13 Jun

Darwin’s Triplets: Life in a Color Wheel

Identical Triplets In the earlier post Evolution 101, we saw how evolution works in the wild. It discussed about how a particular biological trait is selected in a population. Darwin called this “Natural Selection“. Eventually it turned out that Natural Selection is an umbrella term for three different types of selection:

“Me” Selection
Sexual Selection
Group Selection

The interplay of these three selection forces makes us who we are. Like the inter-play of three primary colors make all the hues that we can see in the nature. In other words, it is as of we live a life in a color wheel.

“Me” Selection

Me-Selection

“Me Selection” is a term that I coined. I use it to represent selection of traits that help an individual animal to live longer. Traits like tortoise’s shell or cheetah’s speed or some of the examples of Me Selection. Traits that help the animal to find a better mate, make more babies or take care of the herd’s interest don’t come under “Me Selection”.

Sexual Selection

Sexual-Selection

Some biological traits help animals to secure better quantity or quality (or both) mates. These traits pervade a population through Sexual Selection. Often, sexually selected features contribute very little to an animal’s survival (Me Selection) or the survival of community in which it lives (Group Selection).

A good example of Sexual Selection is peacock’s tail feather. Luxurious tail feather in a peacock advertises to the peahen that the male is physically/genetically fit. Tail feathers don’t increase the survival of the peacock. If anything, it only makes it difficult for the peacock to catch its prey or run/fly away from the predators. Tail feathers are also metabolically expensive to maintain.

The only advantage with a nice, long and iridescent tail feather is that a lesser peacock can’t fake it. Tail feather, in other words, is a honest signal. If the peahen selects a peacock for its tail feather, the peahen can be reasonably sure that it mated with a genetically superior male. Tail feather in a peacock is called a sexual ornament.

Sexual ornaments are there everywhere. The best sexual ornament is the one that serves as a honest signal (i.e. something that a lesser animal can’t fake).

The strangest of the sexual ornaments, you would never guess, is the human brain!

Another thing: Evolution of sexual ornaments tends to ‘run away’. Long tail feathers become longer and longer over relatively small number of generations.

Study of Sexual Selection, unfortunately, is full of political land mines, taboos and unacceptable conclusions. Hence, this is not as well studied as it must be. Even the researchers who study Sexual Selection publish their findings with great caution. As a result, some of the vital insights that come from understanding Sexual Selection (and how it shapes up who we are) are not available to the general public. What a loss!

Group Selection

Group-Selection

Group Selection is the least understood of the selection forces. Even its very existence is not yet widely accepted. But Group Selection gives such an elegant explanation to so many strange human behavior that we will never understand who we really are without understanding what kind of effects the Group Selection forces have on us.

Group Selection is a funny thing. It works on making the genetic material from a particular group succeed over the genetic material of other groups. It doesn’t care about genetic material of an individual animal like the Me and Sexual Selections do. On the surface, Group Selection looks like a Group vs Group war. While that is true, Group Selection has a greater impact than that.

Group Selection pits the interest of a Group against the interest of the individuals who belongs in that group! Group Selection makes an individual to subjugate its own self-interest to the interest of the group. When the interest of an individual clashes with the interest of the group, the group often doesn’t hesitate to get ride of the individual!

When we think about group selection, we must remember one thing:

A part of 'the group that live in' lives inside each one of us.

At one level, each one of us is the group. We act in a way that subjugates the interest of other people to the common good of the group. We willingly sacrifice some of our own self interest in the alter of the common good. How much of self interest we sacrifice, or how much of similar sacrifice we demand from others, changes based on the situation we are in. Our sense of group identity and altruism are highly elastic.

War, where we the survival of the entire group is threatened, make us more altruistic than we usually are. In the middle of the battle field, men often put the lives of their comrades above their own. Contrary to this, when an individual is in a situation wherein its own self interest is not easily jeopardized by the dangers that the society faces, the individual tends to become less altruistic than it usually is.

Feeling the Selection Forces

In an individual, selection forces express themselves as emotions/feelings.

“Me Selection” may express itself as hunger, fear, cold, warmth, satiety, anger, etc.
Sexual Selection may express itself as pride, libido, competitiveness, creativity, etc.
But the way we feel the Group Selection is interesting. The sense of oneness you feel when you stand in front of God, well, that is the Group Selection forces you are feeling. When you feel the forces of Group Selection, you have a strong urge to merge and lose the sense of your self into the identify of the group.

Emotions of Group Selection are just as seductive, if not more, as the emotions of Me Selection or Sexual Selection. Though, we don’t readily recognize it. The interplay of the three selection forces determines who we are and how our societies are made. Interplay-of-Selection-Forces

Some of our traits are fostered by two or three different selection forces. For example, having a broad shoulder and good shoulder muscles in a human male helps him to be a good hunter (Me Selection) and also helps him to find more/better mates (Sexual Selection). Being a good hunter, while it caters to Me Selection forces, sharing the spoils with the group also caters to the Group Selection forces.

When a particular trait is exclusive to a single selection force, expression of that trait might be opposed by other forces. For example, human equivalent of peacock’s tail feather (sexual selection) is often considered as vanity and looked down upon by the society (group selection). Whereas, for a woman who is looking to select a mate, display of honest signal by a man is all that matters. Life-In-A-Color-Wheel

Our natural desires and urges are endless and shifting inter-play of the three selection forces that played a part in molding us. At any given point in time, your natural feelings are just a pixel on the beautiful color wheel. At times, you play on the periphery. And at times, you play right at the center. But usually, you are somewhere in between.

Life becomes simple and uncomplicated when you understand the color wheel of selection forces and then design your life around that understanding

What is your preferred color
Where do they come from
What is their significance
What is good about them
What is bad about them
Why has your color choice changed over time
What else are you giving up when you chose your color
Why is someone else angry about your color choice

Life in a color wheel might be the simplest answer to so many of your life’s dilemmas. In the future posts, let’s take a closer look at the inter-play of these hues.

I promise you, it will be nothing less than liberating.

11 Jun

Evolution 101

We can’t understand human nature without understanding the forces of evolution that made us who we are. We are the happiest if we design our lives/societies around the human nature, like a glove is designed around a hand. Failed philosophies like Marxism and Objectivism are results of failing to design our societies around what evolution has made us to be.

In a series of future posts, we will dissect the impact that evolution has on our nature. In this post, let us make sure that we have a clear understanding of how evolution works.

Take a look at the image above. Let’s start with an animal called ‘Grey Circle’. Due to genetic mutation, the babies of Grey Circle, shown below the horizontal line, are likely to be slightly different from the original (parent). Of the three babies, the White Circle has a mutation gives it a survival/propagation disadvantage (e.g. being born without limbs). The genes of Black Circle were mutated in such a way that it has some special advantages over others (e.g. ability to run faster). And the baby Grey Circle has no advantage or disadvantage over its parent.

Second-Generation-After-Mutation

Over the subsequent generations, White Circle population dies out. But the number of Black Circles in the population increases.

Advantageous-Mutation-Over-Generations

With every passing generation, there are more Black Circles in the population for every Grey Circle.

Inter-Breeding-of-Mutants

Of course, Grey Circles and Black Circles may end up inter-breeding. But for the purpose of this discussion, let’s ignore it.

Eventually, the Black Circles dominate the entire population as they successfully out-compete the Grey Circles. Thus, a new population is born with a new trait.

Here is an important takeaway:

If a trait is found in all animals, it must have offered a significant advantage in the evolutionary past. After all, all animals without the trait were wiped out across generations.

For example, take human population. Wherever in the world they are found, humans are always intelligent (when compared with other animals), don’t have body fur, have language, etc. Intelligence and language skills must have been so important at some point in our evolutionary past that all proto-humans without these traits were wiped off from the gene pool

Let’s look beyond humans. Every animal in the planet has a strong drive to self-preserve. In the case of sexually reproducing animals, all of them seek mate. We can then conclude that the animals that didn’t bother about self-preservation or mate selection got wiped out from the gene pool.

Mutations-keep-popping-up

Of course, mutation is a messy business. It is never just Black or Grey. Mutations keep happening all the time, in million different forms. Some of the mutations/traits end up dominating the entire population (e.g. intelligence in humans) . Some of the mutations/traits persist in the population, but they never fully dominates the population (e.g. skin color, super-intelligence, schizophrenia). Some mutations/traits get wiped off from the population immediately (e.g. anencephaly) or eventually.

Evolution carries forward that traits that eventually dominate the population. Period. Evolution doesn’t care for good, bad, virtuous, evil, etc. When we hear the phrase “survival of the fittest”, we tend to confuse it with “survival of the superior”, however one likes to define superior. Evolution is blind to anything other than population explosion.

In the next post, we’ll look into three sub-types of evolutionary forces.

28 May

Sam Harris on Lying

Sam-Harris Sam Harris is one of the sharpest thinkers I had come across. Here are some excerpts from one of his thinnest books, Lying. Though the book is not as well thought out as some of his other works, I culled out these gems from the book. I put a next to the ones that hit a chord somewhere. Though, you might want to put your heat next to something else:

We often behave in ways that are guaranteed to make us unhappy. Many of us spend our lives marching with open eyes toward remorse, regret , guilt, and disappointment. And nowhere do our injuries seem more casually self-inflicted, or the suffering we create more disproportionate to the needs of the moment, than in the lies we tell to other human beings. Lying is the royal road to chaos.
Endless forms of suffering and embarrassment could be easily avoided by simply telling the truth.
The boundary between lying and deception is often vague. It is even possible to deceive with the truth.
People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs— that is, the more a person’s well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people’s opinions— the more consequential the lie.
To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.
To speak truthfully is to accurately represent one’s beliefs.
If one is not sure whether or not something is true, representing one’s degree of uncertainty is a form of honesty.
The intent to communicate honestly is the measure of truthfulness.
Even liars rate their deceptive interactions as less pleasant than truthful ones.
Deception and suspicion are two sides of the same coin. Research suggests that all forms of lying— including white lies meant to spare the feelings of others— are associated with less satisfying relationships.
Honest people are a refuge.
You know [the honest people] will tell you when they think you have failed— and for this reason their praise cannot be mistaken for mere flattery.
Honesty is a gift we can give to others.
[If we are honest,] we can simply be ourselves in every moment.
In committing to being honest with everyone, we commit to avoiding a wide range of long-term problems, but at the cost of occasional short-term discomfort.
To [be honest] is also to hold a mirror up to one’s life—because a commitment to telling the truth requires that one pay attention to what the truth is in every moment.
Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface.
Lying is the lifeblood of addiction.
Ethical transgressions are generally divided into two categories: the bad things we do (acts of commission) and the good things we fail to do (acts of omission).
Sincerity, authenticity, integrity, mutual understanding— these and other sources of moral wealth are destroyed the moment we deliberately misrepresent our beliefs, whether or not our lies are ever discovered.
Responding honestly to the subtext would not be lying.
Unless one commits to telling the truth in situations like this , however, one finds that the edges creep inward, and exceptions to the principle of honesty begin to multiply.
False encouragement is a kind of theft: It steals time, energy, and motivation that a person could put toward some other purpose.
[Lucy] lied so effortlessly and persuasively that Jessica was left wondering if she had ever been deceived by Lucy in the past.
Failures of personal integrity, once revealed, are rarely forgotten.
A commitment to honesty does not necessarily require that we disclose facts about ourselves that we would prefer to keep private .
Psychopaths can assume the burden of mental accounting [of lying] without any obvious distress.
Lies beget other lies.
When you tell the truth, you have nothing to keep track of.
Tell enough lies, and the effort needed to keep your audience in the dark eventually becomes unsustainable. While you might be spared a direct accusation of dishonesty, many people will conclude, for reasons they might be unable to pinpoint, that they cannot trust you. You will begin to seem like someone who is always dancing around the facts.
No one ever quite confronts [the liars], but everyone begins to treat them like creatures of fiction. Such people are often quietly shunned, for reasons they probably never understand.
Liars trust those they deceive less than they otherwise might— and the more damaging their lies, the less they trust, or even like, their victims.
To lie is to recoil from relationship.
Lies are the social equivalent of toxic waste

Sam Harris makes me realize that my biggest personal achievement is that I have trained myself to lie very little, if at all.

I ‘think’ that I never lie on things that are consequential (though I do succumb to the temptations of occasional white lies). I make it a point to indicate the probability of my uncertainty when it matters. I never pretend that an intentional act of omission with the intent to deceive doesn’t amount to lying. Neither do I intentionally mislead someone when a truthful communication is warranted!

Note: Of course, I don't confuse protecting my privacy with lying.

Stopping the habit of lying some twenty years ago was a great character builder. Being married to someone whose take on honesty is very similar to my own has been the single biggest blessing in my relationship. If there is one trait that I would love for my son to pick up from me, it would be my soft corner for honesty. Luckily, I see no reason why that won’t happen.

26 May

Dragons of Idea Age

Dragaons of Idea Age

In the last five posts, I argued that we have just entered the idea age, another renaissance, and what can we do to prepare for it. This post is about the unique risks that idea age is bringing to your business/career.

Exponential Growth

Exponential growth is a double edged cutting sword. If you not on an exponential growth, or if you are on a slower exponential curve, someone else will set up so much of lead over you in a short time that you might as well go home and hand your boots!

Different-exponential-curves

The graph above shows two exponential curves, one growing at just twice the rate of another. But the difference is startling even after a short growth run. WhatsApp, which is a company designed for the exponential era, has half the market capitalization as Tata Enterprise. WhatsApp employs just 55 people and is 5 years old. Whereas, Tata enterprise employs a small country and it is more than a 100 years old.

Because a competitor growing at faster exponential rate can set a very large lead over others, the slower growing company will soon be marginalized and fail to be of any significance to anyone.

Agility over Accuracy

Early-exponential-start

Because exponential curves grow quite quickly, a delayed start is worse than slow start! In the exponential era, agility in terms of quick start and quick execution is more important than getting things right. Time and again, companies and countries have proven that being faster (Thailand) is better than being right (India). Among the exponential companies, everyone is expected to be reasonably accuracy. But that is just the entry ticket. The real differentiation is the speed at which they execute their business.

Software is Eating the World

Marc Andreeson (of Netscape fame) famously told that ‘software is eating the world’. Everything is getting digitized. Healthcare is the next industry that is dangerously close to getting disrupted by digitization.

Giants like IBM, Google, Qualcom, Apple, etc. are working on solutions that will record better health data, analyze it better, do better diagnosis, do cheaper diagnosis, etc. They are all in the verge of producing a working commercial solution over the next few years. When they are rolled out, the current healthcare model will be stood on its head.

Other disruptions that are already under way are Uber and Airbnb. Uber is disrupting taxi services all over the world. They own no taxi cabs (only thing they own is an app), but there are talks in the rumor mill that Uber is going to be the next $ 100b company. By the way, when self-driven cars become common place over the next few years, services like Uber will kill automobile manufacturers too.

Airbnb is disrupting hotel services all over the world and it is already valued around $10b. Airbnb too doesn’t own a single hotel room. Only thing they own is an app!

If software companies can disrupt taxi services ‘and’ automobile manufacturers, what do you think they will do to your business! It is a question that is worth pondering over hard and fast.

Network Externality

Network-externality

Imagine you invented fax machine. Just after you made the first fax machine, when there is only one fax machine in the whole world, the utility of the machine would have been zero. After all, who would you have sent a fax to!

But then, when you made the second fax machine and put it in someone else’s office, your own machine will become valuable. Thus, with the addition of every fax machine in the world, the value of your own machine goes up. Not only that, when a new fax machine is added to the network, the utility of everyone’s fax machine goes up too!

The value of fax machines around the world keep going up when more people start using it. Eventually, the utility of fax machine becomes so high that no one can afford not to have a fax machine. In other words, the network effect becomes so strong that it traps you inside it. The cost of breaking away from the network is too high that the network becomes self-perpetuating.

That is network effect or network-externality.

Software companies are much more dangerous when it comes to exploiting network externalities. Because the cost of servicing an incremental user is next to nothing, software companies can quickly grow the network of their users. That’s why in software, the leaders like Windows and Oracle have always had upward of 90% market share!

What we must take note is that all software-enabled services, like FaceBook, Google Maps, Airbnb, Uber, etc. are also enjoying the advantage brought to them by network externality.

So, if and when your business is going to be digitized, you can be sure that it will be yanked so fast and so definitely that you will have no option but to walk away. What is really bad about it is that the software company that is going to eat your meal doesn’t even have to have an office in your country!

What now?

Ask yourself these questions:

If Google (or Airbnb or Uber) wanted to get into your business today, how will they do it?
Can I do what they would have done?
Do I have the capability in me to manage an exponentially growing business?
If my answer to one or both the questions above, what can I do to acquire the missing capability? Or, what would be my Plan-B when someone starts digitizing my business?

Click Idea Age for all posts related to this project

24 May

Idea Age is here. How can you get yourself ready?

It is not a secret that we are facing exponential threats from resource crunch and environmental degradation. This 5 post series argues that in response, we are inventing a new idea age.

Exponential Threats talks about the seriousness and inevitability of growing threats humanity is facing.
In Exponential Technology, we argue that our technology, our best ally, is not sufficient to tackle these threats. We will also need unprecedented level of human ingenuity.
In Origin of Ideas, we see where human ingenuity comes from.
In Age of Creativity, we see that we are entering an era of unprecedented global creativity.
In this last post, we address how you can prepare for the idea age

It’s all about Networks

To understand creativity, we need to understand networks. Network

Creativity is the process of combining two or more existing ideas (shown as a ‘node’ in the image above) in a new and useful way.
Every idea is a network of two or more ideas. So, each node is a network in itself.

We can use the image above to represent a single brain by taking each “node” as an idea (or knowledge or information) inside that brain. Or we can use the same image to represent creativity at the level of a society. Then each node is taken to represent an individual brain. A network becomes ‘stronger’ when the number of nodes or the interconnection between the nodes increase. Now, let’s see how we can prepare ourselves for the idea age.

Idea Age is also Exponential Era

We live in an exponential era where changes happen in ever increasing pace. One bad thing about the exponential era is that the difference between the winners and the ‘also-ran’ is huge. We are presently in an important point in history. People who ride the exponential tide now will have a very different future from the people who remain in the 20th century. Of course, we are not arguing that the life in the bleeding edge of exponential era must necessarily be better than the slow and steady pace of the past. But some like it hot. And fast. Here are few simple things you can do to hitch your super-exciting exponential ride.

Get out of Paucity Mentality

Openness will be a substantially important hallmark of the idea age. People who operate with paucity mind-set are usually too afraid to open up. In the Idea Age, operating in isolation are too slow. Also, team consisting of different skill sets is usually much more effective than a genius operating in isolation. The difference will be more striking with passage of time.

What are the things that you are too afraid to share? What is the worst thing that will happen if you start sharing them? How do you know you are right about it? Don't forget to apply this question to your personal life too!

Become an Idea Altruist

In Idea Age, everyone has an idea that they don’t have enough time to implement. So, you are less likely to have your idea stolen today. Start sharing your ideas. You can start by sharing ideas that are not critical to your livelihood. And then move on to sharing life-or-death secrets. When you start sharing ideas, you become visible to others with similar interest. They might incorporate your ideas in their scheme of things, or lend their ideas for you to use, there by making both of you better off.

List three ideas that you think others will benefit from. And how can you share them with others? Blog, FaceBook, talks, forums, interest groups, white papers, stories...?

Education and Experience

Education is a journey. Not a destiny. Never stop educating yourself. We have cart load of online educations resources available these days. Some of them are listed below:

Most online education resources are free. There are interest groups, discussion forums, group efforts… In Idea Age, education is a life long process. Every time you learn something new, you increase the number of idea-nodes inside your brain.

If self-education is not your cup of tea, try by learning something that you love. It does't have to have practical value.

Once in a while, learn something that is completely unrelated and irrelevant to you. In an area where you already have proven expertise, any new learning will bring only incremental advantage. When you deal with a completely unrelated subject, anything you learn will increase your knowledge graph by a huge margin.

Of course, we shouldn't forget that 'doing' is a form of learning too! So, go and do something that you haven't done before.

More importantly, block time out for solitude. Most people require some quite time once in a while to digest and assimilate what they have learnt.

Future favors the Networked

Idea Age is all about networking of ideas. Learning increases the number of idea-nodes inside your head. To increase the number of nodes outside your head, connect with other heads. Identify at least one person from each of the following category and connect with them:

People who have common interest
People who have no common interest
Idea altruists
Super-networkers
Life-long learners
Opinion makers

Have habits built into your life that provide ample networking opportunities. For example

Participate in networking events
Write/talk about your ideas
Participate in online forums
If needed, block out time every week (or every day) specifically for expanding your network

Of course, when you are expanding your network, you must take care to ensure that the quality of your network is maintained at all times. Or else, you can easily end up being inundated.

Network. Look for quality, similarity and variety.

Healthy Body and Brain

Of course, if you can’t maintain a healthy body and a physically fit brain, none of the above really matter. Here are some basic guidelines for maintaining healthy body and brain. These are rudimentary, but non-negotiable:

Maintain healthy weight
If you have cardiac or glycemic issues, eat low GL, zero oil, no dairy, vegan
Moderate alcohol, no smoking
Supplement with multivits, antioxidants, Omega 3, etc. Anti-ageing?
Exercise
Sleep prepares the brain for creativity

Here are three best kept secrets that will help you live much longer and have a healthier life:

You are the designer of your body – at least, from this point on
Your brain starts dying when you stop learning
Your body starts dying when you stop having sex – except when you go on calorie restriction, in which case you extend your lifespan, but shut down your sex drive

A New Chapter?

In all probabilities, Idea Age is mark of a new chapter in human history. By the time this renaissance is through, our lives would have become more different than any of us have dreamed of. When you prepare yourself to enter the Idea Age, I want you to keep one thought in your mind: You are very likely to live past 100. If that is true, how do you plan to spend the additional time?

This post has four prequels and they are listed below in their order
- Exponential Threats identifies the growing threats that are going to hit is so fast we won't have a choice but to change our present way of living
- In Exponential Technology, we argue that our technology, our best ally, is not sufficient to tackle these threats. We will also need unprecedented level of human ingenuity.
- In Origin of Ideas, we ask where human ingenuity comes from.
- In Age of Creativity, we see that we are entering an era of unprecedented global creativity.

23 May

Age of Creativity

Age Of Creativity

This 5 post series addresses as to how “we are facing exponential threats from resource crunch and environmental degradation and in response, we are inventing a new idea age”.

Exponential Threats identifies the growing threats we are presently facing
In Exponential Technology, we argue that our technology, our best ally, is not sufficient to tackle these threats. To do that, unprecedented level of human ingenuity should come into play.
In Origin of Ideas, we discuss the source of human ingenuity, both inside an individual’s head and across the society.
In this post, Age of Creativity, we will see why we are entering an era of unprecedented global creativity.
In the last post, we address how you can prepare for the coming Idea Age

There are a bunch of reason for us to believe that we have entered a new age of creativity. Another renaissance. But in its scope, this one will be like no other. By the time it has run its course, humankind would have, I speculate, made a clean break with the past.

New Knowledge

Creativity is a process of combining existing ideas/knowledge in a new and useful way. The process of creativity can be thought of as forming new connections in a network of ideas. In a network, addition of a new node encourages sprouting new connections (image below).

Network with newNode

If we are considering idea generation at social level, then we can treat each human being as a node in our network. As we have seen in an earlier post, bigger human population creates more new nodes.

But if we ignore the physical containers of idea/knowledge/information, every new discovery or idea becomes another node in the fabric. When a new node is added to a network, it makes new pathways possible (image below).

New Node New Pathways

Birth of an node (idea) increases the number of existing connection (ideas), which in turn increase the possibilities of several more connections (ideas) germinating.

Note: If you have already noticed the fractal nature of ideas, you will find intuitively understand the recursive nature of the paragraph above.

Thus, the new ideas increase exponentially in quantity! Today, we are seeing important new ideas coming in every day, with each new idea begetting even more ideas. We are getting inundated with creative opportunities. Understand the idea-inundation is key to preparing for the age of creativity.

New ideas have another interesting effect. When we come across novelty, it increases the levels of a brain chemical called dopamine. Among other things, dopamine inside our brain increases the alertness and focus.

Note: Dopamine is also responsible for feel-good and libido. It also plays a major role in romance. Effect of dopamine is designed to wear off with repeated exposure. Translation: Less novelty, less dopamine.

Brains are built in such a way that we love to work with novel stuff. Novelty tickles our brain cells into working with them. With so many new things popping up all around us, we are all gradually becoming idea generating machines (the only way to work with a new information is to integrate it with the rest of our knowledge base, which is same as forming new connections to the novel idea).

New Tools

Vast majority of younger generation is familiar with tools for data analysis, visualization and (product) design. These tools are helping us to combine ideas much more easily, and with far less resources and time.

We also have massive interest-groups online, who come together to create, fine tune, implement and exploit new ideas. Idea generators get almost instantaneous quality feedback. Instantaneous feedback is the corner stone building expertise in any domain.

Global Size Melting Pot

Large Melting Pot

Today, we not only have more than 7 billion brains in the network, these brains are also inter-connected in a way that was unheard of even 25 years ago! While internet is the pipeline through which the connectivity happens, we have several internet-dependent devices that improve the quality and pay-off of the connections.

Social media is one such device that helps us extract more juice out of global connectivity. The world has now become a huge monkey-see-monkey-do society, with each of us learning from everyone else. Because we all show our best face in the social media, we are learning positive habits/attitude from each other in unprecedented speed. And by helping us to learn to express ourselves in small steps, social media is helping us all to become creative.

Other devices that help us make the world one huge melting pot are online communities, special interest groups (already discussed above), cheap access to markets, free online education, etc.

Attitude Shift

Honey Bees

We are not strangers to the win-win nature of idea sharing. However, we have had tremendous reservations in sharing ideas that brought power and money. But that has changed now.

Today, we have more opportunities than any one of us can handle alone. Besides, the speed of change is so rapid that there is not enough time for a single person to build sufficient expertise to exploit a domain. Consequently, we are beginning to more freely share all sorts of ideas. In a world where a product has a typical life cycle of 3 to 5 years, one lone individual trying to build an edifice out of a single idea over 20 years is often a recipe for disaster.

We are also going through another important attitude shift: We are rediscovering the pleasure of belonging to a community.

We are social animals. We seem to be biologically pre-disposed to deriving pleasure from sharing. We are taking the pleasure community to new levels by becoming pioneers of sharing. We already share things from cars to clothes to house. Sharing, or Collaboration Economy, is becoming the next big thing and a manna for the folks keen on sustainability.

Role of Current Economy

With the global recession, the people in the West now have more time than they have money. The resource crunch is incentivising them to become more creative and democratizing the process of idea generation.

In the same time, masses of people in the developing countries across Asia and Africa are leaving poverty behind. These people now have some surplus time and money. They are beginning to explore things beyond basic survival. There is a good chance that this population, which has leapfrogged into knowledge world, will be more adapt in working with ideas than the earlier generations that came off the boat.

Threat to Survival

The last factor that democratizes the idea generation process is the pressure from the serious survival threats that our civilization is facing presently. Because of their exponential nature, the threats will hit us so fast that our existing creative infrastructure won’t be able to handle them. We will end up recruiting all creative faculties, every human brain that is ready to contribute.

In the next article in this series, we will see what we can do to prepare for the idea age.

22 May

Origin of Ideas

This 5 post series will addresses as to how “we are facing exponential threats from resource crunch and environmental degradation and that in response, we are inventing a new idea age”.

Exponential Threats identifies the exponentially growing threats we are presently facing
In Exponential Technology, we argue that our exponentially growing technology, our best ally, is not sufficient to tackle these threats. To do that, unprecedented level of human ingenuity should come into play.
In this post Origin of Ideas, we discuss the source of human ingenuity, both inside an individual’s head and across the society.
In Age of Creativity, we address as to why we have reasons to believe that we are entering an era of unprecedented global creativity.
In the last post, we will address as to how you can prepare for the coming Idea Age

Before discussing how human creativity is likely to save the day, we must first understand the origin of ideas, either inside a human head, or across a society. After all, there are striking similarities between both types of idea generation.

Human Mutation and Population

First, a small detour. A paper was published in 2007, showing how the rate of human mutation was picking up speed with time. The reason was discovered to be the rising human population! More humans meant more mutations. More mutations, of course, meant more variety and better chances of human race continuing to eke a living. According to Matt Ridley, as he argued in this TED talk, there is one other thing that becomes more common with increase in population: Ideas. Ridley argues that since people make ideas, where there are more people, we have more ideas generated. But ideas funny creatures. With ideas, 1+1 = 11. Value of an idea goes up multi fold when it is in the midst of other ideas. For example, take the idea of petroleum mining. When this idea is not combined with any other idea, it has zero value (imagine a guy digging out tarry goo, with no idea what to do with it). But when it is combined with other ideas like IC engines, automobiles, jet planes, plastics, war, pollution, etc., the idea of petroleum mining becomes a formidable! Idea Having Sex Each idea makes several others come alive. To better understand how ideas work, you can think of ideas having sex (an analogy introduced by Ridley in his TED talk). But since ideas combine in every which way possible, we should think of them as polyamorous, egalitarian, libidinous and indiscreet! Ideas Are Indiscreet But the value of an ideas is derived from its ability to combine with other ideas. Not from its ability to stand alone. According to Ridley, an environment that fosters mixing of ideas is much more productive and valuable than sheer IQ. For example, industrial towns like Tiruppur and Sivakasi pop up out of nowhere to become an island of superior performance only because these towns end up having a bunch of people thinking, eating and breathing closely related ideas. Interestingly, a reasonably large population is needed to sustain idea generation and specialization. And when it comes to playing the idea catalyst, no population is large enough. There is evidence from the past that China stopped advancing its science and technology when it cut itself out from rest of the world. Similarly, it is my personal belief that India fell short of exploiting its potential to innovate when it decided to cut itself off from the West (the chief idea generators at this point in the history) after obtaining its political independence from the British.

Creativity Inside your Head

Interestingly, creativity inside your head works in a very similar fashion: Generating a new idea inside your head is just a matter of combining two or more existing ideas in a novel way. To foster your own creativity, you will need rich knowledge base. The more ‘idea raw materials’ you work with, more appropriate will be the ideas generated by you.

Ideas

You get to work with more ‘idea raw materials’ when (a) you are knowledgeable and (b) you get to retain more of what you learn. Retention is partly genetic, partly due to repetition and partly due to physical health of the brain. Of course, we will have better understanding of memory as more research throws light on the subject.

Next to memory, your ability to communicate between different models of your brain is important to combine ideas in a novel way. The physical health of your brain like blood circulation, health of the myelin sheaths insulating the axons, etc., determine how well you can combine ideas inside your brain and create new ones. If the circulation is poor (supplies of less energy) or the myelin sheaths are damaged (increased noise level during communication), all energy hungry neural operations like creation of new ideas get down regulated.

Sustained attention is a faculty that is known to play an important role in creation of new ideas. As if, the longer you hold an idea in the center stage of your head, the more opportunities you give it to finding a suitable partners to hook up with.

Living and interacting with people who have a knack for creating new ideas certainly helps your own creativity. They teach you that it is alright to come up with new ideas and supply you with building blocks for generating new idea.

Most importantly, learning to suspend one’s critical factor is an important ingredient of personal creativity. People have a tendency of snuff out new ideas, even before the idea was given a decent chance.

Of course, intention/motivation is another huge factor in fostering personal creativity.

The last factor in personal creativity are external. Some people respond to external pressures (e.g. impending deadline) by becoming creative. In these people, pressure activates their norepinephrine, increases their mental alertness and actually makes them more creative. Another brain chemical that increases the mental alertness is dopamine. Dopamine levels in the brain increase when you are faced with a novel situation, when you are suitably rewarded or when in love (among other things). Typically, when you are in any of these situations, the level of your personal creativity go up.

Interestingly, we have entered an era that supplies ample quantity of several factors that we saw above. In the next installment of this series, we will see as to how creativity across the globe is in the process of reaching unprecedented levels.

REFERENCES:

- This post is a sequel to Part-1, Exponential Threats and Part 2, Exponential Technology
- All the posts in this series are based on the presentation Idea Age is Here

15 May

Exponential Technology

This 5 post series addresses as to how “we are facing exponential threats from resource crunch and environmental degradation and that in response, we are inventing a new idea age”.

Exponential Threats identifies the exponentially growing threats we are presently facing
This post, Exponential Technology, argues that our exponentially growing technology, our best ally, is not sufficient to tackle these threats. To do that, unprecedented level of human ingenuity should come into play.
In Origin of Ideas, we discuss the source of human ingenuity, both inside an individual’s head and across the society.
In Age of Creativity, we address as to why we have reasons to believe that we are entering an era of unprecedented global creativity.
In the last post, we will address as to how you can prepare for the coming Idea Age

Exponential Technology

One ray of hope against this exponential threat is one proven exponentially growing tool available with us: Our technology, at least the Information Technology. A group of people are such staunch believers in the power of exponential technology that they even predict that human beings would demat (de-materialize, become digital) by 2045! Technology and Transhumans In a world where human beings are demated (i.e. our minds are ported into machine), we don’t need agriculture, we don’t need cooking, we don’t need transportation (we will travel on electrons), we don’t need to die, we don’t need to have children, we all can have zillion clones, each one of them living inside a $1000 computer! The world inhabited by demat human beings will use less resources than anyone in 20th century could have imagined. This merger of man with machine was named the Technological Singularity (or, simply, Singularity) by the man who predicted it. It is, of course, so loony and so outlandish an idea no on in their right mind would even dare mentioning it in a civil conversation. Only problem is that this idea has been put forward by a no-nonsense person, backed by solid data with mind boggling predictive power.

Exponential Intelligence

Ray Kurzweil, the proponent of Technological Singularity, took 15 different prominent lists, containing major intelligence events in the history of planet earth and plotted it on a log-log graph sheet. Here is what he got: Kurzweil showed (see his book Singularity is Near) that the exponential growht of information technology during later past of 20th century, attributed to Moore’s Law, is merely a part of a larger trend that has been unfolding from the formation of Milkey Way Galaxy! The trend is so reliable and predictable that Kurzweil proposed that it could be safely extrapolated into the future. By extrapolating the trend, he showed that by 2013, our super computers would have enough processing power to enable human brain’s functional simulation

PS: Incidentally, in 2013, Kurzweil took up a job with Google and he now heads a project to build the human brain in a machine. In this 2014 TED talk, he discusses as to how intelligent machines that are capable of reading the entire internet will be here in less than 10 years.

He also showed that by 2025, the super-computers will have enough processing power to enable neural simulation of human brain! He went on to predict that by 2045, $1,000 would buy enough processing power to equate all the 10 billion human brains alive that year. By 2045, Kurzweil speculates, we will have the capabilities to port human brain into intelligent machines! However, there is a leap of faith that Kurzweil fails to address adequately. For example, by 2014, $1,000 can already buy more processing power than what is in a mouse brain.

But then, were are the cyborg mice?

While Kurzweil had provided wonderful argument to establish the predictable growth of computing power, he failed to show convincingly as to how the increase in processing power would result in augmentation of intelligence. Though, he provided some indirect evidences to his argument. Kurzweil showed that even stuff that doesn’t seem to be directly related to information technology explosion seem to follow the exponential curve.

Example 1: Exponential increase of private manufacturing in USA

Example 2: Per-capita GDP of USA In other words, Ray Kurzweil showed that technology grows exponentially, that intelligence grows exponentially and that wealth creation happens exponentially. He failed to adequately explain the anomaly between the humongous processing power we have today and primitive state of current intelligent machines.

Idea Explosion

A thinker, author, journalist, politician and ex-banker called Matt Ridley came up with a plausible explanation for the puzzle that Kurzweil left unanswered. Unlike the data driven argument put across by Kurweil, Ridley’s explanation was just another leap of faith. Though, he made an elaborate anecdotal evidences and couched his argument in it. As we will see in the sequel to this post, Ridley argued that human ingenuity would rise to the occasion and save the day.

REFERENCES:
- This post is sequel to Idea Age is Here: Part 1, Exponential Threat 
- Next post in this series is Origin of Ideas
- All the posts in this series are based on the presentation Idea Age is Here 
- In this TED video recorded in 2005, Ray Kurzweil explains the 'impending' Technological Singularity

15 May

Exponential Threats

This 5 post series will addresses as to how “we are facing exponential threats from resource crunch and environmental degradation and that in response, we are inventing a new idea age”.

This post, Exponential Threats, identifies the exponentially growing threats we are presently facing
In Exponential Technology, we argue that our exponentially growing technology, our best ally, is not sufficient to tackle these threats. To do that, unprecedented level of human ingenuity should come into play.
In Origin of Ideas, we discuss the source of human ingenuity, both inside an individual’s head and across the society.
In Age of Creativity, we address as to why we have reasons to believe that we are entering an era of unprecedented global creativity.
In the last post, we will address as to how you can prepare for the coming Idea Age

We (humans) are facing an imminent danger to the present way of life. Something must change. The popular belief is that change will drastically reverse the decades of advances that we have made in obtaining ourselves substantially better quality of living. Whereas, the popular hope is that we will come out on the other side much stronger than we are today.

Given that I am an ever-hopeful, I fall into the second camp and strongly ‘hope’ that some incredible breakthrough will come along (after all, what is the point in living, if one belongs to the ‘hopeless’ camp). The obvious candidate for the ‘breakthrough is coming’ camp is the exponential technology. That may not be the case.

All available evidences go to argue that over the coming decades, idea generation will be democratized, quality of average idea generated (or quality of idea generated by average Joe) will improve and give us new solutions that we didn’t even know were possible. This coming Idea Age will be very similar to various renaissance periods from the history, but much more potent. It is my hope that by the time we are finished with the idea age, we would have changed the human race both biologically and culturally.

More importantly, when idea generation is going to be democratized, a significant portion of human creative energy is going to be spent on improving human happiness. After all, in the centralized idea generation era that we currently live in, there is too much focus on economic value of the ideas.

Read on to understand more about the coming cultural and destiny shift, to learn what it would mean to you, and how you can prepare for it.

Growth vs Resources

We are stuck in an economy which is required to grow year on year, endlessly (image below).

Growth is Exponential

For example, no one (at least, no value investor) will ever buy shares in a company that doesn’t promise year on year continuous growth. You wouldn’t want to take up a job that can’t give you continuous increase in revenue. For reasons that I am not getting into here, we can’t wish away the exponential growth cycle without substantial hardship.

The trouble with exponential growth is that our consumption of raw materials doubles once in a few years (image below).

Exponential Growth

If, for example, take Oil. The global consumption of oil grows at 7% per annum year on year. At that rate, the global consumption of oil doubles every 10 years (1.07^10 = 1.97). Every time when consumption doubles, the amount of oil consumed during the new 10 year period equals the amount of oil consumed during the entire period coming before that! That kind of consumption growth can’t be sustained indefinitely.

Way back in 1972, a bunch of European scientists have modeled the global population growth and resource utilization and put their results into a book titled The Limits of Growth and updated it in 2004. The book predicted that our civilization would face a collapse during the mid to later half of current century.

In 2012, New Scientist published a paper wherein the predictions of 1972, as laid out in the book, were compared with the actual date obtained till the first decade of 21st century, and using much better modelling techniques. The result was a chilling conformation that the reality is not much different from the predictions of doom made in 1972 (image below)!

While the original 1972 predictions have been hotly contested and called deficient, surprisingly very little criticism has been heard about the 2012 New Scientist paper.

In the meanwhile, NASA recently announced that it has come up with climate model that matches with climate changes remarkably well. Based on this highly reliable model, NASA predicts that if we continued ‘business as usual’, by end of the current century, the global temperature would raise by as much as 14°C in the arctics and by lesser degree in other parts of the world.

Of course, NASA also pointed out that if we respond to impending climate change aggressively, we might just be able to get away with minimal damages. But the political will and preparedness seem to be widely lacking.

Given the looming resource crunch and consequent economic collapse, aggravated by global warming that is at least partly irreversible, we will have no way but to significantly change our present way of living.

Exponential Technology

While we are facing exponential problems, we have one exponential solution at hand: Technology. In the sequel to this post, we will understand exponential technology and how can it help us to deal with our exponential problem.

REFERENCES:
- This post is based on the presentation titled Idea Age is Here
- You can find the next parts of this series at Idea Age is Here: Part-2, Exponential Technology and at Origin of Ideas

10 Sep

Barbie, Conan, Body Image and Intellectuals

Living Barbie

There is a 28 years old Ukranian woman named Valeria Lukyanova, who believes that she is from Venus and decided to change her look to suit her inner body image. She chose herself the look of a Japanese anemi character and achieved it using intelligent makeup and some cosmetic surgery (her age, heavy makeup and surgical assistance are all contested). People started calling her a living doll, and then a living Barbie. That’s flattering the Barbie doll because she is so much prettier. Lukyanova is a singer, sort of, and wanted to use her new look to spread her spiritual message of peace from Venus (and, perhaps, to sell some music).

But something quite unexpected happened. More and more young women are wanting to follow Lukyanova and are going in for living doll looks. Being a living doll is not for the faint at heart. It calls for a radical lifestyle modifications, and dollops of money to pay for the mandatory cosmetic surgeries! Unlike our friendly neighborhood intellectuals would like us to believe, these women are not being brain washed by the Galactic Association of Cosmetic Surgeons or evil multi-national corporations trying to sell them trillions of dollars worth of eye liners to these unsuspecting young women. They are not even doing this to get themselves more boys. They do it so that their outer look matches with their inner body image.

Funny and misguided girls you say? Well, not so fast.

Take our male body builders and high octane actions stars. We have all noticed how they ripping muscles augmented by multiple steroid cycles and Synthol (of course, they hotly contest the usage of steroids or Synthol). Isn’t it strange that these guys have more heterosexual male fans than women fans? None of these famous muscle heads have ever been called a sex symbol. On the other hand, the most popular sex symbol today, George Cloony, doesn’t even take his shirt off in most movies. If you have tried googling “George Cloony Shirtless”, you will know why!

If this body is found sexy by most women, then why are the body builders spending huge amount of efforts and money on ripping muscles? The muscle size doesn’t even add to one’s longevity, mental acuity or money earned. Like the living dolls, the body builders are catering to the self-image that is typical of their own sexes!

Barbie doll’s body proportions appeal to the girls. Most guys, on the other hand, salivate for the curvy and strong body of Xena the Warrior Princess!

Cosmopolitan is the leading lifestyle magazine for young women and Maxim caters to young men. Make a quick comparison between the models you find in them and you will find the women in Cosmo are more stick-like. Whereas the women in Maxim must have curves. Anorexia, or something close to it, seem to be the inner body-image template and most women try to gravitate to this. They spend a lifetime trying to go as close to this self image as possible.

Take a look at any men’s fitness magazine and you will find ripping muscles, advertisements for muscle building supplements and black market steroids. On the other hand, women oriented fitness magazines seldom post pictures of Mr. Universe. Page after page, the post lean and athletic looking male bodies with broad, well formed shoulders and V shaped torso. Like Ken. Men who are looking for ripping are doing it to cater to their own inner urge.

Is it wrong to desire a body that appeals to one’s own inner image? Of course, not! If their body-desires doesn’t hurt anyone else, or it doesn’t conflict with their other priorities, what they do with their own body is none of anyone else’s business.

Is it wrong to blame the corporations, capitalists, multi-nationals, patriarchy, media and the buffalo for this phenomenon? Of course, yes!

Most of our so-called intellectuals are fraudsters who are too incompetent to do their homework before they air out an opinion. Liberating ourselves from the twisted world views they provide us is an important part of building ourselves happy lives.

That is the central tenet of this blog!