यह मेरा पहला हिन्दी पोस्ट हैं

मुझे पता नही था की हिन्दी में ब्लॉग करना इतना आसान होगा
मैं गूगल पे पूरा लट्टू होगया हूँ
मुझे गूगल से फिर से प्यार होगया हैं
नो वंडर गूगल रोक्स

ఇది నా మొట్టమొదట తెలుగు బ్లాగ్ పోస్ట్!!

బ్లాగర్ లోనే తెలుగు లో పోస్ట్ గలనని నాకు ఇవాళ్ళే తెలిసింది.
ఇది చాలా కూల్ కదా!!
ఇప్పటి నుంచి నేను వీలైనప్పు డల్ల తెలుగు లోనే బ్లాగ్ చేస్తాను.
తెలుగు లో బ్లాగ్ చేయడం ఇంత సులభమని వూహించలేకపోయాను.

GOD – the remarkable invention of a criminal genius??

The other day I was having an interesting discussion with a good friend (he is currently selling sanitary napkins for a health care major in Vizag and he lives alone by the seaside) of mine from IIMC who is writing a book on philosophy (at least that’s what he claims). I don’t remember how we got about discussing religion and GOD starting with randomness (guess that’s what talking about randomness does) but we did and suddenly an idea struck me. Could the concept of GOD have been a remarkable invention of one of our ancestors –most likely a criminal genius??

Humans being have a remarkable ability to find patterns (even in randomness) and develop cognitive shortcuts (biases). On one hand these abilities help us make sense of the immensely complicated world around us and help us in times of danger by reducing the processing times of our decision making. On the other hand, they are responsible for us drawing incorrect conclusions from information, both insufficient and incorrect and get thoroughly confused between correlation and causality. Why did ancient human beings have to resort to a supra human entity to explain the then unpredictable/apparently completely random natural phenomena like earthquakes, floods and epidemics instead of accepting the fact that they don’t understand the causes and that they need to investigate further? Why is it so difficult to deal with uncertainty?

My guess is that the concept of GOD is a brilliant conception of an evil genius, a genius who exploited the human mind’s innate weakness to his benefit. It’s a masterstroke. Multiple sources of uncertainty can now be neatly encapsulated into a single one – GOD. Also the causes of destructive/constructive random events can now be explained through anger/happiness (emotions that are pretty easy to relate to and understand) of GOD and correlated to activities performed by humans. It shouldn’t be very difficult for a genius to find spurious correlations. The biggest benefit to the genius is obviously the ability to influence people at will.

Now the only question that needs to be answered is the following - how did the person predict GOD’s moods given that he really does not understand how they work? Pretty simple, all he had to predict was to consistently predict a bad outcome and hope for the best (that is the occurrence of the bad outcome J) and he would have had a pretty good run.

So my humble submission is that GOD is a remarkable invention- an abstraction much ahead of its time and could only have been conceptualized by a remarkable genius having a remarkable understanding of probability and yes RANDOMNESS.

Clarity on lack of clarity

This is my second week at office in my new job and though I have been given lots of work to do, I just don’t feel like doing any of it. And to top it all, I am feeling extremely sleepy. I am trying to figure out which of the following factors are responsible for this situation of mine:
Lack of sleep (the late night jog at Shivaji park last night with a pack of dogs has resulted in lesser number of hours of sleep. I am trying to jog to lose weight and not to take part in the Mumbai marathon not even the senior citizens’ marathon and that I am not an early riser should have been obvious by now)
Lack of interest (in the work I have been asked to do although the job was chosen by me...I work in the Ops and Tech division of one of the biggest financial services firms on the planet)
Lack of attention span (can be measured in femto seconds these days)
Lack of clarity (this is exactly what I mean)
Lack of ‘enough money’ -the feeling (am clear about this and I guess so are you)
Lack of higher physical and cognitive abilities (trust me, I have ample evidence to prove this)
Lack of steady female company (steady is the key word)

Though all the factors are mutually reinforcing, there is one factor, which clearly is the root cause and that is lack of clarity. Lack of clarity is the single most important factor responsible for dissipation of energies, decrease in productivity, happiness and satisfaction in individuals, teams, companies, states and countries.This post is only about the individual(may or may not be me).

Lack of clarity on what you like and what you are good at -> lack of clarity about what you want to do in life -> lack of focus-> lack of clarity about what abilities you want to develop ->lack of higher cognitive and physical abilities->Lack of clarity on strengths and weaknesses -> lack of clarity in terms of studies, career and relationships -> Lack of interest in job, lack of ‘enough money’, lack of satisfaction and lack of steady female company ->lack of attention span and lack of sleep->lack of productivity and happiness.

Most normal people, businesses struggle to achieve this clarity in their lifetimes. This clarity of vision is what separates great leaders and companies from the mediocre at least according to a lot of theories. Achieving internal clarity then seems to be one of the best ways to deal with the chaos and uncertainty of the external environment. But what is surprising is that so much of research is done on great leaders and companies and relatively little research is done on how people actually achieve this clarity that makes them great!!!!

Its one of those days

It is one of those days when I feel myself being forced by myself to communicate with others ,dont know what and dont know why...I dont know whether this is a kind of desperation that stems from not being able to articulate what one would like to communicate, or is it just a kind of uneasiness that arises when you realise that there is something wrong with you when you have nothing 'original' to communicate, which forces you to communicate?? I dont know what it is but I know one thing for sure - it is extremely frustrating when words dont come easily to you especially when you think you have a lot to say..and my respect for authors of any kind has increased manifold ever since I have experienced this terrible feeling.

I started this blog with the idea of sharing something 'original' from my life with the world... something that could be a thought, an idea or even a real life experience...down the line I have realised how difficult it is to produce something original, the difficulty of the task is reflected in the number of truly original posts = 0 that I think I have been able to create ever since I started blogging...by truly original I mean something which has not been done before by oneself or by anyone else...since it is very difficult to create something original this blog is a desperate attempt to create something original by documenting the desperation one feels in attempting to create something original...I desperately hope this kind of desperation is original

Slightly late in the day

These are the lyrics one of my friends showed me today.Unfortunately I cant say yes to many of the questions raised below but hope some of you can..read on..

would you say everything you could
do the things that you thought you would
did it ever occur to you that this could be your final day
did you go where you wanted to go
learn about what you wanted to know
did you ever really give something back instead of always taking it

did you find what you're looking for
did you get your foot in the door
can you look at yourself and feel proud of all the things you've done
did you inspire the ones that you knew
make a difference to those who knew you
did you finally figure out what it is that makes us who we are today

don't waste another day
you never know when you'll get one
don't waste another day
to do anything you haven't done

did you always give it your best
is there anything you regret
if you could have another shot at it all would you do it just the same
was it all that you thought it could be
are you the person you thought you would be
or did it feel like you were spinning your wheels instead of moving forward everyday

don't waste another day
you never know when you'll get one
don't waste another day
to do anything you haven't done
don't waste another day
you never know when you'll get one
don't waste another day
to do anything you haven't done

did you
da da da did you
did you
da da da did you

don't waste another day
you never know when you'll get one
don't waste another day
to do anything you haven't done
don't waste another day
you never know when you'll get one
don't waste another day
to do anything you haven't done

did you
da da da did you
did you
da da da did you
did you
da da da did you
did you
da da da did you

Did you - Hoobastank

My latest orkut photo

Edwise - exploiting the long tail of education

I recently finished reading Chris Anderson's 'The Long Tail'. It is one of the best business/economics/culture books I have read in recent times.In it Anderson talks about how the empahsis is shifting from blockbusters to niches and how infinite choice is creating unlimited demand.Anderson gives a lot of examples of companies exploiting the long tail of demand in various industries - e.g. Amazon(books), Google(adverstising), Netflix(dvds), Itunes(Muisc) etc. As I was reading the book I was trying to think of local companies trying to tap the demand in the long tail and players taking advantage of the long tail in other industries. The first company which came to my mind was this company called Edwise. Edwise provides educational consultancy (for free almost!) and value added services to students interested in studying abroad.

Unlike the big companies mentioned in the book which cater to the demand in he 'head' as well as the 'tail', Edwise caters to demand only in the 'tail'. The business model of edwise is pretty simple. It has tie ups with a large number of universities in countries like US,Canada,UK, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Hongkong. These institutes do not include the top rung universities which essentially makes them a part of the long tail of education in the respective countries. Consultancy here means helping the student choose a set of countries, courses and institutes.Value added services mean various services required by a student starting from couriering the application forms to the institutes the student has selected to finding accomodation in the place where the student has finally enrolled.

Ok now here is the interesting part about how Edwise makes money without charging the student a penny. Edwise gets a commission from the university(Edwise should have a tieup with it ofcourse!) for every student who joins it.It gets a commission from the value added services it provides.What about the costs??Almost all the costs involved are fixed costs.And the major costs I can think of are rents for decent sized rooms which can accomodate on an average 2-3 counsellors, a broad band connection at each of the places and man power costs. I leave it upto you to estimate the profits(atleast I think its a profitable venture).

What I like most about this whole idea is the way it fits beautifully into the framework proposed by Anderson in the long tail.In 'the long tail' he says:

1)Give people a lot of choice.
2)Help them choose.

Thats exactly what Edwise has done. Edwise gives the student enormous choice using the power of the internet, hundreds of universities to choose from and it also helps them choose by recommending institutes and courses to students. Edwise can provde so much choice because the marginal cost of a tie-up with a new institute is negligible.The demand for each of the universities from a country like India will be very low but the cumulative demand for all the universities will be a sizeable number given that not all students can get into the blockbuster universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, LSE or other top rung universities and that different students have different preferences.

The student wins because he does not pay anything, the university wins because it gets more students and in a lot of cases foreign students are charged more than locals and Edwise wins too.

Check out The Long Tail and Edwise