Talk to the Hand

In my experience, the smartest people have perfectly awful handwritings, barely legible, almost as if the brain is too engrossed in more complex thoughts to care about aesthetics. This observation bothered me. What gets you a slap on the wrist with a ruler (not that I was in that kind of school) when you’re young is perceived as character and the willingness to be different when you’re older. This was a matter of great concern for me because my writing has always been more than legible. I was quite worried that I would come off rather dense, as I probably do in this neatly typed post.

Lately, however, I’ve changed my mind. Yes, a lot of smart people I know do have dreadful handwritings. But any handwriting that’s legible and doesn’t look like it’s straight out of a cursive writing book is a mark of artistic ability. I write like crap when I’m “not in the mood.” Can a person with a lousy hand write well when they “feel like it?” More choice means better optimisation. So there.

Sometimes I can’t help feeling that 2 years of economics hasn’t done much for me other than adding the words “optimisation” and “equilibrium” to my daily vocabulary. 

Innocence Found

A lot of our childhood games encourage us to develop skills required to be a good criminal. We run away, dodge and escape from the catcher in pakdam pakdai and its regional variations, hide from the catcher in hide and seek, destroy a neatly stacked pile of stones in pitthoo and then set about rebuilding it before we get caught and work as a team to distract those trying to catch us out in gallery. Maaram pitti is probably preparation for prison life where you unnecessarily hit each other to get everyone out of the game. We also acknowledge the fact that being a cop isn’t half as fun as being a robber – the catcher gets to hide again once he finds someone else to blame.

Are we shaping future criminals, acknowledging the fun of doing something unlawful or just maintaining skills that would be required in the wild in case of an evolutionary turnaround? 

The Waiting Game

I’m not the sort of person who is usually on time. I have a rare condition. I once arrived so late that one of the people I was supposed to meet, having waited for me for over an hour, went home. I didn’t notice. I also frequently lie about my location to make it easier for the other person to endure the wait. Of course, when it becomes apparent that I lied because it doesn’t take 2 hours to reach anywhere from Connaught Place, they get a bit annoyed, disregarding the fact that I did it for their own good. Nobody appreciates how considerate I really am.

I do, however, have very strict rules about waiting for others. I don’t like to do it, so I don’t. I make sure I’m adequately late so that I don’t need to do so. In addition to my natural gift for being appallingly late, this determination helps me time things to perfection. Of course, this means that I have no idea of how to reach a place on time, say, for an interview. I turn up freakishly early, try to while away time, lose track of it and end up being late anyway.

Recently, one of my friends turned this habit into a two-player waiting game and lied about her location as well as the time we were supposed to meet. Imagine her astonishment and my indignation when I was the first to reach. Obviously, this means that I will have to further delay my arrival in future to account for the possibility of her lying. The only optimum that exists is for everyone to tell the truth while I do as I please. Otherwise, as a cursory study of any cheap talk game will tell you, there will only exist a babbling equilibrium. 

The Kiss of Death

It was an ominous day when I was appointed to the placement cell of my undergraduate college. Within weeks it became patently clear that there would be a financial crisis. Indeed, the following summer saw a global food crisis, uncontrollable oil prices, spiralling inflation and an economic recession looming in the horizon. When the placement season began, I was asked to call all investment banks. The first bank I called was Lehman Brothers. After that, every company I called shut down within weeks. I decided I had done enough damage and quietly bowed out.

During my Master’s, I was careful not to be affiliated in any way with the placement cell. However, when the placement season started, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to apply to a couple of companies. So that’s what I did. I applied to exactly two companies. Both of them decided not to recruit anybody at all from our campus. I’ve decided not to apply to any more firms because it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the students.

I’m wondering if I can blackmail firms with this unique skill I have. But what good would it do? If my calls can cause firms to shut down and my resume can cause a hiring freeze at every organisation it enters, what would hiring me do to the company?

Spiritual Progress and Deals with God

I have a friend who has her head firmly planted on her shoulders. It’s what gives her the confidence to shrug so frequently while others have to make do with a twitch of the eyebrows. So when she told me she had made a deal with God, I was sure it was no ordinary deal.

At the outset, allow me to clarify that I’m all for deals with God. He’s the ideal party to draw a contract with because you can always be reasonably sure that He’ll hold up His end of the bargain. It used to bother me at first that such deals are similar to bribery. But when you think about it, it’s just payment in kind for exercising specialised skills. God is so efficient that once you’ve agreed on the contract, you can relax and be sure that it will be taken care of. You can propose a deal costlessly. You can choose your own terms, although you don’t really receive a rejection letter if He finds your terms unacceptable. But most people seem to know what would seem fair to Him. He doesn’t object to sudden modification of terms. If you don’t fulfil your obligations under the contract, you will be penalised in ways you could never imagine, the uncertainty over the form the penalty will take being a potent motivating factor to make you honour the agreement. He’s all right with performing His end of the deal first, without any guarantee or advance payment from you because of His immense power to enforce contracts. For instance if you promise not to eat chocolates for a month and you violate the terms, He can give you diabetes.

My friend, as I mentioned before, is rather smart. She formalised this whole system so beautifully for herself that I had to marvel at the religious progress the current generation is making. She decided that God’s jurisdiction should be clearly defined. For His convenience and her own, she decided that her promises are enforceable in a geographic area specified in the agreement, which conforms to existing political boundaries so that any doubts she has can be resolved by worldly authorities.

She’s also very exacting in her requirements and reduces the reward when God doesn’t show the panache she has come to expect of Him. For example if it turns out that she had merely misplaced something and she remembers where she had kept it later, then it doesn’t qualify as a miracle, so she allots credit to God on a pro-rata basis and modifies the contract accordingly.

I’ve also noticed that nearly everyone who makes deals with God appears to believe that He will reward those who deny themselves something they like. I’m not sure how this works. It’s not tenable for everyone to believe that He is a sadist. Does He consume what the devotees forgo? If so, is it correct to assume that His preferences are aligned with our own? Or perhaps He just wants everyone to have a sense of balance in life: you can only have one or the other. It helps one practice constrained optimisation on a regular basis and prevents devotees from becoming hedonistic parasites to society.

I was marvelling her ingenuity but she seemed to mistake it for sarcasm. “What do you do when you want something?” she asked, eager to know more about my spiritual inclinations. I usually convince myself that I don’t want the thing in the first place so that I’m not disappointed if I don’t get it and if I end up getting it, I do my best imitation of an Oscar acceptance speech: “This is such a surprise!” Then it takes me a few minutes to reverse all the brainwashing I’ve done to myself.

But then I wondered what I’d do if I lose something where there’s no question of wanting it. Say, I lose my passport. I suppose I’d worry, whimper and lose sleep for a couple of days and then pass the buck to my parents since I’ve done all I could in the matter. That’s probably why my parents never tell me where my passport is.  

Oh Shopping, why must you be a Nightmare?

I recently went to Great India Place (GIP) mall. Let’s just say my sisterly concern caused me to be roaming around a part of what isn’t Delhi. I felt more claustrophobic than one would on Blueline buses that ply on what is Delhi.

The said sister was slightly upset with me. I had misled her into believing that I would arrive an hour earlier than I did and I was also dreadfully tardy in responding to her queries about my location because I wasn’t in the mood to put my book down. I wondered why she messaged me with such regularity from a mall. Sure, it’s boring to shop alone but not so much as to have to send messages every 8 minutes? Turned out she was waiting for me at the metro station, hoping against hope that I would indeed arrive at the agreed time.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. All right, it was mostly my fault. I tried to explain to her that I had done everything I could to be on time – skipped the lens routine, reached the metro by car, ran up the stairs and took the train to Vaishali even though I needed to go to Noida because I couldn’t stand to be doing nothing while she waited for me. She pointed out that I should’ve left early, writing all in caps to indicate her displeasure. Unfortunately that idea hadn’t occurred to me. I had already decided to have a lazy morning so it was a bit difficult to change the course of things. She didn’t know it at the time, but I saved her life by making her wait.

You see, GIP isn’t a mall so much as it is a poorly stocked labyrinth of colourful signs with girls who are no longer teenagers humming the tunes of 90s boy bands and short boy-men who wear too much cologne cheap deodorant. It also has more children on a weekend than the average pre-school on weekdays. Most of these children have a delightful way of slamming themselves into passers-by, doing their child-launched-from-a-cannon-at-a-moving-target imitation.

When I did enter the mall, it had so many people that I thought there must be something really wonderful to buy there. Every shop was overflowing with people but nowhere did I find anything that I would be caught dead wearing. They couldn’t possibly all be keen social scientists observing behavioural patterns like me.

Thankfully, I wasn’t shopping for myself. My sister asked me if it isn’t the most wonderful thing to be shopping for someone else, even more so than shopping for oneself. I thought for a minute. She must be making some less obvious point because she most certainly isn’t an altruist. I nodded. “Yes it is,” I said. “When you shop for someone else you get the satisfaction of buying something that you consider worth buying without the guilt of having spent your money.” “Exactly!” she smiled happily.

At one of the shops we wandered into she found a sweater that she considered pretty. I noticed that you could see through it and observed that it probably wasn’t very warm. “Who cares about warmth?” “Well, it’s a sweater, isn’t that what it’s supposed to do?” I asked, somewhat naively. “No! It’s supposed to look good!”I put my finger on my chin thoughtfully and asked her why she didn’t just buy a t-shirt in that case – it would certainly not be bulky, it would be cheaper and probably more stylish. “But then I wouldn’t be dressed for the weather,” she shrewdly pointed out. “Ah! I see it now!” I said. “You want to look like you chose comfort over style but you’re really choosing style over comfort.” “Exactly!” And I always thought it was the reverse.

The best thing about the day, other than all this worldly wisdom, was the plate of golgappas I ate outside the mall. Not just because they were quite good, but because it was a refreshing change to be surrounded by cars instead of people. 

How Not to Make Decisions

Students of economics are armed with a formidable array of tools to “make decisions”. Being the keen scholar that I am, I wanted to see how they apply these to a “real-world setting”. I decided to look at the choice of optional courses in the final semester. The goals vary from “taking it easy” and “doing something different” to “preparing for a PhD”. So at the outset, I should say that there is no “correct” choice of bundles, and the choice depends entirely on the constraints (in terms of choices available and ability) and preferences (or goals).

I found that we aren’t spiritual enough to be able to optimise. There isn’t enough knowledge of the self, of self’s abilities, self’s preferences and whatnot. There also appears to be much social pressure that operates indirectly through social conditioning (even now!) – smart people take difficult papers, wise guys take “scoring papers” (I’ve never come across these in all my life, I used to think it’s an oxymoron. I know now that it’s just moronic), geeks take “theory papers” and the “take it easy” guys take the most mind-numbing courses available. Most of them don’t attend classes.

This is not optimisation! Dear old Slutsky and Hicks must be turning in their graves. We study all of consumer theory in the first semester, are introduced to choice under uncertainty soon after, ace exams in permutations and combinations in the second semester and then choose courses based on, well, none of the above. I agree that we were spoilt for choice in the previous semester and are generally spoiled in the last semester, but isn’t constrained optimisation the cornerstone of microeconomics?