Author: navin

I like what you like

The New York Times has a very interesting article about herd instinct. The main point it makes is that people tend to like things that they think other people like (or will like). In other words, Himesh Reshammiya is popular because he is popular. Of course, people do have intrinsic likes and dislikes which are independent of what other people think – but equally, if not more more important role is played by the “social” aspect.

And of course, there is research to prove this point.

They created 9 different websites of music by unknown artists. Users of these websites could download and listen to the music. On 8 of those websites, the users could see how often a song had been downloaded by others in the past (from that website only). And on the last one, they had no idea of the popularity of the song. And a bunch of interesting results emerge:

First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

On an average, they found that a song that was was a top-5 song in terms of intrinsic quality (the 9th website), had only a 50%
chance of making it into the top-5 list by popularity.

So that should explain why shakalakalakalakalakalakalakalaka shakalaka boom boom is assaulting my ears everywhere. And why Aap ka Suroor is even happening.

Seatbelts Save Lives

This blog post is a great article on why you should wear seat belts. Although the general idea is well known, this post goes into so much detail of what happens when you don’t wear a seat belt, that hopefully it will scare some more people into complying.

In a collision, you have three or four sub-collisions all taking place in sequence. First, the vehicle hits some object. The vehicle abruptly slows, but unrestrained objects inside it continue at the same speed, in the same direction. Then the unrestrained body hits the interior of the vehicle, and starts to slow. That’s the second collision. That body’s internal organs are still moving at speed until they hit the inside of the chest (or get cheese-sliced by their supporting ligaments—and that’s where you get things like bisected livers or aortas). The fourth collision is when the bowling ball you left on the rear deck hits you in the back of the head, because that continued at the same speed in the same direction. Newtonian physics: Learn it, live it, love it.

You definitely need to read the whole post. It goes on and on in this vein. If nothing else, it is very medically informative.

Over the years, on multiple occassions my friends or acquaintances have been involved in accidents were some of the occupants of the car were not wearing seatbelts and had very serious injuries (and in some cases, died). But people in the same accident who were wearing seatbelts walked off with minor injuries. I have myself driven my car head-on into an immovable object at 120kmph on the Pune-Bombay highway. My car suffered to the tune of 1 lakh rupees. I walked off without any injuries.

As the article points out, in many places, wearing a seatbelt is now required by law. Non-compliance is punishable by a small fine in some cases, and in other cases, death.

(I found the article from this Boing-boing post.)

Kurt Vonnegut’s tips on writing

Wikipedia’s page on Kurt Vonnegut lists his eight rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I especially like 3, 6 and 7.


This blog post tries to apply the same principles to blogging. It takes each of the above points and then expounds on how that can help you with your blog post.

Vonnegut also has a longer write-up on How to write with style. That is also a great read.