Thoughts In Progress: 1

In the Thoughts-In-Progress posts, I write about ideas some of which I may not be fully convinced of yet. Or about which I have not made up my mind yet- this way or that. Like Work In Progress, these thoughts are not done yet.

In the last week or so, I watched a few interviews of Patrick Collison (Stripe co-founder and CEO; generally known as PC*). Noteworthy ones: with Zukerberg and with Jason Crawford. There I came across a few somewhat-new thoughts. Both these have an article of his in the Atlantic about diminishing returns in science as a background.

Ok. First of all, that thought was new. The article was mostly about established/ pure sciences. Not technology or positive effects of the scientific progress on the world. When you read books like those by Steven Pinker and some charts from our world in data, the world certainly seems to be getting better despite news media giving the opposite impression. So in general, this thought that maybe science is not progressing at a good rate never crossed my mind. And I have not thought much about this idea. But at the face value it seems appealing. Of course, over time, I will think about it, and as I suggested in the post about escaping from the grip of an idea, I will pit this thought against opposing thoughts. (For example, a contrasting thought is what Bill Gates says- and I have come to believe 100%- that we overestimate what we can achieve in one year and underestimate what we can achieve in ten years.) Suppose we discover a new element, are able to map consciousness, discover life in other places, are able to edit genes, find cure for old-age, etc.- Any one of these ideas would be a breakthrough of quantum mechanics kind. And maybe some of the new progress would be serendipitous- like Kekule’s dream or discovering plutonium by accident. I added this Seinfeld reference after publishing the post as I thought it’s- well, I will just say it- ‘very comedically humorous’. I am slightly worried that my brain did not remind me of it in the first draft of this post while I was writing about discovering a new element.

In the interview with Zuckerberg, a couple of other things were also noteworthy: should history be a background when thinking about things like this?, real estate/ rent/ student loan crisis, costly medical care crisis. Without painting this in black and white (for example, UK’s NHS is the silver bullet solution), the US seems to be struggling with these problems and so is India. Also, long arc things like periodic table of cells, that even if their foundation solves some problems it will be for the grandkids’ generation, etc. Did I miss any?

The interview with Jason Crawford came up as a youtube suggestion, and unlike Stripe and startup focused interviews, had better returns for the time spent in watching it. In answer to a question PC argues against a centralized body having control, deciding direction and funding, etc. He mentions that federal funding of science is a recent phenomenon which sounds true. Well, for example, Darwin’s Baegle and voyages of Columbus were funded by respective central authorities. We, at least I, operate in far smaller contexts than these people. But in general, I agree that we- in whatever sphere of influence we have like our software projects- should let ideas compete and win. Of course, our areas of focus may be short term whereas some ideas (for example, should we develop our own service or use third party service) may need longer terms to compete and win. And sometimes we may have been conditioned by history/ our experience/ someone else’s opinion/ guidelines to allow that (again, for example, should we develop our own service or use third party service). The thing where we need central authority and funding and direction and guidelines, I think, would be long arc, not-suitable-for-open-market-yet, common-good, no-harm-to-anyone areas: long term, vision, policy, infrastructure, etc. By the way, Montek Singh Ahluwalia says that infrastructure is something that is not traded. Is electricity infrastructure? He answers that. All of these, again, are new thoughts to me and not fully formed or ingrained yet. **I will be thinking, reading about those to make them more concrete or considering if these have any merit or not. For example, in IT, some areas do need strategic Big Upfront Design whereas in most areas we can have incremental and evolutionary approach.

*I have visited PC’s website multiple times in the past and his bookshelf page has awed me. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog before, recent book recommendations I get come from a few online forums and people. And I generally prefer recommendations from people with wide ranging interests rather than say narrow band- like software, economics, literature, etc. But there are some people whose recommendations, because of their interest areas being unreachable to me or mutually exclusive of mine, seem inaccessible. For example, Obama always has reading lists but these seem to be so on a different level of topics/ interests that I don’t think I purchased any book yet because of his recommendations. (I purchased his audio book but haven’t taken it up yet.) And I think some of such recommendations- as these people are public figures- are based on their image and target audience- like say does this book seem like a POTUS should recommend it? But even within that framework, his recommendations seem to come from heart. There might be an afterthought about his image but primary thought seems to be his reading and interests. How can it be otherwise for someone who can quote Naipaul paragraphs? Yet it seems- at the level I am- a bit inaccessible, too out of reach. For example, (I could not think of a better analogy than Hindi film music) say you like both Rafi and Kishor, and while you know that maybe Rafi is better, you relate to Kishor’s songs more because you can sing them yourself whereas Rafi seems an unattainable goal. Well, people like Obama and PC fall in that category for me. On the other hand, even though I ‘know’ that BillG has equally different and diverse range from topics of my interests, I have purchased and read a few books based only on his recommendations.

**I understand that in my current domain, I may not make policy decisions in country’s economic, scientific areas. So one may argue if there is even any merit in spending time on these thoughts, couldn’t I instead…, etc. Well, we all indulge in escapades like these- men and women, kings and peasants alike. The areas may differ but we all find time for not-immediately-actionable things. In fact, this is a known problem in IT. Software engineers try to solve problems that they are not currently working on. Also, that reminds me of a joke Stephen Fry told on QI. Paraphrasing here and sorry for stereotyping: Wife says, my husband is very smart. I am the dumb one. So my husband takes all the strategic decisions in our family. He decides whether the world should take global warming more seriously, and should India have a permanent seat at UNSC, and knows if there is life on other planets. My brain cannot handle stuff like that. I worry about less important mundane stuff like clothes to wash, and when should our kids get their annual flu shots, and their show-and-tell projects, and stuff like that.