Hackers and Painters

I snitched this headline from the name a book. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. If you haven’t read it yet, may I urge you to? It is a lovely book authored by Paul Graham, a computer scientist, venture capitalist and well, a writer. And if you’re among those not inclined to read a book, he captured the sum and substance of it all in an essay back in 2003.

Some lovely learnings emerge out of it on what comprises the hacker ethic, in which he underlines the significance of relentless practice, devotion to beauty, why a premium ought to be placed on disciplines we are unfamiliar with, the humility to try and imbibe from others what we don’t know of, and above all else, inculcating a habit that allows us to share and collaborate so that we become lifelong learners.

Philosophically, it influenced many in computer science deeply. Because that is where he was best known and enthusiasts—or hackers, as they were called then, when the word wasn’t as bastardized—were enthused by his ideas. They could see the value in what he proposed. When I came of age, I could see merit in his ideas and was among those who embraced them.

But personal philosophies are malleable and susceptible to influences. That is why, at some point, I started to question the premise. I argued against the most beautiful of his ideas—collaboration.

“Maybe, I’m not a nice guy. I don’t care," I wrote once. Friends who knew me as a technology enthusiast and someone who had benefited from it were appalled at what they thought was a complete misunderstanding of a powerful idea. In a scathing indictment, I was told, “the most unfortunate thing is that we have journalists like you..."

In hindsight, I suspect I may have felt insecure with the idea of sharing. Because at the end of the day, my livelihood, I thought, is a function of the ideas and the words that came out of what I think up and my networks. How can I possibly give it away for free? 

That is why, I argued, “by thinking something up and offering it to the collective to improve upon, I stand to lose my livelihood... it leaves me with no incentive to write". Therefore, I ought to do all I can to protect what I come up with.

But much experimentation, conversations and learnings later, I now concede I was wrong. I stand corrected and an apology is in order. I admit the world we live in now wouldn’t have gotten to where it is without collaboration.

So much so that even Microsoft, the bastion of all things proprietary, after having fought to keep the world out of its doors, is now seeking to collaborate. Otherwise, it knows, it will perish.

So, who are hackers and how did hacks get into the lexicon? Everybody, it seems, is into hacking. Computer hacks, study hacks, sleep hacks, food hacks and, to top it all off, life hacks. 

To put that into perspective, let us first understand what a hacker is not:

• Geniuses who write books on “ethical hacking" and sell courses on “ethical hacking" are, well, geniuses. Because it needs a genius to find a market full of idiots willing to pay money to become a “certified hacker". None of what Graham articulated needs to be certified. It is a world view.

• Then there are management gurus who take terms like jugaad—a word most north Indians are familiar with. Loosely translated, a quick fix or, well, a “hack" as it is now understood. Packaged for the West and management schools, it is rephrased and given a lovely twist—frugal innovation.

By way of example, think of a contraption like the jugaad which plies on north Indian roads. The handle of an old scooter, tyres and engine of a motorcycle, the frame of a bicycle, the body of a bullock cart and a diesel engine to are retro-fitted to create a dangerous contraption. 

This is then deployed on the roads for pretty much everything from ferrying people to livestock and goods. It does not fall under the ambit of the Motor Vehicles Act. It is jugaad, and fits the framework of “frugal innovation".

But two problems exist here.

1. It cannot be scaled.

2. It violates the law because it is a safety hazard. So much of a hazard that the Supreme Court had to intervene and has asked all states where such vehicles ply to provide the court with details of what authorities are doing to take these contraptions off the road.

My limited submission here is that the Hacker Ethic in its purest sense is not about finding shortcuts like these. 

Instead, it focuses on finding truth, purpose, beauty, meaning and goodness in an optimum manner. And like I said earlier, this ethic insists we place a premium on optimizing ourselves and our work, so that we can devote as much of our time as we can to learn.

How? Allow me to provide a few instances:

• The other day, I stumbled across an interview of Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire co-founder of Facebook. The 25-minute interview in which he articulated all of his ideas revealed clarity in thought. But what struck me was something else altogether. While in college, he studied both psychology and computer science.

  In India, this is an alien idea. The way things are, computer science is kosher because it can potentially make an engineer out of you. Psychology is not because it falls in the domain of liberal arts. 

  To cite but one instance, while talking with a doctor the other day, I asked him what his son was up to. He told me the original plan was to get the young man to pursue a career in medicine. But if he doesn’t get through the exams, “let him do arts or some shit".

  The tone was not condescending, but one that smacked of downright derision.

  Hackers sneer at people who speak this language. That is why Zuckerberg studied psychology. All thanks to it, he could ask, “What is it that people want the most?"

  His understanding of the domain taught him that humans seek other people out the most. What he learnt at his computer science class helped him create a software platform that could take his understanding of the human mind into a place he would otherwise not have been able to if he were wedded to either one of the disciplines. In his head, the disciplines collaborated.

  Having done that, he sought out people who understood the other arts, like design, and domains like business to build what is now one of the most formidable entities in the world. He optimized himself by collaborating between disciplines and others.

• Then there is this nonsense I come across every other day about how large organizations are trying to “replicate the start-up culture". And to do that, they have begun by “breaking down silos". This includes doing ridiculous things like spending obscene amounts on creating “open offices".

  Apparently, “open offices" facilitate conversations and an “open culture". Who is to tell them the Hacker Ethic includes an idea called Deep Work? And that there is evidence that conclusively demonstrates open offices are actually an insanely stupid idea because they kill productivity?

  This is because, to get meaningful work done, the human mind needs to find the optimal state to be in—the Flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Most people call it as “being in the zone". To get here, they need their space.

  But organizations, in attempts to ape Facebook or Google without understanding the ethic that drives them, compel people to operate under suboptimal conditions. Zuckerberg didn’t start out trying to build a company. Neither did the founders of Google. They started out by trying to solve problems that real people face.

  To do that, they worked with the resources they had on hand. Which is essentially what a start-up is. That profitable entities came out of it is another story altogether. 

  But in trying to replicate start-up cultures, you cannot force-fit the Hacker Ethic into it. The most charitable thing that can be said of such attempts is that it is a horribly atrociously version of jugaad. It is destined to fail.

• And why will they fail? Because hackers share. They work with the collective. By way of example, take the Human Genome Project (HGP). It is the world’s largest collaborative biological project, conducted across 20 universities and research centres and funded by the governments of the US, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Canada and China. 

The database is there for anybody to access on the Internet. When looked at in isolation, the database can be gibberish because the quantum of information in it is so huge, it is impossible for any single entity to make any meaning out of it. Unless individuals and organizations collaborate to make meaning out of it for the greater common good.

Are there profits to be made out of it? Most certainly. Businesses have come to build around the ecosystem that is the HGP and provide highly personalized services to individuals across the world. The system is still evolving and who knows what may come out of it?

• Now, this ought us to introspect and ask: Am I a hacker? Let’s put it this way. If you think of the Hacker Ethic as a way of life, then yes. It isn’t always about coding and computers alone, but about looking at the wisdom they have gained and trying to emulate it. 

They don’t seek shortcuts. They seek elegant solutions to complex problems. When wrong, they have the humility to admit that they were in the wrong, move on and find the next optimum. They seek, they search, they look for the best ideas and they share as openly as they gain. This ethic is a life of learning, adapting and not scrimping.

This piece was first published in Mint on September 17, 2016

Field Notes from an ICU

Contrary to what I always imagined, the ambience outside the intensive care unit, or ICU, where my dad sleeps now isn’t antiseptic. Around me are a few chairs, and a few weary faces. Pretty much everybody is glued to mobile handsets. The only time they come to life is when one of the security personnel shouts out a number. The guardian of one of the human beings admitted in the ICU then jumps up and scrambles to do whatever it is that the resident medical officer (RMO) or nurse in charge wants them to. 

The only times I have seen my dad are when the number he is now identified by is shouted out. I haven’t been allowed in any place close to him since he was wheeled into the emergency room earlier today. Since then, he has become just another body that lies sedated in a sterile environment, in sharp contrast to the air outside. I don’t know what will become of him when he gets out of there. The doctors in charge claim they don’t know either. “Under observation for 48 hours," is all they mutter.

*****

I think it was yesterday. Or at least it seems like that. The two sons of a junior warrant officer (JWO) in the Indian Air Force (IAF) and his wife would walk the lanes and bylanes of Sion, a suburb in Mumbai, every evening. 

At some point, the young officer would strike a deal with his sons. Either they could stop by a street vendor who hawked comics where they could debate and deliberate further on which title of Amar Chitra Katha they ought to settle on, or whether they’d much rather everybody share a plate of vada sambar or masala dosa at Hanuman Restaurant right across where the vendor sat. The only times there was no debate was when the latest copy of Tinkle hit the stands.

At all other times, the officer was clear it had to be either the comics or the food. Certainly not both. The boys resented it because they thought they were being disciplined into making choices. The young officer made it sound that way while the mother looked on indulgently. More often than not, the comics won over the food.

Purchases done, all of them would troop home and the young man would lie on his bed, open the comic, the boys on either side, and he’d animatedly read out tales from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, Valmiki, the Jataka Tales, and every once a while stories of heroes from contemporary Indian history that Amar Chitra Katha thought appropriate to publish. 

The older boy grew to become me—a journalist; the younger one, my brother, a researcher in the neurosciences. Thirty-five-odd years down the line, in hindsight, the both of us know the young officer wasn’t trying to teach his sons to choose. It was because a JWO in the IAF then barely took home enough money to make both ends meet. 

We grew up in an India where “India was Indira and Indira was India". My folks hadn’t heard of economic liberalization and its potential benefits until the early 1990s. Not that it made sense to them. But by the time they did and figured out what it meant, their boys were ready to join the workforce. Until then, the only kind of parenting most middle-class folks like them knew was to give their boys the best, like buying comics pretty much every other day. If that meant mortgaging little pieces of gold at the local pawn shop from our mother’s meagre dowry, then that is what they did.

But something happened, a mutation if you will, between generations. The kindness and genteel parenting dad weaned us on got replaced by “helicopter parenting" of the kind my generation and I practise. 

My older daughter Nayanatara doesn’t have the time for long walks with me. Just out of Class IV, her mornings are crammed with a ruthless curriculum that leaves no room for simple joys like Uncle Pai in Tinkle. When done with her formal class hours, she attends classes for taekwondo, kathak, phonics (which will apparently do her diction good), quilling, art and pottery. My wife and I think it par for the course if she has to grow up into a well-rounded individual. 

My folks aren’t so sure. They think their kids—my brother and I—turned out to be reasonably decent blokes given the Rs. 400-odd the IAF paid my dad every month by way of salary. I suspect they may just have a point.

Each time dad tried to tell me that gently, I’d go into a funk and tell him the times have changed. But as he convulses yet again, the RMO tells me they’re at a loss, and that the ventilator sounds the most plausible option—someplace in my head tells me I ought to consider his advice on parenting a bit more seriously. It’s okay to let children be and soak life in without imposing the ideals of what adulthood ought to be like on them. They’ll just turn out fine. So long as you have the bandwidth to attend to their simple needs—be a playmate when they need you and read a few comics together every once in a while.

*****

The kind of literature on medicine I have read includes the compassion of Atul Gawande, the eruditon of Sherwin Nuland and the perspective of Roy Porter. Their expositions on the practice offered me stunning insights into the relentless world of young resident doctors, the nature of how we biologically live and why our cells die. That is why I always thought of medical practitioners as romantic ideals.

But in the real world, across the glass wall where dad lies right now, Gawande and Nuland and Porter are just that—romantic ideals. The resident doctors are—pardon my expression—kids on whom the graveyard shift is an imposed one. They are trying their damndest best to do what the textbooks have taught them. But experience is still to mentor them. 

Over time they will morph into seniors, like the ones doing the rounds now, and who during their normal waking hours are arrogant pricks. Pardon my expression, but there is no other way to describe them. Allow me tell you why. Fed up of the “He’s under observation" line, I thought up a quick one to throw at the senior doctor on the rounds. 

“Excuse me sir, but which lobe of his is affected?"

“You understand medicine?" he asked me condescendingly.

“I’m a practising biochemist," I lied through my teeth. 

“Ah! You’re one of us," he melted and proceeded to take me through the initial prognosis.

Much of it sounded like Greek and Latin. But because curiosity had compelled me to read Gray’s Anatomy and some textbooks on biochemistry closely in the past, and carry an app called HealthKart on my phone that I look up every once a while to understand the nature of various drugs, I managed to nod intelligently, ask some questions, and finally get a fix on what is happening to dad. 

Perhaps I am being unduly harsh on the fraternity. When looked at from one perspective, how can an overworked medic sit down and possibly explain the nuances of medicine to traumatized caregivers clueless about the machinations of medicine? 

I can think of exceptions to the rule like the good Dr Natarajan, an obstetrician, who devoted patience and time to my wife and me when we’d gone through a scare a long time ago when she was carrying our second child. He assuaged our concerns and treated us like humans—not like preserved tissue samples in formaldehyde jars that reside in medical schools. That said, I maintain that the likes of him are exceptions.

But why should it be? If kids weaned on comic books purchased on the back of wafer thin pay packets and mortgaged gold can grow up into informed individuals, what makes medical professionals think they can be condescending? I buy the argument that they soak in an enormous amount of pressure. But what if these medics were put into the pressure-cooker environment that is the newsroom; or a trading room at a broking outfit; or asked to frame policies that rein in the fiscal deficit? None of these professionals can get away without explaining the nuances to the masses. Because if they don’t, they’ll get lynched. 

Why did I have to lie and claim I am a biochemist to understand what’s going on? Why did their doors open warmly only when my brother, who is actually a doctor, walk in? What if I hadn’t lied? What if my brother wasn’t a doctor? Much like the weary souls splattered across chairs outside the waiting room, I’d be groping in the dark and be on tenterhooks. 

The problem with the practical medicine that exists in hospitals outside the books of Gawande, Nuland and Porter is that they don’t understand the nuances of what it means to be human. It lives instead in a cloistered world seeped in arrogance.

The other problem with contemporary medicine—and by that I mean allopathy—is that it exists in silos. There are neurologists, cardiologists, urologists, pathologists, pharmacologists and so on and so forth. Each of them has a microscopic understanding of the microcosm they work on in the human body.

A good general practitioner (GP) with a holistic view is practically impossible to come by. Contemporary allopathy has, for all practical purposes, killed the GP. Philosophically, Ayurveda espouses the idea of holistic medicine. But it is hopelessly outdated. In times of crisis, it is not a science that can be relied on. The way it is now, it is but a body of ancient texts that practitioners turn to. As for homeopathy, anybody who thinks it a science ought to be an idiot. How am I to take any system that believes in the placebo effect seriously?

Where does this leave us when faced with a crisis but to turn to a splintered system like allopathy? For all of its frailties, at the end of the day, it has done more to extend our life spans than any other system. 

Now, if only it could temper the arrogance its practitioners come with! 

*****

Dad thought it only appropriate he marry my mum when he first set his eyes on her. He was 22. She was 20. Her old man, my grandfather, was scandalized in what was then a very traditional Malayali society. He tried to talk the young man out of it. But dad firmly declined. She was his first girlfriend. He was her first boyfriend. They’ve been married 45 years now. Neither will eat a meal without the other. Nor will they end the day without having reported to each other all of what they did during the day.

I always thought this an old-world relationship that is pretty much impossible to sustain in the world we live in now. I’ve had conversations in the past with friends who practise psychology. Their hypothesis is easy to comprehend.

We live terribly busy lives. Not all of our needs can be satisfied by one individual. So, in theory, it is not just probable, but okay to seek multiple partners so that all of our needs are satisfied. To that extent, I am told many practising psychologists believe adultery is kosher—and that over time, the mainstream will come to accept it.

During one of my long walks with dad, I asked him what he thought of the hypothesis. He laughed gently, as is his wont. “Your mother meets all of my needs," he told me then. “I haven’t looked at another woman, ever."

“You won’t understand how we love," mum once told me. 

That is why, even as his sedated mind now groans out for her, she watches stoically from the other side of the glass door. There is nothing she can do but hold his hand in the brief moments they allow her to.

A wall of silence separates mum from both of her sons. Her front is brave. But deep down, I guess she needs to talk to somebody. But that somebody lies in a mist. What will happen of their 45-year-old love story if he isn’t around? What will happen of her if he isn’t around to pamper and drive her around? I don’t know.

I wish that I knew how to love like he loved—the good, old-fashioned way—devoid of all pretences.

He tried his damndest best to teach us that through Amar Chitra Katha so we understood how to love our spouses in much the same way that Satyavan did Savitri, so that when Yama, the god of death, comes calling, death can be cheated. 

As I wind these dispatches up, I wait and watch quietly, hoping Satyavan will indeed wake up from the deep sleep he is in now, beat the odds that Yama has placed on him, and walk back home to the Savitri he loves so much.

“We’ll keep him under observation for 48 hours," I’m told again and am jolted back to reality.

This piece was first published in Mint on Sunday on May 30 2015

Homeopathy, astrology & economic forecasts

Astrologers, homeopaths and economic forecasts can’t be trusted. Because the so-called science they practice is fuzzy at best and hocus-pocus at worst.

Consider, for instance, this delightful anecdote recounted by a senior journalist at a popular Mumbai-based newspaper. Sometime in 1998 or 1999, he wrote a few days ago on his Facebook wall, the hugely popular astrologer Marjorie Orr took a break. Fearing a backlash from readers, his editor suggested that the young man, along with two of his colleagues, should ghost write the column until Orr got back to work. Some trepidation later, he got down to following orders for six weeks until the astrologer got back from her vacation. Not a single reader from the newspaper’s erudite, English-speaking community wrote in with an angry word that his predictions were off the mark.

The post attracted a barrage of amused comments from other journalists who’ve ghosted for popular astrologers like Peter Vidal in Indian newspapers. Vidal apparently recycles his column by replacing the text for one star sign with something he’s written in the past for another star sign. Most people don’t notice. Then there is Panditji from Jaipur who misses his deadlines every once a while and the poor sub-editor at the desk had to think up “good” days of the week, “lucky” colours to be worn and “numbers to bet on” for each star sign. “The trick,” wrote this veteran desk hand at the magazine in response to the Facebook post, “was to make people believe they were on the verge of a quantum leap in life.”

Then there is homeopathy: generous column inches are devoted to it in newspapers and magazines, and practitioners make a pretty damn good living out of it. The premise around which this tub of crock continues to exist—in spite of a mountain of evidence to prove homeopathy is indeed crock—is that water molecules have memory.

But even Class VIII students exposed to elementary chemistry and concepts like Avogadro’s number know water molecules have no memory. This is because by then, they’re taught the mechanics of dilution. Whatever the botanical compound that goes into making a homeopathic drug, it is diluted to an extent that there would be no trace of the molecule left in the drug—except the sugary coating made of powdered lactose, of course.

In homeopathic parlance, on average, most compounds are diluted by 30C. That is 1060 , or one followed by 60 zeroes. To understand how much of a dilution that is, imagine a drop of water with a diameter of 150 million km—the distance from the earth to the sun. It takes light eight minutes to travel that distance. Now imagine a drop of water with one molecule of a substance in it. That is a 30C dilution.

It is entirely possible that Samuel Hahnemann, who thought up modern homeopathy, had figured he’d gotten it all wrong in the face of this evidence. That is perhaps why he continued to argue water has memory and that even after dilution of the kind he propagated, water retains a “spirit-like” essence of the original compound that is “no longer perceptible to the senses”.

Ben Goldacre writes sardonically in his superb book Bad Science: “If water has a memory, as homeopaths claim…water has been sloshing around the globe for a very long time, after all, and the water in my body as I sit here typing in London has been through plenty of other people’s bodies before mine. Maybe some of the water molecules sitting in my fingertips as I type this sentence are currently in your eyeball. Maybe some of the water molecules fleshing out my neurons as I decide whether to write ‘wee’ or ‘urine’ in this sentence are now in the Queen’s bladder (God bless her): water is the great leveler.”

Both of these disciplines are similar to another perverted discipline—economic forecasts. It draws from the worst of astrology and homeopathy. While the chances of getting a prediction right using astrology are as good as flipping a coin, homeopathic remedies are no better than placebos where there is no relationship between cause and effect. But economic forecasting relies on both of these to get by and there are suckers by the millions buying into them.

To sift through why economic forecasting is fraught with inconsistencies, Nate Silver’s outstanding book, The Signal and the Noise is a good place to start. He argues that this discipline faces three fundamental challenges: “First, it is very hard to determine cause and effect from economic statistics alone. Second, the economy is always changing, so explanations of economic behaviour that hold in one business cycle may not apply to future ones. And third, as bad as their forecasts have been, the data that economists have to work with isn’t much good either.”

To get a sense of how difficult this really is, let’s consider the most reliable data we have on the US economy (because it is the most closely tracked). The US government puts out 45,000 indicators each year and private data providers track as many as four million statistics. Since World War II though, they have witnessed only 11 recessions. How in the world is anybody to choose 11 outputs specifically from the data on hand that caused these recessions?

By way of example, consider the maxim “co-relation does not imply causation”. What it means is that just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other, it does not mean one is responsible for the other. For instance, Silver points out, ice cream sales and forest fires are related because both occur more often in summers. But there is no causation. You don’t set off a bush fire in some desert when you buy a tub of ice cream.

On the face of it, there seem to be three reasons why economic forecasts go horribly wrong. The first is arrogance on the part of a large majority of economists. The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), based out of New York and London, is widely respected. In 2011, the firm predicted double-dip recession, which is a recession followed by a short recovery and leading into another recession.

When quizzed on the prediction, the firm threw up a lot of data that seemed incomprehensible to most people and obfuscated it with jargon that made no sense. Like this: “ECRI’s recession call isn’t based on just one or two leading indexes, but on dozens of specialized leading indexes including the US Long Leading Index…to be followed by downturns in the Weekly Leading Index and other shorter-leading indexes. In fact, the most reliable forward-looking indicators are now collectively behaving as they did on the cusp of full blown recessions.”

Silver tracked their approach to a stance articulated to their clients as far back as 2004: “Just as you do not need to know exactly how a car engine works in order to drive safely, you do not need to understand all the intricacies of the economy to accurately read those gauges.”

When looked at from this prism, the only thing that matters is data and more complex data—and not even an attempt to get to the story. “There were certainly reasons for economic pessimism in September 2011—for instance, the unfolding debt crisis in Europe—but ECRI wasn’t looking at those. Instead, it had a random soup of variables that mistook co-relation for causation,” concludes Silver.

The second reason economic forecasts are notoriously difficult to handle is that the society and the systems they try to predict are dynamic. Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek, in his acceptance speech in 1974, had explained why these systems are difficult to deal with.

Physical scientists can observe and measure the things that drive systems they are studying. But society, and therefore, the economy, is not a physical system. There are millions of variables that cannot be measured or seen. For instance, how will an individual respond to a set of stimuli in a given set of circumstances? There are no universal answers.

But economists, in their attempt to be rigorous, infuse techniques and models used by physical scientists. This is fundamentally flawed because in doing that, they have to ignore that which cannot be measured, in spite of it being integral to economics. The outcomes are incorrect predictions and actions that can harm society.

The third is that humans and the institutions they build are inherently biased. As an experiment, Silver conducted economic polls across organizations that engage in forecasting. Given the same data, he figured that the lower an entity’s reputation, the wilder its predictions. And if your reputation in the markets is higher, chances are your estimates are conservative.

The dichotomy is explained by the fact that if your reputation is on the lower side, you have little to lose. So perchance you hit bull’s eye, the chances of drawing attention is higher. If reputation is high on the other hand, there is an incentive to protect it and you’d much rather err on the side of caution.

Perhaps these are the reasons why Ezra Solomon, an influential US economist and professor at Stanford University, once caustically said: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

First Published in Mint on Dec 5, 2014. Copyrights rest with HT Media Ltd

Why not to trust homeopathy, astrology & economic forecasts

Astrologers, homeopaths and economic forecasts can’t be trusted. Because the so-called science they practice is fuzzy at best and hocus-pocus at worst.

Consider, for instance, this delightful anecdote recounted by a senior journalist at a popular Mumbai-based newspaper. Sometime in 1998 or 1999, he wrote a few days ago on his Facebook wall, the hugely popular astrologer Marjorie Orr took a break. Fearing a backlash from readers, his editor suggested that the young man, along with two of his colleagues, should ghost write the column until Orr got back to work. Some trepidation later, he got down to following orders for six weeks until the astrologer got back from her vacation. Not a single reader from the newspaper’s erudite, English-speaking community wrote in with an angry word that his predictions were off the mark.

The post attracted a barrage of amused comments from other journalists who’ve ghosted for popular astrologers like Peter Vidal in Indian newspapers. Vidal apparently recycles his column by replacing the text for one star sign with something he’s written in the past for another star sign. Most people don’t notice. Then there is Panditji from Jaipur who misses his deadlines every once a while and the poor sub-editor at the desk had to think up “good” days of the week, “lucky” colours to be worn and “numbers to bet on” for each star sign. “The trick,” wrote this veteran desk hand at the magazine in response to the Facebook post, “was to make people believe they were on the verge of a quantum leap in life.”

Then there is homeopathy: generous column inches are devoted to it in newspapers and magazines, and practitioners make a pretty damn good living out of it. The premise around which this tub of crock continues to exist—in spite of a mountain of evidence to prove homeopathy is indeed crock—is that water molecules have memory.

But even Class VIII students exposed to elementary chemistry and concepts like Avogadro’s number know water molecules have no memory. This is because by then, they’re taught the mechanics of dilution. Whatever the botanical compound that goes into making a homeopathic drug, it is diluted to an extent that there would be no trace of the molecule left in the drug—except the sugary coating made of powdered lactose, of course.

In homeopathic parlance, on average, most compounds are diluted by 30C. That is 1060 , or one followed by 60 zeroes. To understand how much of a dilution that is, imagine a drop of water with a diameter of 150 million km—the distance from the earth to the sun. It takes light eight minutes to travel that distance. Now imagine a drop of water with one molecule of a substance in it. That is a 30C dilution.

It is entirely possible that Samuel Hahnemann, who thought up modern homeopathy, had figured he’d gotten it all wrong in the face of this evidence. That is perhaps why he continued to argue water has memory and that even after dilution of the kind he propagated, water retains a “spirit-like” essence of the original compound that is “no longer perceptible to the senses”.

Ben Goldacre writes sardonically in his superb book Bad Science: “If water has a memory, as homeopaths claim…water has been sloshing around the globe for a very long time, after all, and the water in my body as I sit here typing in London has been through plenty of other people’s bodies before mine. Maybe some of the water molecules sitting in my fingertips as I type this sentence are currently in your eyeball. Maybe some of the water molecules fleshing out my neurons as I decide whether to write ‘wee’ or ‘urine’ in this sentence are now in the Queen’s bladder (God bless her): water is the great leveler.”

Both of these disciplines are similar to another perverted discipline—economic forecasts. It draws from the worst of astrology and homeopathy. While the chances of getting a prediction right using astrology are as good as flipping a coin, homeopathic remedies are no better than placebos where there is no relationship between cause and effect. But economic forecasting relies on both of these to get by and there are suckers by the millions buying into them.

To sift through why economic forecasting is fraught with inconsistencies, Nate Silver’s outstanding book, The Signal and the Noise is a good place to start. He argues that this discipline faces three fundamental challenges: “First, it is very hard to determine cause and effect from economic statistics alone. Second, the economy is always changing, so explanations of economic behaviour that hold in one business cycle may not apply to future ones. And third, as bad as their forecasts have been, the data that economists have to work with isn’t much good either.”

To get a sense of how difficult this really is, let’s consider the most reliable data we have on the US economy (because it is the most closely tracked). The US government puts out 45,000 indicators each year and private data providers track as many as four million statistics. Since World War II though, they have witnessed only 11 recessions. How in the world is anybody to choose 11 outputs specifically from the data on hand that caused these recessions?

By way of example, consider the maxim “co-relation does not imply causation”. What it means is that just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other, it does not mean one is responsible for the other. For instance, Silver points out, ice cream sales and forest fires are related because both occur more often in summers. But there is no causation. You don’t set off a bush fire in some desert when you buy a tub of ice cream.

On the face of it, there seem to be three reasons why economic forecasts go horribly wrong. The first is arrogance on the part of a large majority of economists. The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), based out of New York and London, is widely respected. In 2011, the firm predicted double-dip recession, which is a recession followed by a short recovery and leading into another recession.

When quizzed on the prediction, the firm threw up a lot of data that seemed incomprehensible to most people and obfuscated it with jargon that made no sense. Like this: “ECRI’s recession call isn’t based on just one or two leading indexes, but on dozens of specialized leading indexes including the US Long Leading Index…to be followed by downturns in the Weekly Leading Index and other shorter-leading indexes. In fact, the most reliable forward-looking indicators are now collectively behaving as they did on the cusp of full blown recessions.”

Silver tracked their approach to a stance articulated to their clients as far back as 2004: “Just as you do not need to know exactly how a car engine works in order to drive safely, you do not need to understand all the intricacies of the economy to accurately read those gauges.”

When looked at from this prism, the only thing that matters is data and more complex data—and not even an attempt to get to the story. “There were certainly reasons for economic pessimism in September 2011—for instance, the unfolding debt crisis in Europe—but ECRI wasn’t looking at those. Instead, it had a random soup of variables that mistook co-relation for causation,” concludes Silver.

The second reason economic forecasts are notoriously difficult to handle is that the society and the systems they try to predict are dynamic. Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek, in his acceptance speech in 1974, had explained why these systems are difficult to deal with.

Physical scientists can observe and measure the things that drive systems they are studying. But society, and therefore, the economy, is not a physical system. There are millions of variables that cannot be measured or seen. For instance, how will an individual respond to a set of stimuli in a given set of circumstances? There are no universal answers.

But economists, in their attempt to be rigorous, infuse techniques and models used by physical scientists. This is fundamentally flawed because in doing that, they have to ignore that which cannot be measured, in spite of it being integral to economics. The outcomes are incorrect predictions and actions that can harm society.

The third is that humans and the institutions they build are inherently biased. As an experiment, Silver conducted economic polls across organizations that engage in forecasting. Given the same data, he figured that the lower an entity’s reputation, the wilder its predictions. And if your reputation in the markets is higher, chances are your estimates are conservative.

The dichotomy is explained by the fact that if your reputation is on the lower side, you have little to lose. So perchance you hit bull’s eye, the chances of drawing attention is higher. If reputation is high on the other hand, there is an incentive to protect it and you’d much rather err on the side of caution.

Perhaps these are the reasons why Ezra Solomon, an influential US economist and professor at Stanford University, once caustically said: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

First Published in Mint on Dec 5, 2014. Copyrights rest with HT Media Ltd

Jesus and Optimal Fragmentation

It is entirely coincidental that when this piece was written, it was the season of Lent, leading to Easter Sunday. I was taking time out to re-read The Gospel according to Jesus Christ by the Nobel Prize winning writer Jose Saramago, listen to Suzanne by Leonard Cohen on loop, and was done with poring over an essay on How to Get Rich by Jared Diamond, a biologist, ecologist, anthropologist and an author.

On the face of it, there is nothing to bind these seemingly disparate things: a season that brings all Christians in prayer together with a book, a song, and an essay. But bear with me.

Diamond’s essay was first delivered as a talk. Diamond expends much time on an idea described as the Theory of Optimal Fragmentation.

It is a complex idea with much history and evidence to back it up, and I sum it up as so: When something gets too big, it must be fragmented into smaller units for it to survive. In much the same way, if something is too fragmented, it must be consolidated into a more cohesive and larger unit so that it may survive.

This theory, Diamond argues, holds true for individuals, organizations, governments, countries, and ecosystems. The talk is peppered with examples, both historical and contemporary, from biology to business—all of which make for a very compelling read. When individuals get too rich, their wealth must be tempered. When organizations grow too large, their size curbed. And when governments get too big, their urge to control opposed. If systems aren’t put in place to do it, nature will. As a corollary, he postulates, the reverse is true as well. That anything too small will not survive. The poor are condemned to stay destitute. Small businesses to die. Tiny countries to be trampled upon. Systems must be framed such that they can reach an optimal size to survive the long run. Else nature will destroy it.

In trying to absorb the significance of the essay and examine it for whatever it may be worth, it was time to step out, get fresh air, and think it through.

But like I said earlier, it is that time of the year as well when Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was inevitable then that my mind would wonder: what may he have been like. Why do people swear by him? Why do so many theories and stories exist about him? So much so, that even among those who believe in him, there is no agreement on what may he have been like, and what is it that he may have actually said. Who is the real Jesus Christ?

Christians of different kinds exist, and the interpretations of the Bibles they live by offer differing perspectives on what is the Christian way. For instance, there are Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglicans, and many other branches, all of whom claim their allegiance lies with Jesus Christ and the Bible. How did it get to be this way?

While the existence of these schisms is one among the many reasons I don’t go to church—or subscribe to any religion for that matter, it does nothing to take away though from my fascination with Jesus Christ, the man. This fascination, I suspect, has much to do with that how a layperson like me, untutored in the religious texts, struggled to cope with the complexity and contradictions of the several ‘Jesus narratives’.

Why, for instance, does this character get this kind of attention from people of all kinds? How does one explain some of the most enduring literature of our times that has been drawn from his personality?

That is one among the many reasons why The Gospel according to Jesus Christ comes to mind right away. It takes a while to wrap one’s head around this ferocious account of Jesus as imagined by Saramago. The Jesus, the author imagines in this fictional account, is a human with flaws, passions and doubts. He is confused and abandoned by none other than the God in whom he has placed his trust. This is the kind of Jesus I can relate to.

This personality though runs contrary to what is the popular narrative. It sounds eminently believable though, the book is unputdownable, and the Jesus described there, when stripped of all divinity, is somebody whom an ordinary soul can empathize with.

That is also why when Leonard Cohen starts to sing Suzanne, it is very difficult to stop listening. There is no inkling of what lies ahead as the song starts to spell its lyrics out in his deep baritone.

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever

And you know that she’s half-crazy but that’s why you want to be there

And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China

With lines like these, it is inevitable then, the head begins to imagine the woman you are in love with and want to be lost with, forever. And then, out of nowhere, something else altogether jumps out. Such as these lines:

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower

And he knew for certain only drowning men could see him

He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them

But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open

Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

What are we to make of Cohen’s interpretation? Is Suzanne a metaphor for all things temporal and ephemeral? And is Jesus’ voice one of resistance that emanates from a soul exasperated that his words cannot percolate into the heads of ordinary mortals?

Or did Cohen intend it that way to drive home, in no uncertain terms, that good and evil are only a matter of perspective?

It is a theme that appears in Jose Saramago’s literature as well even as he describes Mary Magdalene, the woman who loves Jesus staring despondently upon the cross, where her beloved is crucified, between two thieves. Even in his agony though, a crucified Jesus, while waiting for the inevitable death to come over, passes verdict on what he thinks of the thieves crucified to his right and left: that one is good and the other is evil.

The commentators voice in the Saramago’s narrative, describes this as Jesus’ failing, and the voice of someone who “….failed to understand that there is no difference between one and the other, or, if there is any difference, it is something else, for Good and Evil do not exist in themselves, each is simply the absence of the other”.

And it was during a long walk earlier in the day in the wee hours of the morning that some thoughts that could trace its roots to Jared Diamond’s assertions started to merge into these ruminations.

Is it possible, a voice in the head asked, that the narrative around Jesus Christ had gotten too big to contain Jesus the man? Had Jesus gotten too big for the religion that is Christianity? While the religion that is Christianity is bound by the narrative that is Jesus Christ, is it possible that if the voice of Jesus Christ the man has to survive in the long run, the walls of Christianity must be broken down into multiple churches.

In a parallel universe, if an example from Jared Diamond’s studies is to be taken at face value, then the Chinese ought to have been the world’s original colonizers—not the Europeans. History has it that between 1405 to 1432, the Chinese had gotten so good at ship-making that they could send seven ocean-going fleets comprising hundreds of ships each to hunt for what may lie around the world. Each fleet had at least 20,000 men each. The Chinese Empire though was a monolithic one and ruled by one emperor. In 1432, a new emperor decreed that expending money on ship-building was futile. After that, China turned inward.

As opposed to that, the Europeans were a fragmented bunch. It took Christopher Columbus seven attempts before the Spanish royalty agreed to fund three small ships. It led to the discovery of America, an explosion in interest, and 11 countries from Europe got into the race to discover and conquer America, an other parts of the world. Europe was “optimally fragmented”.

The “monopolist” China lost out and the “optimally fragmented” Europe gained in the longer run. There were loud voices that argued if it be made a larger block, it could counter the force that the US had gotten to be and China was emerging to become. The outcome of all these voices was the European Union (EU). That the EU has practically fragmented now is being explained because the bloc was too big and a heterogeneous one at that. What shape China stays in remains to be seen. Much of India’s role has to be looked at from this perspective, Jared Diamond argues.

The hypothesis has more nuances and my submission here is a very simplified one.

The larger point in the current context is that, if Diamond’s assertion be true, then basis much evidence that the anthropologist and biologist has on his side, for Christianity to survive for as long as it has, it had to fragment. It could not have survived as a monopoly. It followed a course that nature dictated just so it may survive. To follow this course, it had to create narratives of all kinds so that it may appeal to the most numbers of people.

My understanding is that the narrative of Jesus as a sailor, is one that appeals to most people. This, because sailors, at least as popular perception goes, are of a very different breed. As metaphors go again, they are seekers who traverse the seas and have it in them to ignore the lure of “Suzanne”.

Seekers by their very nature gain much experience over the years on their many journeys across over the waters. It is inevitable then that people pray to those who have walked the waters before, more fervently so when they start to “drown”. They write songs in honour of sailors who have been there and done that before them.

And all good sailors know, all good songs, are like good narratives. It morphs over time. To the afflicted, it offers much comfort. To others, it may sound like a darned good yarn. Anthropologists, poets, artists, and writers know that. History has taught them when the time is right to spin a yarn, when to profit from it, and above all else, that to achieve epiphany, they must wait, such that the conditions are right and everything is optimally fragmented.

This piece was originally published in Mint on Sunday. All copyrights vest with Mint

What is trust really?

A very long story short: Early last week, the family driver met with a tragic episode. He fainted on the wheel and lost control of the car. Passing motorists figured something is the matter and attempted to cordon it off. A passer-by ran beside it, opened the door to get in, pulled the handbrake and got it to halt. Because the episode happened close to home, an acquaintance figured it is my car and I was promptly informed. 

On getting there in a few minutes, it was clear something was dreadfully wrong. The 37-year old sounded incoherent and was hallucinating. All accounts from witnesses to the episode suggested he had just had an epileptic seizure. He had to be pinned down and taken to a hospital right away. With help from strangers and an obliging taxi driver, he was rushed to the nearest hospital. 

En route to the place, calls were placed to friends in the neurosciences. Basis their prognosis over the phone and my limited understanding of the symptoms, a few outcomes looked possible. It could be anything from a haemorrhage in the brain triggered by high blood pressure or a seizure triggered by some kind of encephalitis. To zero in the real cause, medical protocol insisted that he first be sedated to rein in the violent behaviour, an MRI be conducted, and a few life-saving drugs be pumped in. Else permanent impairment or even death looked imminent.

On getting to the casualty ward, I didn’t think it pertinent to describe at length all of what transpired—but quickly summarise whatever happened and suggest he be restrained first and that urgent protocols as mandated when such behaviour is demonstrated be administered. I was stared right back at and told: “He looks perfectly all right to me.”

Even as the doctor said that, he got up and ran away from imaginary demons into oblivion. The security let him pass. They heard the doctor pronounce him hale and hearty. I yelled at the intensivist for thinking me an idiot. “I know what I’m talking about,” went unheard. But she looked right through me. 

Much later I was told she felt mighty offended. What protocol to follow is something she decides and isn’t dictated by anybody. I certainly didn’t look the kind who could offer informed advice—unkempt in a worn-out t-Shirt, sloppy shorts, stubble a few days old on my face, and bathroom slippers on my feet.

Just when it was time to lodge a man-missing complaint with the police, he reappeared on the horizon. This time, looking lost, dishevelled, and talking to ghosts. Much drama and another long story followed that lasted until mid-night when I finally sunk into bed, exhausted after all of what had transpired. 

In hindsight, the sanest piece of advice I received during the day was that he be taken to KEM Hospital in Mumbai. When I was first told that though, my reaction was “Any place, but not there”. How terribly, terribly wrong I was would be evidently only much later.

The first reaction KEM Hospital evoked from me is a uniform one that the “privileged” living in metropolitan cities like Mumbai feel. It has much to do with that this is a hospital managed by the Municipal Corporation of the city and owes its allegiance to the government. And the government, the privileged believe, have a track record of mismanaging pretty much everything. But because there was no resort or resource left with after much adventure through the day, it was the last option. 

KEM Hospital is like a parallel universe. An altogether different system that operates at a pace and rhythm that makes no sense to those who live outside of it. Throbbing with thousands of people of all kinds, at first glance, it looks like a war zone. Casualties are brought in every minute, their misery intact, some howling in pain, others waiting to die, many accompanied by wailing relatives, others by a harried police constable, even as the medical and para-medical staff work against the odds. It is inevitable then that they have neither the time or the inclination to engage in polite talk. Everybody looks rushed and sounds brusque.

With a convulsing man though, I imagined some latitude may be offered to get ahead of the others so that this creature, whose misery I was holding, could be offered some immediate relief. Instead, I was asked to stop being stupid, shut up and wait in a queue—because there were others whose misery looked greater. Broken heads, torn limbs, flowing blood, crying children, everybody looked and sounded even more miserable and desperate. 

It was soon evident why the professionals at work there look as rushed and sound as brusque as they do. They take calls every minute, every hour, every day, on their feet in harsh conditions. It can break down the hardiest of souls. There is no room for emotion. If any such thing be felt, it can be drowned elsewhere—but not here. There are real people that must be attended to. All of them must be paid equal attention. Time is at a premium. All help is appreciated, but not acknowledged. This is an ecosystem that has a mind of its own and gets on with life on its terms. 

A little while later, it was time for one of the overworked doctor to now look at the cranky mess of a man with me and his wailing wife as well in tow. The physician quickly heard me out and had no problem either with noting my opinion. He finally weighed all the evidence with a counterpart in a matter of a few minutes, so a call may be taken. I heard them quietly confer with each other quickly: “Herpes Simplex?” one wondered. 

Over the years, I have gotten to know enough about this strain of the virus. That compelled me to butt in and suggest that while the clinical symptoms may suggest that, the diagnosis can be misleading in my experience, and a deeper probe may be needed. They didn’t roll their eyes or look at me suspiciously. Instead they jotted it down on the case paper, agreed to hospitalise him right away, and investigate some more. Unlike the earlier place, there was no time or room for egos to clash. That was it. My job, he said, is done. I was asked to step aside so the system can take over to do whatever it thinks is appropriate. 

What system? I thought I couldn’t see anything, except chaos. Just then out of where somebody emerged out of someplace and directed me to another official, so my statement can be recorded for the police to verify my antecedents and that of the “person” I had brought in. They had to record my identity and that of whom I had got in. Over and out it was.

It took me a while to let it sink in that a system had indeed taken over. There was nothing else I could do. While I am not a medical professional, I do know that what I could see being executed, was as mandated by the latest advances in medicine. There is nothing else any of the doctors at KEM or somebody at the fanciest hospital could do better. 

At best, the private ones may have offered an illusion of offering better care because it can offer creature comforts like air-conditioned environments, private rooms, higher quality food, reassuring conversations, and a seemingly sanitised environment. It comes at a huge premium though—unaffordable to most uninsured Indians. 

Having witnessed all this, calls were placed to friends of all kinds: those who practice medicine, former teachers from my stream during college and affiliated to KEM Hospital, and friends in the media who report on the domain. A clear consensus emerged: They trust the medical professionals at KEM Hospital more than they do from any private medical entity in the city. 

For that matter, they argue, they trust large medical entities in the country trained to serve the poor, and look chaotic to the untrained eye, more than many professionally run, private medical institutions. This runs contrary to how hospitals such as KEM are perceived by those who live on the top of the economic pyramid. 

But if I were to be in there, I’d sure as hell would be desperate to get out. Why may anyone want to get into a system that seems strained at the leash? Even as this dispatch is being written, 4,500 para medical staffers and nurses have declared they will not report to work because the software that processes their salaries have malfunctioned. They haven’t been paid. How can anyone trust such a system with their lives and the lives of those that matter to them? What was I missing? 

It took me a long while to figure I am missing the forest for the trees. The reason people in the know suggested I place my trust in the ecosystem around KEM Hospital is because experience has taught them it is a trustworthy system. Trust is something that can be measured by metrics like opinion polls. But opinions are, well, opinions. It is subjective. Trustworthiness cannot be measured in any form. This was first put into perspective for me after listening in to the British philosopher Onora O’Neill in a short, but outstanding talk on what we don’t understand about trust. 

‘The aim is to have more trust. Well frankly, I think that’s a stupid aim. It’s not what I would aim at. I would aim to have more trust in the trustworthy…”

“It’s judging how trustworthy people are in particular respects….”

“And I think that judgment requires us to look at three things. Are they competent? Are they honest? Are they reliable? And if we find that a person is competent in the relevant matters, and reliable and honest, we’ll have a pretty good reason to trust them, because they’ll be trustworthy….”

“But that’s what we’re looking for: trustworthiness before trust. Trust is the response. Trustworthiness is what we have to judge. And, of course, it’s difficult. Across the last few decades, we’ve tried to construct systems of accountability for all sorts of institutions and professionals and officials and so on that will make it easier for us to judge their trustworthiness. A lot of these systems have the converse effect. They don’t work as they’re supposed to. I remember I was talking with a midwife who said, Rs.Well, you see, the problem is it takes longer to do the paperwork than to deliver the baby.’ And all over our public life, our institutional life, we find that problem, that the system of accountability that is meant to secure trustworthiness and evidence of trustworthiness is actually doing the opposite. It is distracting people who have to do difficult tasks, like midwives, from doing them by requiring them to tick the boxes, as we say.” 

“The aim, I think, is more trustworthiness, and that is going to be different if we are trying to be trustworthy and communicate our trustworthiness to other people, and if we are trying to judge whether other people or office-holders or politicians are trustworthy. It’s not easy. It is judgment, and simple reaction, attitudes, don’t do adequately here.”

When thought about, Onana O’Neill philosopher sounds so very right. My head was unwilling to trust the doctors at KEM because the attendant paraphernalia that accompanies a privately-run institution does not accompany them. They are burdened by having to attend to people in huge numbers and have no time for nice-talk. There are other pressing things to be attended to. Like fix a few more broken people. What my head couldn’t see is or measure is that they are trustworthy. They work in a demanding environment that insists they take complex calls. When they work as furiously as they do, it is inevitable then that they become better than others in the field. 

But the report cards can only measure what has been gleaned from the text-books. Like facts that can be trusted upon. There is nothing though that can showcase whether these facts will be deployed in just the right way, at the right time, and ingeniously if need be, to create a trustworthy doctor—except the word of those who may have seen them at work. Because trustworthiness, much like respect, must be earned, every day. 

Even as this making itself evident, his relatives started to come in. They looked distraught and looked at me for answers on what is to be done next. I had other things to do. Like meet a few deadlines. 

Calls were placed to two friends. “What do I do now? This guy looks in a real bad shape and his folks don’t know what to do.”

I knew what their answer would be. It is what I would have told them if they were where I was. But I needed to be doubly sure. 

“You’ve done what you can. The system has taken over. There is nothing else you can do. Get out and go back to work.”

As anticipated, some relatives called up a little later to suggest KEM Hospital is an awful place to be in and that they would much rather he be at private hospital. 

“Bad idea”, I said and hung up.

This piece was originally published in Mint on Sunday on March 13, 2018. All copyrights vest with HT Media