Different Perspectives

Well there's n-number of things to speak of for this topic. Just including some observations I'd thought about in last few days, I guess.

On bribes.



Thought about this recently while filing paperwork for driving license. It almost seemed like, along with euphemism, another sort of mentality drove the bribing. It almost seemed like, to some people, the ability to pay the bribe, as in showing some sort of "superiority" over the other was essential, in terms of normalizing the status. Because minus that, they were at a lower status as in asking another person to do something for them, but when they gave this bribe, they finally had that air of treating the worker as just someone serving them either as an equal or lower. But even here, they try to veil it under gratuitousness.

In fact, if you extend this mentality to other situations, it's not hard to make out that it's pretty rampant. One of the best visible examples is lavish celebrations people have. Weddings, Birthdays, Anniversaries. Even in some pretty impoverished communities, if you're not throwing a gala celebration, you're frowned upon. 

It's not hard to see the connection between this behavior and outright superiority complex if you actually have an abundance of resources. But I thought about another peculiar aspect of this while driving back today. It was one of those peddlers on streets, who sell something cheap, like toys, handicrafts, cloths for cleaning, tissues on the street. I try to buy it from them, rather than giving beggars money, because well, they're doing something a little more commendable. Yes of course, there's much more complexity to the situation, I know. For example, it's not clear how they obtained the material they sell. It's not clear how they use the funds and if they use it better than the beggars. But still, overall, the means seem just a tad more satisfactory, if you make some assumptions on both ends. Anyways, to come back to the point;

Chandler : Gee, Monica, what’s in the bag?
Monica : I don’t know, Chandler. Let’s take a look.
Phoebe : Oh, it’s like a skit.
Monica : Why, it’s dinner for six. 5 steaks, and an eggplant for Phoebe.
Ross : Whoo!
Phoebe : Cool.
Monica : Yeah, we switched meat suppliers at work, and the new guys gave me the steaks as sort of a thank-you.
Ross : But wait, there’s more. Hey, Chandler, what is in the envelope?
Chandler : By the way, this didn’t seem so dorky in the hall.
Ross : Come on.
Chandler : Why, it’s six tickets to Hootie and the Blowfish! The Blowfish!
Monica : It’s on us, all right, so don’t worry. It’s our treat.
Phoebe : So...Thank you.
Ross : Could you be less enthused?
Joey : Look, it’s a nice gesture, it is. But it just feels like--
Monica : Like?
Joey : Charity.
Monica : Charity?
Ross : We’re just tryin’ to do a nice thing here.
Rachel : Ross, you have to understand that your nice thing makes us feel this big.
Phoebe : Actually, it makes us feel that big. 

Charity may not always be or feel as innocent as it is supposed to.
It's really mind boggling trying to think about it from all the possible points of view. The same aspect may be construed in totally opposite ways depending upon how you think.

This mouse is wireless, no wires to meddle with.
This mouse is wired, for no battery requirement.

Knowing better on getting to know better

At what point do you know if the new people you've met are going to stay in your life or not? Another chicken and egg situation that I have had a hard time resolving. On the one hand if you assume that they won't, you won't invest your best and that is the first self enforcing assumption. But of course if you do assume that they will and you make a better impression than they expected, it's equally likely to be the other self enforcing assumption. Of course the other two trivial possibilities being, where both of you assume symmetrically.

It's somewhat annoying that I think about it more often than I'd like. Over many years too. This is something that in my opinion should be figured out in your teenage years or maybe in early 20s.

Anyhow, random trivial thoughts on the matter:

It's not out choice to come into this world, it may be our choice to go away. Best is to give it all you got. To make a parallel, one can talk of various opportunities. It's not your choice for an opportunity to chance on you. You best be prepared to capitalize. Opportunity could be a person.

Opportunities, like any other things may be false positives or false negatives. How does one tell whether the person you're about to --want-- to let into your life is rather of the class of relationships that are best kept ephemeral? It's a hard problem.

The best solution, like always that I find is: Hope for the best, in each instance.

Experiences vs Material (Stuffocation)

Consider a society where material happiness is relatively easier to find. People may likely start to feel that they have or are vying for too much material.

A few of important points of thought I gleaned from the talk:

• Experiences make an individual happier than material. It may seem at first (and research may point to this on the outset) that a well off modern society is required for stuffocation to take root. While this seems intuitively true, I can't argue with the logic that experience, will still bring more happiness even to someone who can't afford an expensive tablet, but can spend tea time chatting and laughing with friends. 
• Your experiences matter more than what you own. This seems like a pretty old concept, so can't argue much here. What you do defines you much more than what you say. Your words are just something you own. Your actions are something that can only result from what you are, what you have experienced.
  It's about the journey, not the destination -- another related phrase, more on it in next point.
• People regard status, local as well as global to some extent, very highly. They want to be at least as good as the neighbour if not more. While James (from the video) mostly only talks about experiences and happiness, I'd go so far as to include bad experience and contentedness into the picture. Even if it's because you're working that much harder to buy what your neighbor bought, in the end, what you enjoy, what you learn from are either the process of acquisition or the end result of using said item; whether you do the latter or not is up to you of course.
  Bad experiences that teach us, are equally as important in shaping not just your knowledge, but also character.
• Consumerism has it's place, without abundance, having a perspective of stuffocation is lost and we are still left with many easily tractable problems.
  The more you have may lead to more experiences worth having. But defining this sentiment in more exact terms, is I think very hard. Because just like information (or food), it's mostly about how well you digest that information rather than how much of it you have. Which requires experience, bringing us back to the original point.

Despite the evangelical appearance of the talk, it was quite thought provoking.

Some reading material:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/597049

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024409732742#page-1

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/85/6/1193/

Behavior is 1% direction, 99% recursion

"Practice makes a man perfect" -- The famous 10,000 hour rule states that to achieve success in any specific field, one needs to go through, basically a large number of repetitions before it becomes a habit rather than a task. It`s no new information, we see similar adage in sports where they always advise you to "just feel and react" without thinking. What they're saying is actually an outcome of the same philosophy. It needs to be a habit (built into your muscle memory) rather than you having to consciously think about it. But to get there, sports persons go through tremendous number of repetitions---going back to the 10,000 hour rule---that programs their subconscious.

Interestingly, we can see that just because the information is redundant doesn't mean that it is unnecessary. Why else would people go to self help books, watch motivational videos, and so on, which basically expound the same rational crap that everyone inherently knows already? It's about ingraining a philosophy into your subconscious. To an extent, it seems plausible that if you repeat a "factual" statement to yourself a hundred times, you may start believing it. Especially if it is on a more subjective manner. Like, if you have a low confidence level, you are advised to speak repeatedly to yourself, 'I'm good, I can do this', or something to the effect.

In my opinion this method continues to a meta level as well. Not just for academics, habits, sports, philosophy or attitude, the method can be applied towards motivation, organization, optimization and justification of the same activities.

Recently ran across this interesting nugget:

(and then I ran across a few hundred more...inspired me to go download and watch 'The Pursuit of Happiness') It's not difficult to argue that there's a lot of crap in most of these stories. From propaganda (subtle or flamboyant) to fictional anecdotes disguised as facts to unnecessary generalizations. But like most other source of information, we can just as easily filter through the noise and get to the signal. One signal that really struck me---and has stuck to me since---is the following line:

You don't really want it. You just kinda want it.

Really, that's just it. In my opinion, the most succinct way to get motivated is the driest way. 'Get over it'; because that line up there. Anything significant or worth being proud of in life requires hard work and effort beyond the point of tiredness/boredom/hopelessness etc. because it's that point where you need to remember the corollary to this message:

...If you want (this) as bad as you want to breathe when you're drowning, only then will you find a way to get it done.

We can convince ourselves, through repeated attempts, to want to achieve greatness as bad as we want to breathe. Then the struggle to achieve it will---and should---become nothing more than a habit. It's what I will strive to from now on.

-------------------Aside(1)

There are some other asides to look at this philosophy at. My favorite one comes from one of the best series of lectures I've found on the internet, the graduate course of Principles of Digital Communication-I by Dr. Robert Gallagher. Here he brings up the point that struggling through theory and toy problems are not what engineers do. However, that's exactly how great engineers are made. One needs to spend enough time getting their theory right and then understanding how the different parts behave using toy problems so that looking at a system from an architectural point of view becomes second nature. Greatness is achieved when a person knows how to break the problem down into its essentials and then how to add the 'nasties'.

-------------------Aside(2)

As another aside, I wanted to talk a little bit about the fact that some people don't need to go through as many failures as others to learn the same number of things. In my opinion as a member of the latter group (more failures), I think that's just how the world is. Maybe the reasons that we aren't as good at induction as the former group; but at the same time, the repeated attempts show us more facets of the same problem than the ones who have better induction. In my opinion of course. I chalk my reasons to the relatively statistically indeterminate nature of the world. There's always some things one can't foresee.