An Argument Against Myopic Thinking

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark said:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! 

I may agree to 'a piece of work' part, but should I agree to the 'noble in reason' part as well? Should I endorse the viewpoint that man is an owner of admirable qualities? or Should I shrug off this phrase as a spell of romantic thinking and admit to an unromantic, even cynical, picture of a man?  Well, as it turns out that, while we humans are indeed noble in reason in many aspects, we, at the same time, are the opposite too. When faced with problems, we, at times, tend not to resolve the underlying problem, but to just deal with the tip of the iceberg. We invent shortcuts and short-term solutions as a response to deeper systemic problems. We succumb to our own myopic thinking and thus, inadvertently structure our society around the hidden fractures.

In this blog, I intend to throw a light on such kind of myopic thinking and such fractures that go right through the fabric of our society.

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I shall start with the case of prisons. Have you ever pondered why do we need prisons? A simplistic explanation that is usually given is that some people don't stick to the rules of society. They become a threat to the rest of the society and hence they need to be kept away from the society. A plausible argument, but very myopic. When we propose to lock up the supposedly-bad people, are we looking at the root of the problem or are we just trying to solve the problem temporarily? If prison indeed would be a solution to anything, then over time it should have reduced the number of criminals in the society. Well, has it? 



The clear failure of prisons to either act as a deterrent of crime or as a place of rehabilitation indicates a major flaw in our thinking: that by choosing to imprison the culprits, we choose to go the easy way; the way which can suppress the problem in the short term, but is of no good in the long term.

My argument is that the correct way to deal with the crime conundrum is not to lock up those who perpetrate it, but rather address the very causes that perpetrate the perpetrators.

 

As the graph above indicates that there is an inverse relationship between crime rates and economic inequality, we can conclusively suggest that rather than spending our money on making more prisons and therein locking up more people, we should focus on making our society more egalitarian; we should endeavor to reduce poverty, provide good education to everybody, provide employment and a good standard of living; we should ensure that kids are brought up in homes that are free from violence. These steps, unlike our myopic ways of thinking, shall ensure a lesser violent society in the long term. However, it should not be inferred that prisons can be completely done away with. An utopian society, a world without prisons is mostly a myth, but at the same time we should not turn a blind eye to the fact that prison is not the optimum solution for the ills of the society and hence attempts like deprivation of liberty, dehumanizing the confined are simply short-sighted methods- products of our own myopic thinking.
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The second example of the epidemic of myopia that sweeps over our society is in the educational system: in the form of the grading system or the ranking based system. We tend to manage by numbers or letters, which, in my point of view, is far too simplistic. We aim to measure and compare the learning of students, but to achieve that we invent a shortcut method: "grade them". We aim to motivate the pupils to study and end up taking away the very essence of education itself. Let's see how.

In our society, grades have become such a powerful social and symbolic force that grades and grades alone determine the future prospects and opportunities for a student. Consequently, schools become a competition and grades an obsession; in the backdrop, true learning takes a backseat. Exams and league tables, more often than not, pollute the learning environment and make the pursuit of education look like a rat race. Students feel afraid to pursue their true passion, because in a ranking based system, they would fall behind in the subjects which they don't love.

The irony of the grading system, therefore, is that while it seeks to incentivize education, it does the opposite. To show how removing grades can liberate our education system, the best example I can present is that of the Finnish Miracle. In 2006, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted a survey of 15-year-olds' academic skills from 57 nations. Finland came first in science by a whopping 5% margin, second in math (edged out by one point by Chinese Taipei), and third in reading. And this has been a trend, more or less, over the years. So, how does Finland churn out so many avid learners year after year? The key is that Finnish schools rely very less on the grading system. "Students in Finland sit no mandatory exams until the age of 17-19. Teacher based assessments are used by schools to monitor progress and these are not graded, scored or compared; but instead are descriptive and utilized in a formative manner to inform feedback and assessment for learning." Great emphasis is put on trust and well-being. In short, there is no corrosive competition, unjust comparison or unsound evaluation. Finnish schools take away exactly the effects the grading system engenders and this is exactly what makes them shine.
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The third example of our myopic thinking is the reservation system or preferential treatment system, which is supposed  "to improve the well-being of perceived backward and under-represented communities" defined primarily by their 'caste', 'religion', 'color', 'gender' etc. In many countries we observe that whenever certain group or class of people is not doing well, the government provides them free lunches. In my point of view, this is plainly a short-term thinking. If you want to build your muscles, should you take a pill and get the muscles overnight or should you hit the gym and exercise regularly to achieve the same? We should cure not the symptoms but the underlying cause of illness. Let me clarify the point with examples.

Take the reservation system in India. And think carefully. Should we provide reservations to those not doing well and directly help them come in the mainstream( which, by the way, is against the utilitarian principle as well) or should we address the root cause which includes providing them better infrastructure, better education and making them capable enough to compete with the rest? Instead of giving them separate quota in jobs and other social opportunities, should the government not ensure that every kid from backward communities get little more attention in primary schools? Why not make the foundations stronger, for without proper foundation all attempts to make a stable building would be futile? 

Another recent example that comes to mind in this context is the case of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. A number of reasons are cited for the crisis ranging from securitization practices to misaligned incentives to unethical bankers. But the source of the crisis lies somewhere else. The crisis owes its existence to the short-term thinking of the US government: the myopic policy of giving free credit to those falling behind in the economy. Raghuram Rajan, in his book "Fault Lines" summarizes this fault-line in the following paragraph.



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Thus we see that we tend to look for easy solutions to the deeper problems of human society. Though at times, they might appear as the best possible solutions, but in retrospect, the shortcuts do more harm than good. If you want to solve a problem, go to its root cause. Though there are many pressing political conditions which force the policy makers to take the easy route, one can never justify the ills of a myopic policy. Period!




 

Human Nature: Biological Inevitability or Cultural Conditioning?

There are many aspects of human existence- like war, morality etc- which are quite often attributed to the nativist school of thought. In contrast to the empiricist or tabula rasa view, this viewpoint holds that human beings are endowed with certain inborn, innate instincts which are hard-wired into the brain and these deeply entrenched features explain why humans wage war or why religion is so ubiquitous across ages and civilizations or why there is one true morality binding upon all of us. These characteristics of human existence, psychological nativists claim, are engendered by human biology and thus are an intractably inherent part of human nature. But in reality, innateness is not what determines the omnipresence of war or religion but cultural and historical conditioning. Put in a different way, the source of these dominant behaviors of human nature stem not from our genetic make-up but rather from the contemporary cultural practices and codes of conduct.

Take the case of war. It is naturally assumed that human beings categorically possess the animal instinct of aggression and hostility owing to the continuous struggle for survival. Why else would there be wars in all ages of human history? But as Margret Mead explains in the essay War not a Biological Necessity that war is not contingent upon factors like human nature or endless struggle for resources or frustration arising out of biologically determined drives. Warfare is more of a practice, a cultural ritual, an invention. If people have an idea about warfare as a way to handle certain circumstances i.e if war is the appropriate form of behavior, then when such circumstances appear, people will inevitably go to war. On the other hand, if people don't have an idea about war as a cultural norm or practice, they would either submit to the enemy or commit suicide themselves or  quietly go about their business or find some way to vent out the anger, but they would never go to war.The point in emphasized in the following paragraphs by Margret Mead.

There is a way of behaving which is known to a given people and labelled as an appropriate form of behaviour; a bold and warlike people like the Sioux or the Maori may label warfare as desirable as well as possible, a mild people like the Pueblo Indians may label warfare as undesirable, but to the minds of both peoples the possibility of warfare is present. Their thoughts, their hopes, their plans are oriented about this idea--that warfare may be selected as the way to meet some situation.

And, conversely, peoples who do not know of duelling will not fight duels, even though their wives are seduced and their daughters ravished; they may on occasion commit murder but they will not fight duels. Cultures which lack the idea of the vendetta will not meet every quarrel in this way. A people can use only the forms it has. So the Balinese have their special way of dealing with a quarrel between two individuals: if the two feel that the causes of quarrel are heavy, they may go and register their quarrel in the temple before the gods, and, making offerings, they may swear never to have anything to do with each other again

Warfare may be an invention, a cultural code of conduct, but is it true of morality as well? Is it not that some people are morally good; people who help others genuinely; people who can't see the pain of others? Jesse Prinz in his book "The Emotional Construction of Morals" proclaims otherwise, making the case that there is no such thing as innate goodness and the moral values of an individual is derived from cultural conditioning and emotional osmosis. The key idea is that we learn the values in very young age in the form of codes of conduct. When we scream, throw things, hurt other kids or make a noisy disturbance,our parents correct these behaviors and they usually do this by emotional conditioning. For example, parents threaten physical punishment( Do You want a slap?), they withdraw love( I am not going to play with you), they cast out( Go away!) etc. These methods cause a negative emotion in the child and thus it gets internalized in the form of morals. As and when children come in contact with society and culture, they imbibe more of the norms and morals present in the society. So later on, if they find homosexuality or polygamy outrageous, it is not because they being good are grossed out by bad things but because the society they lived in never considered it morally good and thus indoctrinated them through emotional osmosis.

Morality, in this sense, is not a standalone feeling of an individual but the collective attitude of a culture. This is why morals vary so much across places and cultures. One group's moral values might be immoral for other groups. For example, today we consider cannibalism bad, but in history, 34% of the cultures practiced cannibalism. In ancient Rome, blood sports, decapitation etc were pursued for recreation. Public torture and execution were performed in many European countries before the 18th century. And the people of these cultures didn't find them morally outrageous because it was culture in the first place which conditioned them. Thus, it would be plausible to say that our moral viewpoint of the world is mutable and insular, impacted solely by the cultures and societies we happen to inhabit.

It is, therefore, evident that the inventions of culture permeate through our lives in such a way that they appear innate to human nature.As it turns out, however, that these traits are not the part of us but of our culture. This gives us hope that if we correctly invent cultural practices and codes, we might overcome many problems in our society which are prematurely associated with hard-wired problems of human nature. Blood sports was such an invention, but we made better invention- the contemporary version of sports- which is not only much more efficient and harmless but also much more thrilling.





 

Why so Serious?

Like so many posts before, this post may also never see the light of day, for after completing them I would have achieved the goal of having vented out my feelings and thus would not have required the world to know about it. But if you, my friends, are reading it, then probably I changed my mind and am ready to face the repercussions of it.

I usually prefer to keep my unworldly thoughts to myself; thoughts that most mortals, if not all, find trivial and irrelevant. Experience has taught me that doing otherwise leads to either me being dubbed abnormal or me being made fun of by others( whom I, with no offense, now call 'mere mortals' and 'biochemical puppets' who have no idea of what they are talking about). Either ways, however, I am at the receiving end. Still, sometimes my thoughts are so irrepressible that they may get the better of me.

Yesterday, while at office, I was submersed in such unworldly thoughts and had no desire to do the mundane formatting issues. And I let that desire come out to one of my colleagues and said something like this: " let the issues come..dekh lenge..let's relax a bit". To which the reply came something like this: "itna cool mat bano..kaam bahut baki hai". Well. I didn't reply but the same day, one of my friends called up and started discussing career prospects with me and then my thoughts and feelings started overflowing.

To put everything in picture, let me start with what I meant by being cool. I meant that let's look at our position in the universe. What are we? We are not even a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things. Our position in the universe is lesser than that of a bacteria on planet Earth. Still, we tend to think we are so important and we know so much. We place so much importance on everything we do. What I meant by being cool is what this picture is saying:


Our anthropomorphic tendencies rule our lives which we all have inherited through Evolution(remember Darwin?). The consequences are numerous: We invented religion, we made Gods in human form, we made rituals to please Gods. we attributed lightening to God's anger, we made Earth the center of universe. For thousands of years, we continued to live in illusion: an illusion that we are somehow important, that the cosmos has planned it all out for us and us only. Still, time and time again, reality has hit us hard in our face. Let's see how:

We found that Earth is not the center of the universe, but Sun is. Then we found that Sun is not the center but just one of the stars among the billions of stars in our galaxy. Then we found that our galaxy alone does not encapsulate our universe but is just one of the pieces among the billions of them. And lately, we found that our universe may not be the only universe but just a bubble in an infinite froth of universes.

Still, we were hopeful that in spite of all this, we still are part of this grand design: that we are made up of the same matter that everything else in the universe is made up of. But like before, we again were wrong. Most of the matter and energy in the universe is dark- not made up of electrons, protons as we all are made up of, but of something altogether different. The particles we are made up of form only 5% of visible universe and damn, we can't see most of the matter in our universe. So much for our importance in the cosmos. Nature reveals itself as if it has no care of us.

Still, we believe that at least on Earth, we see a lot, that we see our beautiful world. Well, just look at the picture below and find how much of the Electromagnetic Spectrum we really see.



Bored of seeing, go to audio frequencies. There also, we hear only tiny fraction of whole range of audio frequencies.

Come to dimensions and you will believe that the three dimensional world we see is that is all. But oops! The universe may have many more dimensions than we seem to perceive of it. Moreover, unlike we may feel, space we see around us is all embedded with time( and yes, time is as real as space itself). We may have the illusion of time going forward, but in reality past, present and future all are present simultaneously just as space is present here and there simultaneously. This means that may be everything that is happening or will happen has already happened. If you want to see Beethoven composing his 5th symphony, just come out of the universe and look at the space-time fabric below. You will find him somewhere in the this fabric: or if you want to see your great great granddaughter, just come out and have a look at this fabric. All is present here.

I quote Albert Einstein: "What does a fish know of the water it swims in?" He asked this question as a way of pointing out that we humans have not a clue of the real nature of the cosmos in which we live. Our eyes lie to us, our cognitive patterns sabotage us. For example, do we see space around ourselves curved? We don't, but in reality Earth has curved space around us just like a heavy ball would curve a rubber sheet. And that is why when I let go of my bag from 7th floor, it falls not because something mysteriously draws it but because the 'bechara' bag follows the curved space(preferably space-time) created by Earth; it is very similar to the fact that on a curved rubber sheet, if one puts a ball around the edge it will move towards the center of the sheet. Many more wonders to tell, but I shall restrain myself here.

Well, we still won't believe that we are nothing. We thought for centuries and still do that God created us, otherwise how else can, a human body or a human brain, out of a trillion cells assemble together out of itself? Somebody must have done it, ain't it? And then to crush all our narcissistic beliefs Charles Darwin came along with the phenomenon of Evolution: The second greatest idea to me after Einstein's Special and General Relativity in whole of the history of human civilization. The idea was that we started from non-living beings which turned into simple life-forms some billion years ago and has been evolving towards complex organisms with time. Well, if you don't believe how an organ as complex as human brain can evolve, just find some documentary by Richard Dawkins on Evolution. He will make you believe in the power of Evolution.

Now, after having written so much about the futility of our efforts to inflate our importance, I don't want to go to the realm of free will, which, if understood in its truest sense, would suck all beauty and magnificence from life and render it utterly meaningless. Would you not hate it if somebody calls you a chemical being walking by, subject to the inputs beyond itself and has no self of itself?

Time and time again, we invented things to place importance on ourselves, oblivious to the real nature of  reality. But reality must dawn upon us sometime. We must not take human affairs too seriously. The point is not of running away from harsh realities of life, but of not living in illusion and therefore, treading life with knowledge and humor. Besides, we all must have a sense of humility, no matter where we are, because even the best of human civilization have little or no idea of reality. I admire greats like Albert Einstein but I also believe:" What Einstein today is, was Aristotle of his age." We have come a long way since Aristotle and we have a long way to go from Einstein.It may even be impossible to have a command over the real scheme of things.(Idea elaborated in my previous blog)

So, I am anything but 'cool'. While I must do things to fill my stomach(like formatting), I must also do things which are in the realm of reality otherwise would I be any better than a herd of swine which follows the basic evolutionary needs and urges all the time, unaware that there are other things as well.

Whether you appreciate or reject my thoughts, I sign off with this quote of Albert Einstein and the link to the video which I found very stimulating and thrilling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y0ky1-qKIc

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude"

The Limits of Science

Let us imagine that one day all life forms are dead on this planet. Aliens from outer space visit the planet and they find a computer sitting on the desk of a dead Google employee and try to UNDERSTAND the computer. Upon exploring, they find that it is immensely complicated system. For example, when it is powered on, electrons start flowing...they pass through different chips etc etc... But as they are endowed with extra-ordinary brains, they would be able to understand it at even the atomic level. While trying to make sense of the computer, aliens would be successful in explaining "How" the computer works in terms of a chain of Cause-and-Effect events. For example, when the computer is powered on, something happens which leads to something and so on in a complicated chain of events. A tremendous achievement it would be, wouldn't it?

 But is this all about computers? Is all the knowledge aliens acquire about  a computer complete in itself? If so, what about the fact that there was a life-form called "HUMANS" who invented the Computer by sequentially organizing things and assembling them over with a completely identifiable purpose in mind? Undeniably, there was a purpose to the creation of computer but will the aliens ever realize it? For them, the understanding of a computer can, at most, be in a physical sense i.e. a chain of cause and effect events. If they follow logic and reasoning of the kind that physicists today follow, they would never associate any purpose to the creation of computer. To them, the creation of a computer would be a completely purposeless physical event, but as we all agree, it would not be the complete picture.

Retracing the same line of thought as above, we can replace the Computer by our majestic Universe. When we look upon our universe, we find it mesmerizing and we give it a try to understand it. In the same way, as the aliens tried to understand the computer, we would try our best to understand it. And in the same way as the aliens did, we would be able to explain the universe in terms of a chain of physical events. For example, something led to big bang( the multi-verse theory), which led to formation of stars and galaxies, which in turn led to formation of planets which in turn led to formation of life etc etc. But as we saw above(with the example of computer), it might not be the complete picture of the universe. Just as the aliens concluded incorrectly and prematurely that there was no purpose to the creation of computer, in the same way, may we not incorrectly and prematurely make the same conclusion? When one digs deep into the workings of universe, it sounds as if the whole chain of events leading to present state of universe is indeed a mere probabilistic cosmic event with no associated purpose at all. But don't we have a chance to go horribly wrong in this line of thinking?

Indeed, it may be possible that there is an underlying purpose in the workings of the cosmos. In the above example of aliens, if we remove all traces that could lead the aliens to the existence of life, it would be unpretentiously difficult for them to discover a purpose behind the invention of a computer. Would the same be the fate of Science? Would science never be able to theoretically and experimentally establish the purpose of universe? Would it be limited to a mere cause-and-effect understanding of universe in a physical sense?

Right now, I don't know whether science can really break the barriers of its own discipline. But I would like to be an optimist. I would like to believe in Albert Einstein who once said: "One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have." I would like to believe in him when he said " Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world". I would love to think that though our knowledge about the purpose of universe is limited but may our imagination one day lead us to uncover the true reality of things! May the physical understanding of our universe encapsulate within itself the hidden links to uncover the deeper underlying secrets! May Science is vindicated one day, once and for all!

A Critique of The Anna Phenomenon

The mission “fight against corruption” led by Team Anna has a noble aim: to minimize and, if possible, eradicate corruption from the fabric of the society. But are the methods employed by Team Anna equally noble as the aim is?  Or sometimes the goal is just so important that it overshadows “The method” itself and renders it unimportant? 

It is undeniably true that the malady of corruption, embedded quintessentially in our society, has reached its threshold level. The people of India share a common sentiment of revulsion against the pervasive nature of corruption in all walks of life. So, it was natural for one person or one group of people to stand up for the matter, fight against the status quo and gain overwhelming support from the whole nation. In the present context, it was Team Anna which embarked upon this pursuit and began the anti-corruption movement with the method of “protest and placing the views in public”. This is a completely unexceptionable method. But suddenly, for reasons beyond my comprehension, the color of the movement changed and the Team Anna directed the movement towards ““Anna-will-keep-fasting-until-his-bill-is-adopted-or-amended-with-his-permission”. Now, there is something to ponder about it.

Clearly, Team Anna wanted government to adopt the bill but this way of “fast unto death” was bloody as well as coercive method to bring about change. Referring to use of such method during British Raj, Dr. Ambedkar observed: “When there was no way left for the constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods.” But the present situation is remarkably different. One should always keep in mind that the Indian Constitution provides ample opportunities for advocacy, through discussion and lobbying with parliamentary Standing Committees, Groups of Ministers, the Ministers concerned, the Prime Minister, courts, and above all through a peaceful agitation. Team Anna should realize that with several political parties on their side, the possibility of reaching a middle ground is high. On this note, however, many people might claim that in reality, such things don’t happen in India and un-coercive methods don’t transform into success. But to those people who have lost their faith in democracy, I would ask to look upon the past and see how major bills and acts have been passed in the past. For a quick reference, the right to employment through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the right to information, rights under the Forest Act, the right to education, and now the right to food, are some of the revolutionary measures that civil society has been able to accomplish through constitutional methods.  So, the conclusion which is both logical and practical is that Team Anna should abandon the grammar of coercion and use constitutional methods instead. There is ample scope in it. Otherwise, in coming days, we might see more people, with evil intention, looking to overturn the system by adhering to unconstitutional and coercive methods in order to fulfill their personal and selfish goals. 

Besides, the Lokpal Bill is too important a piece of legislation to be passed under threat and unreasonable deadlines. All its aspects need to be discussed with extreme care and with consensus among all sections.

To sum it up, democratic methods may be slow but they have the strength to win the race.