Author: kumareshkr

A common man with a restless mind

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus but humans are the disease

On By kumareshkrIn Covid 19, Family, Life9 Comments

A few disclaimers to start with:

  1. The article isn’t as pessimistic as the title makes it appear
  2. I am not going to bore or scare you by mentioning any numbers or statistics because there are enough facts and figures out there anyway
  3. This may be a rant
  4. There is bound to be a difference of opinions (debates and discussions welcome)
  5. Chances are that you are working from or chilling at home, so please do read the whole article

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.

Agent Smith, The Matrix (1999)

Human beings are clearly not ready for a lot of things, and certainly not to adjust their lifestyle during a crisis. The “most evolved species” on the planet is finding it so difficult to stay at home! Times like these reveal how ignorant and stupid the so-called educated/literate people are, from blue-collar workers to world leaders. We are too adamant and stubborn to change our ways unless we get hit, by when it is too late.

It’s weird how we always teach children that prevention is better than cure but none of us applies it when it really matters. The excuse that is used is, “Oh, we didn’t know it would be this bad!” which makes sense in some cases. You probably needed a 9/11 to toughen countries against terrorism, but you don’t need “the worst drought in a century” to teach people to conserve water, and you certainly don’t need a pandemic to teach people how to wash your hands and how to cough! You always cough into a tissue or upper sleeve and you always wash hands that thoroughly.

We were all predicting that the apocalypse would involve tsunamis and famines but the fact that a nanometre-sized virus has the world on its knees is just a way of adding salt to the wound. It is like an extra slap in the face to the human race that, till now, believed it controlled the world.

We needed this attack. We needed someone or something more powerful and dangerous than what we imagined to force us to change our ways. I read that Venice’s waters have become crystal clear and that China’s pollution has dropped by record amounts… in waters which should never have become dirty and in cities which should never have reached that level of pollution in the first place.

We needed this pandemic to force us to be with our families, to value our time at home, to pause our taxing corporate jobs, and basically, to appreciate what we already have. You don’t have to catch a movie in a theatre, you don’t have to go on a shopping spree in malls, you realise so many trips and meetings were unnecessary and can be substituted – to a reasonable extent – from home, you don’t need extravagant parties or weddings nor do you need elaborate funerals.

I don’t understand why people are refusing to cooperate with such simple measures, starting with “Stay at home” (I can understand it’s much more difficult to stop yourself from touching your face, which you don’t realise yourself most of the time). I am talking about those for whom it is not a necessity to go out to make a living. Self-quarantine isn’t a bad thing; it’s not taboo. It’s not like you have to hide the fact that you are sick. In fact, chances are you will be praised for taking preventive measures.

To all those wishing that “the clock would be reset” to the beginning of 2020, are you sure? Yes, many people have died and many have lost their jobs and the situation is only likely to get worse in the next few weeks… but maybe all this would have happened in the future sooner or later. I’m sure most people are worried and panicky because they feel the pandemic has come at a bad time for them. Even if the virus had asked you what would be a suitable time to attack, surely, you would not have had an answer.

Times like these bring out the most selfish behaviours of people as well as the most caring. Thousands of people die every day due to cancer, hunger and many other causes but no one gave a damn then. And now you are getting paranoid because a guy in your office can’t stop coughing? On one hand, you have people hoarding masks and toilet paper and even guns (Why? To protect yourself if someone attacks you under panic or to aid you when you attack someone? I certainly hope it is not to shoot the virus down) and on the other hand, NGOs and other parties are volunteering to deliver food and essentials to old people. In one part of the world, leaders are making generous donations to help stabilise the lives of so many people and industries who took a hit, and in another part of the world, leaders are making money off the coronavirus by hiding information from the public. Of course, one can’t help but come across numerous conspiracy theories about the virus, about China, about fake cures and whatnot. This is also more reason to stay away from statistics and graphs. Yes, you should be aware of what’s happening around you but don’t get obsessed with numbers, predictions and rates. Chances are that half the numbers are underreported by accident or by intention, which will only lead to more panic, rumours and misinformation. 

While humans are working to find a cure for the virus, in many ways, the virus has been the cure. We are made to follow proper hygiene, we are made to spend more quality time with family, a lot of us have a forced break from an insanely hectic work schedule, cities are getting cleaner and quieter… I agree that the world is not in a stable situation right now, but the pandemic has come with a silver lining of its own. When all this settles down and the world returns to a new normal, let’s hope we retain the good values we learnt during this time. If not, just know that if the virus can hit us once, it can come back, possibly stronger.

Everyone has been affected in one way or the other, personal or professional. Some of you may have lost internship opportunities, some of you may have lost family members. But as humans, we should be able to find a way out and jump back on track. Life will go on.

No country for old folks

On By kumareshkrIn Family, LifeLeave a comment

The general classification of humans based on age is as follows:
1) Children
2) Working people
3) Old people

It seems that old people are either the friendliest ones or the most annoying ones. Here are a few examples (from the observations of a 21-year-old):

  1. Remember that one neighbour who would not return your tennis ball after you had hit it inside his house when playing cricket? Almost certainly, that neighbour is an old man wanting some peace and quiet, which you and your apartment friends are clearly denying.
  2. As your luck would have it, the person in front of you in a narrow staircase is an old woman walking with a cane. As sensitive as we may be, for most of us, our mind goes, “I just had to be behind her, huh?” You try to nudge your way ahead but fail, and silently curse in your head.
  3. Your grandparents at home seem to be the most patient with you. They always have time for a bedtime story. They are the ones who introduce you to mythologies. More often than not, they pray for your well-being more than you do for yourself.
  4. Whether it is an extra chocolate pack from the grocery store or a new book you’ve always wanted, it invariably comes from your grandparent’s pocket.

Of course, each of you will have different experiences from your observations of your own family and society. But, the general atmosphere of today is not friendly towards the aged, is what I feel, and hence the title of this blog post (nothing to do with the Coen Brothers’ film – which, by the way, is probably their best).

Most old people are slower than normal; they struggle to adapt to today’s technologies and the pace at which things move. They ask you more doubts than usual with things which seem trivial to us: “What is this ‘Instagram’ that everyone is talking about?” “Why are there so many complications with aadhaar?” (I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that yet). Of course, you can’t forget the superstitions: “Today is Friday, don’t cut your nails”, “Don’t do this today; 23rd is the auspicious day” and the list goes on.

Not only do they generally seem to have a greater belief in God, but they also want to believe that people are innately good. Like I said, they have a hard time understanding that majority of things get done today with at least one “under the table” offering. On the other hand, the people of our generation have learnt to adjust and live with the bending of laws, and when our grandparents ask about it, we just shrug our shoulders with a “that’s how it is” look.

The other common monologue that invariably comes up is, “When I was your age…”. This can be followed by how cheap things were, how simple people were back then, how they managed to live day in and day out without internet and mobile phones… and of course, our immediate reaction is to roll our eyes.

Now there are a lot of things that they do which our generation considers stupid – “Why are they so sentimental?”, “Why do they have to listen to the same devotional song again when I want to see the same TV show for the 94th time?” (ironic, no?) “Why do they wake up so early in the morning?” For every such, “Why can’t they adapt?”, in our minds, they might feel that the current generation does not want to accommodate them.


The other place you’re fantastic at being yourself is when you’re a wrinkly because you can’t be arsed. You get to that stage in your life where you realise there are more summers behind you than there are in front of you, and everything intensifies. You become more honest; you become less compromising. So you’re going to tell people, “I don’t want the spinach, I’m not going to eat it, I don’t like it. And I don’t like jazz so you can shut that noise off. And while I’m at it, I don’t like you!” And we call these people “eccentric”. We call our oldies eccentric. In fact, what they’re doing is being authentic.

Caroline McHugh, TEDx

Along the same lines, it is also because of the fact that “there are more summers behind them than there are in front of them” that old people are often the most caring and unselfish people around you. I think it is only at that stage that most of us think about being of service to others out of our own will. I have heard a number of people of my age say how they would first go abroad, make money, and then come back home and then do some goody-goody work like teaching or social service. If that is really your goal then why not start right away?

I, for one, don’t exactly believe in “Respect the elderly”; I believe that respect should be given to whoever deserves it, and age is irrelevant. At the same time, I think a lot of us get impatient way too quickly when talking with or dealing with the elderly. The human body is (un)fortunately designed in a way where we become physically and mentally weak as we age, but we don’t realise this when it happens to others. Hence, my parents bring up the other familiar line: “When you come to that age, you will then regret all this.” (Of course, if you are as pessimistic as I am, you will also believe that the human race will be wiped out in another 50 years). Atticus Finch said the same thing in a different context, which I think is still applicable:


You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Atticus Finch, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960)

All said and done, we are who we are because of something that your earlier generations have done, which doesn’t always have to be good, but if we have a roof over our head and food to eat, we have more than enough reasons to be grateful. However, rarely do we show it. If you consider their hospital bills to be too expensive, think of how much your schooling cost. If you think they are too dependent on you because of their health, think of yourself when you were a toddler. [1]

As each generation becomes more selfish and more pessimistic, people of my grandparents’ generation make me jealous to know how good humanity was then. I am amazed at how patient my father is with my grandparents, while I find it so hard [2]. Here’s the truth: they don’t even want that much from us. All they need is someone to talk to and someone to care for them. It is because we are all “too busy” to do these that old-age homes make money (such fancy ads they put on TV too!). Sure, you can’t talk to them about your crush or the latest Snow Patrol album, but I think spending more time with them is a big step to start with. You’ll be surprised at how much happiness such a small act can cause.

Footnotes:

[1] I think that is one of the reasons why I get emotional when watching the film Black, in the scene where Michelle visits her teacher, Debraj, after graduation, but he can’t even recognise her because of Alzheimer’s. There is a role-reversal here, as it is Michelle who now teaches Debraj how to speak. This scene, to me, best summarises all that I said about being grateful and showing love to the elderly (at least those close to you), even in – and especially in – their most pitiable moments.

[2] Add Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge? to your movie list if you haven’t seen it already. While it is basically a comedy, it is one of the best portrayals of how a man and his family treat an old relative, who only seems to bring them trouble.

To Act, or to be Acted Upon

On By kumareshkrIn College, LifeLeave a comment

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Abraham Lincoln

For a long time now, the go-to method of resistance among most people across the world has been through protests. Wikipedia’s page on “protest” lists numerous protests from the 1770s till 2019, along with different forms of protest. In recent times, the most relevant protests include the Hong Kong protests and the CAA protests across India.

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A protester throws a smoking tear gas shell back at police officers in Hong Kong

Clearly, there is a vast difference of opinions between people who support and/or take part in protests and people who don’t take part and think it’s a waste of everyone’s time. While that is a debate for another day, what I want to focus on – especially in the light of recent events – is the involvement of the Indian youth in the protests across the country, not only for the CAA but even otherwise.

It is better to protest than to accept injustice.

Rosa Parks

Why do protests happen in the first place? They are basically a way to express disagreement or grievance at some action taken by some authority, and the hope is that if the authority notices enough people being dissatisfied with a certain action, they would revoke it. Examples from the Gandhian era have proved that protests do work. But, of late, protests have had a negative connotation associated with them.

The reasons that are generally given are:

1) Who’s right and who’s not: It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand who are the ones actually serious about fighting for a cause and equally difficult to find out what you are actually fighting for in the first place. With social media being so accessible to everyone and (fake) news spreading around so fast, suddenly everyone seems to have become an expert in current affairs, and within hours you have six different versions of a single event, often contradicting each other.

2) “What’s the point?”: Protesting is something you have to invest your time and effort in and it involves taking a lot of risks (from being subjected to violence to getting arrested) in order to achieve something, which, at the end of the day, might still not happen. This often leads to apathy among youth and elders. There’s this inherent notion that any protest will eventually die down and people will give up, so why bother joining one in the first place? The more likely reason is that people are inherently selfish: if an issue doesn’t affect them directly, they will not care. “I already have so many things to worry about” is the standard excuse.

Of course, there are several other reasons, but one underlying factor is that we (yes, myself included) are scared. Scared of being hit, scared of having a “criminal record”, scared to forgo our daily routine to stand in the sun outside someone’s house and hold up placards, scared of being expelled, scared that if you share an anti-government post on Facebook, you might be denied a US visa…

From my own experiences, I can say that if you are part of the Indian middle class, you are invariably part of the category that abhors protests. Exceptions do exist, but, in general, most adults will be ultra cautious to avoid any association with any protester (let alone be near any venue of a protest), and if you are a student, your parents would have told you to study and not poke your nose into anything else. We are always risk-averse, almost always looking for a “known and safe path” and rarely trying stuff out of the ordinary. Try telling your parents that you want to help your friends in a protest and you will very likely get a retort along the lines of: “He has nothing better to do, but you have XYZ to do” or “If he jumps into a well, will you follow him?”

Films like Ramanaa – I’m hoping – were meant to inspire students to stand up for their rights, but in reality, there seems to be a negative vibe associated with student protesters. As students, we are told that our duty is only “to study”; it is as though we are too young to raise our voices for anything (again, something that we’ve been “trained” to do since childhood). It is ironic how one set of Indians shift the onus on the youth to lead the nation in the future, and another set of Indians think student activism is taboo. I wonder how many folks think Greta Thunberg is wasting her time instead of going to high school.

Not all protests may be for good causes – because what constitutes a “good” cause varies from person to person – but I think the older generation should have a little more faith in today’s youth when they stand up for a cause. You should look at protesters as people who are courageous enough to defend what they believe in, rather than as jobless people wasting their time. Yes, when you are in the late teens and early twenties you should study, but that does not mean you cannot have other priorities. In the last four years, my college was shown in bad light several times because people were shocked that “students of such a prestigious college” were indulging in protests. Well, why can’t they protest? Don’t they have their own opinions and concerns? If you don’t want to be part of a rally or you think it’s insignificant, then you can choose to sit out, but it’s still plain wrong to diss students who are part of protests. If you want to focus on academics then you can do so, but it’s wrong to be apathetic towards serious issues, even if you are not going to be affected. Having a neutral stance is different because it shows that you have at least understood the pros and cons of the action involved.

Of course, another concern would be something like: what if the youths become violent? Well, it all depends on the need, right? If a peaceful protest gives the desired result, well and good. If not, then someone might have to (literally or figuratively) pull the trigger to initiate the next step of action. Again, whether this act is one of courage or violence is debatable (that’s why you needed people like Bhagat Singh in the freedom struggle).

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Students offering roses to the police as a peace offering in Delhi during the CAA protests – very much in contrast to the earlier picture taken at HKG

People who are fighting or protesting for a good cause (which may be a subjective opinion) and more importantly, who know why they are doing so, should be encouraged any day – irrespective of whether they are a student or not. If a 16-year-old can inspire millions of humans to unite and fight against climate change, I think it’s time we broke the stereotype in this country. India is a democracy, and freedom of speech is a fundamental right. Even if the desired result is not achieved, it is still our duty to make our voices heard.

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The Last Drop

On By kumareshkrIn Environment, WaterLeave a comment

Water, water, everywhere, 

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, everywhere, 

Nor any drop to drink. 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

For the past several months, the country as a whole has been “reeling under severe water crisis” and “experiencing a crippling water shortage” and “brought to its knees by an acute water shortage” and whatnot (such fancy descriptions people come up with, but if only everyone understood the seriousness of the situation). So severe is the issue that even the popular TV show Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah incorporated this into its storyline. Arguably the most affected city is Chennai, where I live. With a population of 9.1 million and an average water consumption of 870 MLD (million litres a day), Chennai’s population has been struggling to cope with the water shortage that’s been prevalent for months now.

Is the problem with the apparently “delayed” monsoon? That’s what we want to believe because no one will accept that fact that the “stupid” common man and his greed are at the roots of this issue. Let’s first have a look at the current situation.

Chennai gets its water supply from four reservoirs, out of which only two still have water now. One is the Poondi reservoir, and the other is Veeranam lake, both of which will soon run dry as well. The only bright side for Chennai is that it makes good use of its two large desalination plants, supplying almost 200 MLD to the residents.

IT parks and malls are slowly shutting down, the former even asking employees to work from home. Colleges and schools are buying water from private tankers (who charge around INR 4500 for a 12000L load), as are other commercial enterprises. Where do they magically get water from? By exploiting the reserves of farmers outside the city and paying them a pittance for the water. Why are the farmers okay with this? They’re not, but they have no one to help them. When they raised complaints, the tankers went on a strike, bringing the city to an even more desperate situation, and hence, the complaints were ignored. Government tankers are much cheaper but if you go through the process of registering a request online in their site, it will take a week for delivery. A week!

Nevertheless, to a common observer, activities still seem to be going on normally. Offices and hotels are running, public transport is still functioning… it seems so normal, and that is where the problem is. Everyone thinks “someone will solve my problem”, the reason being “because I’m paying for it”. They want their work to go on uninterrupted irrespective of what goes on around them.

The only way one’s mentality changes is when he suddenly is at the receiving end of the problem, no longer shielded from the water crisis. In my case, it was when we were told that the hostel would receive supply only once a day. When you are faced with a situation where you open the tap in the morning and there may not be water coming out, that’s when it hits you that something is wrong.

It’s about time people realise that just the rains won’t solve problems, and more importantly, they need to get their priorities straight. Running the AC system in a monstrosity of an office building cannot take precedence over families in a building who could conservatively use the same water for a couple of days. Filling your private swimming pool is not what you should be doing at this time, no matter how much money you have to buy a tanker full of water. At the rate of consumption, there is no way this rain will fill up the reservoirs. In the entire city, only a small fraction of buildings employ rainwater harvesting well, while others just look out the windows sipping tea (or Kumbakonam degree coffee). It is going to take a repeat of the Chennai floods to replenish the groundwater in the city. On that note, it’s annoying to see people be so immature and ignorant about monsoon. The official Tamil Nadu Weatherman’s Facebook page is filled with comments like “Why is it not raining in Anna Nagar?”

The damage done through land reclamation and poor maintenance of water bodies in the city is irrevocable… or so it would seem. It is highly encouraging to see efforts such as the people’s movement to restore the Chitlapakkam lake. Here is another inspirational story. Seeing volunteer groups spearhead such a movement is a welcome change compared to the typical Indian mentality, which is to wait till a crisis and then go “oh-oh”. When has the motto ever been “Prevention is better than cure?” The places which get hit by floods suffer losses and deaths every year; Chennai has had water problems for years together and effectively nothing has been done to save or improve groundwater. If anything, people do halfhearted patch-work and shrug their shoulders later saying, “Well, I tried,” which might get you a B instead of a D in a test, but certainly won’t save lives.

When rainwater failed, the city turned towards train water. A special train has been arranged from the town of Jolarpettai (in Vellore) to Chennai, carrying 2.5 million litres of water on a daily basis. The train has two engines to speed up the delivery process, which, including the loading and unloading time, takes 12 hours. Yet again, this is only a temporary solution. On a related topic, there was a news item last month which said that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister refused the “generous offer” made by the Kerala government for a one-time supply of 2 million litres of water. To those of you who were seething in anger at his refusal, actually think about it first! The daily requirement of the city is 870 million litres, and a single supply of 2 million litres is like you making a “generous offer” of 20 bucks to someone who needs 20 lakhs for a surgery.

The special water train

The only way out right now is to work on alternate techniques, like desalination plants. We seem to be mentally programmed to look for short-term solutions and never to deal with issues that don’t directly affect us. The majority of us still think of climate change as “yeah that thing which is supposed to be dangerous and all…” or as a certain leader put it, “a change in the weather” either due to lack of awareness or simply because we don’t care.

It is not an exaggeration to assume that this crisis is one of many such “symptoms” of the exponential population burst, and also of global warming and climate change that will eventually destroy our planet. It makes me wonder if the protagonists in fictional tales actually “save the world” by stopping some villain who wants to wipe out the human population. What do you say, Ethan Hunt and Robert Langdon?

So unless a miracle happens, the air conditioners will still be in full blast, the cars will still burn barrels of petrol, and factories will continue spewing tonnes of toxic waste into the air until the day all of them are submerged under water.

AI – Actually Insignificant or Apparently Indispensable? (Part 2)

On By kumareshkrIn AI, Future, ML1 Comment

Part 1 gave an insight into my thoughts and understanding of AI and ML, and some developments that I found interesting. In this article, I’ll focus on and bring out some points to answer the question, “Can a robot be programmed well enough to completely replace a human in the job sector?”

Here is something else to think about: can a machine feel its own worth or the value of its work? Can a machine empathise with a situation to write a song or story based on that, or can it only generate Markov text if given enough data? Can a machine appreciate or understand the consequences of its actions? Given that it can never have a “conscience”, what will it base its decisions on?

Replacing humans with machines has not only reduced the errors in critical areas (probably), but the respect one has for humans also seems to have gone down, simply because it is a machine that’s now doing the job. Simple example, cricket. Earlier, the umpire used to have all the power in the world when it came to making decisions, and that’s how he earned his respect. Now, nobody cares about his decision; the moment you think he is wrong, you just ask a machine to do his job.

Going back to the other question that I brought up earlier, what are the jobs that humans need to focus on? Given below are two images. The first one depicts the kind of jobs that most people think will be popular – focused majorly on computing and data analytics. The list in the second image, in my view, is much more diverse and much more realistic, proving again that the future has scope for a lot more than just AI. Jobs like solar and wind energy technicians, as well as bicycle repairers (the last one is also my personal favourite) will become more prominent to fight the energy crisis in the world. I’m surprised that the list doesn’t mention doctors, but instead mentions a variety of jobs focusing on people’s health and wellness – physical and mental.

Source: “21 Jobs of the Future: A Guide to Getting – and Staying – Employed for the Next 10 Years”
Source: https://www.trade-schools.net/articles/best-careers-for-the-future.asp

So some of the not-so-popular but crucial areas where we need expertise in the future are mainly energy management, waste management, medicine, psychology and the most underrated job of all, teaching. You can never have too many of these people.

I might not be familiar with the first four categories mentioned above, but the last one is something I have thought about. One of the biggest flexibilities as far as education is concerned is the concept of online learning i.e. the fact that you don’t have to go to a physical classroom to learn. Nevertheless, the teacher is still human. In Finland, people have tried something new: a robot teacher. Is this beneficial or is this nothing more than a small-scale trial run? That will depend on what we want a teacher to be. Someone who just lectures and grades? Yes, a robot can do that, probably better than a human. But if you see a good teacher as someone who motivates, guides and nurtures beyond what’s required of the position – or on a very simple scale, someone who is capable of getting the attention of five people in front of them – then only a human can do it.

I guess what I feel is that AI and machine learning and data science might end up being only a tiny fraction of the factors that shape human life in the next decade. Moreover, it’s not just jobs which are the concern. The entire planet is under danger of population explosion, global warming and other related phenomena. Whether or not jobs exist, humans will keep being born, at an alarming rate too.

Nevertheless, AI has numerous positive aspects too. It can help assist humans – even if not replace – in various ways; it may take away some jobs, it might bring in new ones. While there is a flock of people going gaga over these areas of interest, I feel that there are many more areas to explore which people are not aware of. So, will AI be absolutely indispensable or will it be actually insignificant? Time will tell. 

AI – Actually Insignificant or Apparently Indispensable? (Part 1)

On By kumareshkrIn AI, Future, ML1 Comment

Twenty-five years ago, in 1984, James Cameron predicted a world in 2029 where machines would take over and humans would form a small army to fight against the machines. That’s ten years away. Of course, there have been dozens of films which showcase the Earth at different points of time in the future, each one more dystopian than the first, but I think in all our minds, there is the troubling question of “Where are we headed?”

A scene from the film The Terminator (1984), which shows the world in 2029

While thinking about every possible aspect of the human race and planet Earth ten years from now is potentially an endless discussion, one topic that intrigues me most is that of artificial intelligence. First up, I must admit that I am a novice when it comes to the plethora of developments, advancements and subtleties of machine learning and AI, but as a novice, or as someone who has never been addicted to or sucked into ML and AI, here are some thoughts that go on in my head.


Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

Albert Einstein

Here is a quote we’re all familiar with. Why do I use it here? Because if you are an optimist, you will look at the scenario today and claim that machines are becoming more intelligent. If you are a pessimist – like me – you will claim that (the majority of) humans are becoming dumber. Of course, both cases could be true. At a time when most people are becoming increasingly lazy and incompetent, a small group of humans is training lifeless machines to take over.

This is my understanding of how machine learning works (Here is a formal definition by Wikipedia):

  1. A machine must be able to collect or use data that’s fed to it about some task or scenario.
  2. It must then be able to make a decision or act accordingly upon encountering unseen data in relation to the same task in the future.
  3. Most importantly, a machine must be able to learn from the data to also be able to take the right decisions when it encounters situations that it hasn’t been trained against.

The first two points are more related to automation, while the third is the reason behind the “learning” in machine learning, more in relation with AI. Here is a definition of AI that I found interesting: “A system’s ability to correctly interpret external data, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation.”

Currently, the trending words and phrases everywhere include the words used above too. The first thing I started thinking was, “Why is there a sudden craze for automation and AI now? Starting with the assembly line, bit by bit, machines have been replacing tasks that only humans used to do.” Then it struck me (after glancing the cover of a book lying around at home, which reads What To Do When Machines Do Everything): the idea now is not to just replace humans with machines that can do repeated, mechanical tasks (which the advent of robots is taking care of); the idea is to make machines do… everything.

From our school days, we’ve been told that we humans are the “most advanced” species on the planet because of our capacity to think and the ability to show emotion. The other crucial features are, of course, the ability to take a decision and the gift to be creative. Suppose a machine can do all of these, what’s next? This makes us wonder what other feature is unique to humans that a machine cannot imitate.

The last point is the major factor in deciding which jobs humans will have left to do. Workers in factories are increasingly being replaced by robots. So are drivers and delivery men. So what are the areas which thrive on the decision-making capacity and creativity of humans? Law? Well, if decisions are going to be taken only by referring to past incidents and rules, then a machine can be programmed to do that.

There are fantasies which involve machines writing poems, authoring books, teaching, and feeling empathy. Here is a fun website to look at – one where you have to predict whether a given poem is written by a human or a bot. Will there be a time when a machine can direct a movie? Here’s an interesting article, about the first AI-made trailer for a film. Is this the first step or is this just an experiment with not much scope further? I, for one, believe that all of these fantasies are near-impossible to achieve. These are all areas which rely on one’s creativity and artistic sense. In theory, maybe, given enough randomised trials and enough data, a machine might come up with something that can be called a “poem”, but it will never feel “real”, to those who read it.

So far, I’ve given some of my ideas on how I understand the concepts of ML and AI and related topics, along with some articles which talk about the recent developments in the field. Part 2 will focus more on the jobs of the future, and whether or not a machine has all it takes to completely replace a human in certain sectors.

“I’m patient” vs “Impatient”

On By kumareshkrIn Life, WorkLeave a comment

The curse of our generation – and every generation which follows, if any – is the obsession with instant gratification. We want something, and we want it as soon as possible. We have gone from “The end justifies the means” to “What means? Just skip to the end!” Everyone wants only the final result and in many situations, the efforts are rendered useless if the final requirement isn’t met. What does this do? It tempts (or even forces) people to look for shortcuts and quick fixes to every problem – something that makes it appear as if they did the job when all they did was patchwork. 


Kashtapadaama edhuvum kidaikaadhu. Kashtapadaama kedachathu ennikum nilaikaadhu.

– Annamalai (“Annamalai”, 1992)

The above quote is one of “Superstar” Rajinikanth’s countless punch lines – and this one actually makes a lot of sense. It translates to, “You’ll gain nothing without hard work. If you do, it won’t last for long.” Hundreds of people quote this and use this as captions for their profile pictures. Ask them if they apply this to their own lives and most of them go, “Uhh…”

One of the major reasons – if not the most influential one – that necessitates such shortcuts is procrastination. A quick fix is what you do when you have only one day left to finish something that needs a week to finish, because your mind goes, “Yeah, I’ll have enough time,” instead of, “I have time now; let me get started.” For an entertaining talk on procrastination, watch this. As Tim Urban says, we all have a rational decision-maker inside our heads and the notorious “instant-gratification monkey”. 

One thing I firmly believe is that punishments will push you further than rewards (or “reinforcements”) ever will. It is not the healthiest strategy to follow, but it has a sure-shot chance of getting things done. It can be applied at work or at home. “If you don’t clean your room, you will not get dinner,” will have a better effect in getting your sibling or child to do the chore rather than, “If you clean the room, you can go to a movie.” At work, knowing that you could be sacked if you don’t do your job pushes you more than knowing that you may be rewarded or promoted if you work properly. 

While the intention behind deadlines is – with good intention – to get a job done on time, there is no bar set for quality. The guy who stays up all night to submit a shoddy report on time will heave a sigh of relief, being proud of this “feat” but he will never understand that it was wrong to procrastinate in the first place. The reason? The quality of his work is “good enough” for him. That’s where the difference comes in: do you want to be good or good enough?

For each of us, there are different areas we want to excel in and some areas where we just want to get by (chalta hai attitude, as it is otherwise known). We put in the required effort (or at least try to) in the former category, while we look for easier alternatives in the latter category. A guy who is genuinely interested in a particular class will be studious, attempt all the assignments, and sometimes even do some reading and exploring beyond what he is expected to learn. If one just wants to get the course over with, he will pull an all-nighter before the exam and get half the answers from the person sitting next to him and consider the problem solved. 

While this attitude towards problems isn’t something I like, I think it is inevitable that this is how people will think. The people who have a problem are the ones who think that everything in life does have a quick fix. What’s their motivation? One, it is easy. Two, it seems to work best when others are ignorant or gullible. These are the people whose priority is to look for loopholes.

To those of you who still think: “Yeah, but it is going to take me forever to learn something and be good at it,” especially if you are familiar with the “10000-hour rule”, here’s something that will motivate you – this talk by Josh Kaufman. His research claims that you can be “reasonably good” at practically anything, with 20 hours of committed practice – that’s 40 minutes every day for a month. Completely doable.


A woman approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”
“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.
“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”

You may not be a Picasso with 20 hours of practice, but you don’t have to be a Picasso. Assuming what Kaufman said is true (or even consider 30 hours) why don’t people do it? Because there always exists an easier way out. And only when that easy method fails – which will happen – do people even start to think of plan B’s, when in fact, their plan B’s should have been plan A’s. People don’t take the long route because, as I said earlier, only the results seem to be valued, and not the effort. 

The other fundamental flaw is that in today’s world, speed is given priority over quality. Despite all the clichéd stuff you have heard about how “nothing comes easy”, people, in general, are becoming increasingly impatient to get results. They have resorted to, “Do whatever you can in 2 days” when ideally, it should be, “Take however long you want to solve the problem properly.” At the current pace at which things are developing, no one can afford to say the second statement. 

Sal Khan of Khan Academy addresses a similar issue with education in his TED talk. When you set deadlines based on time and not the result, people will have no choice but to find a substandard way to arrive at the solution.  The end goal has to be set right in the first place. Is your goal to learn something from a course or to crack the exam? Is your goal to learn to play the keyboard properly or just learn one song for an event and never practise again?

The problem today is not just with the people, but with the system. Only when people are given the incentive to put in committed efforts – irrespective of the final result – and when people focus on doing things with the intent of gaining some knowledge, academic or otherwise – and not to get something over with – will people learn to appreciate whatever they do, and do it well. 

When emojis become emotions…

On By kumareshkrIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Have you noticed how some people seem to be very different over text and in person? You see them always online on Messenger and actively engaging in discussions, and yet, when you actually meet them, they struggle to start a conversation. On the other hand, there can be a person who sticks to laconic one-word replies over text but talks a lot in person (which may or may not be a good thing!).

Why is this the case? Maybe someone is not spontaneous enough to quickly start a topic in person, but when it is through a written form, they can afford to think and get their words right. I’ve also noticed that there are some conversations that people prefer to have over text, like an impending fight or a quick recollection of memories after spending time together (“Did you have fun?”, “Send me the pictures, please!” and so on). I, for one, always prefer to text a person if it is the first time I am talking to them. 

Not only do these chat platforms act as a medium to communicate with your friends and relatives who live far away, but they have become the primary source of communication for most things. As an obvious consequence, we become addicted.

If my father sees me glued to my phone, he says, “When I was your age, we never had phones, you know. We spent the entire day without internet,” to which I retort, “Can you do the same now?” I immediately get a ‘don’t argue with me, son,’ look. Despite the point he was trying to make, it is true that WhatsApp (and suchlike) has become a necessary evil that we cannot stay away from. 

I’m still amazed at how my mother manages to carry out so many things at home every day, and still finds time to relax. I think a major factor is that she (vehemently) refuses to have neither a WhatsApp account nor a Facebook account (and yet, as far as staying in touch with friends goes, she can call a friend after four months and talk as if they had been exchanging news every other day!). That’s where she gets all the “extra” time from. 

Think of how much time you spend on social media every day. How many messages do you think you send and receive on a daily basis? In fact, for WhatsApp, you can actually see the number of exchanges for each chat. I admit I was shocked at those figures! (See footnotes)

When you talk to someone in person, you can often gauge their moods by paying attention to their voice modulation, volume and facial expressions. In text, these three factors don’t work, but there are other indicators. If you have been texting long enough, you’ll know that these seem to be the three ways of saying the same thing, but they are all different:

  1. K
  2. Ok/Okay
  3. Okay 🙂 

The first indicates either an addiction to common text abbreviations, or dislike towards what the other person is saying (“I didn’t like that movie you suggested”, “K”) – and the receiver is supposed to take the hint. The second is the normal way of saying it. The third additionally indicates that the sender is in a good mood. Any other emoji can be interpreted appropriately. It is that easy to fake emotions over a chat. A message sent with an emoji indicates a mood different than one indicated by the same message sans emojis. 

So many things can be “categorised” in this manner. Here’s another example: in any chat group, there will be the following types of people (and you can come up with other such categories using your imagination). I’ve acted as each of them in different groups myself. 

  1. The enthusiast: that person who is constantly active on the group, posting, replying, sharing… he’s most often the key reason why a group is active (or muted). 
  2. The spammer: the guy who only keeps forwarding chain messages, publicising other events, clubs etc.  
  3. The lurker: he/she just reads the messages and has an idea of what’s going on, but never replies to any nor says something on his/her own.
  4. The human Dirac delta function: This is the person who remains a lurker for months together, who suddenly posts a flurry of messages and becomes the most active member for a couple of days, before becoming dormant again. You’re not always happy when this person resurfaces. 

Isn’t it weird how ego issues come up when texting? The most common one is, “Why am I always the one starting the conversation? Do you not want to talk to me?” This then quickly leads you to keep checking your phone every now and then for an expected response. “Have they read my message yet?” “He is online, but why is he not responding?” Before you know it, you are getting negatively affected by all these thoughts that you build up on your own. Moreover, WhatsApp had made it easier for those who don’t want to be nagged by giving an option to remove your last seen and the blue tick, which makes another set of people a lot more anxious than they should be. If it wasn’t for this, the word “seenzoning” would have never come into existence.  

When you are with someone in person, then there are new issues, starting with the so-called “awkward silence.” I’m curious: since when did silence become awkward? Why do people have an urge to keep some conversation going? That is the reason this quote below is something I follow, and I have felt this “comfort” only with very few people. 


That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special: you can just shut the f*** up for a minute and comfortably share silence.

Mia Wallace (“Pulp Fiction”, 1994)

“Sharing silence” does NOT mean that you will resort to your social media accounts when you don’t find a topic to talk about with the other person. It is when you are satisfied just with the other’s company. I find it irritating when someone is talking to me and simultaneously looking at their WhatsApp to talk to someone else (“I’m still listening to what you say”, is not an excuse that I buy). 

I know it is easier said than done to control our time on social media and online communication platforms. The least we can do is to put the phone aside and learn to appreciate a person’s presence when they are with us.

Footnotes:

[1] Here’s what you do on WhatsApp:
1) Menu -> Settings -> Data and Storage Usage -> Storage Usage
Then choose whichever chat you want and see the total number of messages, images, and other statistics. (I bet there are at least 2-3 chats where the numbers will astound you). 

[2] As an interesting coding activity, try to do this (some might consider this going overboard, but nevertheless):
1) Export a WhatsApp chat as a text file (Go to the chat -> Menu -> More -> Export 
2) Write a program to read the file (line by line) and count the number of messages that each of you sent (either a two-person chat or a group chat). You can then plot a histogram between message frequency and people in the latter case. 
3) Copy each person’s chat into separate text files. Now you can do some crazy stuff like counting the number of emojis and whatnot that only one person sent.  
P.S.: This certainly helped me revive my coding practice, and of course, gave me a lot of fun. If you are a coding whiz, then this is a trivial exercise.

[3] To work on your number-crunching skills, here’s a case study I came across, that you can try working out on your own. (Link)   

Pause your résumé; resume your life

On By kumareshkrIn College, LifeLeave a comment

We’ve all been in Barney’s position, haven’t we? If not now, definitely so sometime in our past. Depending on whom you ask, you will either be told that it is okay to still search for that true passion, or you will be criticised for not being goal-oriented. Now, to contemplate and discuss how one would actually find his or her life’s purpose or goal is a topic for another day (or post). This article is more about my experience regarding the pressure people (myself included) face when it comes to taking up any new challenge or task, never mind the “ultimate” purpose. 


The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best and that you have gotten the most out of what you had to give. 

Howard Cosell

We’re always told how competition is a good thing, how it brings out the best in us and pushes us further. What no one does tell us is what to gain from the competition. In the environment I am in, competition seems to lead to more losses than gains. The reason? People judge you by what you have done, not how you do something; people look at your “achievements”, not who you are as a person. Your entire life till this point has to be summarised in a single sheet of paper: your résumé. 

Be it for placements or internships, you are now characterised by a sheet of paper with some fancy formatting and even fancier words and numbers. This sheet will be scrutinised and inspected by multiple people and finally graded to indirectly say, “Your life has a score of 4/5.” Crazy as it may seem, this is what happens, pretty much everywhere. 

So what does this lead to? People now live a significant amount of their college lives and work lives with their major motivation being, “This will be a good resume point.” How many of them actually like what they are doing? These are the people who cook up a “mission statement” two days before their interview (which will last till the moment they walk out of the room). This is the same reason why LinkedIn profiles look like this: 

You project yourself as someone you are not because you are not proud of who you are. You are not happy with what you do. Then why do you still do it? Think of how many times you have coached yourself to repeat a statement that you don’t mean at all just because you know it is what someone wants to hear?


We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.

The narrator (“Fight Club”, 1999)

It is completely okay to try your hand at multiple things – some will click, some won’t. What is important is that you like what you do. We are so obsessed with what the end result of an activity will be that we don’t enjoy the journey. Think of an online course you took up – were you excited that you would learn something new or were you thinking about how you would include it in your resume once you complete the course? 

It is annoying when I tell people what I do for fun or what my hobbies are and they ask, “So have you thought of making money with it?” or “I don’t think you can include that in your resume, no?” That’s not the point! What’s wrong in doing something for myself – and I don’t mean just lazing around or binging TV shows – every now and then?

List out all the activities or talents you have – academic, music, sports, anything. Are you happy with those? Make a separate list of all the good qualities you think you possess or have been told so. Now think of all the times you have compared yourself to someone else seeing all the “cool” things they are doing. There’s an internal trigger which immediately goes, “That guy seems so productive. What am I even doing?” All your strengths suddenly seem trivial. Doesn’t that seem stupid? There are enough people in the world to put you down. Why do you want to do it yourself? 

It is okay not to be the best at everything you do. It is fine if your best friend has a job offer from Google but you don’t even know what the “I’m feeling lucky” button does. There’s a reason why behind every “I’m so happy for you!”, there is a little envy. We feel inferior simply because we don’t appreciate ourselves enough. Relative grading can happen in classes but lives cannot be compared that way. Just because your friend is interested in and is good at something that also happens to give good pay, but you are good at something else, does not mean that these should be compared and you should feel bad about yourself. 

No one likes to be called a “dabbler” or a “jack-of-all-trades”. Here’s what I think – it is okay to be one of those rather than being someone stuck doing something you don’t like. It is good to be decently skilled at multiple things and focus on a few of them based on the time and purpose.



When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

John Lennon

It is high time we stop gauging our lives based on others’ expectations and others’ achievements. Your life has innumerable intangible qualities that cannot be compared – good and bad. Value the good ones, admit and change the bad ones. Stop doing things so that the result can be seen on paper; do the things which make you feel good. I like to believe that the activities of the latter category will always bear fruit. 

Remember the moment or live in the moment?

On By kumareshkrIn Life6 Comments

But then, the morning comes and we turn into pumpkins.

-Celine (“Before Sunrise”, 1995)

Put yourself in Cinderella’s place for a minute. You’ve just had a magical night – you couldn’t have asked for anything more. Next morning, however, it is all a memory; it has come and gone and you can never re-live it again. How would you feel? Pretty upset, right? The fact that you just had the greatest night of your life now seems… irrelevant. 

Here is a similar thought experiment: let’s say you have an opportunity to spend the next 24 hours with any person you want – your crush, your spouse, anyone. The catch is that, by the end of the period, you will never see the other person for the rest of your life. Would you still take that chance? 

Here’s the funny part: most of us would not. The fact that there would be no more time spent with the person and no more memories beyond those 24 hours outweighs the experience we would get to have in that time. We seem to appreciate what we take away from a particular experience rather than the experience itself. Why does this happen? 

This is because of the two “selves” we all have – the remembering self and the experiencing self. Any article related to this will have the name of psychologist Daniel Kahneman cited, and so I shall do the same. 


Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.” 

― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

In his TED talk, Kahneman explains that each human has a remembering self – this is the part of you that thrives on memories of the past and whatever you remember from your life so far – and an experiencing self – the part of you that is living in the moment.

Now, a “moment”, by definition, lasts around three seconds. Not much happens in three seconds, right? This is exactly the reason why the remembering self is so dominant; everything we do – the collection of thousands of moments – is done by the experiencing self, but the important incidents and moments we actually register is done by the remembering self.  

The consequence? An entire experience is condensed into the handful of things we remember. This is the reason why the beginning and the end of anything should be the highlights; those are what we tend to remember most. That is also precisely why we become so obsessed with photos and mementoes and souvenirs – paraphernalia that contribute to the memories. In the process of adjusting your DSLR lens or changing the image filters in your phone, you compromise on your experience of the very thing you are trying to capture through a picture (I am guilty of this too).  


Photos are for people who can’t remember. Drink some ginkgo and let the photos burn. In fact, let everything burn and imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing. It’s kind of exhilarating, isn’t it?

Ryan Bingham (“Up in the Air”, 2009)

Here’s your second thought experiment: you don’t have to burn your photos but imagine you wake up tomorrow with your entire photo collection in your hard drive and phone memory erased. It causes a proper jolt, doesn’t it? Probably a similar situation with my laptop is what triggered me to write this article.

I admit it is comforting to look back at old photos or old chats and experience a moment of “aah, such wonderful memories”. Doing this once in a while is fine, but do it too often and you miss out on something more.  

Think of how much time you spend just recalling old memories or planning for the future. As Kahneman says, the future is nothing but anticipated memories, so it is again the remembering self at play here. As my friend once said, the problem with relationships is that most of the time, the people think about either “where do we go from here?” or “why don’t we do those anymore?”, and on both counts, they miss out on the present. 


Memory can change the shape of a room or the colour of a car. It’s an interpretation, not a record. Memories can be changed or distorted and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.

Leonard Shelby (“Memento”, 2000)

Think of how many times you “try” to alter your memory: you try to forget something, you convince yourself of something that need not be true… but you can never alter experiences. This brings us to the question of what truly defines who we are today – is our current persona shaped by our experiences, or memories of those experiences? 

The times in our life when our experiencing self is most dominant is when we take up endeavours which cause pleasure or thrill – amusement park rides, adventure sports, and even sex! This seems to be the reason why people end up doing absurd stunts. Driving at 100 km/h on a highway, blindfolded, would appear outrageous in retrospect (if you survive), but the time when you are driving – the time when you live in the moment – cannot be substituted, cannot be tampered with. The same would go with meditation. If done properly, those thirty minutes is when you allow your mind to go blank; it is a whole new feeling altogether, about which you have no clear memory afterwards. 

I think it’s an innate aspect of human nature to hold on to things that last rather than enjoy evanescent incidents, and that’s why we value memories far more than we value experiences. Looking at the Kahneman quote, it is a shock when it hits you that the part of you that does everything, and the part of you that thinks you did everything, are not the same. I think we would all be (very) different people when we learn to live in the moment.