After reading Ayn rand books I used to feel pretty depressed looking at the amount irrational things around me , till I find Dilbert.When I first read "Dilbert the way of weasel" it stuck me so hard that within 6-7 months I read almost everything written by Scott Adams(hmm may be I have too much free time also at that time) . By reading Ayn rand books we can see what is wrong, and if you read Dilbert instead of feeling bad about that you will actually start enjoying it. After reading Dilbert books I never had a dull or bad day as I was petty much surrounded by its characters in live and I feel like I am the only person who actually saw the preview of situations that are coming .
In one of the comic when asok informs the boss about the project being behind the schedule , he asks him for a daily status update till the situation improves, its really funny to see the same thing repeatedly in my office. Recently I saw the extreme end of this which is hourly status update( I would have gone crazy if not enlightened by Dilbert).
In another comic Dogbert will say he is planning to kill all the people in elbonia (some third world country) but we don't need to feel guilt as elbonians believe whoever dies in that will get donuts in their after life .When I read that one of the terrorist who attacked TAJ hotel actually told other terrorist that they don't need to take dinner as they can have it in their Jannath (heaven), I know that Dogbert is right on target. Many comics in Dilbert need deep philosophical knowledge to actually enjoy the comic (I think Dilbert is the second best philosophical content I came across after Ayn rand).
The strategy which improved my quality of life greatly is 'surviving the meetings'.Before going to any meeting i will clearly define the objective to achieve in the meeting which is almost but not exactly opposite to the objective of the meeting, like how many blunders we can find in some movie (ex. DON)or in how many ways Sharukh movies are stupider compared to aamir's movies etc. and will try to come to a conclusion by the time meeting ends.
Dilbert is the best thing I got from working in IT as I would have missed it badly in any other profession .Thank God for Dilbert.
Sunday 31 October 2010
Sunday 24 October 2010
Apocalypse
I see many people discussing in media and in general also on end of world on some particular year or date etc.I can understand the people who are un-educated discussing it, but I wonder on the number of educated persons discussing about this when actually they can spend time on many useful ways.
The main flaw in any Apocalyptic argument is it suggests some year, some round number or a fancy number and numbers by themselves doesn't have any meaning . If you take 10 , its two in decimal system, eight in octal system and sixteen in hex-decimal system. and I don't see any reason why god , nature or the universe whatever that's running the world would use decimal system and have a preference to fancy numbers.
After reading these predictions I did some research (actually googled for 5 mins) and found these top 10 failed predictions http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/091104-doomsday-predictions.html . I think we will see these predictions time to time to solace people who are not able to keep up with the pace of the world . Any way I have a bad news for the people who are enthusiastically waiting for the end of the world as per Mayan calender ....at least till they find another calender :) follow the below links.
http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/end-of-the-earth-postponed
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39759260
The main flaw in any Apocalyptic argument is it suggests some year, some round number or a fancy number and numbers by themselves doesn't have any meaning . If you take 10 , its two in decimal system, eight in octal system and sixteen in hex-decimal system. and I don't see any reason why god , nature or the universe whatever that's running the world would use decimal system and have a preference to fancy numbers.
After reading these predictions I did some research (actually googled for 5 mins) and found these top 10 failed predictions http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/091104-doomsday-predictions.html . I think we will see these predictions time to time to solace people who are not able to keep up with the pace of the world . Any way I have a bad news for the people who are enthusiastically waiting for the end of the world as per Mayan calender ....at least till they find another calender :) follow the below links.
http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/end-of-the-earth-postponed
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39759260
Monday 11 October 2010
Emotional Atyachar
Guilt, i think is most dominant emotion used in the world against man. When I first read fountainhead I understand its true nature of Guilt and started analyzing ,I was surprised to see the amount of Guilt that is filled in the world and only way to achieve happiness in this world is to kill that emotion.Guilt is mainly used against man to make him feel small and unhappy as the Man with happiness without guilt cannot be ruled.It is evident in the small tussles between friends to abstract religious beliefs.
Mostly the situation they use to create guilt in us will not even have remote connection to us but still we feel responsible the them. What you need to know is that the main objective is not to serve the cause but make you feel guilt.Take the case of tiger's(or any species) extinction we are in no way responsible for it, and even if all the tigers/seals/wheals extinct I don't think it's going impact me or any human being in any way. If we spend the same money on poor people , the results would be much better. In the same way " Go Green" or global warming problem ( http://bit.ly/cHAv3G) , without any kind of evidence we all made to believe that we are causing global warming.
We will see mails and people teaching we need to consume less as in some part of the world people are starving without thinking how will that impact, as a matter of fact if you consume more, it will actually support whole supply chain and create jobs to all of them and will help the people raise out of poverty.
Not only these what ever gives pleasure to man are vehemently attacked by religions ,politicians, NGO's and masses causing people to think pleasure it self is a sin/guilty.If you don't believe see the attack on Coke, Cigars, Mobile (by NGO's) ,Sex (by Religion), Industrialization and Cars (by environmentalists) Money (Altruism and politics) . All these things may be diverse in nature but only thing in common is they give pleasure and sense of achievement to the man.
Without you making a conscience effort to understand the true nature of these preachings its not possible to escape or raise out of this emotional atyachar.
Read the following lines form Ellsworth Toohey which is the best antagonist character I have ever seen or read till date, (The main difference between Atlas shrugged and Fountainhead is that Atlas shrugged lacks a strong antagonist character like Toohey.) so that you can get better understanding of Guilt.
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004FMp
Mostly the situation they use to create guilt in us will not even have remote connection to us but still we feel responsible the them. What you need to know is that the main objective is not to serve the cause but make you feel guilt.Take the case of tiger's(or any species) extinction we are in no way responsible for it, and even if all the tigers/seals/wheals extinct I don't think it's going impact me or any human being in any way. If we spend the same money on poor people , the results would be much better. In the same way " Go Green" or global warming problem ( http://bit.ly/cHAv3G) , without any kind of evidence we all made to believe that we are causing global warming.
We will see mails and people teaching we need to consume less as in some part of the world people are starving without thinking how will that impact, as a matter of fact if you consume more, it will actually support whole supply chain and create jobs to all of them and will help the people raise out of poverty.
Not only these what ever gives pleasure to man are vehemently attacked by religions ,politicians, NGO's and masses causing people to think pleasure it self is a sin/guilty.If you don't believe see the attack on Coke, Cigars, Mobile (by NGO's) ,Sex (by Religion), Industrialization and Cars (by environmentalists) Money (Altruism and politics) . All these things may be diverse in nature but only thing in common is they give pleasure and sense of achievement to the man.
Without you making a conscience effort to understand the true nature of these preachings its not possible to escape or raise out of this emotional atyachar.
Read the following lines form Ellsworth Toohey which is the best antagonist character I have ever seen or read till date, (The main difference between Atlas shrugged and Fountainhead is that Atlas shrugged lacks a strong antagonist character like Toohey.) so that you can get better understanding of Guilt.
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004FMp
Sunday 3 October 2010
Reflexivity
Reflexive theory is the the best theory I studied in the recent times and influenced me a lot. I read this first from the books of George soros ( is the man who short sold $10billon and made $1.1 billion profit within 24hrs. in 1992) its petty simple theory but the applications and influences are quite enormous.
In simple terms it says " Reality will effect/change perceptions,in the same way perceptions can also effect/change reality". In this first part is quite simple like if a person is good, every one perceive him as a good person and the second part is quite hard to digest but if you can observe you will know that the perception can change reality too.
If you take India in 2000 ,on the ground we had nothing to write about infrastructure, living conditions, good government etc but some how the perception started to change towards India (may be Nuclear tests helped) and foreign investment started to flow into India ,which started changing the reality , now we are the worlds second fastest growing economy.Even now if you take in any standard (like growth,infra,living standards etc) china is far superior to India but the capital flows to India are much better compared china ,more companies are starting /increasing investments in India and many companies like Google are leaving china,which i think will again change the reality in our favor.
If you take prices of Gold for which there are no fundamentals than the price it self are going up because people are buying it thinking the prices go up and the prices are going up because people are buying. When the trend starts reversing the same reflexivity will work in opposite direction too.
In the same way if you take Windows/iPhone there are more applications because of which more people continue to use them and there are more number of users so more companies will continue to develop applications to that platform.This reflexive process to continue till some new platform emerge.
When I first started investing I started reading finance related books. Reading the books helped me understand the markets better and understanding the markets made my reading much more interesting and enjoyable. In the same way reading philosophical books helped understand the world better and vice versa.It is very useful as if you can appreciate it and setup this kind of feedback loops.
We can find a lot more examples in financial world which you can access below
http://www.sharpeinvesting.com/2007/08/george-soros-theory-of-reflexivity-mit-speech.html
In simple terms it says " Reality will effect/change perceptions,in the same way perceptions can also effect/change reality". In this first part is quite simple like if a person is good, every one perceive him as a good person and the second part is quite hard to digest but if you can observe you will know that the perception can change reality too.
If you take India in 2000 ,on the ground we had nothing to write about infrastructure, living conditions, good government etc but some how the perception started to change towards India (may be Nuclear tests helped) and foreign investment started to flow into India ,which started changing the reality , now we are the worlds second fastest growing economy.Even now if you take in any standard (like growth,infra,living standards etc) china is far superior to India but the capital flows to India are much better compared china ,more companies are starting /increasing investments in India and many companies like Google are leaving china,which i think will again change the reality in our favor.
If you take prices of Gold for which there are no fundamentals than the price it self are going up because people are buying it thinking the prices go up and the prices are going up because people are buying. When the trend starts reversing the same reflexivity will work in opposite direction too.
In the same way if you take Windows/iPhone there are more applications because of which more people continue to use them and there are more number of users so more companies will continue to develop applications to that platform.This reflexive process to continue till some new platform emerge.
When I first started investing I started reading finance related books. Reading the books helped me understand the markets better and understanding the markets made my reading much more interesting and enjoyable. In the same way reading philosophical books helped understand the world better and vice versa.It is very useful as if you can appreciate it and setup this kind of feedback loops.
We can find a lot more examples in financial world which you can access below
http://www.sharpeinvesting.com/2007/08/george-soros-theory-of-reflexivity-mit-speech.html
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