses truly against corruption? Do you know that there have been plenty of law-enforcing people I’ve seen in my life, that the masses have kicked out of office? Arun Bhatia is my classic example. We speak of lack of infrastructure in our city of Pune (where I was born.) We speak with cynicism of all that could be done if the city planning laws were followed. Arun Bhatia became the commissioner of Pune for exactly 48 hours. As soon as he took office, and began enforcing the law, the masses – yes we’re speaking of the masses – the common masses – the regular middle classes, lower-income classes, upper classes, etc. – EVERYONE kicked him out of office in 48 hours. What does that say about the will of the masses? In fact, if I had heard that not a lot of people were against corruption, I’d readily believe it. To think that people from my city of birth are against corruption is a joke! Did they hold agitations to enforce the city planning laws? Did they hold agitations to enforce laws against a certain faction that went into people’s homes and beat them up? I know hundreds of “middle classes” that lie and cheat on their income taxes. What right do you think they have of holding someone else accountable? Why should a politician be treated by a different law? Why must he not get the right to lie and cheat? Why the double standard?

What I’m leading into, is this – if we do pass a bill, will it be enforced? What happens when hundreds of these middle classes are caught in land-deals or property purchases whose value is not honestly declared? What happens when hundreds of these people’s undeclared income is brought under investigation? Will we ignore it? Will we demand that it is inconvenient to us, and it must not be enforced?

This is a very real and dangerous possibility, that may bind our country in chains for another century with a big grand farce. Do the masses with the candles on the streets realize the consequences for themselves? This is not about the Members of Parliament or the Chief Ministers or the Prime Minister. This one’s going to hit home, and hit us all where it hurts. Illegal land deals. Illegal constructions. Illegal electricity bill manipulations. Illegal cooking gas cylinders. Undeclared incomes of doctors, lawyers, businessmen, farmers. I’m not sure all those supporters have thought this through. The fight is politically and diplomatically framed against politicians, and we’re all up in arms “against” an entity that we have clearly bounded and defined. I know plenty of people who have moved vehicles across state boundaries without paying the proper taxes. It is because of a corrupt cop who is happy to take $2 that they avoid paying heavy fines. Would they really want that corruption gone? When it starts to hit us, we’re going to demand leaner laws. We’re going to have talk shows and debates about confiscating whether a poor farmer’s undeclared income is ‘fair’. We’re going to cave in. And like the host of other laws that exist, we will have another one that won’t be taken seriously.

Visibility:

Visibility is a big part of the Jan Lokpal bill being promoted. Allegedly, it will allow corruption to be brought to light, which implies that we don’t yet know that India has corruption. Do you really buy that? Seriously? So you’re sayimg, there is corruption in India, not because it is not prevented, but rather because people don’t _know_ that it happens? Are you kidding me?!

To prevent the Jan Lokpal from abusing its powers, there will be populist measures like video recordings of meetings. We’re back to the point above. Do you think I don’t act against police abuses because I don’t know they happen? Do I not prosecute people in power because there is lack of evidence? So that given a video recording of a misdeed, I’m better equipped to fight irregularities there? I’m afraid of the kind of world we live in, if this belief is widespread.

I can’t prosecute those who abuse powers, because I don’t have the means to. Whether I have a video tape or not, I don’t have the time, resources or guarantee of remaining alive long enough, to fight a case in the courts. Visibility was never the problem. I remember in my own University, I had evidence of breaking of rules and regulations by the director. I have a hatred for that entire institution not because I didn’t have video recordings, but because I could find nobody who would act on the evidence that did exist!

Such populist measures frighten me because if I ever do have a grievance, I will have that video recording thrown in my face, and told to shut up because it shows no irregularity.

Enforce, Enforce, Enforce:

I love the support this issue is getting. I know people are pissed. I know people are frustrated. We’ve had enough. We taken this for over six decades. More bills and laws and authorities are not the way to go. We need to enforce what we have. Enforce laws. Enforce rules. I’m totally in support of adding new laws. But do so consciously knowing what we are all giving up. The sacrifice isn’t the fasts we’ll do, or the protests we’ll hold in the safety of American cities (for us NRIs), or the candles we’ll light. The sacrifice we’ll give up is our own little bribes we’re so used to.

We must ENFORCE! if this is ever to work. Sadly, I’m not convinced that’s going to happen, but am holding out hope that I be proven wrong. I’ll get back to you in one year and we shall see where we stand.

December 26, 2010

Mythbusters’ method of derivation by first-principles

Filed under: Entertainment, Personal, Preaching, Science — Tags: , , , — archisgore @ 1:20 pm

I’m the type of person who loves deriving from first-principles and one who admires people who like to do the same. This post goes in honour (British English, people – I come from an ex-colony) of the Mythbusters.

To figure things out, to derive things when no knowledge exists is a concept that seems rare today, and yet I’m sure it was rare as far as humanity existed. It is simply observation bias that made me believe the Renaissance period was any better than today. I didn’t read about all the billion people over the world who didn’t do anything while Da Vinci was doing something. Science and Technology ‘exist’ just as a lot of other things.

Most people know things – they don’t find out things, or learn things; they just know things. I came back from a road trip an hour ago on a route that everyone knew had no places to stay or eat, and yet I stayed in warm lodgings, clean beds, and ate some of the best American food in 20 years. We know toast is made by heating bread. We know we’re supposed to go ‘ahhh’ when we eat French or Italian food, and we know bread can’t be made any other way because – well wouldn’t we know about it already? Red wine is better than White wine. Gas pumps have gas, because… they just do, don’t they? Two drinks are never dangerous for driving because I always have control.

Unfortunately, a lot of science education programs also follow this pattern. There exists the earth. It is round. We live on it. It revolves around the sun. I literally don’t know a single person (including myself) around me who can devise a simple experiment right now on the spot to test whether or not the earth is round. I went through five years of college being told Knowledge (no, not a grammatical error there, I was literally told Knowledge – as in a proper noun).

The one thing that really defines the Renaissance was the spirit of individuality and discovery. Leonardo didn’t make ‘great’ paintings, as if God had said, “Let there be a definition of great paintings that humans can aim for. There was hence a definition for what maketh paintings great.” Leonardo made paintings – they were appreciated. Others couldn’t make much better than his, and his paintings obtained value. The renaissance evolved and nurtured the process of independent thought and opinionated thinking (two things I value most.)

I wrote once before about how a process (also called a model) is what defines everything about science, and perhaps what defines science itself versus… well, lack-of-science. I can’t be more precise than that because process is all-encompassing. String theories don’t define one outcome, but define a process by which outcomes for all situations can be predicted. ‘Solutions of equations of the n’th degree’ in mathematics are really the processes used to solve any system of any number of equations with any number of variables of the n’th degree. As a child I had the opportunity to read some interesting books by 20th century scientists, and one difference I noted from modern populist writing is their emphasis on their line of reasoning, their attempts at scientific enquiry, the setbacks, the necessity for designing creative experiments to test hypothesis.

For the last three years, I’d been trying to figure out just what makes me such a mad fan of the Mythbusters, and the answer is that they are more old-school scientists than many I have met in my life in a university. Of course one does chance upon those rare inquisitive individuals who want to know, but they are few and far apart. I must say that the Mythbusters remind me of some of the influential people from my past who made me who I am today – people who genuinely wanted to find out. I will put this out there – Adam and Jamie are two of the very best science teachers that exist on earth today, and the reason is precisely because they are not scientists (while that’s clearly not true, we’ll go by their claim for now.)

They love to discover. They love to figure out. Sure, you’d say, why figure out what’s already known? If you really just said that, then you don’t know squat! :-) To design an experiment to test a hypothesis is a complex task, heck there’s a whole specialization one can study in design of experimentation. Designing an experiment for a theory that cannot be easily tested rarely happens through dreams, no matter how much we want to believe that that’s how we’ll get rich some day. It comes through practice. Let’s be honest, half the things Adam and Jamie test are not known – sure we can make an educated guess at them, but we don’t know them do we? Chickens are not spheres with point mass.

The Mythbusters teach true, pure science, while selflessly claiming they’re not scientists. They derive from first-principles. Instead of assuming chickens are spheres of point-mass, they start with chickens as chickens, and spherical-masses as spherical-masses. If the two being shot out of a cannon demonstrate the same result, Adam goes, “Hmm… Jamie, what if we replaced our chickens with small spherical balls?” (such a thing has not really happened on the show, I made that up.) This casual remark teaches tons more science than all of high-school physics put together. It demonstrates how generalizations come to be in the first place. What the phrase, ‘without loss of generality’ means. What substitutions are allowed. How experiments must be broken down. How do you discover theory in the first place?

Deriving from basics is one of the key overlooked abilities of this decade. Yes, we know the earth is round. We know we can go in space and figure it out. We also know that some ancients figured it out long ago. Most readers of this blog, I’m sure, are at least self-styled techies who are ‘in the know’ about all things technology. I doubt there’s anyone who can come up with an experiment to test the veracity of that hypothesis right now without leaving this page. That’s the kind of stuff the Mythbusters do daily. Some of the tests they are asked to conduct are impossible to imagine being tested. It is like a classic Sherlock Holmes mystery – when you know the answer, it’s obvious, it couldn’t have been anyone else! I’ve been racking my own brains for the last hour trying to figure out how, given that I don’t even know what “The earth” is, I would attempt to figure out its shape. I’ve had formal education in high-school physics.

They also follow a pre-declared results-based experimentation process. A lot of experiments in my high-school physics were dead-on in conclusions, but they never defined what a set of outcomes would have implied before the results were described. The Mythbusters approach is truly scientific. They would first ask: Why do you decide that you want to put an Apple in liquid nitrogen? Then they would define what each outcome would imply: Suppose it were to come out soft, what would that tell us? Suppose it were to come out hard, what would that tell us?

Objectivity is very hard to learn – and is a constant struggle. We all hope our very first outcome is favourable, and it rarely is. Data is manipulated, conclusions are creatively worded, because the results don’t quite imply what we expect them do. The Mythbusters are not afraid to fail, but heck, they love to fail! Almost every other episode they are proven wrong. They love it! It doesn’t get any purer science than that!

If today’s kids are going to break new barriers, then they must have the ability to derive from first-principles – from the very basic axioms. This however, must be done without compromising clear and hard science. Plenty of out-of-the-box thinkers who promote unlearning what universities teach, get too carried away in philosophy, spirituality or just plain stupidity. Deriving from first-principles never causes you to unlearn what you have learnt, but rather causes you to conform what you have learnt. If you were to put an apple in liquid nitrogen, no matter how out-of-the-box you are, it must have the same results as anyone else doing it. If not, you’ve hit upon something and must find out why.

I’m glad the President Obama recognized such brilliant men who love to discover and figure out. It is heartening to see them teaching principles of science (and I know secretly that they too know they are following the scientific method) without making it ‘science’. Under the casual tone of ‘obvious necessary steps’, they are secretly teaching some very fundamental methods of scientific enquiry that took me years to learn.

EDIT: Some people just asked me, why this is important. We come across people treating simple problems as if they were obstacles created by God, or treating solutions as if they just came into existence of their own accord, without appreciating that there was some human being who developed that solution. If one cannot appreciate that, then one can never look at current problems as solvable, since they inevitably ‘exist’. Brings to me frightful visions of the Eloi.

November 28, 2010

Whatever happened to “The Renaissance Man”?

Filed under: Personal, philosophy, Preaching — archisgore @ 9:43 pm

Most who know me, know my obession with the Renaissance period – when people like Leonardo Da Vinci defined the ideal man. A man who strived to improve himself, to better himself. (Ladies, forgive me for not using the more politically-correct “person” here, because I speak in the context of the age.) These men were certainly different. They were different from their peers. They strived to excel in multiple human endeavours, ideally simultaneously. Math, literature, painting, sculpting, music, poetry, to name just a very few. It therefore goes that to strive to improve oneself, if followed through better than others, certainly elevates you to a position of distinction. I’ll shortly get to the judgementalism of this statement.

My obsession with Star Trek represented the same ideal. It showed characters who worked to “improve themselves”. Characters who strived to explore the unknown, to excel in diplomacy, warfare (should the need arise), but the biggest objective of all – to gain understanding. Whether it be planets, or civilizations, or warp technology. Understanding is more than just knowledge – it reflects acceptance and peace.

Some of you will argue, I’m sure, that my definition of what “elevates” a person isn’t necessarily the one they must live by. While I will give a rational and tangible answer below, you know my standard response in case you do not care to present a rational argument: “This is my blog. If you disagree, go write your own blog and see who’d read it.”

Let me explain what I mean by “elevation”, when I say that the Renaissance Man was ever-attempting to elevate himself from his peers. From childhood, my dad always reminded me that the normal curve has two narrow points, and it can be very simple to not realize that you are on the wrong tapering end. A person must remain ever-vigilant to this possibility.

We all have intrinsic objective functions we use to evaluate and judge things – situations, people, objects, value, worth, etc. I’m not defining the objective function in any way, I must remind you. Regular readers know that I never insist upon defining the rules of the game myself, but do insist that when someone does define the rules of a game, that they not break those rules themselves.

Based on these objective functions, it is not difficult to measure the quality of a person. Sure you’d say, “But what’s important to you, may not be important to me.”, and boy am I sick and tired of repeating myself but must refer you to the paragraph above. I’m not speaking of what’s important to me, I am indeed speaking of what you claim to be important to yourself and whether you are being truthful, if not to me, at least to yourself. So yes, given what you claim is important to you, it is not difficult ot measure the quality of any process, person, object, whatever. I’m not saying an objective function has to be necessarily simple, but I do insist that it exists (if it didn’t exist, then you are not acting with a purpose, and by definition are not intent on improvement.)

If I find enough squealing pigs repeating the same hashed out point about what I define as improvement is not what they define, I’ll add an edit to this post later. For now, what I am saying is that if you were on a number line, and if you stepped to your left, and the number decreased, then it must increase if you step to the right. This change is called learning (almost all AI, statistical, modelling, game-theoretic, and optimization problems work off this definition.) So a change with a direction as determined to be that which brings you closer to your objective function is what we know as improvement or learning.

Getting back to what this has to do with the Renaissance Man. So the Renaissance Man, was above all, a functional man. Someone who contributed to his objective and struggled to improve upon it. If Leonardo were a great painter, then any painter who might make paintings of equal quality as that of Leonardo, but who could possibly make more of the paintings would be known as a “better” painter. And for the third time, if you were about to say, “who are you to say making more paintings makes for a better painter?”, I must send you back a few paragraphs. See we’re already talking about Leonardo. That means he’s a big deal of some sort. If he’s not, you shouldn’t be arguing against me, so go home. Having accepted that he’s a big deal, we might agree that he’s a big deal because he made some pretty damn popular (be careful now, I didn’t comment on the quality) paintings (I’m not saying only paintings, but paintings being one of the things that made him a big deal – yes I must be excruciatingly precise because some people get on my nerves with idiotic responses.) Now intrinsictly we are stating that paintings that were made of his quality are desirable. If they’re not, he’s no longer a big deal, so go home and leave me alone. If you can agree that paintings are desirable, then logically, we are left with no other conclusion than that anyone who made more paintings of equal quality would be an improvement.

In short, “If Leonardo is a big deal”, then, “Anyone who made paintings of his quality, but more than he made, would be better than him.” If you refuse statement two, you reject statement one.

So that, not by my definition, but your own definition, is what “improvement” means. With improvement comes difference. Change. Deviation. Departure. A man who makes paintings of equal quality of those of Leonardo, but can make more of them must be different in some way (basic math). A few (but not exhaustive) possibilities are, he may be a faster painter, have some kind of tools not known to Leonardo, have magical abilities, more dedication to painting, less interest in any activities other than painting, to name a few. We may not agree on what that difference is, but we must agree that there is a difference.

So far I would expect most people to follow and agree with me. We can agree that somewhere the above logic is intrinsic in our brains and perhaps instincts. Whether it is a modern feature of a man is debatable, and irrelevant. Being more functional is to be better. Being better is to be different.

Now we come to the kicker. How many people do you know who do things just to be different? When did this tendency arise? Is it a sign of too much prosperity and having nothing better to do? I’ll bet you’ve had the following version of a conversation with someone in the last… say… week?

Bob: Hey, I need a phone with features a, b, and c.

Alice: Yup. Those are pretty much the needs of every person I know. Phone X is what you want.

Bob: Yeah… no…. everyone has phone X, so what’s the use?

And there we have it. The decline of a set of philosophies that were in vogue a hundred years ago. Bob doesn’t say, “I wish I had a phone that did 2a, 4b and 6c.” Instead Bob’s objective function is to be different. Yet somehow, it is a tendency for which Bob feels, if not is in actuality, rewarded socially. Once more, if he weren’t rewarded, he wouldn’t do it, and the tendency should die out. Instead I see it growing day by day. Whether its televisions or phones or gaming consoles. I know classic Linux fanatics who have a custom-tweaked Kernel, for what purpose, I don’t know. (Nope, not that I don’t understand their reason, but I’m never told the reason – under the cowardly blanket of telling me I wouldn’t understand.)

At what point did we forget functionality? When did we stop looking at what we need out of an object, process, method or entity, that the entity in question fulfills? At what point did we stop caring for a good piece of music, but more for the adamantium alloy that forms the strings of the guitar on which it was played badly? At what point did we stop caring about whether a phone could do what we need out of it, and instead decided to survive with a few lacking features just so we would be different? At what point did we lose sight of the fact that to be different does not necessarily constitute an improvement by even a long shot?

What surprises me most is that at least ten years ago, people would take the trouble to fake improvement. At least they’d display the sour-grapes syndrome. If they wanted a “different” phone that didn’t have feature ‘c’, they’d take the trouble of claiming they didn’t want or need the feature anyway. Today they’re so blunt as to tell me they can’t perform so-and-so task because they don’t have feature ‘c’, and if they had it, what’s the difference left between them and others? Yes, seriously, I’m not kidding. I’ve been in situations with people where they actually boast about being sub-optimal, because, if they did what everyone else did, how’d they be “cool”? Da Vinci was different because he had an extra feature “d” that nobody had, not because he lacked something everyone in the world had.

It’s like saying, “Whats the big deal? Everyone eats food. I need to be different. I don’t have the faintest idea what makes gourmet food, but I’ll bet not many people eat out of a trash can. Wow, I’m so hip – I eat out of a trash can, that’s so different from what anyone in the world does!”

Where did the Renaissance Man go? What happened to being different by being better, by striving, by struggling, by achieving? Not by someone else’s objective function, but at least by your own? What happened to the guy who bought the phone with all the features they need, and then adding some more of their own, making them different from all others?

This trend is all the more common in a supposedly highly-educated class of engineers today. Most often I find myself dragged into unnecessary discussions about my choices of furniture, or televisions or phones, or anything I do. A lot of times some of the most highly educated people would advise me to act in a sub-human manner. Now I don’t claim I wouldn’t want something functionally superior. If there were Sofa A, but then there were Sofa B which was a superset of functionality of Sofa A, I’d certainly take advice to choose B. Such an argument is painfully difficult to find these days. People tell me, “Sure, Sofa B doesn’t have all the comfort of Sofa A, but it comes with this other thing that others don’t have.” We see this with bad drivers on the roads too. These guys would suck if they were to go on a race course. A man attempting to improve fast driving would go on a race track and improve upon their speeds there, instead of one-upping gentle old ladies who just want to get to the grocery store. Leonardo didn’t compete with kids throwing finger paint on the walls.

The conjunction for indicating improvement is “and”, not “or”. Improvement does not mean degradation of something more fundamental and basic. Improvement, elitism and pretentiousness have their place in this world. They come after basic necessities have been satisfied, not in their stead. The I-have-something-you-don’t-have thing does work, and does command respect or envy, but only when you truly have everything else I don’t have. Otherwise, it only goes to show why techies are ridiculed and laughed at.

I grew up in a village in India where most homes had a refrigerator long before my family had one. From the front, you could see a lot of fancy decorated openings into those houses too. If you ever showed up you’d probably not know why that place was a village, until you found out that none of the houses had toilets. People did their “business” so-to-speak on a large open ground. Sure, they apparently had all the comforts of someone living in the city, but did they? If I’d have started with this story, I’m sure many elitists would have laughed at the “obvious” deficiency of the villagers’ reasoning, and yet, are we any better with our fancy degrees from big universities?

May 12, 2010

…therefore God exists

Filed under: philosophy, Preaching — Tags: , , , , , — archisgore @ 6:33 am

As a child I heard this story. Once a prominent mathematician was asked by the King to come to court and prove the existence of God. The mathematician solved some complex problem on the board, and wrote below it, “…therefore, God exists.” I don’t know who the scientist was, but do comment if you know more about this story. I found the story hillarious as a kid, and laughed at how stupid the king was.

As an adult, every day I deal with people using such arguments to make their point or worse, enforce their opinions on us. This is a commentary, and as always will follow with some tips on defending yourself against such people (I personally prefer going on the offensive, because it’s just so awesome to see them try and squirm their way out.) Those who are cursed with a logical mind are unfortunately subject to the constant torture of consciously recognising it all the time. Let’s start with a quick real-life story to illustrate the point.

A couple of years ago, I made a comment about some opinion of a famous personality that I felt was misplaced. As you would have guessed, in less than an hour, my mailbox had the first holier-than-thou super-authoritative mail sitting in it, telling me how great the personality was, and how puny I was in comparison. The mail said nothing of the opinion I commented upon, nor my own comment itself. It said nothing about the issue at hand. The crux of the mail exactly amounted to, “*gibbersh* therefore, you’re wrong.”

Have you ever been at the receiving end of such an argument? Do you feel helpless and frustrated? If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone, and many of us still haven’t figured out a good defense yet. I’ve worked in a “corporate” and “business” environment long enough to know that at least in the top tech companies, this kind of talk isn’t entertained. However, it is too common to be coincidence how much people use this kind of argumentative logic and how often they use it. It feels as if there is some academy where such kind of training is imparted on a mass scale.

The basic premises that lead to such situations are:
1. Existence of a subject in need of attention
2. Lack of sufficient knowledge about the object of the conversation
3. An inherent need for self-gratification by appearing involved in the conversation

As the two premises are fundamentally contradictory, how can they be reconciled? You guessed it! *gibberish* (sub-classed by *tech-gibberish*, *economic-gibberish*, *philosophical-sounding-gibberish*, etc.)

Since actually making a well-thought-out argument is beyond question, and the subject has nothing substantial to say anyway, subject chooses path of lease resistence using the logic ‘afterall, so many people can’t be wrong’ (a blog on this is pending). Stick to the “large corporation”, “famous personality”, or “popular choice’, and you’re relatively safe from being interrogated in depth allowing them to preserve the appearence of caring about bigger picture by rehashing some statements they’d have heard here and there.

Your very first defense against such attacks is identifying the attack. You must be self-aware when a discussion or a debate is moving away from issues relevant to the object. In the case of my story above, the author sent me a 3-page biography of the personality and a lot of info about some program that I did not care about. Knowing that a person is changing the issues of discussion is a vital part of defense. Last evening in another such debate, I faced a new one - a commentator simply pulled out one noun from my sentence and responded with, “Since you said…” and created a sentence of his own using my noun with completely different semantics. It was a new learning for me.

Why should you care? Because they may end up being decision makers that affect your life. Managers, politicians, relatives, etc. When such people become decision makers, it is altogether too difficult to argue or escape from them as their objective is self-gratification only. The best defense is a good offense. They are relatively easy to corner. When cornered, they will go on a last-ditch attack effort by stating more “stuff” which could be things from your past or just general stuff they consider to be your flaws. You see, in their world, everyone is a weasel, and all they need to do is find that one time you screwed up so you will back off. See this as a sign of weakness and exploit it! That is the time to strike back and strike hard. Don’t waste time defending yourself, but quickly bring the conversation back to the topic of focus and you shall win the debate.

The end won’t be as satisfactory as them admitting to being ignorant, but rather with them rephrasing your own point and saying, “That’s what I was saying in the first place.” Leave it at that if you can. That’s the best you can expect.

Any similar experiences you’ve had?

March 28, 2010

On opinions, objectivity, fact, liking, agreement, bias

Filed under: Preaching — Tags: , , , , , — archisgore @ 12:59 pm

It was long overdue I commented on this. I guess we only write when we’re passionately misrepresented or misinterpreted by someone. I recently read a book called “The Difficulty of Being Good.” Unusually, after a long time did I love a book that was loved by so many other people. The single biggest reason I loved this book is because after Bernard Shaw, I found someone who wasn’t afraid to take sides, make judgements, express opinions. It is when I was expressing this, that I was asked, “Do you like to read biased books?”, and I decided to explain my position, and hope to inspire maybe another one person who may be afraid of opinions.

Art is inherently dependent on interpretation. There is no right or wrong interpretation, but rather my interpretation and your interpretation. I have commented ad nauseum on how so many people look for the correct interpretation based on a populist majority and then stick to it.

This blog is now about opinionated art - literature to be precise. I have always loved people who are opinionated. Others call them biased. I say everyone is biased, and if they’re not, they’ve got no reason to be living on this earth. Very few of those people have opinions though. This consequently translates into literature too. A large portion of populist books are non-judgemental and non-opinionated in nature. We have a tendency to call this unbiased or objective. It simply represents the high levels of cowardice in our social order. Objectivity, by definition is opinionated.

Let’s look at objectivity for a minute. Objectivity, quite literally (and trivially), means towards an objective. Objectivity is focussed and opinionated. Fairness does not mean neutrality. Objectivity is fair, not passifist. If I were to be made an objective judge of one person having stolen something from another person, then in all fairness, I would judge against the thief. Of course I am biased towards something – I am biased towards my definition of good which states stealing is bad. I am not biased towards either of the two actors involved in the crime, however I will label the act as a crime. I am opinionated, objective, and fair, and harshly biased against stealing. Someone who fails to express an opinion either way, is neither objective, nor fair, nor unbiased, but rather biased towards cowardice of maintaining their “good guy” image amongst both parties.

Let’s talk about opinions. During my days of work with open source I said this, and ever since I work for Microsoft, I keep saying it. I said it against the Church when they opposed Dan Brown’s book, and I say it against the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena when they threaten Sachin Tendulkar against his right to free speech. I am a person interested in opinions, because opinions tell me what people truly really are. Facts are easily verifiable. If the Church is threatened by a two-bit author who has little literary skill, then that just demonstrates their “faith” or whatever. It demonstrates that their followers are dumb imbeciles who would not take 10 minues to verify the facts written by Dan Brown. They are not objective and fair. Similarly, if Sachin Tendulkar saying something troubles MNS, it only indicates how weak and dumb they claim their followers are.

Opinions make people interesting. Opinions make people… well people! To suppress an opinion is to kill humanity. If we believe in aatma and crap, then to suppress an opinion is to simply allow the body to live while having killed a person’s soul.

I understand the value of fact. I’m also one of those people who at times will cut through people’s lengthy discussions and ask for cold, hard facts. I want facts because I want to form an opinion. So demands for facts make me all the more opinionated. It doesn’t mean I’m not objective as I explained above, it doesn’t mean I’m not fair, however, it does mean that I stick to what I believe is fair and don’t compromise. I’m not a coward who would prefix every statement with “maybe” or “perhaps”.

I hate it when people start books, conversations, blogs, articles with, “This is only my opinion…” Of course it’s your opinion, that’s why I’m here. Tell me what you want to tell me and I know I am listening to your opinion only. I don’t put any human on the same pedestal as God. Thereby I do not attribute to any human the previlidge of knowing The Universal Truth. Everything I hear and see is opinion.

I often like certain people’s opinions or claims which are controversial or unpopulist and if I ever said it, I am branded as their suporter. Even though we display a great deal of training, we fail to demonstrate much education. Language provides us with so many words with so many precise meanings and we fail to understand. There is a clear distinction between liking something and agreeing with it. I like many books that I don’t agree with – heck I love those books because they simply bring out my humanity in me. Every time I read them, I realise I am an individual, I am a human, I can read this book for the hundredth time and I shall still disagree with it. I positively love the book!

For all our grand historic crap and traditional shit, I find Indians a society filled with uneducated people. Even Mahabharat and Ramayan, and the Geeta, have instances of great characters admiring their enemies. They remained enemies till the end because they disagreed with each other. That doesn’t mean they didn’t admire the enemy’s opinion on something. I love opinions because they connect me with the rest of the world. They make me matter. Reading an opinion tells me there are other individuals like me who think and act. It gives me hope.

I read an interesting quote, and I can’t remember where, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.” To hate something passionately also makes us feel good. It is an assertion of our humanity, of our right and free will to have opinions. It asserts our ability to make judgements. I fear that I may someday be indifferent to this world, or it may become indifferent to me. That is when I will have lost my humanity and my soul.

Let us now conclude with bias. What is bias? Bias to me, is a double-standard. Bias is when you apply a rule to one person, but relax that rule to another person. Bias is cowardly. Bias is the opposite of objective and opinionated. Bias is reserving to oneself powers over other individuals. That is the one thing which drives away any passion in me. So in conclusion, I will state that the last thing I would either read, like, or agree-with on the face of this earth, is anything that is biased. I hope that clarifies to everyone whether or not I like biased literature.

This doesn’t mean I hate bias - because that would still have stirred up a passion in me, prompting me to read biased books. I simply consider bias a waste of my already very short life afforded to me on earth. A biased person has no guts, has no courage. A biased person has no thought, no opinion. They will change the rules of the game anytime it is convenient to their narrative. It is purely nonsensical and irrelevant. A biased organism is not human.

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