Nobody Understands

This is humbleness, greatness and reality check all rolled into one:

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school - and you think I'm going to explain it to you so you can understand it? No. you're not going to be able to understand it. Why, then am I going to bother you with all this? Why are you going to sit here all this time, when you won't be able to understand what I am going to say? It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see, my physics students don't understand it either. This is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

This was Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman giving lecture to laypersons in New Zealand on Quantum Electrodynamics, his work for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1965 for physics.

By the way, replace "physics" with "economics" in the above extract and you will not be far off! Only no one as great as Richard Feynman has had the courage to admit it.

Seth Godin on Alpha Inventions

Well ... well ... well. Seth Godin's Blog is doing rounds on Alpha inventions. Can you believe it? He, whose blog is read by 1000's, if not more, is testing out Alpha Inventions.

Unless someone else has submitted it or Alpha Inventions has picked it up on its own, it definitely means Alpha Inventions has come of age and is earning respectability in blogging circles.

But this is something we regular users of Alpha Inventions always knew, didn't we?

See Two definite ways of increasing blog traffic and Are hits from Alphainventions.com for real?

One can expect a clever analysis of Alphainventions from Seth Godin soon.

A language without pronouns

Every language has some unique features that strikes to you odd at first, but then once you get used to it, makes lot of sense. Take Spanish, for instance. It is took me a while to get used to almost complete absence of the pronouns: I, you and we. Since the verb form changes with the personal pronoun, one can easily understand who the text is referring to.

For example,

tengo - (I) have
tiene - (you) have
tenemos - (we) have

Efficient, isn't it?

I wonder why German that has similar verb form did not go the same way. Is it because Germans prefer order? Perhaps. It is definitely worth exploring the relation between general characteristics of a nation and the language.

Well, I guess that's the way a language evolves. It grows naturally. No wonder why artificial language like Esperanto could not grow into a world language despite numerous attempts in the past.

You can thrust a language on anyone.

Beware of neat theories

Centuries ago, Ptolemy explained the heavenly in a neat little theory. That the Earth is the centre of universe and the sun, the moon and the stars walk across the skies in predesignated paths. The universe was, of course, messier. Galileo and Copernicus discovered that universe is a mess. They came up with another neat theory - the heliocentric theory where the sun was the centre and earth and other planets revolved around it. The universe laughed and proved to be a bit more messy that these scientists thought. Today, the scientists are not sure - they have big unknowns and call them dark energy and dark mass (reminds me of Lord Voldermot).

Look at the other side of the universe - the smaller side. Scientists thought the have solved the puzzle with Quantum Mechanics. But, of course, they are still struggling with String Theory and alternatives.

Any system that has more than one parameter (player?) is by nature messy - marriage, for instance :D.
Neat - but not necessarily simple - theories cannot explain complex systems completely.
Beware of any neat theory that seeks to explain complex system.
Actually, I am wrong.
Look out for any neat theory that claims to explain complex systems.
You opportunities lie exactly there.
Be it science or economics or management or social sciences or market.

What India Must Do - A Must Read

Martin Wolf, the famous columnist of the Financial Times has just published an article titled What India Must Do If It Is To Be An Affluent Country. While the details and the solutions suggested is well known, I am struck by the conclusion.

What I take for the world is that India, for all the huge challenges it confronts, is likely to continue its rise, if more slowly than the report assumes. The job of adjusting the familiar western ways of thinking about the world to the new realities has hardly begun. Within a decade a world in which the UK is on the United Nations Security Council and India is not will seem beyond laughable. The old order passes. The sooner the world adjusts, the better.

Many years ago Rabindranath Tagore had penned this ...

Sound the clarion
India is going to reclaim its position at the top in the world stage.
(Lousy translation of the excellent Bangla poetry, I agree, but the meaning is conveyed, I hope)

But before that we need to change. The good thing is the path is clear, but do we have the political and social will?

read the article by Martin Wolf.

Life Factors Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Half a century ago, Frederick Herzberg discovered that the factors that affect satisfaction are not the same as the the factors that affect motivation on the job. He called them Hygiene Factors and Motivators.

He found out that absence of Hygiene Factors cause dissatisfaction. That, of course, does not mean that presence of Hygiene Factors result in Motivation. Example of Hygiene Factors are security, status, salary, peer relationship. Herzberg, in fact, found that presence of Hygiene Factors has very less impact on the motivation level. On the other hand, absence of factors like Good Job Content, Recognition, Achievement, Responsibility, etc. - termed Motivators - had a huge impact on Motivation. Their absence did little to remove dissatisfaction from the job. So, in essence, a great paying job that goes nowhere is satisfactory but you will not be motivate to give your best.

Fair enough!

What is good for a job should be applicable to life too, isn't it?
So why do we focus on aspects that are (apparently) mutually exclusive?

Success in job at the cost of family life.
Wealth but no true friends.
Palaces but no home.

Perhaps we do understand the basic dynamics of life. I am sure laughter and responsibility can go hand in hand.

Abolish Income Tax

One of the advantages I have as a blogger over the Finance Minister of India, is that I can come up with outrageous suggestions. Like this one ...

The expected revenue from Income Tax is 9% of the total government income. I do not know how much the Income Tax department spends to get this 9%. I was wondering if the Income Tax can be abolished all together. Instead increase taxes on non-essential, luxury items. Believe me the economy will boom like it has never before. Some money will go into buying luxury items; the rest will go into savings and investment. And I do believe that the government will more than recover the 9% lost out. Actually this may even wipe out the 38% debt (of the total expected income for this financial year) the government is under.

Now that is not really outrageous, is it?

Economists may argue that this will lead to a spiraling inflation. Will it, really?