Short Takes 3

In the short-takes posts I write about some concepts, phrases, models, ideas, whatever related to my work and life. As these are likely to be known to many, the idea is to just document these together, rather than go into details of these. Will keep updating.

1. Law of the minimum

   Liebig’s law of the minimum states that growth is dictated not by total resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor). If a farm has ample nitrogen and phosphorus but low potassium, the yield will remain low, limited by the potassium levels. Adding more of a non-limiting nutrient (e.g., more phosphorus) does not improve growth; only adding the limiting nutrient (potassium) will increase the yield. This is related to Theory Of Constraints (The Goal, Phoenix Project), Critical Path Method, etc.

2. Bounded Rationality

   (Came across the idea in the book Thinking In Systems)

   Adam Smith says that every individual by pursuing his own interest frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

   Unfortunately, we see multiple examples of people acting rationally in their short-term best interests and producing aggregate results that no one likes. Tourists flock to places and then complain that those places have been ruined by all the tourists. Farmers produce surpluses and prices plummet. Fishermen overfish and destroy their own livelihood.

   Bounded rationality means that people make quite reasonable decisions based on the information they have. But they don’t have perfect information, especially about more distant parts of the system. Fishermen don’t know how many fish there are, much less how many fish will be caught by other fishermen that same day. Human decision-making is limited by cognitive capacity, time constraints, and imperfect information, leading people to settle for “satisficing” (satisfactory) decisions rather than optimal ones. Satisficing: Instead of maximizing utility by analyzing all options, individuals choose the first option that meets their minimum requirements, combining “satisfy” and “suffice”.

3. Framing effect

   (Was reminded of this bias when reading the above mentioned wikipedia entry about bounded rationality.)

   Framing effect is a cognitive bias where people’s decisions change depending on how options or statements are framed, even when they are logically identical. A fortune teller predicts that the king’s grandchildren will die before him whereas another says that the king will outlive his grandchildren.

4. Learning mechanisms

   One of the long term not-too-keen-but-not-just-superficial interests of mine is how people learn. Not just technology but things in general- ideas, thoughts, etc. I generally learn something new and learn about something new by reading, discussing, and to some extent by doing. Since last few years audiobooks, videos, courses, research-papers have been some other ways. But most of these are- in a way of looking at them- really extensions of same mechanism of learning: books. And, for me books will not be replaced by any other mechanism as primary for some foreseeable future. Of course, learning does not always happen formally. Sometimes things percolate and you learn by osmosis. I am sure you picked up bits and pieces of say anecdotal history of a foreign country, geography of a continent, socialism, method acting- if these topics are not your bread and butter- while listening to some casual conversations happening in your group- possibly in hostels/ dorms, yoga classes, improv group or in some other such ‘third places’. But have you found/ adapted a totally different way/ mechanism of learning than your primary/ usual one? For example, a junior once told me that he watched trending github repos and looked for ideas. This’s so foreign to my constitution that I haven’t adapted it even after a few tries.

   I am also curious about whether the mechanisms involved influence people’s thought process dramatically. For me learning via books is more in depth than by watching videos, and learning by doing stuff and teaching a topic give you further insights and mastery. But apart from depth, scope, etc. do mechanisms influence underlying thought process itself? I guess that would be the case because certainly the thought process is influenced by various factors like your upbringing, gender, financial background, the society, friends, etc. But other things being somewhat comparable if two people have different ways (media, mechanisms whatever you want to call it) of learning or taking new things in, do these ways themselves impact not just what but how these people will think about some totally foreign idea? Any suggestions to know more about this?

5. Power Distance Index

   I first read about power distance index in Outliers. Recently during students’ protests in India, I was reminded of the concepts of power distance and index.

6. Imagined Order

   A few points about the concept of Imagined Order from Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens: Imagined order is a shared system of cultural myths, laws, and religions that humans collectively believe in. We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them.

   In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative. Some of these efforts take the shape of violence and coercion. However, an imagined order cannot be sustained by violence alone. It requires some true believers as well.

   How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature. You also educate people thoroughly. From the moment they are born, you constantly remind them of the principles of the imagined order, which are incorporated into anything and everything. It is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.

   Three main factors prevent people from realising that the order organising their lives exists only in their imagination: a. The imagined order is embedded in the material world. b. The imagined order shapes our desires. c. The imagined order is inter-subjective. Even if by some superhuman effort I succeed in freeing my personal desires from the grip of the imagined order, I am just one person. In order to change the imagined order I must convince millions of strangers to cooperate with me. For the imagined order is not a subjective order existing in my own imagination- it is rather an inter-subjective order, existing in the shared imagination of thousands and millions of people.

   It follows that in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.

7. India will go on

   People think more or less what their generation thinks. And they think in similar ways as their generation does. This is more of a thumb rule than an absolute fact. And it relates to the earlier short-take about learning mechanisms and their impact on what and how people learn and think.

   While politics is one of the highest evolved functions/ activities, time and again I have become curious and disinterested in anything politics: local to international, people to ideas. At certain point I deliberately decided that I won’t be tied to any one ideology- political for the discussion here mainly but others as well. Any one ideology is too inadequate and closed to tie oneself to. I understand some reasons why people do that. Primarily, people do that because it’s easy. Easy is not simple, though. Why would you borrow ideology/ philosophy as is from some other entity and make it your own rather than synthesizing one for yourself from various ideas?

   I have deliberately avoided political topics- to the extent possible- since 2015. Coming to recent student protests in India, while I possibly have an average understanding of the topic, I would like to understand more. I know why, how the protests happened, politics and issues involved. What I would like to know more about is the abstract concepts. How such movements start, change course/ pivot, succeed, fizzle-out/ fail, bring about changes, second order effects, the system dynamics, etc. You can relate some ideas like preference falsification and preference cascade or spontaneous order to recent protests. But what other ideas from the first short takes post do you find relevant?

   I have not seen a lot of political/ issue-based movies of old days- Benegal, Nihalani, Puri, Naseer, etc. (And sometimes when I watched those I have had at least a temporary crush on Smita Patil or Chitrangada. Who wouldn’t, right?) IMO Jabbar Patel made some great movies in that space (politics/ issues based; not Smita-Chitrangada space. Although…) Samna is very good, Sinhasan even better, and here is a favorite scene of mine from his movie Mukta which is more relevant to the recent protests even though it isn’t on the same issues. But, just FYI, I had to watch Mukta twice to realize that the male hero is not over the top.

   The title of this short take- ‘India will go on’- is what R. K. Narayan said to Naipaul when Naipaul was feeling pessimistic about India. IMO, Naipaul’s ‘a wounded civilization’ is best book of his India series and ‘a million mutinies now’ is also good. And while his writing was sometimes criticized as colonial mindset, a lot of his observations- sometimes very biting- resonated with me.