Numbnut fallacy

It is astonishing how easy it is to sell someone an idea or a concept just by giving it a fancy name.

You try explaining how the media ends up over-reporting the sensational, thereby making the mundane seem not-so-mundane and vice-versa, and you are met with a general ho-hum response, or a classic blank/bored stare. But say something like ‘Oh it is a classic case of Man-bites-dog‘ and you suddenly have everyone’s attention.

People write an entire book explaining the obvious (Exhibit A: The Black Swan*), and it is applauded because it tells you what you already know – that there is a lot that you don’t know. You are however supposed to be feel happy because you now know exactly what you don’t know and are empowered to talk (in great detail) about your lack of knowledge and your sheer helplessness vis-a-vis dealing with random events which will end up affecting your life way, way more than the impact your usual, controlled environment can ever have. The only consolation is that your vocabulary now consists of awesome words like confirmation bias, outcome bias, base rate fallacy and whatnot. Some go a step further and use Latin words, because English apparently isn’t sufficient to fully describe our ignorance.

This craving to label everything is quite perplexing. I like to call it the Numbnut fallacy.

Oops.

* – I must point out that I am only halfway through the book right now, and I do not (dare not) dispute anything the writer has to say. But it seems to be (so far) too elaborate an exercise at proving something that we already knew but never bothered to jot down for debates/discussions.

My current office desktop wallpaper

This is my current desktop wallpaper in office (click to enlarge)

I like the uncertainty over when the photograph was clicked – it seems like dusk, but there is a small possibility that it might just be the crack of dawn.

I like it so much, I replaced the one I had previously, albeit after a lot of heartburn (The change was also carried out because I heard somewhere that the colour red makes people unnecessarily aggressive

That’s it. No profundity, no metaphors.

Those hips

This video brings back fond memories. Very fond memories.

- Shakira dancing like there’s no tomorrow, shaking her hips as if independent from her body. Kind of like the Irish-Jig-guy but without scaring the ba-jeezus out of anyone.

- Wyclef Jean (that incestuous b*****d) hugging her like she’s his younger sister.

- FIFA World Cup 2006 – the drama, the red cards, the defending, the attacking, the upsets, Germany, Italy. My favourite world cup of all time.

- Zidane having his moment of madness and giving head to someone live on TV with a million folks watching. Clearly, the French like to do everything in their own special way.

- Me having my first (and till date, only) attempt at consistent blogging.

- Watching matches on a big screen with good commentary in the company of amazingly passionate hostel mates – I’ll especially never forget a random bong fellow who was bawling after Argentina got kicked out by Germany in the quarter-finals and the non-stop vernacular cursing which preceded the said bawling.

All this without consuming a single drop of alcohol, which made it even more fantastic.

Be the change

The latest season of Prison Break ended with the following quote for an epitaph:

Be the change you want to see in the world

It was only a matter of time that American TV series start painting doomsday scenarios about potential Indo-China nuclear holocausts. And it was even more inevitable that they would quote Mahatma Gandhi – albeit somewhat out of context.

And then I see this quote here -

We must be the UFOs we are looking for.

And it all makes sense in a very demented sort of way.

(Very good blog, btw, the one I have linked to above).

It was my mom’s birthday two weeks ago …

… and we took her out to her favourite restaurant and had awesome dumplings and clay-pot rice. I taught her (tried to teach her) how to eat stuff using chopsticks. Her enthusiasm lasted for a full ten minutes before she decided to revert back to good ol’ fork-and-spoon. She commented that she now knew how these oriental folks managed to stay so fit and slim.

We had asked the maître d’ to bring her a cake towards the end, but the ass _forgot_. Thankfully, my sis pointed this out to me just as dinner was coming to an end. As a backup, we gave her a brownie surprise with chocolate sauce and candles, accompanied with a few waiters singing ‘Happy Birthday …’ in perfect unison. Arbitrary patrons (who I suspect were a wee bit tipsy) cheered and wished her good luck. It was tough to guess whether my mom was happy or embarassed – I think it was both.

My mom said that this was the first time anyone got her a cake,or gave her a surprise on her birthday. She turned fifty that day.

For the first time I can recall, I was truly left speechless.

Obvious?

Posted at Political Swingers

Give him the cup

A typical argument given by an country for being chosen to host a Football (Soccer) World Cup would be ‘We love Footie!’ or ‘It’s been a long time’ or ‘Tourism has been really down these days.’

Here’s Obama’s argument for USA hosting the 2018/ 2022 WC:

As a child, I played soccer on a dirt road in Jakarta, and the game brought the children of my neighbourhood together. As a father, I saw that same spirit of unity alive on the fields and sidelines of my own daughters’ soccer games in Chicago. Soccer is truly the world’s sport, and the World Cup promotes camaraderie and friendly competition across the globe. That is why this bid is about much more than a game. It is about the United States of America inviting the world to gather all across our great country in celebration of our common hopes and dreams

An American who’s a fan of football (I refuse to call it soccer anymore) is a rarity anyway – and one who supports West Ham United, rarer than that. Given their troubles in wake of the Icelandic economic crisis, I totally sympathize with the Hammers, having had to suffer some heartburn over that particular topic myself. (The Icelandic meltdown, as obvious a pun as there can be, was what inspired this post).

As long as he doesn’t insist that all nations must only field those players who play for American clubs, I say Give Him The Cup!!

Original link via, verified here.

Social Networking?

I’m yet to decide whether I am glad or dejected because I haven’t been tagged in any of the viral things doing the rounds on Facebook these days – Wall photos, 25 things you didn’t know about me, songs which come to my mind first when I read this and other Notes. What I am fairly certain about, though, is how highly irritating these things have turned out to be. I find myself torn between 2 extreme emotions: despair at having my notifications page being bombarded with random alerts, and an intense urge to find out who is the sluttiest person in each of my acquaintances’ friend circles.

What is most irritating, especially about all the random lists people generate, is that most of the things people include are solely meant to be cute/funny and hence end up being quite unreal. I would be very interested in knowing if, for example, someone colour-coded his underpants to work, or things which turned people on (and off). But telling me that you like taking long walks or that you do/don’t cry that often is just a criminal waste of cyberspace. As a mark of protest, here’s my list of things (in no particular order) which I find quite irritating -

1. People who talk about themselves all the time, only to pause and let you talk about them. This can be especially irritating when you want to talk about yourself.

2. People who don’t follow loo etiquette. As if it isn’t scary enough that foot tapping while getting epiphanies can have risqué implications, it can be quite pathetic when people make small talk out of plain relief (no pun intended) or just to dispel uncomfortable silences. This includes saying stuff like ‘I’m so awesome’ on making surprising discoveries. (People also have a tendency to say the most ridiculous/scandalous things in office restrooms – it’s almost like they forget that they still are in office and can very easily be overheard).

3. (Picking up from the previous point) – People who find it absolutely essential to dispel uncomfortable silences. Uncomfortable silences have a very specific purpose in life – to make people uncomfortable and shut them up at the same time. Breaking them, then, is just plain unnecessary.

4. People who ask redundant questions – ‘Ooh did that hurt?‘ after stepping on your foot. ‘I’m sorry am I blocking your view?‘ after coming late to a cinema hall and ambling along to their seats with their eyes glued to the screen. ‘What do you think?‘ after having already decided to buy something and asking for a second opinion just to give you the illusion of relevance.

5. People screwing up their grammar. I know, this might sound a bit finicky, but when someone says ‘I forgotted …‘, what is said thereafter gets, well, forgotted. Or ‘No I didn’t gone.‘ Or ‘I does not do this.’ Or ‘He catched it so well.‘ Mildly irritating.

6. People who screw up my name. I’ve had a wide range of people from Credit card call centre representatives to Rating Agency helpdesk individuals giving me advice on how to pronounce and/or spell my name. How tough is it to accept that someone can be named Sujay and not Sanjay, Sujoy, Suja or (this I swear I am NOT making up) Suagy? How in god’s name do you even pronounce the last one?

7. Pseudo-secularists, because they are full of BS. And armchair critics, because their purpose of existence is as mysterious, if not more, than slugs and bedbugs.

8. Arabic football commentators. I went through the entire 1998 Football World Cup telecast on the (then) newly-launched Ten Sports channel genuinely believing that the ‘experts’ on TV had all been infected by the same strain of strep which made them cough/clear their throats while talking. And they had a very irritating habit of yelling Goaaal GOaaal GOAaaal GOAAAAL! in an infinite loop when … obvious. Same goes for Latin American commentators who shout ‘GOLAASO’ ‘GOOLAAASO’ with a similar passion and sense of urgency.

9. Indian cricket commentators. And Pakistani ones too. ‘Nuff said.

10. The new FB interface. It is not just irritating – it is quite crappy.

11. Over-exuberance.

12. Tomato skin. I’ve talked about this before in great detail.

13. Babies who cry in cinema halls. And parents who act like their kids will shut up if they are ignored. Kids cry because they need attention. Makes you revisit the principles of Idiocracy every single time.

14. Having to explain jokes, especially those which aren’t meant to be classics and have a very, very short shelf life (i.e. bad ones). I go through this particular agony almost every day.

15. People who oppose something (a team, an idea, anything) you support just to have a stand (or to piss you off). I refuse to argue with someone who argues for the sake of arguing.

16. Honking at red lights. There might very well be some deep-rooted pyschological/Freudian explanations for this phenomenon, but there is no doubt that this can get mighty irritating.

17. Atheists who are atheists because it is cool to be one. For that matter, anyone who is something just because it makes her cooler. Although for atheists, I think most of the times they are (as a thumb rule) a little bit irritating anyway. Same goes for PETAmaniacs.

18. French footballers and Australian cricketers. I have no rational justification for this, though.

19. People who post ‘Sorry for not blogging in a long time …’ or ‘Blogging has been slow because …’. Seriously, the world has existed and will continue to exist without your contributions to cyber-literature.

20. People who add unnecessary points to lists just to have a ‘nice’ number of entries.

(This list is not exhaustive and is likely to swell with the passage of time. The round number of entries right now is purely coincidental, and doesn’t contradict point # 20. )

I might just not vote this year

Before people go all JaagoRe on my a**, please let me explain -

I’ve always believed that when when you vote, you should do so because you are FOR a particular candidate/party/idealogy and not because you’re AGAINST someone. This whole ‘lesser of two evils’ school of thought is a fairly crappy way of casting your vote. With the elections almost upon us, the basic questions you address when you decide whom to vote are – Who? Why? What? How?

Who?

1. The Congress has never been my favourite party, mainly because of the shameful sycophancy and elitist approach shown by its members ever since I can remember. The UPA government – and right now, I’m not quite sure who make up the UPA because the constituents can change from the time I post this to the time someone reads this – has done a fairly terrible task on 2 fronts I consider fairly important:

- Security (It is not a good thing to accept terror attacks as an integral part of life in India. It is pathetic to have shitty responses to terrorist attacks and even worse to crow about ‘diplomatic triumphs’ like getting someone to accept blindingly obvious facts. And it is shameful, no matter what anyone may say, to have to shift a cricket tournament out of the country because we cannot provide security for it.)

- Education (The reservation saga which happened 3 years ago and affected most of us quite profoundly is not that easy to forget)

The lack of any positives which the UPA can be credited with inspite of a having ruled in a booming economic and foreign relation environment is by itself a major disappointment. It is a sad reflection on the last five years that the most interesting thing of the UPA rule was the no-confidence motion from last year. By interesting I mean more in an OMGWTF way than OhCool one. The party manifesto(doc) is quite surprising – some find it to be a joke – and the claim made in it over and over again about having delivered on promises made in 2004 in a very substantial measure indicates a fairly delusional group of politicians. Plus, it is not easy to forgive someone who screws up Jai Ho or who has a video where a suspicious looking character flashes scary grins at the camera and goes on and on about his hand while a group of street kids dance in coordinated freestyle. (I am unable to to locate the video on the internet which is quite surprising. I hope to rectify this soon).

2. The BJP and its allies took the word ‘opposition’ quite seriously and did just that quite consistently for the entire period of the last term. The amount of time and money wasted in walk-outs and adjourned sessions cannot be justified nor recovered. The party is yet to recover from the loss of a charismatic leader like AB Vajpayee and has hunted for one for too long without bothering to strengthen its base. A moderate L K Advani or a hawkish Modi are, on the face of it, quite scary propositions for quite a few people, and the BJP has done nothing to assuage these fears. Which is a real pity. What Varun Gandhi has said is shocking, and already people are drawing parallels between him and those leaders who claim to protect the minorities. If this ends up being the reason why the BJP wins (and that is a big IF), it’ll be a fairly diluted victory for sure. Besides, the BJP is yet to come out with its manifesto- at least I haven’t seen or heard about it till now. So if I vote for them, I’ll be voting for what they promised or promoted 5 years ago, which is ridiculous.

3. The Third Front would make a really good Opposition because (a) they don’t have any clear agenda of their own, (b) They have regional interests to protect, and (c) they have a lot of practice at opposing things left-right-centre. The Communist folks were at it even when they were supposed to be providing outside support to the current government. A good thumb rule which has emerged these days is to do/support everything that they consider evil or bad. It is impossible that the Third Front will form a government because they are just too fragmented with too many people who are not particularly known for consistency and stability. The communists continue to live in a world of their own – their Big Daddy Jyoti Basu believes that they committed a big blunder by not being part of the government (he then detaches his ventilator to show he is serious before suggesting that he still remains the best possible for PM). The BSP and their Big Sista’ realize that the ‘uplifting of the backward classes’ will require (sooner or later) educating the backward classes (i.e. giving them Primary Education and not reservations in Higher  Education). But this will go against  their whole policy of exploiting the ignorance of their vote bank, thereby limiting the impact they’ll have on National Politics. I count the Samajwadi Party, Lalu Yadav and RV Paswan in the Third Front too (although right now, I think they are partners of Congress), because they are what are called ‘journeymen’ in football – people who cannot stick with one club for too long. People with itchy feet and scratchy butts.

Why?

There is an absolute lack of transparency in the system. The media is more obsessed with monitoring infighting within parties, pre-poll alliances and switching of allegiances than raising relevant issues. People change parties, ideologies and stands with an alarming frequency. Parties who are allies today become sworn enemies tomorrow, thereby making it impossible to choose any candidate/party. If there was to be a ‘least bad’ coalition, it would be between the Congress and the BJP, which is quite sad by itself. Or is it … ?

How?

I am registered as a candidate in the region which elected Govinda to power the last time. My MP right now is Priya Dutt. I have no sense of belonging to any of the constituencies, no idea of how an MP can make any difference to my life. I mean, other than contributing to the horrible numbers-game will be inevitably ensue after the elections, how is an MP even relevant? – I still have no clue.

If I want to vote, I’ll have to produce a plethora of documents (on a weekday in a very short time window and very soon) to vote from where I stay right now, or create what is probably a fairly archaic proof of registration – a Ration Card. In response to my query as to how do so many immigrants vote so easily, the election officer says that that is because the first thing they do on getting to Mumbai is to get registered here while continuing to be registered voters in their original regions. Clearly, it is not a one vote per person system as touted. So my vote is not even that important, in that case.

–

When I was young and restless (which was like 3 years ago), I remember having a long discussion with some snobbish, wannabe-rich people in my old locality who didn’t vote because they thought it was beneath them. I remember telling them that if they didn’t vote, they didn’t have the right to comment about the state of the country. I remember quoting some Chinese philosopher that if the good people don’t worry about politics, then they have to accept being ruled by bad people. (The actual quote is better worded and has much more of an impact, trust me). I now see that things have come to a full circle, where I have new excuses for not doing the same things I once deemed inexcusable. Which is a real pity, no?

it was 3.30 in the morning …

… and I was on my way back from a midnight buffet somewhere.  My autorickshaw was cruising along at a breakneck speed of sixty kmph. I say ‘breakneck’ because if the rick was to topple over due to a tiny, innocent bump on the fairly bumpy road, I would actually end up breaking my neck. There was an extremely arbit Kumar Sanu – Anuradha Paudwal duet (I think it was this one) blaring through the speakers with the singers competing with the insanely loud Jhankar Beats to get their point across – all I could hear was meeeooowww-dhish-tick-thak-thakka-dhish-tick-thak-thakka-weeoooooow. In short, life was good  in the fast lane.

Our ‘mosam‘, so as to speak, was rudely interrupted by this bright red Skoda Octavia which whizzed past us with a whoosh sound. It passed by so close that my rick encountered turbulence in its wake and started wobbling dangerously. Given that it was a 6-lane highway and that there wasn’t a single car in sight, neither the driver nor I (me?) appreciated this unwelcome attempt at closeness. The car then gave a Left-turn indicator and turned right.

“Yeh chhokri log ko kayko gaadi chalaaneko dete hain, pata nahi saab (why they give cars to ladeez to drive, god only knows sir),” said the driver with a snarl on his face. I couldn’t really see his face because he was facing ahead, but I could definitely hear the snarl in his voice. I know – it was so sexist of him to generalize this, and it was so distinctly unfair to all those brilliant lady-drivers out there who ply our roads with deft skill on a daily basis without threatening other life forms. I would had protested vociferously, but it seemed pointless given the complete lack of a female audience/ rational audience.

We then saw the same Skoda parked a few metres ahead at the side of the road. I decided to do my bit towards registering my protest by peeking inside to glare as hard as I could at the driver. That was when I observed that the driver was, in fact, a girl. And that there was another girl sitting right next to her as well. What were the chances, eh?

For some reason, this reminded me of that scene from Crash, that spectacular Oscar-winning movie from 2004. The scene had Ludacris and another black guy moaning about how prejudiced white people are towards black people and how badly they stereotype them (black guys, that is). And then the two of them … well, see the video. (Embedding unfortunately not allowed for this video).

What can one say or do in such scenarios?