Word Verification

Nowadays there is word verification for almost anything and everything on the net. Spams, abuse of automated scripts and other problems have made it necessary, but its become like a cat and mouse chase. While OCR softwares (those that recognize alphabets and numbers from pictures) are getting smarter, the word verification engines are using more and more cryptic ways of writing them.

People themselves have some trouble identifying it correctly sometimes, which often happens when commenting on blogspot blogs. I don't see the method viable after 10 years.

Going forward

Sorry to disappoint some of you, but I am sticking to my guns. This blog does not work on democracy. It is based on my thoughts and will stay like that.

If you don't like it, don't read. Period.

It is quite easy to criticize under a veil of anonymity. I tried to keep anonymous posts open for some time, but going forward, I need to disallow anonymous comments. Thats because most of the flames were coming from anonymous commenters rather than regular bloggers. The worst of those have been deleted, in case you are thinking that you don't see any offensive ones.

Please resist Flaming. You are free to criticize as long as you criticize the posts rather than the author.

About progressiveness

Here are some of my mini theories about progress and the future:

1. People: In every group or culture, there are some people who exert a pull towards the past. They like everything as it happened a decade or more ago. They dislike every change as if it is a rot or impurity. They see every invention as a danger to humanity or morality. I'm not arguing about the correctness of their belief. They may/may-not be correct and there are dangerous inventions also. Similarly there are people who pull towards the future. Usually there are some people who create the future (musicians, scientists, writers, even politicians etc), and others who like it and follow. These followers might be impulsive or have whatever reasons. I'm not talking about the reasons here.
The net direction of this tussle is always forwards (with a low magnitude), probably because the younger generation is more accepting of the new ideas. If there is a new country or continent (as the North America was settled once), there are less past pullers so such places have much faster progress.

2. Oscillations of progress: Lets say there is a quality Q which has an index 10 today. Ideally Q should be 50 for the world to be more prosperous. Gradually Q increases 20, 30, 40, finally 50. Now this Q does not stop at 50. It would overshoot, to 60, 70, 80. Now the reversal starts, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30. And more occilations until it stabilizes gradually at 50. The reverse oscillation can appear to be a retrograde step when its going lower than 50, but it comes back again.

I believe many of the parameters of progress happen in this fashion. We had a joint family which had its pitfalls of less independence. Now we are moving towards nuclear, and off shooting more towards maybe no-family at all. After a while, we would again come back, and probably it will settle in the end somewhere in the middle.

Though another of my hypothesis says the final structure might resemble the internet. A net like structure where each individual has one or more spouse and those spouse can again have one or more spouse, thereby making the whole world related in a net like structure - similar to orkut.

3. Rules: Societies which have more rules progress slower than societies which have less rules. Simply because rules hinder creativity. Rules hinder change. Rules make the past-pullers in (1) stronger. Again I don't mean rules are bad. Maybe a necessary evil, but they do hinder progress.

4. Religion: Societies which have a strong religion, or more interference of religion in everyday life progresses slower than societies with less religion. I believe religious people have more trouble accepting change.

5. Induction: Progress by one society infects the other to go in that direction. Unless there is a strong pull by 4.

6. Violence: Overall violence in the world is steadily declining. Modern wars are more about machines than people. Aircrafts destroy tanks, bridges, powerhouses. Once all that is done, the war is over. Though it might be more disastrous if it comes to nuclear war, I hope it wouldn't.

7. Immigrants: Immigrants are usually more progressive than the ethnic population of any place. Reasons: The severed tie from their native place reduces the backward (towards the past, towards the known) pull. They were adaptable in the first place thats why they migrated. Rigid people stay where they are, they don't move to other places. The immigrants get to learn from two societies, their own and the new one. Also, they have to make a reputation for themselves again, from scratch, which makes them work hard.
(P.S. I'm not counting refugees as immigrants)

Negativity

Looks like I have built quite a reputation here about being negative. Its not like I don't see the positives, but I like to write about the negatives.

Pondering why:
Maybe because all the good love stories are tragedies.
Maybe because negativity is romantic.
Maybe because of the human psyche of wanting more and more.

Writing positive is way too easy. No thinking required at all. No challenge in it. BTW, I have been challenged to write something positive. So expect a positive post from me very soon. I hope it wouldn't be boring.

Hype of IITs and IIMs

I feel the entire IIM and IIT scene is over-hyped. I have myself interviewed countless graduates from IIT and their technical capability is no better than those from other colleges.

They are called centers of excellence. By measuring how good and fast someone is at gaining knowledge discovered/created by others, one cannot predict how successful they would be at dealing with new situations, solving real issues.

Working in an industry, we encounter issues which have no precedence, no formula to be applied. Some problems are technical, some are political, some relate to the sheer enormity of the task, some about building a consensus. I don't think the entrance exam would filter correctly candidates which are best of each problem, and for unexpected problems.

If we look are examples the world over, great jobs are often done by people who are least expected to do them. College drop-outs, un-educated, unlearnt people often accomplish great feats.

In addition to that, some people from prestigious institutes have a problem (some, not all). They have a big ego. The behavior of the people at their feat right from their families to all others gives them a sense to superiority over the fact that they have studies in a prestigious institution.

They think those who hail from a not-so-famous institute are less mortals and less capable just because of the fact that they do not hail from IITs or IIMs.

Although not all IIT/IIM graduates suffer from inflated ego, I would prefer hiring in the industry be done on a case by case basis rather than giving a blanket preference to people hailing from some particular institutes.

Indians lack creativity

Had written this a while ago, thought of posting after reading Sujai's article - Are Indians creative and original?

Indians lag behind not only in science but in arts, music and other forms of creativity as well. India has 1/6th of the world population. Thus 1 out of every 6 famous artist, musician, sculpture, scientist, writer should be from India.

Indian musicians are still trying to catch up with the west. No offense to Indian music, but it does not have the concept of harmony at all. Nor does it have a concept of providing a bass. Comparing western and Indian music is like comparing a Windows OS with a dos prompt where only one task can run at a time. Though the Indian classical ragas have good melody as well as subtlety, but just having melody is not sufficient. While the west experimented with drums, toms, cymbals and other percussions totaling more than 100 types of percussions, all we have is a tabla, mridungum and maybe one or two more. No Indian instrument produces harmony. They are all designed towards one note as a time.

The sports story is well known.

I haven't heard of any notable Indian sculpture. The only ones of value are in the ancient temples which were made hundreds and thousands of years ago. And if someone were to attempt to make something like that now, the society would eat up that person with all kinds of people protesting against his/her art.

We have a fair share of writers, though many of the good books are banned, with the writers forced to take refuge in other countries and India tries to avoid giving even a visitors visa to them.

Indian culture hinders free thinking. While the school system is bad enough, even at home, children have to agree to whatever the parents or elders say and don't have a right to opinion. Some people might say that this is a good thing. But whether good or bad, it leads to a decline in creativity and we produce a generation of robots who can be programmed to take calls in a call center or maybe write code in c++ or java.
The goal in life Indian children are taught is to get admission in IIT/IIM/AIIMS, so that their parents can gloat in front of their peers who's children did not score so well. If the children score, they are a success otherwise a failure.

Very few children have the resilience to defeat the environment of upbringing during the first 20 years of life. Those who do, have to nourish their creativity either by hiding it from parents and other people surrounding them or through the brute force of rebellion.