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Prisoner of Self

What follows is an excerpt from 'The Bet', a short story by Anton Chekhov, and a discussion upon certain aspects of it. The story is about a bet between a rich banker and a young unwise man. The banker stakes two millions that the young man wouldn't be able to spend fifteen years in solitary confinement voluntarily. The young man agrees to the bet, on the condition that he be given access to all kinds of necessities and amenities; the only condition being that he be denied the right to communicate with humans. The most critical aspect of the bet was that the confinement was voluntary on part of the Prisoner. He had the right to walk out of his room the moment he desired. Which obviously made the stay a lot more difficult. After fifteen years, around 12 hours prior to the scheduled end of the bet the Banker gets a chance to read this note written by his Prisoner:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good things of the world. 

For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women ... Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds' pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God ... In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms ... 

Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you. 

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe. 

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you. 

To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two million of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact ..." 

And the Prisoner of Self walked out as he said, never to claim the 2 millions he had set out to win. My dilemma here is simple: which was the greater of the two mistakes, was it the fact that he imposed that voluntary confinement upon himself; or was it his action of having walked out of the bet  just in time to lose the bet? I can't decide. Can you?

PS: You can read the full story here:  http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml

The Passion

The Visiting-Warlord's Guest Lecture

"Goodevening, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Viktor the Warlord. I wage battles and kill people. Occasionally I carry home the spoils of war for the Wife and kids. Firstly, I would want to thank the administration of the college for inviting me over to speak to such a distinguished audience. It is truly an honour. I tried to decide upon what I should lecture on, but believe me it was pretty difficult to do so. So Rather than making it the formal drab discourse we so much fear, let me begin by asking you this question: Why did Achilles fight? And why did Hitler do so? Hitler did it for gains in this world. Achilles did it for those beyond. For Achilles, it was glory that mattered most. For Hitler, it was the honour of his people and geographical superiority. But what was common to both, was that they both waged with an intent, a motive. 

I intend to tell you today, of a third possibility. How about waging wars without an intent? Or a motive? Or a direction? Sounds funny doesn't it. I mean, why all the bloodshed and ransacking. But just consider this for a moment... how about waging wars just for the sake of it? What if I were to tell you, that there exist warlords who fight not for a cause, who fight not for a gain, but who just fight for the sake of it? I am one of that kind. I fight my wars because I love the war. I love the battlefield. I find the roar of the battledrums inebriating. The rumbling earth upon the march gives me a high. I love the moans of dying men, the sound of bones being crushed and lacerating flesh. I absolutely enjoy the all-night strategizing sessions with my soldiers, and the tactical moves made on the turf. The only thing I hate about wars, is the prospect of fighting another pitched battle on the same battlefield. I find it nightmarish to fend off scavengers from a battlefield where I have previously fought and lost. I don't lose usually though and it is painful, believe me. Give me a new war each time, and I shall fight it with all my might. Give me an old war, and I will not want to fight it.

But that's that. I would expect you to question, is it alright to fight wars without a motive or an intent or a direction in mind? Is it correct to push for a buildup of such magnanimous proportions, just to wage a war which you don't intend to see the consequences of? I frankly, believe it is absolutely correct. As long as the battle itself feeds your passion, gives you the fodder you need, fight it. And fight it well. People will confuse you for the Joker in the film The-Dark-Knight. The Joker fought, without an intent or a motive or a direction. But he did so, senselessly. It did not feed his passion. It was just something he did. 'I am a dog chasing cars, don't know what I'll do if I caught one.' Let the people be. Maybe it is the Joker you intend to become. But most likely not. Eitherways you will be happy. Atleast you'll not go to your grave feeling guilty of not having waged that war, or won that battle. 

I once thought it was wrong to fight without a motive or a direction or an intent. I believed my existence was futile. It took me one long drawn war -- which I know not if I have won yet -- to correct myself. Yes the war is my life. My passion. My karma. I am Viktor the Warlord, and I kill for a living. Thankyou."

For the record

They first gave us a topic to write on, 'Recession is the mother of innovation.' I highlighted the opinion that innovation will come with governmental spending on newer sectors, jobs that have been lost were mostly to cater to an artificial demand which is no more. Innovation in newer sectors to broaden the base of the economy is the only way to jump-start the system back to life again.

Now, the interview:

Panel Desc: two senior people, one of whom had been on my panel last year too , and had done me in with an acads question... I was thoroughly amused by the prospect of facing the same panel again. Very nice, and very senior people.

P1: Come in, CodesmithCipher.
Cipher:
P1: Hoye! Whoever taught you that. Take your seat young man, you don't need to wait till I ask you to take a seat. 
(No point taking chances people, had I sat down he might have wanted to take my case on being stupid enuf not to ask)
Cipher: Big shameless grin, no sir no one taught me that, I'll take the seat. Another big grin.
P1: So, you're with , tell us what you do, I mean, what is your role out there, what do you do... 
Cipher: Err, umm, (clumsily)we work in the domain of knowledge discovery... we try and identify risks and opportunities for a client by creating insights in transactional data.
P1: wow. Knowledge discovery, risks, opportunities, Can you simplify that for us :P
Cipher: We work on supervised learning methods to identify the dependence of response variables on other, given data.
P1: So that is like, ANN's and all (artificial neural networks: a machine learning method)?
Cipher: no sir, we dont use ANN's and other machine learning tools... we stick to statistical methods mostly.
P1: Like what all?
Cipher: We do stuff like regressions, logistic, linear, decision trees etc.
P1: Hmm Hmm Hmm regressions eh? (Broad grin). 
Cipher: Sir, yes sir.
P1: So do you know what CART is, Cipher? I mean, you must have used it, right?
Cipher: Yes sir I do...
P1: So can you tell me what CART is, what Logistic Regression is, how are they different, when do you use CART, when do you use Logistic Regression, and when would you want to use a combination of the two, and how?

Cipher: Certainly sir... Cart is about...
P1 Before that, can you tell me what does CART stand for???
Cipher:  Sir Cart... err, umm... It stands for err... (and then it struck me) Sir it stands for Classification and Regression Trees.
P1: Yes, thankyou. Continue now.
P1: So sir, CART is essentially used, in context of the work we do, to identify sub populations from a large sample size that are markedly different from one another as regards the behaviour of the response variable. Like, in case of a categorical variable, maybe a highly different response rate, or in case of a continuous variable, a large difference in avg. (Mostly on track, but with great deal of clumsiness).

P2: Joins in: Okay, so Cipher do you remember any bit of electrical engineering from college?
P1: How wouldn't he know? Just been seven months out of college. He had better known!
Cipher: Broad 32-all-out grin.
P2: So Cipher, what is a switchgear?

Cipher: Sir, so its about... 
P2: Why are you smiling? And on this particular question?
Cipher: Sir, I had taken IIMA interview last year too, and you asked me the same question 
P1: So, you know what a switchgear is now?
Cipher: Yes sir, I went back last year, and read about it. Didn't answer it then. 
P1: Hmmm! So Cipher lets try and calculate the probability of occurence of such an event. I mean, can you find me the probability that you will encounter the same panelist for two consecutive years?
Cipher: Certainly sir. We will need to take a few numbers as assumptions... 
P1: yea yea sure
Cipher: Lets assume the pool of profs to be around say, 40.
P1: They may not always be professors, you know.
Cipher: Okay sir, lets say, 40 panelists. >
P2: Okay, leave it.. gimme the paper you were writing on. Examines it.
P1: So, Cipher, what do you mean by this recession?
Cipher: Sir its about err.. umm... there is this recklessness, and then there is overoptimism about something, and errr.. there is overexpectation from some thing, and then there is a correction about it.. basically goes on in cycles... so the recession is when there is this correction... 
P1: You know you are trying to be very evasive, and trying to get away with it without getting yourself hurt... I think this is what you might have messed up last year in your IIMA interview. Be decisive, and give short answers!
Cipher:  There goes IIMA again.  
Cipher: Sir, lets consider an example, so like lets take the previous recession... .
P2: But then IT is support infrastructure, what do you think of it this time? Why has manufacturing taken a hit?
Cipher: . Sir manufacturing has taken a hit essentially because demand has fallen. And there was also a spike in oil prices in between.
P2: But oils is back now, better than before.

Cipher: Its more about the demand sir, take the example of the big three: Ford, GM and Chrysler, during the good days before recession they were happily working on larger engine sizes, bigger cars, and more cars. More factories, more capacity to feed an artificially high demand. ...
P1: So Can you tell me what is Gini Co-efficient?
Cipher: Sir its in cart... its a kind of a cost function to decide how deep your decision tree should be... I dont know exactly but its a parameter we feed in to the tool that does it for us. 
P1: Looking into my form, says to himself: You guys from Electrical engineering background, doing statistics fulltime... why... 
Cipher: Sir its not that I just veered into it, I generally like data and have done a couple of nice projects on it (Trying to cash in on my btech project and internship which got a paper).
P1: Ho ho ho! So were you the kind of guy who does internships at IIM's during your study at IIT's?? 
Cipher: No sir, this was scientific data on which I had worked, I loved technology, I still love it. No IIM Interns for me.
P2: love tech? Why do you want to do this management thing then?
Cipher:
P2: So you're going off your technology love?
Cipher: No sir it will stay with me. Its an enabler. Will give an edge. 
P1: Some clarification regarding a certificate i received. 
P1: Okay, so tell me, what do you, as a data-miner, do to save the current scenario? What's your client-kind typically?
Cipher: Sir its mostly credit card issuers.
P1: How can you help them in these times.
Cipher: Clumsy again. Sir, err, umm, we can err, umm, help them by reassessing their risk... better analytics to understand how to redistribute credit lines to customers...
P1: THat's done already, and the system is in a mess... they are bleeding right now, how will you help them?? 
Cipher: Sir, Collections! So when the bank writes off or charges off, they still try and recover some bit of it, and some analytics goes in at that level.
P1: Ya, so collections, what happens in that. Quick quick! make it fast! we need to wind up now.
Cipher:
P1: Looks at timer. Okay, leave it. Pick up a toffee.
Cipher: Sir can I complete please?
P1: Naah naah, pick up a toffee, jaao.
Cipher obviously slightly irritated, fiddles around in that small cup to find an eclairs, says thankyou, and walks. out.

-------

Transcript of what I could remember of the encounter at the IIMA interview.

I can talk geeky numbers too!

So I had this really chill conversation today with two very nice people. It started with the more elderly of the two asking me what I did for a living. Having acquired a bit of bluntness from the previous standoff a couple of days back, I said: 'I do quantitative analyses for a living.' And then I was asked about variance/standard deviation, was asked about central and non central moments, about kurtosis and skewness and about the expectation of exp{tX} and its role in calculating non central moments about the origin. [Yea I roughly pieced it all together. I rock]. I was asked to give the physical interpretation of the fourth moment about the origin. And I answered that too. Yay. So they then asked me my opinion on Guruji's return after the suspension of president's rule in Jharkhand, asked about the breaking up of Bihar and my opinion on it, discussed wholesale price index and consumer price index and its significance with regard to inflation overall, the value of inflation index right now and so on.

And then I was mostly in good stead, when they asked me, 'What books do you read, Hansraj.' Now I rarely read, and what I do, is mostly wiki and feedreaders and google news and stuff. And recently I did read a couple of books on India in general. But then I decided to name a partially read book which I could never make any head or tail of. I recently wrote a blog out of whatever I interpreted from it, called 'The Inconsistency'. What followed in the interview was an extension of what I wrote in that blog entry. So this is how the interview moved on from there on:

'So Sir I recently reached midway through this book called Godel Escher and Bach: The eternal golden braid. Its a 1979 Pulitzer winner.'

'What's it about?'

'Its about formal systems in mathematics, and how they relate to real-life implications of the philosophy behind the positioning of meaning. It essentially talks of where meaning lies, is it in the axioms of a formal system interpretation of a real-life entity or environ, or is it in the rules with which you construct the theorems. It argues whether meaning is implicated by the way the system behaves, or whether it depends on the genetic code cast in stone. Several arguments for and against it have been posed in the book. Its a very well elucidated literature.'

'Hmm. . So can you tell me the difference between indeterminate and infinite.'

'Certainly sir. Bla bla bla'.

'Any examples?'

'There is this famous summation, 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 ..... people have proved its either of zero or one or one fourth. No one has come up with a perfect proof. The sum is indeterminate.'

'Right... so...'

'There is another example sir... consider the function sine(1/x). The energies in the frequencies at lower domain values in x will gradually tend to indeterminacy, owing to the hyperbolic divergence of the oscillation parameter 1/x.'

'Hmm... what about division by zero?'

'So Sir, this is a classic question posed by ramanujan as a kid to his teacher... what if there are 5 oranges and no kids to take them. Who gets how many? The answer sir, according to my understanding is indeterminate.'

'So Hansraj can you tell me why does Nifty have only thirty shares?'

' Sir, I can't tell you that, since I am not at all into stocks. I guess its basically meant to create an index that is broadbased and gives a good reflection of the economy's health as a whole without biasedness etc. And sir, Nifty has fifty shares, not thirty. .

' Any other calls?'

'All save Bangalore and Shillong'

'Why not Shillong, with that percentile?'

'Wont know sir.'

'Where is Shillong?'

'Sir its in Sikkim?'

'Hahahaha.. which is why they didn't give you a call. Its in Meghalaya'

'I am sooo sorry sir'

'Hahaha... relax.'

'Thankyou sir'

The Honest Joe

The Honest Joe

What has been the most honest thing you have done in your life? And which made you feel real good and stupid at the same time, afterwards? I'll tell you. I got to spend arguably the twenty-five most coveted minutes with a couple of people today. It is rather difficult to articulate what it takes to get a chance to speak with them, especially a second time. But after having failed to make them happy last year, I got to sit with them again, today. 

Let's cut the crap. This was the second time I was taking my IIMA interview. Last year, my interview started with the panelist asking me, 'What is a switchgear?'. I did not know. And then he asked me what an oil-circuit breaker was. I did not know again. And then I lost control over that discussion, and it veered off course. And I had to fend off another 2,44,800 people to be able to speak with them again. This time 'round, 800 miles across from Kolkata, I met with the Profs from A at Delhi. It was a lazy afternoon, and I was allotted Panel #3. And Panel #3 was two professors, one of whom was the same gentleman who asked me what a switchgear was, last year. Yes. And this time, after a minor discussion with the other professor, I got to speak with the same gentleman once again. 

And he asked me, in the same tone, that shot me back in time, 'So Hansraj, can you tell me what a switchgear is'. Such are the vagaries of nature. I thought for a split second, and knew the next question he would ask, once I answered this one. And I knew what'll be the one after that too. I knew I could ace it. I could literally talk about the switch-gear ad-infinitum: it was, afterall, what let me down last year! 

But guess what, people, something struck me. Call it stupidity, or call it the want of brownie points, I made a clearly observable smile, before I actually gave the answer. And predictably, the man interjected and asked me: 'Why did you smile upon hearing this question? What's so funny?'. Me: 'Sir, you asked me the same question last year. Should I answer it.'

He became quiet. And gave me a blank stare. The other professor, sensing the unusual incident, interjected. Said, 'Okay, so old acquaintace eh. Neat. You know what a switchgear is?' Me: 'Sir, I did my homework this time round.' Prof: 'Okay, so lets get into a nice probability question. Lets evaluate the probability that you meet the same panelist again. And consider your probability of clearing cat this second time as one. No smartness there'.

The interview went on a very average course after that, they didn't get into academics at all. I could have answered that question. And the most beautiful answer it would have been. And probably the next one would have been on an oil-circuit breaker. And the one after that on the grid-transient stability. I would have aced them all. But I chose not to. Don't know why. Call it smartass. Call it stupid. Call it dumb. I had an average interview after that. This was arguably a most important moment for me. And I did what I did. Was it right on my part? I don't know. But I am happy. Tell me guys, was it right?

PS: Just as an aside, the Professor in question happens to have headed finances for Rolls Royce before he decided to teach at IIMA :P

The Inconsistency

The loop that fails to close.

Formalist theories in mathematics are littered with large volumes devoted to consistency of the system in explaining itself. I intend to discuss here, the implications of such a delicately balanced formalist system gone all wrong. But before that, let's briefly understand what a formal system is. 

A formal system is a means of explaining any physical/non-physical system within the bounds of the universe. Perhaps even beyond that. The theory of physics can fall within the purview of a formalist interpretation, but so can the theory of post-modernist philosophy. It is the largest kind of generalization you can have, in view of defining a paradigm. 

Within such a system, you have the set of core fundamental truths, or axioms. These fundamental truths, or 'guiding lights', are explaniable and derivable only in a language or system that is one stratum higher -- a meta-language where even the guiding principles are merely derivable entities. Within the bounds of a formal system, however, for all practical purposes, the axioms are unchangable, cast in stone. It is like stating that 'matter exists', and, 'energy exists'. Both are uncontestable truths that cannot be questioned within the framework of the physical universe as we know it. (Possibly there might be an explanation in a meta-universe). A case in point here is, that you can have certain fundamental falsities, or anti-axioms too. 

Apart from this set of 'truths' is a set of Rules or Principles upon which you can derive more truths or 'guiding lights'. Such rules decide how more truths can be derived from the starting fundamental set of 'truths'. An example of such a Rule, (Call it Rule Number One) in light of the starting two 'truths' that we proposed about matter and energy, is as follows: 'One quantum of energy is convertible to a quantum of mass that is proportional to the quantum of energy undergoing the change.' (Essentially, stating that E = mass times speed-of-light squared). The rules give you an opportunity to come upon more 'truths' that are 'consistent' with the original set of truths from which they were 'derived'. 

Rules are very crucial, and must be crafted extremely carefully, if you intend to have the system remaining stable and functional under very stressed circumstances too. For example, imagine a rule, for the same formal system in consideration. The Rule Number Two says that 'The quantum of energy can half without the creation of any matter, if Buddha Smiles'. Now, assuming that no correlation Rule between the creation of mass and the smiling of Buddha is given, we can safely assume, that there will be an inconsistency if a quantum of energy either passes through the first rule, or through the second rule.

Essentially, bad Rules such as the ones we just discussed, can lead to arrival upon inconsistent truths in the system. And such truths can render your system unstable and essentially, you will need to get back to the drawing board to re-design your formal system. This is what happened when the constancy of mass and energy was questioned by Einstein, and a new Rule was created and added to the Formal System of Physics (assuming a hypothetical construct such as this exists) which stated that mass and energy are interconvertible by a New Rule (E = mass times speed-of-light squared). This stabilized the system.

Your life is a Formal System. So is mine. We are born, and fed with a set of core truths, and a set of guiding principles to use in order to build upon the set of core truths. More rules are added to your formal system once you interact with the Social Paradigm. But, your fundamental, core truths, the axioms, remain where they were. Gradually, using the Axioms and the Rules engine, you construct a large bank of Truths or Theorems for yourself. You know that eating healthy food helps you gain weight, and that drinking liqueur can harm your body. And it is all good. 

What do you do, if this system suddenly encounters a glitch? What do you do, if your set of core-truths or axioms suddenly gets challenged by a Truth that got constructed with the same set of carefully crafted Rules? If you assume the derived truth to be a falsehood, you will have to assume that your rules engine if flawed. And that it can lead to creation of several other falsehoods which apparently show up as truths. Or, you can trust the rules engine, and decide that one of your fundamental, starting truths, possibly, was misguided? Something was wrong with the core of your reactor, and not with the reactions?? Your system becomes unstable. You have no way to explain the inconsistency. You are a formal system now, that has no way to correct itself. 

This is a glitch, and as one with an elementary experience in numbers, I can say that glitches are dangerous. They can gradually go away, transit out of your system by a lovely convergence. OR, they can violently diverge, leading your system to an uncontrollable stage from where only a core-dump or a warm-reboot can bring it back. 

I stand here, looking at this inconsistency. I am scared, I have a glitch in my system. It can bring down my castle. It can cause untold damage. It is an unrectifiable mistake which has no solution. And I know not a meta-system where I can go back and ask for a re-check of my Formal system. God Help Me.