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Random Quotes - 2

This is a bunch of interesting quotes I’ve collected over the past few months. Maybe they are connected to each other, and maybe they are not:

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent
- John Maynard Keynes

Source: Wikipedia. See also this relevant article, about the US government bailout of financial institutions in September 2008.

Quotes of Kenneth Boundling, economist, which sound strangely more relevant after the global financial meltdown:

Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis

Nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure.

Source: Wikipedia
Switching a little:

There you have it. Admiration for raw, undirected cleverness winning over a questioning of fundamental importance. I wish there’d been someone in the room like Fight Club’s Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), who responds to a smart remark by Edward Norton’s narrator character with, “Clever. How’s that working out for you, being clever?”

Source: RibbonFarm.com

But let’s not worry so much about the crisis. Paul Graham points out that now is the best time to start a startup. However, many people think of doing a startups, but not are not willing to quit their current job yet:

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.
- Marcel Proust

Source: BrainyQuotes

But where do ideas for startups come from? Proust again:

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Enough about money. Let’s focus on love and happiness. Here’s Proust again:

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.

We only really think when distressed, we shouldn’t worry about striving for happiness so much as “pursuing ways to be properly and productively unhappy.”
- Publisher’s Review weekly paraphrasing Proust

Source: How Proust can Change your life

Random Quotes - 1

Some random quotes that I collected from the web:

Reflecting on the misinformation, half-truths, and weasel-words that form the bulk of political-campaign speecifying, I conclude that listening to politicians’ campaign speeches yields about as much information as listening to insects buzzing: in both cases you’re made aware that annoying, and possibly dangerous, pests are nearby.

Source: Cafe Hayek

“Faith is Hope given too much credit.”

– Matt Tuozzo

Source: Overcoming Bias

NBC Universal, which is trying to block a public bike path from traversing its property along the waterway…
One bike advocate said Universal executives told him they feared that people would use the path to lob unsolicited screenplays onto the studio’s nearby production lot — something that apparently happens at other spots when a Universal film scores big at the box office.

Source: boing-boing.

Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.

Source: Seth Godin.

As usual, the idealists are 100% right in principle and, as usual, the pragmatists are right in practice.

Source: Joel on Software

In a relationship, you are not meant to make someone else happy; you want to be happy *with* that someone else.

Source: Solitary Dreamer (3rd comment)

How can the Chinese use computers, since their language contains so many characters?

Image via Wikipedia

The Straight Dope tries to answer the question “How can the Chinese use computers, since their language contains so many characters?” and gives a very fascinating insight into the Chinese language:

(3) Enter the syllable into the computer phonetically using Roman (i.e., our) letters. This takes up to six keystrokes plus, in some programs, one more keystroke for the tone. Typically this pops up a menu of possible characters, six characters or so at a time.

(4) Page through the characters looking for the one you want. With 50,000 possible written syllables but only a few hundred possible spoken ones, each spoken syllable can have as many as 131 different meanings (average: 17), each with its own character. You could be paging quite a while, and you still might not find the character you want–no program includes all 50,000. (Answer to obvious question: in speech you figure out the meaning from the context. Never let your attention wander during a Chinese conversation.)

After reading the whole article I am amazed at how the Chinese have managed to be so computer literate!

Our own problems with Indian languages are similar, and if you have any interest in entering Indic languages into a computer, you should check out Lipikaar.com which is trying to use a similar technique.

The Tyranny of the Normal

Image via Wikipedia

This is an interesting article that talks about the disadvantages of having a privileged life. It is talking about education in Ivy League schools in the US, but applies equally well to the IITs and IIMs in India. It’s quite a long article, and parts of it I skimmed over, but it makes some good points.

It starts out with small ideas:

The first disadvantage of an elite education[...], is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals.

Later in the article, it touches on another aspect that is more serious, in my opinion:

How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.

To me, this appears to be saying something similar to what J.K. Rowling referred to in her famous Yale speech. There are a whole bunch of things that successful people will never try, because that would push them outside the comfort zone that is provided by their success.

Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They’ve been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure. The first time I blew a test, I walked out of the room feeling like I no longer knew who I was. The second time, it was easier; I had started to learn that failure isn’t the end of the world.

This issue does get conflated with financial security, and Venkat pointed out in a comment to that post. But maybe the path to greatness (even in a narrow financial sense) lies in being able to give up some of the financial security temporarily, climb down from the hilltop that you are on currently, walk down into the valley, so that you can scale the next mountain. (Students of optimization will recognize the phenomenon of getting stuck in local optima, and the need to traverse sub-optimal areas of the search space before you can find a better solution. See for example the Simulated Annealing algorithm.)

The great institutions of our country churn out successful executives. Even those of my IIT classmates who had trouble passing their courses are now successful mid- or top-level executives. There are no weirdos. Which might be a problem, claims the article:

Thirty-two flavors, all of them vanilla. The most elite schools have become places of a narrow and suffocating normalcy. [...] I know from long experience as an adviser that not every Yale student is appropriate and well-adjusted, which is exactly why it worries me that so many of them act that way. The tyranny of the normal must be very heavy in their lives.

I don’t quite agree with this paragraph. I think it is a little too harsh. However, in general, the phrase “the tyranny of the normal” somehow resonates with me. I can feel the tyranny of the normal all around me, and on me too. Forget careers and business success. Even in simpler (or is it more complex?) things like relationships, friendship, love, there is the tyranny of the normal.

I am a pretty happy and contented person. In fact, I think I see myself as one of the most contented, amongst all the people that I know. And if there is one thing that bothers me, I think it would be the fact that I long to escape the tyranny of the normal. But I guess this longing is still probably half-hearted. Because, seriously, there is nothing preventing me from doing that, other than the fact that I am comfortable sitting on my hilltop, unable to generate enough motivation to plunge into the valley on the other side.

And, I would like to end with another, in my opinion, insightful quote from that article:

A friend who teaches at the University of Connecticut once complained to me that his students don’t think for themselves. Well, I said, Yale students think for themselves, but only because they know we want them to.

I wonder if I am in the second category.

Gaurav Mishra is giving away everything he owns

Wow.

It took me over an year to “give up” my job. Around August 2006, I started thinking that I should quit my job and take some time off. It took until August 2007 to crystallize the vague thoughts that I had in my mind. And it took until December 2007 to actually quit.

As you can see from the timelines, it is not easy to break free of the structure of the default life that we impose upon ourselves, based on what we see around us. Note that, in my case, it wasn’t finance that was holding me back. It was just needing to convince myself to get out of my comfort zone.

Now, six months later, I am convinced that it was a great decision. In fact, I think everyone should do something like this at some time during their career. Especially if your career is having a mid-life crisis. If you’ve been at a regular job for 5 to 10 years, and you can afford (financially) to take about 6 months (or more) off, I highly recommend that you do this. All the non-financial reasons that you are trotting out for not doing so are just rationalizations. Convince me otherwise, I’m ready to debate you

But frankly, what I did was not all that revolutionary. Lots of people quit their jobs to try something different. Gaurav Mishra is taking the next, really revolutionary step:

I have already decided to give away the job (for ten months at least), and my lovely house goes with it. Now, I am giving away everything else I have, to one lucky person. Yes, you read it right, I’m giving away everything I have, to one lucky person.

He clearly lays out some compelling reasons for why this make sense. Read the details, and comments of readers over at his blog.

For the record, no, I do not feel envious of Gaurav, I have no intentions of giving away my belongings. But I do admire the courage.

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J.K. Rowling on the power of failure

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeHarry Potter creator J.K. Rowling talked about what failure taught her at a recent commencement address she gave in Harvard:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

So, how many of you are working on an area that you succeeded in easily, but is not necessarily your primary passion? Co-incidentally, I had a similar discussion with a bunch of friends yesterday - i.e. those who did well in college and found well paying and mildly challenging jobs have the least motivation to do something truly interesting with their lives. It is the ones who did not do well who are now doing well.

Ever since I quit my job (six months ago) and started “goofing off” (i.e. working on a bunch of things that I feel passionately about), I’ve met more and more people who wish they could be doing the same, but are still unable to take the leap of faith required. I’ve also met more and more people who did take the leap of faith and are doing quite well. I’m fairly convinced that a lot of people in the first category should just bite the bullet and make an attempt at grabbing their dreams. Financial insecurity is often cited as a reason for not doing so, but I am not convinced. I think it is more of a comfort zone thing.

Think about it.

Wayward Alzheimer’s patients foiled by fake bus stop

Image by M@rg via FlickrDo you sometimes forget what you were just going to do? Alzheimer’s patients are like this all the time. They have decent long term memory but their short term memory is pretty bad. This does lead to many problems for the people who are taking care of them.

The Telegraph has this bittersweet article about a Alzheimer’s nursing home which had to come up with a creative way to prevent the patients from trying to take a bus home:

the centre was forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their homes and families but had forgotten that in many cases neither existed any longer.

When asked to suggest a solution to this problem, I’m sure most people will think of compound walls and locked gates. They have come up with a much sweeter solution. Just outside the home, they created a fake bus stop. It looks like a regular bus stop with all the appropriate signs. With the small difference that no bus actually comes there.

“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.” The idea has proved so successful that it has now been adopted by several other homes across Germany.

See full article (found here)

What causes the smell after the first rain?

Do you remember the distinctive smell of the earth when it rains for the first time. (Marathi readers will be reminded of the song aala aala ga sugandh maaticha.) Ever wondered what causes it? Ever wondered what this smell is called? Obviously not.

But, by now you should know that if there is one thing I enjoy, it is to take a poetic concept and kill it by introducing the prosody of science.

Anyway, the smell is called geosmin. And, in the spirit of scientific enquiry, here are the gory details, from howstuffworks.com:

As it turns out, the smells people associate with rainstorms can be caused by a number of things. One of the more pleasant rain smells, the one we often notice in the woods, is actually caused by bacteria! Actinomycetes, a type of filamentous bacteria, grow in soil when conditions are damp and warm. When the soil dries out, the bacteria produces spores in the soil. The wetness and force of rainfall kick these tiny spores up into the air where the moisture after a rain acts as an aerosol (just like an aerosol air freshener). The moist air easily carries the spores to us so we breathe them in. These spores have a distinctive, earthy smell we often associate with rainfall. The bacteria is extremely common and can be found in areas all over the world, which accounts for the universality of this sweet “after-the-rain” smell. Since the bacteria thrives in moist soil but releases the spores once the soil dries out, the smell is most acute after a rain that follows a dry spell, although you’ll notice it to some degree after most rainstorms.

Why all religions have bizarre/stupid beliefs

Paul Graham has an  essay on the “Lies we tell kids”. The whole essay is pretty interesting, but one of the sections contains this startling insight (a little long, but worth it):

Some parents feel a strong adherence to an ethnic or religious group and want their kids to feel it too. This usually requires two different kinds of lying: the first is to tell the child that he or she is an X, and the second is whatever specific lies Xes differentiate themselves by believing.

Telling a child they have a particular ethnic or religious identity is one of the stickiest things you can tell them. Almost anything else you tell a kid, they can change their mind about later when they start to think for themselves. But if you tell a kid they’re a member of a certain group, that seems nearly impossible to shake.

This despite the fact that it can be one of the most premeditated lies parents tell. When parents are of different religions, they’ll often agree between themselves that their children will be “raised as Xes.” And it works. The kids obligingly grow up considering themselves as Xes, despite the fact that if their parents had chosen the other way, they’d have grown up considering themselves as Ys.

One reason this works so well is the second kind of lie involved. The truth is common property. You can’t distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to do things that are arbitrary, and believe things that are false. And after having spent their whole lives doing things that are arbitrary and believing things that are false, and being regarded as odd by “outsiders” on that account, the cognitive dissonance pushing children to regard themselves as Xes must be enormous. If they aren’t an X, why are they attached to all these arbitrary beliefs and customs? If they aren’t an X, why do all the non-Xes call them one?

This form of lie is not without its uses. You can use it to carry a payload of beneficial beliefs, and they will also become part of the child’s identity. You can tell the child that in addition to never wearing the color yellow, believing the world was created by a giant rabbit, and always snapping their fingers before eating fish, Xes are also particularly honest and industrious. Then X children will grow up feeling it’s part of their identity to be honest and industrious.

This probably accounts for a lot of the spread of modern religions, and explains why their doctrines are a combination of the useful and the bizarre. The bizarre half is what makes the religion stick, and the useful half is the payload.

I am not sure I buy the whole logic of the argument. But it certainly made me think and possibly view religion in a different way.

I spent a lot of my teenage years thinking of religion as a load of crap for weaker minds. Later, I read about how Tilak used Ganesh Chaturthi very effectively to bring people together. That got me thinking about the social value of religion. Here I am using “social” in the “making friends” sense of the word (not the “charity” sense of the word). Religion is the mother of all social networks.

In grad school, I would have arguments with my friend Frank, who used to go ga-ga over religion. He pointed out to me how many major artistic and architectural achievements over the centuries have been achieved because of the backing of religion.

And now Paul’s idea of separating religion into things that make it stick and the payload resonates with my view of religion. Basically, instead of focusing on the silly rituals that are the most visible aspects of any religion or specific religious activity, think instead about the payload. Think about what substantial things can be (is being) achieved (intentionally, or unintentionally).

Dans le Noir?

Dans le Noir is a restaurant in London and Paris where you eat in complete darkness. Here is the motivation for the concept from their website:

Sensory experience

Dans le Noir? allows you to completely re-evaluate the notion of taste.
Without sight, other senses are offered a new sensation and emotions.
Darkness leads to truthfulness about taste, kills preconceptions and let you face the realities of ingredients and cuisine. Our chef elaborates a refined and sensorial cuisine with fresh ingredients to help our senses to enjoy the “truth” taste of food.

True conviviality

Dining in the total darkness represents a very unusual social experience. How many times have you ever had the chance to talk to people without any preconception that sight implies?
At Dans le Noir? there is no more pressure of other people’s visual judgment. You talk more freely and spontaneously. The absence of vision changes completely the way you act and react, both emotionally and socially. That’s why Dans le Noir? is far more than just a restaurant: it offers a social and convivial experience. Dans le Noir ? raises some questions such as the role of sight in the way we relate to others.

Empathy

In the dark room, you are guided and served by our blind staff.
A magic switch between sighted and blind people happens. For once, blind people actually become your eyes.
This reversal of roles implies a transfer of trust from the sighted person to the blind guide because without him we are just lost. Who actually feels the most Dans le Noir??
The experience is emotionally strong and this empathy really encourages mutual trust and respect.

See restaurant website.