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· 3 min read

I chanced upon the course on Justice by Harvard professor Michael Sandel and it was fascinating to say the least. I completed the course which has 12 lectures of around 50 minutes each.

It was interesting to understand how the current legal and social systems came about and what's the moral force behind them. The focus of the course was on examining what is the moral basis of different school of thoughts like Utilitarianism, Libertarianism, etc.

I will share a series of posts to unpack the key points discussed and my views on it. So lets get on with it!

There are 2 basic school of thoughts:

  • Utilitarianism - Key philosopher of this school is Jeremy Bentham - Which believes in making decisions by the precept of "Greater good of greater number"
  • Categorical - Key philosopher is Kant - Decisions are based by understanding inherent Goodness of certain acts versus others

One of the key points of discussion was about Fundamental Rights. Do human beings have certain inalienable rights which can't be violated even if their violation leads to greater good of greater number? While Libertarianism argues for fundamental rights as good categorically, Humanist Utilitarianism promulgated by John Stuart Mill argues that society will be better in the long run if there are fundamental rights - and hence its OK.

Libertarians led by philosopher Robert Nozick argue that the state should be minimalist and do only the most essential things it needs to do.

  • No Paternalist legislation

  • e.g Seat Belt laws

  • No moral laws

  • e.g Laws banning LGBT marriages

  • No distribution of income from rich to poor

  • Taxation is a form of coercion

According to Libertarians, Taxation is coercive as it violates the Principle of Self-Possesion. The argument goes something like this

Taxation

This is an interesting line of argument, as in our modern society we hardly question tax on income. We take it for granted. In a way we have given too much power to the state and it has become a Leviathan. Its deeply rooted in the idea of welfare state where we expect the state to provide for the poor.

India added the words SOCIALIST and SECULAR to its preamble in the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act only in 1976.

Preamble

A non-libertarian form of government gives more power to the state, and power as a rule tends to concentrate itself. So, how good is the idea of a welfare state?

More on next part.

· 3 min read

A few key questions which I came across while reading the book and my thoughts on it.

  1. Who are we? As a lot dependent on how our neurons are trained? The state of all our neurons and their collective parameters. So the entity which we refer to as "me" is nothing but a particular stage in the training of neural network. It is constantly changing. The decision which you take now in a given condition, may be very different from say 10 yrs ago - as your neural net has changed.

  2. Our past is not a faithful reconstruction. The way we remember the past can be very different from how it actually happened? So, who we are, which is dependent a lot on our memories - is not a reflection of reality but what we chose to remember from our past.

  3. Consciousness as an emergent property - Just an emergent property from the activity of millions of neurons. Like traffic is an emergent property from the movement of all the cars. When the cars move, there is nothing called "traffic", traffic emerges out of interaction of multitudes of vehicle. But why does this emergent property appear so real?

  4. If there is no memory, there is no sense of time - There has not been any independent verification of time!

  5. Decision making and free will - Apparently our lower brain makes decision even before we are consciously aware of it. So do we really decide or it is just a story which our neocortex tells us?

  6. Are we living in a simulation? An interesting argument by Nick Bostrom

  7. Our internal model is low resolution but up-gradable - similar to what John Deane of Google Brain project suggests in this lecture. The best approach is to build a huge model which can give results for thousands of problems rather than individual models trained for specific. Is this the reason why we are a general purpose machine, rather than very good at specific tasks. As Henlein used to say -

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

· 2 min read

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about the concept of Anti-Fragility - things which gain from volatility

Interestingly Entrepreneurship is something which is Anti-Fragile by definition. You may lose small amounts in terms of expenses in finding the right problem to solve for, but once you find the right problem and the right market, you get an out-sized reward(hopefully).

Startups on the other hand are highly fragile as there needs to be a set of conditions which need to perfectly align for a startup to be successful. The timing should be right, you can't be too early or too late. The founding team should have the right skills for the type of business you are building. You should have enough money to grow at a fast rate. If any of these conditions are not met, a startup is doomed to fail.

But Entrepreneurship as a lifestyle for a person gains from volatility or stressors. Some of your startups may work, some may not, but along the way you build more resilience and experience to have a better intuition for the next venture. Its interesting how fragile components (startups) give rise to an anti-fragile lifestyle - a not so intuitive emergent property.

In working with complex adaptive systems, Nassim says, trial and error is a better approach than a teleological system in which you are focused on getting everything right. This is the modus operandi of startups, too launch an MVP quickly and learn fast. Lean Startup which is the war cry of current startup ecosystem beautifully encapsulates this. Because there are so many things which are unknown, you can't wait to nail down everything before proceeding. You need to start shooting with reasonable confidence and course correct on the fly.

If you think about it, this is also the only tool which nature uses in evolution. "Mistakes" is at the basis of all evolution - and it has led to complex and intelligent organisms like us humans.

So, don't let the unknowns bog you down. Keep trying - and sooner or later you will have an out-sized outcome. Anti-Fragility baby!

· 3 min read

I was recently recommended to check out the Farnam Street podcast with Naval Ravikant on twitter. In case you want to check it out, here is the link

By any standards, this was a great podcast where Naval discussed about different topics. I will capture here some of my key takeaways:

  1. Being in Present : One of the key ideas which struck me was Naval's emphasis of being in present and stopping the monkey mind. Instead of always thinking about what's going to happen in future or what has happened in the past, we should just focus on the task we are doing at present. If you are brushing your teeth, don't think about what will happen in a meeting today - rather just brush your teeth.

Though at first, it seems very counter-intutive, as I think about things that will happen in the day at such times when I don't need to pay much attention. But this prevents me from being in the moment, and may be it develops a habit to be always in the past or future - while what we truly, really have is the present. Children don't have this problem of being in their own head, they are always in present - and I think most of us will agree that children are happier than adults. After all, happiness is nothing but how we feel in our head, and if we stop thinking about bad things that happened in the past - or be anxious about things to happen in future - we are more likely to be at peace/happy.

This also reminds me of Miyamoto Musahi, who in his book The Book of Five Rings talks about being in the present. Although, he was a master swordsman who was never defeated in a sword fight, he said that he never made any strategy about how he will fight. He just practises his techniques, and fights in the moment. He says making prior strategies will make him vulnerable as the opponent can take advantage of his fixed strategies.

  1. Meaning of Life : Naval's answer on meaning of life is the one of the most rational I have found till date. He answers it in 3 parts.

a. Meaning of life is personal - and its different to every person.

b. There is no inherent meaning of life, and everyone creates their own meaning. Cause if there was a defined meaning of life, then there would be question around why THAT is the meaning of life. And may be having a given meaning of life, would have been a worse scenario.

c. Naval mentions another meaning of life around accelerating the heat death of the universe - as that is where the universe is heading according to the entropy argument. I guess this is not just for human, but for all living beings - though I am not quite sure. Also, it is a very depressing meaning of life :) I would delve deeper into this and may be would have a better understanding next time.

Overall, it is an awesome podcast. I realize that I have just touched upon 2 topics, and its already too long. If you are interested in any topics around reading, decision making and general philosophy on life, give this a shot.

· 3 min read

I endeavored on a trek to the Himalayas in early May this year. It was the Chandrakheni Pass trek which started from Manali and ended at Rumsu village near Naggar. We visited 5 higher camps

  • Sola Tanki (7930FT)
  • Mountinag (9187FT)
  • Ubla Thach (9793FT)
  • Dohra Nala (10692FT)
  • Naya Tapru (9970FT)

From Dohra Nala to Naya Tapru we crossed Chandrakheni pass at around 12190ft Drawing This post is more around my observations during the trek.

  • I was reading Man and His Symbols during the trek, so the mountains combined with the concepts of archetypes and 'collective unconscious' created an aura which inspired a deep appreciation of nature and our humble role in grand scheme of things. Looking at the mountains just makes you wonder how long these mountains have been standing there, snow clad - without any concern for the million thoughts and desires which billions of people have every day.

  • While taking strolls in the early morning along side our camps, it became very apparent to me that the world is just a playground or a 'maya' and how much is it of value / real is difficult to ascertain. It is just a play which getting performed with different actors getting introduced, playing their parts and fading away. The mountains on the other hand just stand there being a testimony to everything - and may be they also take birth and die, but on a much larger time scale. Himalayas after all are just result of some tectonic plate shifts around 50mn years ago.

  • We were a group of around 60 folks, and there was an increased tendency to take photographs of everything. Part of this was because of advent of mobile and availability of Internet even in high mountains (which was really a surprise to me!) This inevitably made me think about the documentation vs enjoying beauty in the present question. For me at least, I preferred enjoying the beauty at the moment rather than trying to capture it for viewing at some later time. But why is taking photographs so popular? Is it to share with your friends about the great places you have been? Or to keep memories for your future? Beats me.

As Naval was telling in a podcast, being at the present rather than being in your monkey head is important. Present is what we really have. Past and futures are just illusions of our memories and construct of our brain. DrawingDrawing Next time, I intend to go in a much smaller group - so that there is less noise and more tranquility to absorb the beauty and reflect. Lets see how that materializes.

· 3 min read

I decided to give Carl Jung a try when I was exploring psychology as a way to understand consumer behavior. The popular startup books - Drive, Grit, Habit, Predictably Irrational - limited psychology to product development application. Though I slowly realized that the subject is much deeper. I wanted to try my hand at more classical psychology authors. Freud and Jung emerged as what most people talked about. I had tried reading Freud in my college days and couldn't gather much, so I thought I should give Jung a chance.

The main idea which most people associate with Jung is around the idea of Collective Unconscious and their reflection in dreams. I picked up Man and His Symbols and I am blown away by it - though I have reached only half of it till now, there are lots of new insights.

Some of my key learning:

  • The basic idea of God and Religion are embedded deep in our psychology, in the wiring of our primordial brain, and is not just a recent invention. To think that Homo Sapiens arose around 7 million yrs ago in Africa and moved to Eurasia around 100,000 yrs ago - there is a lot embedded in the neural connections of the brain which gives rise to these ideas. May be there is a need for a God for humans to remain sane and continue living in the world.

  • The idea of Hero - The idea of Hero which Joseph Campbell elucidates in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces may be is the story which gets itself repeated in every generation of humans. The struggle, the guidance by a mentor and final triumph are themes which repeat throughout the history. May be this is the reason why we tend to hero worship so easily, it has been going on since time immemorial.

  • The 'Archetype' - The idea of an archetype is a curious one. Though I am still not quite sure what Jung means by it, it seems to be patterns or themes which are present in human psyche - Angels, Demons, Anima (he feminine part of a man's personality) - these are all themes in our psyche which Jung wants to call out.

  • Dreams - Dreams are the windows by which our unconscious tries to communicate with the conscious. The conscious is a new emergent property (like traffic is emergent property from number of vehicles plying on the road. Consciousness can also be thought of in a similar way) and has now superseded the unconscious. It is the rational logical "thinking" part - while unconscious has been driving the human behavior when we were animals. Even study of neuro-biology suggests that there are large parts of the brain which makes the decision, even before the thought comes to our conscious mind. May be this is the instinct or gut which people talk about.

Not surprisingly, Jung lays a lot of emphasis on the understanding of dreams. According to him, the unconscious and the conscious must remain in harmony to maintain a stable life.

· 2 min read

I picked up this book on recommendation by Bill Gates for it somewhere in social media. And I must say, I am not disappointed.

Some of the key ideas of the book:

  • Eurasia became the cradle of civilization (Fertile Crescent) because it has a long stretch of land lying at the same latitude level - allowing high range of crops and animals to chose from to domesticate. Americas or Africa or Australia didn't have that long stretch - which was connected ecologically and geographically. Being at same latitude implied similar climate and hence ease of distribution.

If I parallel it with startup terminology, distribution was much more important than where the invention was actually made. Because of huge scale available for any innovation in Eurasia, it soon picked up - and reached other lands.

  • Another major cause may be the wiping off of large mammals in Americas during the Pleistocene period, which led to unavailability of animals available for domestication in America, leading to slow growth in agriculture (as there was no muscle power of domesticated big mammals) and lack of germs which Native Americans were immune to it. Lack of immunity of Native Americans led to their susceptibility to Eurasian germs which were largely occupied through domesticated animals.

  • Food production and settled villages led to development of better technologies, as people can now specialize in particular activities, rather than worrying about food all day long. Thus the major growth in technologies came from better co-operation and financing, rather than individual genius.

This points very starkly the need for teams and leaders who can lead teams to produce results. Though as a society we tend to indulge in hero worship, but the main contribution of leaders/heroes may be to lead teams of great people to achieve extra-ordinary results.

So, EQ is more important than IQ, not only today - but even in historic times. Something similar was pointed out by Alan Kay in his lecture in YC startup school, that point of view contributes to 80 IQ points.

  • Human societies have been built on war and struggle. That is what leads to progress. Peace may be periods of stagnation and lack of technological development. Even in recent history, World Wars were times of great technological breakthroughs. Humans innovate best when they are under do - or - die situation. Peaceful innovation may be just a mirage.

· 3 min read

So I picked up this book as I was intrigued by the general mayhem going on in the media after Trump election. Many people suggested we are heading for an Orwellian society. I thought I should understand what an Orwellian society looks like.

Some key takeaways -

  1. The world projected by George Orwell is a totalitarian oligarchy - similar to Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.

  2. A 'Big Brother' is made to be the leader of the party - but nobody ever has met him/seen him. He is created just because it is easier for people to focus/love/hate a person, than a party.

  3. What surprised me was the level of sophistication George Orwell had achieved. The goal of Party was not to control material outcomes - but to control thoughts. They have also invented a new language for it, as the language determines what we can think, or at least one theory says so. This was also the main focus of the movie Arrival. The hypothesis which posits this is called Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis

  4. The concept of "doublethink" implies to hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time. Interestingly Marc Andreessen says that it is an essential quality of great founders - as they need to be believers of their ideas and be able to convince others to work on it and at the same time be cognizant that it may not work.

  5. The main antagonist O'Brien in the novel explains while torturing Winston that reality is only a matter of consciousness. It was a great play on the existing Mind-Body Paradox which questions the nature of reality. Is there a reality which exists apart from our conscience or is it just a projection of our consciousness. As science would tell that, absolute reality (if there is such a thing) is very different from how we perceive it. Human beings are just one of the sensors which perceive reality in a certain way.

  6. The people in Oceania (the society portrayed in the novel) are in a state of constant excitement by the results of imaginary war happening. This posits the question - is our current media also similar and politicians just control us and keep us in a state of frenzy by peddling news - which may or may not be true. How can we trust media? Is media just a way to keep us occupied - and prevent us from asking the real tough questions? Is that why China keeps such a tight control on media and information.

  7. In the novel past is constantly changed based on the requirement of the Party. OBrien asks - Is past real? How do we know about the past? - Its only through written records and memory. In the novel, there is a grand mechanism of keeping the past 'current' by Ministry of Truth. If we the Party controls the written records and the mind of its subjects - doesn't it control the past also. How do we know that past we know is the truth? Haven't we hear the maxim that 'Winners write the history'?

Overall, a shocking work by George Orwell. Makes you question many things you believe in.

· 2 min read

This post is just a compilation of some resources I came across when researching consciousness. I thought people on a similar journey may benefit from it.

Consciousness is a tough nut to understand. Many things which you take for granted get questioned, and I find that our understanding of the world is much limited as we delve deeper into the basics.

My interest in consciousness stems from the fact that Brain is one of the things which we as humanity have very little understanding of. In some way, it is one of the last standing unknown. With my recent endeavours in meditation, I have got more curious about how our brain works and how it gives rise to consciousness.

While there has been a lot of discussions done on this aspect from a philosophical point of view, I think a lot more can be done with the technology.

My current approach is to understand more about the brain in terms of technology and its information processing capabilities. I think this would lead us to take a better shot at understanding consciousness.

Here are a few resources I found interesting.

  1. Ed Boyden He runs Synthetic Neurobiology group at MIT and has developed many tools to understand brain better.

Here's a great video by him on How the Brain is computing the Mind

  1. Theodore Berger Professor at USC who has worked on replacing part of hippocampus with VLSI circuitry and has got decent success in rats and monkeys.

  2. Kernel This company is working on developing neuroprosthesis to cure Alzheimers etc. They have Ed Boyden and Theodore Berger working with them/ advising them. Also, its CEO, Bryan Johnson is remarkable.

· 2 min read

Reading biographies are always a great source of inspiration - esp. if it is one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century. Walter Isaacson is a meticulous writer who keeps you gripped to the story. I have read 2 biographies by him now - Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs - and both are outstanding. Drawing Few key takeaways for me from Einstein biographies were:

  1. Einstein had tough initial days and people were not willing to give him a permanent job. He had to resort to taking part-time tuition to meet his financial needs. Even though, by this time he had published his now famous 1905 paper on Special Relativity. But this didn't ruffle Einstein and he was happy publishing his papers and working on his equations.

  2. Non-Conformity - Einstein had a rebellious trait and always challenged existing beliefs and authorities. It served him well, as he was able to challenge the concept of time when in those times Time was considered sacrosanct, as laid down by Newton.

  3. In spite of his intelligence, he had a tough family life and had a difficult time maintaining cordial relations with his 2 wives. Shows his fallibility or human-ness. Even Einstein was not perfect.

  4. He laid a lot of emphasis on individual freedom and abhorred any authoritarian regimes. He was a proponent of pacifism. Even though fate would have that, his inspiration led to the formation of the team which eventually discovered atom bomb.

  5. He spent a lot of time in his later life trying to disprove quantum mechanics, though there was increasing experimental evidence in its support. Basically, after 1920 he didn't produce anything of significance. In a way, the belief that led him to discover relativity - that Nature is governed by simple, elegant laws - made it very difficult to accept that the world can be better described by probabilities of Quantum Mechanics.

In his own words " God doesn't play dice" - was his ardent belief. He believed that there is an independent "reality" which exists independent of the observer, while quantum mechanics was suggesting that - what is observed is dependent on the observer and there is no "reality" independent of the observer