India enters the Age of Transparency

Not many would have thought that when an year back this was happening to Kejriwal....this would be the eventuality of this situation an year later.

Dec 2012 outside Delhi Sheila Dixit's (ex-Delhi CM) house.

An year later sworn in as the CM of Delhi

Wonder what's going on in her mind

or his

or hers

Bi-Polarization and Capitalism

One of the biggest examples of Bi-Polarization is the existence of Financial Markets and Bubbles. Bubbles happen because of the consistent need for the human mind to be part of the larger wave and not be left behind. Financial Markets facilitate these bubbles and help them exist. Actually its a little more complicated that that. Markets are designed to remove the inefficiencies of the financial system and matching Supply and Demand (.. or another Source and Sink) by providing a platform for pricing exchanging information

Now lets come to a very fundamental question. Are markets efficient or not? Of course people would say that markets are efficient because markets always price in all information. The problem is that this understanding is flawed. The markets are not efficient because some people always make money while others always lose. Why does the phenomenon exist. Occam's razor- because some market participants always have more information that others- its as simple as that- thereby making our perfect and efficient market a void theory.

Till the time the world was going through the Cold War, many countries were not in a situation to remain neutral and had to become party to the entire situation thereby taking sides. Even though some countries were neutral, many eventually became polarized either due to proximity or core ideology or whatever the reason is. The fall of the Soviet Union led to the beginning of a new era and in a bid to become a larger pole in the entire polarization scenario the more efficient system ( at the time) survived and ushered an age of consumerism and privatization.

But there happens to be an underlying weakness in capitalism as well. It might well be possible that the in the past the current form of capitalism showed more endurance than the failed version of Communism. The basic flaw is that Capitalism favors wealth or whoever has more wealth. This gives an undue advantage to the person who has more of it and puts others to a serious disadvantage. Capitalism works by adding a premium to money (in more laymen terms puts an interest rate to cash). To start any project we need cash. Capitalism designates a risk premium to this cash. So in more simple terms interest rates are like a carrot that has been placed in front of us- The ones who ride the horse are the wealthy. But who is following the carrot. Who is the mule? The mule is the working class- those who are starved of cash. Look at the vast economic disparity already existing in the world. Let's face it. The ultimate objective of capitalism is the increase share holder's value. This never ending cycle of increasing economic disparity could eventually be the reason for social unrest and possible future revolutions/alternate forms of governance.

Capitalism in its current form exists because people in power see little merit in the socialist form of governance and having already witnessed its failure in multiple times in history have out rightly rejected ideas of a inclusive growth strategies which could improve the world multiple times. But there is a catch. Capitalism has also failed- and more number times. That's what happens when we have financial bubbles- LTCM, subprime you name it, we have already seen it before. But the problem is that till the time the US continues to maintain its dominance in the world, we would continue to see this system function unless there is complete loss of confidence in the Dollar and their economy. I believe this reality is more closer than we think it is.

Eventually the central bankers and leading economic advisers in the world would figure out that extreme capitalism can lead to massive imbalances in any society. It would only be time before some madmen decide to take control by force if there is a critical mass and then we could land up in another totalitarian regime. Just that the imbalance created are usually trying to equilibrate and already existing imbalance. The underlying problem is that the human mind is not willing to change easily. Change comes at a cost and that work against the short term interests of the shareholders. However, if our governance systems had been more flexible and willing to evolve, we would not have situations like over population, inequality, gun culture, casteism, corruption, lack of medical services etc.

Why would it happen that in spite of having more than sufficient food in the world, there are people still dying of hunger. The reason is the underlying skewed nature of our minds. We are just not willing to accept that may be we are wrong and it is time to embrace a relatively tolerant and humane approach to things.

Lets look at a small piece of information I wanted to share which might change the way you look at everyone else around you. It is interesting to note that entire modern human civilization outside of Africa that we see today are descendants of a small tribe of around 100 people who managed to cross from Africa into Arabia many thousands of years ago. Yes, everyone around you, even your boss, your enemies, your wife and all before you have come from that small group.

Bi-polarization and sensory perceptions

In our previous discussion, I explained how bi-polarization can lead to the existence of two opposite polar entities in systems to ensure continued existence/sustenance. The existence of the two sexes can be derived from the same explanation.

Some of the effects of the bi-polarization of sexes in humans has led to some of the following specializations:
1. Women able to multitask better than men.
2. Men having better spacial/ hand coordination than women
3. Women are much more networked/connected to peers than men
4. Women able to perceive sensory perceptions in more details than men can
5. Women having more longevity and immunity than men
6. Men physically larger than women.

This leads us to an important possibility. Men and Women perceive the world and their lives in very different ways. This drastic realization would mean that how a woman would sense or feel about a particular event/time/color would be very different from the way a man would experience. Not only does that mean all people in the world feel differently but they might actually perceive and understand them differently.

We know that there are super tasters who can taste much better than normal people. We know some people have more sensitive skin. Some can hear really well and some can sing well. All these small differences on people is what helps us becoming more diverse. Its nature's way of not putting all eggs in the same basket.

Now I would like to discuss about the primary senses that we humans have.

1. Vision
2. Auditory sense
3. Smell
4. Taste
5. Touch

Most humans would agree that the above are primary senses any human would most likely have. Some would say there are more but we would like to keep this discussion within the realm of acceptable science.

Now say you have got only 100 units of memory space allocated to you to store a particular piece of information, say think of a day when its raining and you are standing in front of bakery waiting for your bus. How would you allocate those 100 units to the different senses to recreate the entire scene to the greatest detail. Which senses would be your first and second choices. Once you have finalized your allocation I would like you to think about why you made the choices you made.

Now let me guess what choices you would most likely make.

1. Vision
2. Audio

In fact most people would allocate more than 70 of the 100 memory units to the two above senses. What could be the reason for such a lop sided result. Are we stuck with our sight and sound fixation. Or are we subconsciously choosing these two senses for a reason. The reason is blaring right at our faces.

We choose information that which is efficient. We choose Vision and Audio because it helps capture the most information. By seeing and hearing people use associative logic to store a lot of their information. But there is catch here. I have asked you to recreate the entire scene.

Now lets add a control to this experiment. The 100 memory units remain the same. However, this time the only difference is that every visual memory has to have another memory associated with it to ensure that memory has an association. Standalone memory is of no use to the brain and hence our grey just loses it after some time or just discards it. We can still use other senses but at least one association has to be maintained.

Say, you see a tea stall right next to the bus stop I was talking about. With this visual memory of a man taking out hot tea for you on a rainy damp evening, we could possibly take the sound of the stove or the tea getting poured into the cup or maybe just use the smell or taste of tea.

Gripped with that hurdle, our allocation of the memory units comes close to what we call the polarization or Bi-Polarization of the senses.

If my guess is right most people would now allocate more than 40% of the memory units to Vision; Audio would take much lesser space now.

This phenomenon is called Polarization of the senses. Because humans end up taking so much more of input from one particular sense organ for quicker processing and action that other senses take a hit. It is clear that in human beings and many animals, a lot of the brain power is used for storing visual information.

The problem with this kind of polarization is that our mind tends to fill in information for us even if its not there. Visual confirmation is taken and for faster processing the brain fills in the rest for us. Its like guessing the story by just reading the first chapter. Only your mind makes up the rest of the story.

Polarization of senses occurs in animals in different ways. Some animals are known to be able to smells out things and not just the present but through time. Some bears have the capability to figure out if the source of the smell passed through a spot today or yesterday and sometimes even a month. It is possible that the way we perceive our visual sense, other life organisms may have senses which are polarized in another specialization. Is it possible that their brains are able to get a larger amount of their external stimuli from other perception organs. Is it possible that they are therefore able to perceive/see/experience these external factors in very unique ways. Well we can't be sure about this at the moment. But may be if someday we invent machines which can possibly help us communicate with them..... 

Bi-Polarization and Life

Bi-Polarization Effects opens possibilities for explaining some of the basic questions of Life:

1. What is the possible explanation of Life?

2. Why are there two sexes?

3. How did Life get so diverse?

4. What we still cannot explain?

When Big- Bang struck the Time Clock running, there began a race for every thing. Since its been only 13.8 billion years since time existed, it might seem very difficult to explain Life but it isn't. After when the Solar System came to Life around 4.5 bn years ago, Life found the right conditions to form a billion years later. We came quite late on Earth for sure. But lets get to answering those questions.

1. What is Life. 

Life is a controlled transfer mechanism created by the Universe to exchange energy or forms of energy. The transfer is controlled by some rules defined by mother nature.

That might seem quite like a trivialized explanation for such a beautiful experience but we are transferring or exchanging all the time.Universe is a  packet of energy that went haywire for a particular period of time following which energy became mass and mass became complex entities like Life. Life exists because some elements (more specifically carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) in the periodic table come together  more oftern to form regulated entities and can form sustaining units. When these self sustaining systems got more larger, things went into overdrive. Collective units needed to be more stronger to survive. Once a system stays stable for long periods of time, the more stronger units form mechanisms to exchange stimuli and matter in a controlled manner. Over time these systems become capable of storing information and recording past experiences- more like control experiments which after millions of years of repeated sustenance become capable to accepting/rejecting external stimuli.

Ultimately all life is functioning on the information stored in our DNA. These memory coils just help us transfer matter/energy/information/ideas in more controlled manner.

2. Why are there two sexes?

At some point in time, life figured it out that division of labor is the best chance for survival. The existence of the two sexes is a testament to the fact that natural systems tend to get polarized over time. This not just helped in increasing efficiency and diversity but has in turn help in exchanging information which could otherwise have possibly got missed had Life stuck to asexual reproduction. Over billions of years, the polarization of sexes can get extremely skewed and show remarkable differences in the two due to natural selection.

3. How did Life get so diverse?

Changes in external circumstances/stimuli led to similar life forms changing their behavior. The changing environment could have acted on these life forms at different times in evolution and hence the differences. 3.5 bn years is quite some time to show have this diversity becoming real.

4. What we still cannot explain?

Our understanding of existence itself seems still quite limited. Why does anything exist in the first place. Are we the imagination of a super natural entity or are just an extension of a cosmic singularity. The problem is that in spite of all the technological breakthrough, we are still to go much ahead in understanding the Universe. Some with an academic approach to things might find these questions frankly very inconsequential and more delving into the spiritual, nonetheless these happen to be some of the most basic questions before we can understand anything in this world properly.

Natasha

The howling noises kept up the entire night screeching through the roof, pounding the walls. Sometimes even the bed would begin to shake because of the shrill. I am not sure if it was me shaking or the bed. I couldn't make out the difference. The pain in my ears was just too unbearable. Often I wondered why my parents couldn't realize why I woke up so often in the night. May be it was because they could't hear me or at least that is what I could make out of all this.

The doctors told me that I was born mute but miraculously my hearing was proper. Usually they go together- hearing and speech. Mysterious acts of nature. I am six years old and I live in a beautiful neighborhood in South Bombay with my parents. They say that till a few years back, Bombay used to have a different name and they changed it for some reason I never understood. I love my parents very much and they take real good care of me. I am usually the earliest to rise in the morning because the noises outside would make me extremely restless. Pa would wake up next and then we go for our morning walks. Pa would choose a different route every day so that my sense of direction improves and I can compensate for my disability. 

After we come back, Ma would prepare scrumptious breakfast for me. Ma gives it to me on my special plate and only I get to eat from it. My parents have always tried to make me feel special and hence they take real good care of me. In spite of my disability Ma and Pa have always been supportive to my needs and desires. 

Because of the constant sounds in my ears, Ma and Pa have shown me to doctors to find a cure to the problem. However all the medical progress falls flat in from of nature's designs. A few times the clamor in the night would get so sever that I get bizarre dreams. One time, I saw tine white living things the size of cup cakes come out of my body and they were attached to my insides with noodle like appendages. The fear was intense that I had to literally bite off the noodle shaped wires to get the living things detached from my body. 

Ma and Pa have tried may times to make me feel normal. They have made me meet many kids with similar disabilities so that I can get more used to the world outside. Some of these kids are even more crazier that I am. Few of them get so mad they came to bite my face. Ma and Pa had to literally pick me to get the freak kid off me. But then there were others who were much more gentle and nice.

The noises went berserk on a Saturday afternoon. My withdrawal was quite obvious to my parents. They tried really hard to cheer me up. We went to the golf club near by in the evening. We walked along the concrete jogging track which ran parallel to the beach. The breeze was the only savior from all the mad noises around. It was like a civil war going on in my head. There would be grenades exploding and machine guns firing. A few rockets could be heard in the range going to mach speeds. The thought process broke when Ma & Pa decided to take a tour of the palm groves. The band of sun rays alternated withe the shadow of the palm trees like the keys of a piano. We kept pressing each key and there burst another grenade in my head at every note.After sitting on our favorite bench and listening to strange bird sounds, we came back in our jet black sedan. These days the cars are note very friendly especially the larger ones and the public buses. The come like a dinosaur on a preying spree, I am scared of buses.

We reached back by sun down. The sounds were hurting my hears in a very bad way now. I thought I would lose my mind if I didn't do something. I decided to get some fresh air. I strolled out side on the car parking looking at all the cars waiting for their masters to drive them. The guard at the gate seemed to recognize me and smiled. After saying hello to him I went in the opposite direction of the sounds. After a few minutes, I found myself facing a red wall- it was probably a dead end. I thought it would be a good idea to head back as it fast approaching dinner time and Ma and Pa are very particular that I eat my food on time. I turned left at the first corner which was where my house was.The guard was missing and another person was sitting inside lighting a candle. I went to the door and tried to open it. The door won't budge. I tried to shout and make whatever sounds I could make. The doors opened but it was not Ma and Pa on the other side. It was strangers. Did I reach the wrong house. How could that be. I begged for the people to help me. They probably didn't understand and the lade inside came out with a stick and tried to beat me. I didn't understand why. The guard came rushing with his torch and tried to shoo me away. I was losing my mind.

I ran away and hid inside a large cement pipe which was the only safe place I could find at that moment. There in the darkness, I saw other disabled children spending the night and looking strangely at me. Even their mother seemed disabled and weak. They showed pity on me and let me stay with them. I realized that people with disabilities are not welcome anywhere and that's why my parents tried so hard to make me feel normal. Never did I realize the extent of the cruelty the world would be willing to apply and without any remorse. In the midst of all the chaos, I forgot about the noises, my mind had cleared now. I felt like a new person. The sound of the explosions soon faded and my head ache had gone.

After what seems like a few hours, I could hear Ma and Pa shouting from far " Natasha". I rushed towards them. The joy of seeing your parents after you lost them, after feeling helplessness, is something one can understand from experience. The sheer happiness made me swag my tail vigorously and involuntarily . Ma and Pa picked me up with tears in their eyes. I knew the concern they went through. Ma started caressing her gentle hands over my white furry body.

As Ma went in carrying me, Pa switched off the tube lights outside letting the LED lights in different colors glow and said "HAPPY DIWALI"

The Bi-Polarization Effect

It all started when as a kid I started learning about the water cycle in geography. Water cycle happens because energy from the sun gets captured in the water and turn it into water vapour which eventually gets cooled and comes lower. The water then comes down the rivers in to the sea and causes minerals and soil at higher locations to come to the level to the sea. Matter has ended up in a vicious cycle to come to an equilibrium. The connection was so obvious. Every system works on the model of the water cycle. Or the water cycle works in the same principle as any other system. Every system in the universe has the same underlying principle.

Let us now define a few terms.

System: Any structure or entity which can or has the capability to exchange matter, energy, information or any other type of existence within the space-time fabric.

Dynamic System: Any system where an exchange is happening due to some reason

Source: The origin of the transfer or exchange

Sink: The destination of the transfer or exchange

To give you an example assume a ball which is on a hill - it has potential energy due to gravitational force. If you let it go it come down with an increase in Kinetic Energy. The system is dynamic because the ball has moved physically down the hill. Here the Source becomes the potential energy. The Sink is the Kinetic energy.

Now lets take it one step forward. The Kinetic energy now acts as the source. The sink would be temperature of the ball which would increase due to the friction, the wear and tear of the ball, the sound that gets generated. All these acts as sinks in their subsequent dynamic systems. Eventually the size of the systems breaks down. The sound gets dissipated in the air. The heat is lost into the atmosphere.

Now lets get to our theory.

Bi-polarization Effect: Any "dynamic system" has a natural tendency to form polar entities/systems which act as Sources and Sinks. The Source and Sink exchange matter or energy or information or any other possible entity which can brink the Source and the Sink back to equilibrium.

At the time when I initially came up with the idea of the Bi polarization effect, I wasn't aware of the rules of thermodynamics. To put it simply, Bi-polarization effect is an extension of the second law of thermodynamics but which is applicable to not to to the material world but can also explain other metaphysical concepts. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy in the world is always increasing. To put it in more simple words: lets say you have a beautiful sculpture and you really love it. But for some god forsaken reason the sculpture slips from your hand and breaks in to a 100 pieces. Now the process of putting back the sculpture together would lead to the over all entropy (or disorder) increasing more than it was before. So basically what ever creation we do, it is leading to more disorder in the entire scheme of things. Fortunately, the universe is large enough to not make us feel these increases in entropy. But had you been present at the time of the birth of the universe or the creation of the space time, all creation has been possible because of an increase in entropy (or disorder). So life and everything else in the universe might actually be an anomaly or an error in God's programming which he just couldn't control and has gone haywire.

The Bi-polarization effect even works in even non material concepts. The financial systems work in way where the market psyche acts as the source and tries to fuel economic bubbles. Some of these systems may not even have any real impact but can provide to perplexing explanations to social behavior.

Because the Bi-polarization effect works on almost every system in the universe, I tried to ponder on some of the unexplained phenomena in the world. Something basic which we have still not figured out. Some thing like Gravity.

Unfortunately, its one force which we experience all the time, yet, in spite of all the geniuses putting their heads together, its still not explained. or at least we are looking in the right direction.

Lets now get into a thought experiment. Lets imagine an artificial world (somewhere in space) where we have placed small intelligent bots on one pole of a giant magnet. Lets assume the robots can't see beyond their own world. The giant magnet would create a magnetic field which would make the bots stick to their world. Although the robots are intelligent and capable of problem solving, would they ever be able to make out what force was making them stick to their world. Would it be possible for them to figure it out that they live on magnetic pole which has another end. Now lets assume that their artificial world is moved to a planet and as we approach the planet, the magnet is de-magnetized gradually so that the bots can never make out that the force that was putting them together had ever changed its nature. Would that ever change their perception of reality. I could only wonder.

The basis of the above thought experiment is to bring forth the possibility that the observable universe might just be another pole of a magnet. The other pole being invisible (at least at the moment).

Basis the above assumptions, we can conjecture (without trying to discredit existing theories of existence) that there is an invisible and untraceable field running through our universe which is giving all matter its matter like properties. Its even possible that we just a dent in the middle of a giant magnet and the invisible fields were there all the time. Just that space and time got created in middle. Could this also mean that we have another pole where gravity works outwards. Could it mean that the entropy there is almost zero. Could it be possible that there could be an alternate universe where the same rules of physics don't apply. Could there be "White Holes" from where all matter escapes at the speed of light? 

Only time can tell. 

Why India Inc is optimistic and why they are wrong

Disclaimer: Only pun intended

Before I had started working on the Bi-polarization theory, I always found it difficult to explain the patterns that I experienced in daily life. Why would we continue to sway between our moods of hope and despair? Why do markets fall and rise? Why do some people always make money and some always lose? 

What happened yesterday proved to be a classic example of the bi polar effect. The ex RBI governor Dr. Subbarao made way for the Raghuram Rajan who also happens to have immense international experience. There are multiple conspiracy theories that run in our circles regarding the entire change but I would keep that for another day. The entire shift was such a big media event, it surprised me to see how the people had become so obsessed with the personality rather than the actions and what it really meant in the long run, they forget basic mathematics.

Unfortunately this is the basic principle of bi-polarization. People tend to attribute bad times to the person who seems most associated with it, even if it was never his/her fault to begin with. For all you know, all the good things that person might wrongly get attributed to his/her substitute which brings us to the core reason behind the existence of the bi polarization. Bi-polarization exists because we don't want our brains to work and we are just too lazy to think and find solutions to problems. We just want some one else to guide us out of a crisis. Even if the advice/guidance turns out insignificant, it still gets a better audience than what the original guy would have got even if he made sense.

RBI decided to offer a window to the banks to swap FCNR (B) dollar funds, mobilized for a minimum tenor of three years and over at a fixed rate of 3.5 per cent per annum for the tenor of the deposit. Another measure included swapping dollar funding at 100 bp below the market  levels. Although the problem here gets deferred temporarily, thereby reducing the panic in the market, this has hardly solved the problem. The money that comes in now has to be returned back so in the whole scheme of things, there are no extra dollars in the system. The most important question- who funds the loss here. Does it mean we are throwing away money to the foreigners just so that the rot in the system gets more time to survive?

Probably Dr. Subbarao understood the fundamental problem here, that you can't clean a system without purging it out. You need to clean it inside out. 

                                                 phew- can't believe I pulled it through!

Why the media and everyone is wrong about Moilly!!

The problem with economists is that they are extremely theoretical and extremely distant from their real emotions. While I was just making up my mind about getting Accord for refueling, the news channel started flashing the news of a new weird proposal by the government- A time limit on the working hours of petrol stations!!
Well how weird could that get. How could any one in his sane mind talk like this. Its preposterous, outrageous, without any semblance of sanity and lacking basic common sense. 
That's exactly how I thought about it instinctively. Hell I would have continued to think that way had I been a little younger and not discovered the "Bi-polarization Theory".

For starters, this proposal may not even have been Moilly's original idea. Even if it would have been, it may have come through one of the many brainstorming sessions that he would have been sitting through. It may have well been one of the few ideas that might have survived in those Cabinet meetings. To be extremely critical about an idea without really understanding its origins and reasoning is like trying to judge a book by its cover. Most of us don't get to choose the circumstances we want to be in.

The more smarter economists and the media would argue that it could lead to hoarding, longer queues in petrol stations and more inefficiencies in the system. Moreover consumption would remain the same. The problem with the entire situation is that Moilly has hit the nail on its head. He has unassumingly described the problem in a very simple way. Its the oil. Oil which is our single largest import is making us poorer day by day. Somehow the more effluential and influential class don't want to realize and accept the fact that we are consuming more than we can produce. It the price of luxury.

Had it been another day when Nymex was trading at 220 USD per barrel and INR was trading at 85, the step that Moilly suggested would probably make much more sense. Unfortunately that step comes after many other steps would fail and Moilly couldn't have timed it better. He has indirectly tricked the media and the public to assume such a situation as a possibility and thereby making them outrageously ridiculous and hence giving the market a new bottom which is undesirable. Markets need to be regularly sensitized of these levels because our environments are constantly changing. Thus market tries to re-balance and correct itself to more sustainable model and thereby attaining equilibrium. 

Moilly has clearly been misunderstood. The poor guy would now be hounded for his seemingly harmless comment which if looked at logically would possibly lead to a real reduction in consumption. Think about it. If you control the time for the petrol stations working, it is definitely going to reduce consumption. The US did it during the Oil price shock- they actually rationed their petrol. If India is in a crisis, its equally everyone's responsibility to contribute and reduce consumption and save some for tomorrow. 

Ultimately any economist would agree that consuming less today keeps more wealth for tomorrow.

Poor Moilly has been asked to mix his words now. Tough luck Moilly!!

                                                                                                 I hate my job :(