The Clincher ...

Proof that Manmohan blundered badly - Praful Bidwai agrees with him. A simple algorithm to figure out the right course of action in any situation would be to ask Bidwai what to do, and then do the opposite.

Morality from Religion

Just a gentle reminder why you should worry if you get your morals from religion ...




If you haven't yet, there's never a bad time to read about the Euthyphro dilemma, and the philosophical problem it poses for religiously rooted morality.


Why am I picking on Christianity? I'm not. That venerable religion is only about as good or as bad as any other. The west just happens to be a lot more relaxed about this sort of thing. A video like this with a Hindu or Muslim theme would lead to riots and arrests in India. A similar video with a Christian theme that was made in India would lead to street protests at the minimum. We're just not grown-up enough about these things.

Judging a book by its cover

Indians tend to equate soft-spokenness and an academic demeanour with ability. The west errs in the other direction - inspiring speakers tend to be overestimated. In reality, the ability to communicate is orthogonal to genuine merit. As the great Deve Gowda is reported to have quipped, making great speeches in parliament doesn't make a capable prime minister. And as a wag on the opposition benches retorted, neither does making bad speeches.

Manmohan Singh's intellect and ability is almost revered in India, perhaps because he looks, behaves and talks as if he would be more comfortable in the hallways of Delhi University than in the corridors of power. But does he really merit that reverence?

Perhaps he does, in terms of economics, but in terms of statesmanship? How has he risen to the greatest challenge to India's security in recent times? With a series of bold pronouncements but weak-kneed actions. His latest flip flops on talking to our friendly neighbours are a case in point.

As Brahma Chellaney points out, India has had Prime Ministers in the recent past that outdid themselves in handing out unilateral concessions to the neighbours, with no or negative results. Mr. Vajpayee and Dr. Singh seem to be outdoing each other in doing damage in this direction.

It is time we demanded more from our statesmen, and held them accountable for their results. From Gujral to Vajpayee to Manmohan, they get elected, bungle on security, and retire into a taxpayer funded lifestyle. It must be mentioned that L K Advani wasn't much better in this regard, if his Jinnah gaffe and actions afterward are any indication. Perhaps our PMs should stop thinking with their hearts and listen to their heads instead. Especially ones that get elected on the belief that they have brains.

History is a Prankster, Karma is a Bitch

The Bible, New King James Version

Acts Chapter 4 Verse 35
"...; and they distributed to each as anyone had need."

Acts Chapter 11 verse 29
"Then the apostles, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea."

OK so history is a prankster and karma is a bitch. Driven by envy and ambition, Marx decided to claim that, when it came to wages, Ferdinand Lasale was an impractical impossiblist extremist just like Simon Peter. As a result, many people have decided that Karl Marx was an impractical impossiblist extremist egalitarian just like Simon Peter.

More here and here.

When in Chrome, do as the Chrome-ans do

Reading about Courgette made the Hatter finally polish his installation of Google Chrome (which helpfully autoupdated itself) and resign himself to begin using it.

Why would the Hatter consider giving up his Firefox for the new tool of the Web Overlords? Firefox has been getting a bit unwieldy, and eating up too much memory these days. So what's new about the memory footprint, you ask? True, that's a sin Firefox has been guilty of since forever, but it has got worse recently. There are limits to the Hatter's patience, and (virtual) memory.

Chrome is fast and feels much more responsive than Firefox. The JavaScript engine is supposedly much faster, and does feel marginally faster. It seems to render all the pages I frequent well enough. So far so good.

There are a few minuses, though. For example:

• There is no working extensions system, and the Hatter needs Greasemonkey and Adblock and all those other scripts he's cooked up to make his life on the web a bit easier. Chrome is working on a scripting and extension system, which we will have to look at. Perhaps I should look at their dev channel. Incidentally, ads on web sites seem to have got less intrusive since when I bid goodbye to them with Adblock a few years ago.
• Proxy management is not quite as flexible - partly related to the previous issue, since Firefox implements that through an extension. However, the equivalent of foxyproxy should be part of basic browser functionality now. Please, can we have that, Chrome?
• Doesn't work on Linux yet, so I can use it only on my work computer. There is a dev channel Linux build which I must try out. Perhaps I will try porting my scripts as well. I can live without Adblock for a while.

Most of these issues will be fixed, and the path away from Firefox is becoming clearer. It's going to take some more time before I switch my default browser, but it will happen.

Inevitability has a strange, but vaguely familiar flavour.

With enemies like this, does Manmohan need friends?

In other news, Comrade Karat continues his single-handed decimation of the CPI(M) in Kerala by throwing Comrade VS out of the Politburo. Given VS's popularity among swing voters, the CPI(M) may now come back to power in Kerala by 2050 or so, if they're lucky.

And Shri LK Advani seems to be doing the same to the BJP. His latest bit of brilliance is to call for EVMs to be scrapped and ballot paper to be brought back. Perhaps he pines for the days of ballot stuffing, booth capturing and slow unreliable vote counts. Too bad nobody else this side of 1950 does.

It would take incompetence of monumental proportions for the Congress to lose the next elections.
Unfortunately for us, they're more than capable of delivering that.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.



Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

In other news, Mayawati continues her statue building spree.

PS: Apologies if Shelley turns in his grave.

Bangalore Traffic, Nash Equilibria, and Why Indians drive better in the US of A

... entire Bangalore is out in cars today! why can't folks car pool or take public transport?
- A facebook friend's status message

Has the same thought crossed your mind? Why does everyone take a car when everyone is better off taking the bus?

As it happens, there is a "truly elegant" explanation for this, but it was too small to fit in a facebook comment box (with apologies to Pierre Fermat). So, blog post it will have to be.

Remember the movie "A Beautiful Mind"? Remember the mad mathematician John Nash? His eponymous contribution to Game Theory - the Nash Equilibrium - shows up in the said answer. And what may that be, you ask? The Mad Hatter, being qualified by way of similar mental states to interpret John Nash, will gladly answer.

Remember the Prisoner's dilemma?

Tanya and Cinque have been arrested for robbing the Hibernia Savings Bank and placed in separate isolation cells. Both care much more about their personal freedom than about the welfare of their accomplice. A clever prosecutor makes the following offer to each. “You may choose to confess or remain silent. If you confess and your accomplice remains silent I will drop all charges against you and use your testimony to ensure that your accomplice does serious time. Likewise, if your accomplice confesses while you remain silent, they will go free while you do the time. If you both confess I get two convictions, but I'll see to it that you both get early parole. If you both remain silent, I'll have to settle for token sentences on firearms possession charges. If you wish to confess, you must leave a note with the jailer before my return tomorrow morning.”

The “dilemma” faced by the prisoners here is that, whatever the other does, each is better off confessing than remaining silent. But the outcome obtained when both confess is worse for each than the outcome they would have obtained had both remained silent.

So, both prisoners confessing is what usually happens. That is a worse outcome for them than both prisoners remaining silent. Why does this happen?

John Nash generalized this idea into the concept of Nash Equilibrium. Assume you are a player in a game. You know everyone's strategy, and they know yours. Given knowledge of everyone's choices, if you could then change your strategy and come out ahead, the game is not in Nash Equilibrium. In a Nash Equilibrium, therefore, no individual player can incrementally change strategy and come out ahead. The globally optimal strategy of both players being silent in a prisoners' dilemma situation is not a Nash Equilibrium. A prisoner, knowing that the other is going to be silent, can improve his outcome by confessing. A globally optimal state that is not a Nash Equilibrium is unlikely to be reached. On the other hand, both prisoners confessing *is* a Nash Equilibrium, though not globally optimal. Knowing that the other would confess, a prisoner would rather confess than be silent.

For the curious reader, here are more examples of Nash Equilibria in games. And here are more.

All well and good, what does this have to do with people driving cars?

As the astute reader (and, as I never tire of saying, all the Mad Hatter's readers are by definition astute) would have guessed, the Bangalore traffic game is a generalized prisoner's dilemma situation. And the global optimum of everyone taking public transport is not a Nash Equilibrium. Knowing that everyone takes the bus, I can travel by car and travel in more comfort and save a bit of time. Thus, we end up in a non-optimal Nash Equilibrium where everyone takes their car.

Of course, this is simplistic, the situation involves a lot more variables (like my not actually wanting the stress of driving) and a lot of people still end up taking the bus. But, the non-optimal solution being a Nash Equilibrium captures the essence of the problem. Short sighted utility maximizers that we are, we get stuck in a globally non-optimal situation.

And that also is why Indians tend to drive very well in the US, and not in India. Given knowledge of everyone's strategy in the US (follow the rules, drive fast), Indian drivers pick the same strategy. It is not incrementally optimal in that situation to break rules, for reasons of safety. In India, given the expectation of slower and less rule-bound driving, the same drivers tend to pick rule-breaking as the right strategy. Both situations are Nash Equilibria. One is distinctly more optimal than the other.

So, is there no hope? Are we destined to be stuck in mad equilibria?

It turns out, there may just be a glimmer.

Douglas Hofstader came up with the concept of Superrationality in one of his columns. Simply put, Superrationality is going a step beyond simple utility maximizing rationality. If one assumes other actors in a symmetrical game are also logical thinkers, one must assume that they will come up with the same answer as one does. Therefore, one must find one's utility maximizing strategy assuming that all others will pick exactly the same strategy. That is, I cannot pick a strategy assuming everyone else will do something else - whatever I do, I have to assume everyone else will do the same. This gives superrational players a way to rationally "cooperate" to reach non Nash-Equilibrium solutions.

So clearly, if one knows that all other players in the game are superrational, one could end up in a good situation. But what does one do when one is not sure if other players are superrational or merely rational? This and other questions have been discussed but not definitively answered. If this sort of question interests you, perhaps this (slightly dated) survey of the field would as well.

Back to practical matters now. If we were all superrational, clearly we wouldn't be bound by Nash Equilibria in matters of public concern. Knowing that everyone would do the same as I, I would take the bus. Knowing that everyone would drive exactly as I, I would follow the rules of the road.

How do we transform our public from a rational Nash-Equilibrium-seeking herd to a superrational group? Should we teach game theory in school?

What say you, gentle reader?


ps: Interestingly, Emmanuel Kant came up with something resembling superrationality with his "categorical imperative" of moral philosophy

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

pps: The "prisoners' dilemma" description above is quoted from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

ppps: Thanks Ms. A. R. for inspiring this post! Dunno if you like to see your name on the blogosphere, so I've left you relatively anonymous :)