Ba Ba Ba Ba Barbara-Ann

I recently had an interview (another firm that decided it didn’t want to hire at all as soon as they met me) where they asked me what I would like to be questioned about. My interviewer, a rather dashing man, helpfully added that, “It’s no fun if you have no clue about the topic,” just to boost my confidence, I suppose. The only answer I could think of at the time was pop culture. And I turn up my nose at quite a lot of that too. Considering the fact that they didn’t hire me anyway, I realise now that I should have overcome my inhibitions and said it: “Ask me anything about pop culture.” And if he dared to ask me about some horrible single that’s topping the charts I could’ve sneered at him and refused to work with someone with such an awful taste in music.

Pop culture is such a wonderfully unnecessary social construct that I can’t help wanting to waste all of my time on it. The connection between two people who listen to the same music or love the same TV show is instantaneous, maybe more so than two people who grew up in the same neighbourhood. The more obscure the reference, the stronger the kinship you feel with the person who was able to identify it.

Lately, however, it’s started bothering me that all my conversations are an awfully tangled mess of pop culture references. I can’t for the life of me remember the last time I went an entire day without alluding to anything that I came across through popular media. For someone who, as a rule, avoids social networking sites like the plague, this is a real bummer. This means that if I was cut off from the internet, television, reading material and my iPod for a few weeks, I would have absolutely nothing new to talk about. Oh, the horror!

But let’s think about the alternative. Let’s assume for a moment that I wasn’t quite so obsessed with music, movies and suchlike and that I had “real” conversations with people. Exactly how would these conversations go? Would I talk about my feelings? The meaning of life? Idle gossip? I’ll take pop culture any day. Don’t kid yourselves. We’re not Einstein reincarnations. It is time to accept the fact that there is no life beyond youtube.

Tiptoe

I came across an interesting read today. Being more comfortable with skin show rather than talking about sex is by no means a purely Indian problem. You’d think it would be more of a male problem if you trusted enough stereotypes. Apparently it isn’t.

This is probably the only issue I can think of where words can indeed be louder than actions. We get outrageous advice from our politicians. And movies, well, let’s just say our dialogue writers aren’t up to the task of writing out a regular conversation on the subject. We still prefer the flower analogy. Is that why parks are such creepy places? In fact, even our censors seem oddly squeamish on the matter although item numbers are considered perfectly normal.

God knows, our MPs sure could have used some sex education in school. 

13

If there’s one thing we all absolutely adore, it’s superstition; even if it isn’t our own creation. If a lot of people seem to believe it, then it must be true. The lack of logic just gives it some mystique. Everyone could use some mystique, right?

It is courtesy our charming ways and beliefs that many buildings don’t have a 13^th floor. They call it the 14^th floor instead. As if poor counting will negate bad luck. Apparently two wrongs do make a right. The number 13 being unlucky is an old Christian belief but it seems to have found resonance across cultures. My research informs me that there’s actually a word for it: triskaidekaphobia. 

It’s quite interesting to me that an arbitrary set of beliefs can affect outcomes. People believe 13 is unlucky and so very few of them are willing to buy a house or an office on the 13^th floor. This  causes prices and/or the probability of sale to fall, thereby ensuring that the number becomes unlucky for real estate developers merely because enough buyers believe it to be. So people choose to drop poor 13 from the number system altogether. Self-fulfilling prophecies don’t get any stranger than this.

I must consult a numerologist about the importance of lowest common multiples and highest common factors in arriving at decisions about how lucky a number is. Are multiples of 13 also unlucky? Would people be all right with living on the 26^th floor or is that twice as unlucky as 13? The problem with detecting self-fulfilling prophecies that are irrational is that you don’t gain any predictive power from such knowledge. 

Poise

I think part of the reason why I didn’t have a job for such a long time was that I was afraid of getting one. I'm still afraid of getting started. Right now, my record is clean. Empty. Not a spot. There’s a certain amount of liberty you can take with the way you see yourself when you’re unemployed. You get neatly boxed and labelled once you have a job. When I tried to explain my immense loss of identity from getting a job to a friend, he directed me to First World Pains. I’m offended.

Speaking of jobs, I know of a man who knows how to get exactly the one he wants. I do envy his self-assured, confident poise, his manly tears at his unsurprising victory and the eyes that twinkle under the neatly Botoxed forehead. Putin’s election has also generated some classy headlines, the likes of which may never be seen again. Congratulations, Mr. Putin. But I don’t believe you.

This time I'm on Facebook's side

I came across a news report about employers “requesting” prospective employees to provide their Facebook passwords so that they can “predict possible negative behaviours and attitudes.” You’d think after the 2008 recession that companies would be too busy covering their arses to insist that their employees be squeaky clean even in their personal communications. A big ask, you’d think, from a bunch of indicted frauds. Or a swindling of frauds. Isn't that a nice collective noun? 

How bad does the economy have to be for such demands to be acceptable? Are the legal departments getting that bored? Or is this a last ditch attempt by HR managers to find something to live for – other people’s friends?

I think it’s about time we all got a bit cocky too. Let’s ask an interviewer why he chose a life of such mind-numbing drudgery. Ask them about the fraud allegations their company faced the year before last and the funds being channelled to the firm through tax havens. Or better still, let’s ask them for their Facebook passwords and mock them for their sad single-digit friend lists.

We Are All Rock Stars

Mr. Keith Moon was known for blowing up drum kits, toilets and pretty much anything else that took his fancy. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill thing for us Indians – we set off explosives far more powerful than cherry bombs every Diwali. Even five-year-olds do it. So clearly, that can’t be what sets the Indian rock star apart. People will just jeer at him for not knowing when Diwali is.

Mr. David Bowie thought he was quite the star because he liked to play dress up. Children grudgingly do so for school plays and fancy dress competitions each year. Any rock star who tries to use this route to fame will get laughed off the stage. Mr. Bowie himself had to court this fate sometimes.

Let's consider Ms. Grace Slick's TUI habit: "Talking Under Influence." Would that work? In all honesty, our politicians often say things that make me wish they could use being drunk as an excuse. 

What of getting drunk and throwing things at people? Surely that should qualify as rock star-like behaviour? Nope, sorry. Half of India does that every year on Holi. Kids often do so with more precision than most adults.

On average, I believe that sober Indians drive worse than drunk drivers elsewhere. So this form of recklessness would not get a rock star noticed either. General violence and destruction are things at least some Indians indulge in on a daily basis, and unlike most rock stars, they don’t even pay for the damages. So far, so bad.

We have arrived at the last arrow in the rock star’s quiver: setting things on fire. Oh wait. We’ve got Lohri. And Dussehra. Indian festivals make the most badass western icons appear endearingly childish for taking such joy in doing what we do so regularly, not to mention a bit stupid for spending so much on it.

So what can an Indian rock star do? Oh I know! Wear an unfashionable cap and starve himself.

Getting in Tune

As much as I love writing, I’m extremely lazy about writing assignments. It’s difficult to feel inspired when someone tells you what to write and sets a deadline for it. The only thing I can do within a deadline is bullshit, and that I do with great reluctance.

Most good writing is whimsical, born of a sudden fit of inspiration, a great idea that struck you out of nowhere and had to be written immediately before it lost its charm and original form. A good idea is a lot like love. It doesn't happen on command. Most people spend their lives looking for it. Everyone's sure it's out there somewhere. Some people devote their lives to one idea while others have a series of idea flings. It is often unexpected. And you're surprised that it was staring you in the face right from the start. Now that's what I call an intellectual romantic comedy. 


Good writing is usually not born from trying to string together averages to make a mildly interesting write-up. Sadly, writing with a purpose can rarely be done at leisure. Nobody's going to wait for you to “get to know your stuff”, “feel inspired”, “get in the mood to write” and finally, “write whatever you feel like writing”. 

Sometimes I feel quite sure that if the world wasn’t in such a hurry to get wherever it is that it is going, we might produce much better work. Douglas Adams was probably working on a deadline when he said he didn't like writing so much as he liked having written. 

Stop... er...

I was directed to the Stop Kony movement by a comment on one of my previous posts. As far as writing material for a blog goes, this is the absolute gold standard. But words fail me.  

I was introduced today to a rather interesting paper on the nature of political revolutions. It appears that 2012 is the season for revolutions of a different sort. 2011 set the stage pretty well with our beloved Mr. Hazare and Occupy Wall Street which, for some reason, seem to have eclipsed real (and more violent) protests elsewhere. 

The Invisible Children movement is probably a natural extension of the power trip that social media thinks it is on. But Oprah Winfrey and Justin Bieber's endorsement should have set off alarm bells much sooner. Now, now. Don't judge young Mr. Russell. People have done far worse under stress. 

Losing my Unemployment

I expected my first paycheque to cover a lot of expenses I had planned. Having a job requires one to sacrifice a lot of the time ordinarily earmarked for doing nothing. To compensate, I made extensive plans to correctly channel money towards buying myself all the joy I want.

But I’m sorely disappointed. My first paycheque can’t buy me a grand piano, a vacation in western Europe, a decent vinyl record collection, a section of a library, a Bugatti Veyron, real estate on the moon, a small Hawaiian island, tuition for a good academic program, a quaint bistro in southern France or youtube. Money can probably buy happiness if you are as shrewd at planning your purchases as I am. But I can’t know for sure. Not within a month of getting a job in any case.

I also feel like I’ve lost some part of my identity by losing my unemployed status quo. My tally of companies that came, saw and left without recruiting anybody was steadily rising, something that made me believe I had a superpower. A larger sample does, after all, indicate more robust results. Receiving a job offer has taken away all my imaginary powers, not to mention the inspiration for many a blog post.

On the bright side, I got bored of worrying last week and decided that things could either sort themselves out or they could go to hell. I’m happy to report things voluntarily chose the decidedly less attractive option of sorting themselves out despite my curtness.

Additionally, the placement cell is truly relieved: far more excited about me having got a job than they seemed to be about their own jobs. Within 3 minutes of sending me my offer letter, the placement cell officially declared the close of the placement season. I was clearly the most difficult case on their hands. I know it took a lot of patience. 

Bravo

I know I should respect the Indian police. They are brave guys. No, really. They work hard to get where they are and I can only assume their job isn’t a picnic. In fact, considering how many of their comments leave me dumbstruck, I must admit that I’m finally able to see why large organisations spend so much on public relations. Multi-tasking isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

If you try to search for tales of the Indian police’s valour, however, you’re mistaken about their core competency. As a nation, we’re the brain over brawn sort. The Indian police is known for its intelligence and investigative brilliance, prompt registration of obscenity complaints, winning arguments over jurisdiction and most importantly, their fashion sense. Maybe I should have said style over brawn.

But I do pity them sometimes. Our country is a strange one to police. 

Man Up, Wall Street

I can’t say I’ve been following the Occupy Wall Street protests with bated breath. For one, I don’t know what the protest is about and it seems, nor does anybody else – not the protesters, not the reporters, not those who approve or disapprove of the movement – in short, nobody.  A protest that’s not against something definite is not a protest so much as it is a public forum for airing self-pity. I thought the internet was enough for that. 


I'm a bit confused about what they expect to achieve and how they will do so. But I suppose most protesters are and that's really a secondary issue. Personally, I’m a big fan of protests. It gives everyone a few days off work. The media finally has something to report. There’s always something to watch on TV. And it’s indicative of a populace that is trying to think about the state of the world.

Unfortunately, Occupy Wall Street is running out of funds. Apparently, it’s difficult to draw attention to how poor you are unless someone gives you the money to do so. No, no. No irony at all. It’s time for Wall Street to be a man and do the right thing. It must fund the protests, thereby negating the premise of the protest altogether. It’s a win-win. 

Business Communication

 “…for the businessman, the greatest gift is to be able to speak so many words which seem to signify something but don’t, which convey a general attitude but are free from commitment.”

For 3 years I studied business and desperately groped for words to describe the exasperating imprecision of every statement I read. Mr. R.K. Narayan puts it so accurately, succinctly and seemingly effortlessly, that I’m afraid I may have become a business(wo)man myself.  

Much as I lament the English language’s limitations for expressing romanticism, I must praise its pliability for business: the scope for ambiguity is immense.

That said I’m quite scandalised with my English these days. It started when I first discovered online dictionaries that would pronounce words like the Americans and the British do: I realised that I didn’t speak like either of them and to add to it, my pronunciation didn’t even resemble the spelling – I was wrong in every way it was possible to be wrong.

We don’t realise how much of the “good English” we speak is actually very bad English. Being able to string a sentence together is hardly indicative of mastery of the language. If the British ever come back to visit they’ll never guess that we’re speaking their language. We can try to speak in a polished accent or use big words, but speaking correctly is a far cry for most of us, and is unlikely to become a reality unless we decide to spend a lot of time scanning Wren & Martin (oh, you boys) and listening to that stuck up witch on TFD speak “propahly” everyday. 

The Agreeable Shortness of Being

For long I have wondered why I attract so many short jokes. I’m not particularly short. Okay well I am, sort of. But I am the chosen target even when there are shorter people in the vicinity. I think I’m at that optimal height where it’s all right to make short jokes without worrying that I may have some underlying medical condition. Personally, I love short jokes. They are particularly funny when a person of my height cracks them.

Perhaps I’m partly responsible for attracting attention to my height. I can never resist an opportunity to show off the merits of being small. Short people have some remarkable advantages: leg room is never an issue, sleeping on the couch isn’t all that uncomfortable, low-ceilinged rooms are less likely to make us claustrophobic and we are, on average, better limbo dancers.

Beethoven and Picasso were 5’4”, as is Scorsese. As Bill Bryson says in A Short History of Nearly Everything, “The world belongs to the very small – and it has for a very long time.” If anything, short people are more likely to be able to adapt to sudden changes. We do live in the more oxygen-rich part of the atmosphere. We have the choice of being taller by wearing heels or stilts, while tall people can’t be short without undergoing some very unusual surgery. One of the few things economics has successfully taught me is that a larger choice set means better optimisation. 

In Defence of my Frenemy

I read a wonderful article about maths recently. It drew my attention to the treatment of maths in economics. Social scientists hold what can only be described as militant views on the use of mathematics. Those who are good at it insist that it is the only plausible reasoning mechanism. Those who aren’t argue that it’s hogwash. Oh what well-reasoned arguments.

The need for mathematics is well-established in the physical sciences. But it is, after all, just a tool. Considering a paper good just because it is sufficiently mathematical is akin to rewarding the methods employed rather than the result achieved. It could be argued that the result is more rigorous when proven mathematically, but that’s not always a valid argument when one is trying to describe human behaviour. Given that there are more than enough people who hate maths, it is probably reasonable to assume that nobody will employ a very complex reasoning process merely because some researcher believes that it is the only one sufficiently sophisticated to be attributed to a rational individual.

Asserting that the use of mathematics to derive economic results is rubbish just because it is beyond one’s comprehension is pretentious. It takes an ostrich’s brain to insist that something is not true merely because one lacks the cognitive capacity to understand it. The use of maths brings some regularity and predictability to behaviour, a necessary simplification for modelling anything. 

There might, however, be a case for substituting bedtime stories for children with bedtime mathematical equations. They’ll fall asleep quicker, there is a lower chance of them imbibing any prejudices on account of the parents’ carelessness in choosing a story and who knows, they might turn out smarter. 

Picketing, Pocketing

Suppose each of your pockets can be picked with an equal probability on any given day. I’m going to take a conservative estimate of 10% and assume that the probabilities are independently and identically distributed. You have some money, say Rs. 500 that you would like to carry. Would you prefer to distribute them across both pockets so that the probability of you having nothing is minimised, or would you prefer to keep it in a single pocket to maximise the probability of getting to keep all your money? To put it another way, by putting your money in a lot of different pockets, are you actually raising the probability of at least something getting stolen?

Is it correct to say that the probability of each pocket being picked is independent? We could argue in favour of this assumption because it is unlikely that pickpockets would take the risk of checking all the pockets of the same person once they’ve found something. But if the assumption is correct, then you should be indifferent between the distributions (250, 250) and (499, 1), which you are not. So let us further simplify by assuming that the money is equally divided between all pockets.

Let’s calculate what you should do, shall we? If you put all your money in one pocket, the expected value of the money that you can expect to have at the end of the day is 0.9 * 500 = Rs. 450. Since we assume that the probability of the first pocket being picked is completely unrelated to the probability of the second pocket being picked, the intersection of the events should simply be the product of the two probabilities. So the probability both pockets being picked is 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.01. If you equally distribute your money over both pockets, the expected value will be 500 – P(AUB) = 0.1*250 + 0.1+250 – 0.01*500 = Rs. 455. While the amount you put in each pocket doesn’t affect the expected value, the number of pockets will. So it’s rather rational to keep your money in many different pockets if you’re an average person.

But there could be pickpockets who grab opportunities with both hands. Assuming a probability distribution over all pockets instead of conditioning it on the individual does not allow for a fantastically unlucky individual who has all pockets picked on a single metro ride. Let’s just say nobody likes that guy too much anyway so we aren’t relaxing any assumptions for him. This also means that we don’t think a person’s pocket is more likely to be picked just because he has a lot of them. I’m forced to concede that this, too, isn’t very unrealistic. Where will the pickpocket look in a pair of Dockers?

So even without accounting for risk aversion, our model shows that it is indeed rational not to put all your eggs in one basket. In any case, the preference for not losing everything is probably stronger than the preference for not losing anything. But extend this concept to too many pockets and regardless of what the calculations tell you, you should know that you will end up losing at least some money just by forgetting about it (true story). It is reasonable to say that there is an upper bound to the number of pockets you will split your money across: just as it would be embarrassing to find out that you are broke because your pocket has been picked, it would be rather awkward to have to fish out tenners from four different pockets to pay for a doughnut. The answer, my friend, is moderation. 

Stop Writing Already

I can’t help marvelling the amount of completely superfluous writing we all do on a daily basis. We write blogs and text messages but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Think about all the writing that goes into reports, business proposals, university applications, job applications, any application, college projects, official reports – most of this is solicited work, rewarded with grades, admission or money. And yet, most of it goes unread. Nobody wants to read it. We pay money to make people who don’t want to write, write reports that nobody wants to read. Why?

The demand for “writing skills” in almost every job profile is nearly comical. Apparently the need for strong communication skills overshadows any technical or industry-specific skill one would require to get a job done. It’s more important to be able to talk or write about what one plans to do. Is this because the information age has put us out of touch with skills like writing complete sentences or being able to make conversation beyond “suuup?” or is it because jobs must involve useless, joyless activities? I suspect it’s a bit of both. And maybe much else that management never taught me. 

What Economics Wants

So far, I learnt that everything we do is well-reasoned, properly justified and can be modelled using basic calculus and linear algebra. So well-reasoned across all individuals in fact, that it can be correctly and precisely aggregated. We optimise our choices all the time. We can perfectly predict the future. (How come astrologers are frauds when they make that claim but economists are geniuses?) Once we commit to an action, we make sure that we follow it through. All this just contributes towards making us the wonderfully regular, rational, trade-off talking people we are.

But that’s not all. In economics and other social sciences, we have built models for how we choose where to live in terms of access to education, the composition of the neighbourhood and a lot of other factors that I can no longer remember. Based on our identity, cost of education and employer beliefs conditional on social identity, we emit some signal. Based on this signal, we could be assigned some job that we supposedly want with some probability. Considering the amount of mathematics required for these important but relatively straightforward decisions we make, I’m frankly amazed that we manage to breathe without analysing ourselves to death.

I think students of economics should be charged the lowest possible insurance premium. Have you ever seen a reckless economist? We’re dull, boring, predictable and worst of all, rational. Insurance firms couldn’t ask for more. I bet they can’t find another category of people less likely to get into scrapes.