Posted on by Gotamist

The power of renunciation

Successful leaders in India have lived in poverty (Gandhi) or are bachelors (Modi).  Others have been wealthy and given it up. Millions of people have followed these leaders in spiritual life or even in political life. No one can be well off and still be a great spiritual leader.  

This is in contrast to the West where leaders are not renunciates.  It might even be a disqualification.  Consider that politicians often have to show a spouse and child to even be electable.  A bachelor has a smaller chance of getting elected and someone who’s celibate is just….strange.

Political leaders can be wealthy in the West and many saints of the church were kings – no such case in India.  No historical king is revered as a saint.  All saints were penniless.

This could be some fundamental difference in world views of the East and the West. 

Posted on by Gotamist

Exercise is a lonely endeavor

Those of you who are young adults perhaps don’t relate to this.  After all, for many who do fitness activities or sports, that is self-reported as their main social group (sports club, crossfit class etc). However, as one gets older, is more advanced in their careers, is not single, has children, exercise gets increasingly hard.

It is my finding that there is minimal support from other close stakeholders in your life as you have to find time to exercise from one of three things – work, family or sleep.  The last of these works directly against the gains of exercise. As to the other, your workplace is primarily interested in your work product delivered today and not so much in what you need to do today to ensure that work can continue to be delivered later.  Likewise, every member of your family (if they like you), would rather have you spend time and effort directly on family activities and serving family members directly than on investing in being able to do so in the future.  So, I find that on almost any given day, I, and I alone, am advocating for exercise and everyone else close to me is begrudgingly putting up with it (or complaining in some way).

Everybody appreciates a healthy partner, a healthy family member, a healthy friend, a healthy employee or colleague.  Yet, nobody is willing to cut you some slack from the time they think they are owed to let you put in the sweat for it.  It could be just the usual shortsightedness applied to their own benefit (cake now is better than health in 3 weeks – same idea applied to another’s health) or it could just be blindness to the fact that they are also beneficiaries and seeing the exercise as sheer selfish gain for you.

I remember, as a teenager or a young man, hearing the word “willpower” used in the context of exercise – as in, getting through a physically taxing exercise needs willpower.

Now, of course, I am desperate for exercise and relish every opportunity I have for it.  The exercise of willpower is in only two things – a. Setting aside other things (and the inevitable scathing criticism because of that) to get exercise and b.  Using judgment to make sure I am not getting carried away in making too much time for exercise.

Posted on by Gotamist

In a democracy, it’s the wishes of the people that get carried out

That would seem like an obvious and uncontroversial statement, but all too often, when I say something like that, people act like I am a naïve child. I am told it is the agenda of the rich, the white people, the jews, the blacks, the military-industrial complex, the tech billionaires or some other behind-the-scenes “they” who control the government.

Apparently, it is never the wishes of the people that are carried out. I humbly submit that most people, when they make such an analysis, are confusing “what I want” with “what the people want”.  It’s not uncommon to hear supporting evidence like, a) “I didn’t vote for this” b) “I don’t know anybody who supports this” or c) “polls show that a majority of Americans oppose this”.

Let’s set aside c) for a minute.  It should be pretty obvious that a) does not mean that the thing is not supported by the people.  As for b), it could just mean one lives in a bubble or echo chamber.

c) is a bit more complex.  That happens too.

It so happens that the problems facing a government are in very many different dimensions.  Let’s say 15.  But if there are only 2 or 3 major parties, unless individual voters have views that coincide exactly with their party slates, invariably, the 2 parties cannot align with their own voters on all 15 topics. How do the parties choose their positions, then?  They might appeal to what the majority of Americans think.  That let’s them appeal to people currently outside their party.  Or the party might choose to push a position on an issue that aligns with the majority of voters of their own party. Or…they might even choose a position unpopular with even a majority of their own supporters, if that guarantees them the support of a small set of voters for whom the issue is very important if they can be sure that the rest can live with that.  That is, it’s not as important an issue for the others.  These are the cases where they might be accused on “pandering to the base” or “selling out” depending on whether they sided with the radicals or the moderates.

The key thing I want to note, though, is that in none of a), b) or c) do we see any of the powers mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay. Those allegations are simply an easy, intellectually lazy thing to reach for.

Posted on by Gotamist

Equality – outcome or access

It is a prevalent view in some quarters that equality is good.  In particular, equality of outcome. And a lot of energy is expended on reducing inequality.  And the measures are generally some statistic out of a CDF of income over the population. Such as the Gini coefficient or “the top 1% of the population makes X% of the money” etc.

One of the necessary conditions of a growing and innovating economy is inequality and the opportunity to make more money than others, a lot more money even.  So, the SJW program of trying to eliminate inequality entirely is actually an obstacle to growth.  

Does that mean there can be no social justice along when there is growth? No. Just that equality is a poor way to measure social justice.  In particular, most people can agree that equal opportunity or equal access is, in fact, a strong form of social justice.  Of course, this can instantly be attacked by those with a socialist bent as merely a smokescreen for injustice.  “There is never equal access” and “How does one know it’s there, anyway?”

The way to know the presence of equal access is by measuring actual outcomes. There will always be inequality, but if we find that when we slice the population along dimensions of various immutable characteristics – race, gender, location of birth etc, these buckets don’t show a difference, that is actually a fantastic result.   That is statistical equality instead of strong form equality (homogeneity).  To use a metaphor that the left actually loves in the context of immigration – we’d love to see a salad bowl (different parts of the big bowl look alike though different square inches may look different) rather than a smoothie which actually has forced complete equality.

One of the dimensions on which NOT to slice the population is something like deciles of income.  There will invariably be difference in even the fairest societies. To stick with the salad analogy, that would be creating a curve where all the spinach pieces are one side, followed by the cherry tomatoes, followed by the apple chunks etc.  Obviously, different parts of this curve will look very different even though the salad was well mixed in its original state.  If you use such a curve, the only solution is the smoothie.  And that will kill the economy – a topic for another day.

Posted on by Gotamist

Three things learned at work

Having been in some kind of workplace for decades, I have learned that one needs to be excellent towards the people who works with one, to paraphrase Bill and Ted. Here are three:

The first one is well known, and here I am merely confirming that I have found it true experientially: If you are a boss, manager or owner, then if you value an employee, then you have to be proactive in making sure they are happy, productive, successful, feel safe and having a meaningful work life.  If you don’t you stand a good chance of losing that employee.

The second one is less well known: If you are employee and you appreciate your boss, then you have be proactive in making sure they are productive, successful and finding the workplace a good place for them.  A different version of this is well known to even (and maybe especially) cynics – make sure you keep your boss happy.  But this conventional wisdom is centered you.  If the boss is happy with you, then they will not fire you. And maybe arrange for higher pay and promotions for you.  But what I’m talking about is different. It applies to senior folks that you actually appreciate.  Help them so that they stay. 

And the last is one that people think least about: If you appreciate a peer, try to create conditions so that they stay and don’t leave or get forced out.  Because they are not in your chain of command, it is easy to think that there is little you can do or need to do.  The peer sinks or swims based on their competence.  But that’s not quite true.  You are part of their environment and you contribute towards making it a desirable one or a poisonous one.

Posted on by Gotamist

Why majorities go with the right and minorities with the left..

As a general statement, of course, not individuals. Before writing, let me cite some examples. In some societies, some demographic divisions are also political fault lines. For example, in the US, race is a factor. In India, religion is (and a note for casual Western pundits – no, it’s not caste).

And one finds the phenomenon that the economic right (similar policies across countries) are aligned with the majority while the economic left is aligned with the minorities. Locally, this might be mistaken for the a certain religion being aligned with the right. But adherents of the same religion, where in a minority, tend to go with the left.

The reason fundamentally lies in approaches to growth vs. inequality. Minorities have a real historical experience of having power and wealth captured away from them and the entire society’s growth is less of a concern to them than reducing how much they lag behind. Leftism, with its promise of equality is an attractive proposition. Lack of growth is not a real threat if you actually believe that the country’s GDP growth is going to mean nothing to you.

The majority, on the other hand, would like the country to grow economically. Both because they have greater confidence that this will translate to their personal gain and because they might not as personally take much issue with minorities being left behind. Growth first, is the main call and the demands of leftists and minorities are seen as annoying or even the very thing that is holding the country back from greatness.

There you have it!

Posted on by Gotamist

Science is…art?

I remember wanting to be a scientist since the time I was in kindergarten.  The people who advanced human knowledge.  They all seemed people highly deserving of admiration and respect. The ones who remained in human memory for hundreds or even thousands of years even as kings and emperors of the moment simply vanished from memory.

This remained unshaken, reinforced by everything I learned at school, everything seen in government messaging.  While, as a child, all adults seemed rich to me, I came to learn over time that some jobs pay more than being a teacher or even a scientist.  But who wanted that? Wasn’t that the same filthy lucre that we were taught to despise?  Going to an MBA program seemed like something that no one seeking a meaningful life would do.  Artists, leaders – meaningful.  Scientists and mathematicians too.  Doctor, nurse, engineer etc – noble enough and not evil, but basically not a creative person. And the rest, well blue collar and vocational, right? Not something to aspire to but fine, a way to make a living. And then the high-paying but professional careers such as lawyer, executive with an MBA – society had taught me that these were scum – greedy and soulless.

Over time, I came to realize that this is just a certain ideology taught to us.  In fact, engineers, workers and business people for the most part built the actual world we live in.  Nevertheless, I was not going to live that ordinary life, was I?  No, I was going to be a scientist, wear a tweed jacket, inspire children, be an intellectual, be a bulwark against the ignorant dogma of the religious right wing.  Of course, I believed in evolution – i’d have to be a bigot not to, right?  

As for material benefits, who cares about money.  I was not so deluded as to want to be rich! How much money do I need anyway?  I could easily be content with a permanent steady pay that placed me squarely in the middle class (yes, I told myself, this was a selfless acceptance rather than a craving for something truly elusive in the world – job security) and the title of scientist is far more prestigious than anything I could have with money.  All the people who matter would respect a scientist, right? In short, I know what it’s like to think that it’s the greatest job in the world and nothing else compares.  I also understood that a lot of people consider engineering to be nowhere near as glamorous as science.  But I never really understood or even probed why. 

The answer is simple.  I was taught to. By something in my education system even in middle school and elementary school. It is no different from PhD programs where everybody – profs, other students, graduates, all reinforce the idea that any career other than academia is a failure.  In a nearly circular argument, if it isn’t the greatest career, how come the acceptance rate is so low? And almost everybody who goes on to an academic role in the US also thinks, “I could easily have gone to the industry and made a lot of money”.  It may be true that from a sheer selectivity perspective, they could more easily have gone to the industry, but it’s not true that they could easily have made money. It is also not true that the people who can make it to academia are a strict subset of the people who can make it to the industry.  I do know a small number of people who did make it to academia, but would not have made it to certain industries. Making money in the world is hard – whether you came from academia or not.  A lot of people toil hard and never succeed.  

There was also romance associated with scientists.  All the scientists of yore, or at least of 18th and 19th century Europe, were gentlemen of leisure or so it seemed.  The same class that engaged in poetry, art etc.  The great engineers one hears about tend to be of the 20th/21st century and are just ordinary people who were trying to make a living.  Even people like Curie and Prandtl just felt so…elite.  I do recall thinking about how such a high-class atmosphere is declining.

But I have come to understand that many parents want to expose their children from a very young age to science – showing them dinosaurs by the time they are less than a year old – an animal they will never encounter in the world.  They do this in much the same way they expose them to art,, music, sport and other markers of high class that were simply inaccessible to lower class people. They raise them to be into science and they also raise them to be pro-science as in pro-scientist.  These are going to be the lady-and-gentleman class and not the apparently grubby working class of the engineer (only engineers don’t quite think that way).  Truly advancing science takes the same work and hustle as engineering.   Treating it as elegant artwork is either misleading or simply about guiding towards a lifestyle choice than towards what it takes to make an advancement.

In the US today, a majority (58%) of students in STEM graduate programs are foreign born. A majority of the students who excel at the high school level of the national talent search are children of immigrants (who don’t have disdain for engineering as a lower than science). We are frequently told that this is because scientists are not paid well enough. I contend that we should add to this that engineers are respected well enough.

People even walk away from engineers at a party at mere introduction while they are keenly interested in the work of scientists. In prestige, in the US, engineers come in after scientists, doctors, firefighters, professors, lawyers, military, nurses and other healthcare professions and teachers. Worldwide, scientists and doctors have significantly higher prestige than engineers. In the 20th and 21st centuries, most of the advances have been by engineers. Yet, engineers are not considered to be advancing the good of society or have some purpose other than earning a paycheck while all the other professions listed above are. Until this changes, forget about natively having the supply of engineers that the economy actually needs. Paychecks are not going to solve this.

I know this is almost a stream of consciousness and I may not have made any clear points or made a coherent argument for anything… just wanted to share things that crossed my mind in the past and the present.

Posted on by Gotamist

How to know who’s living off government largesse

All you have to do is look around and see who’s claiming to be virtuous (and therefore, worthy of financial support). Look to see who’s constantly attacking ‘“the corporations” and greedy private sector people. Look for who’s got disdain for the 9-to-5 slave.

So, who are these? Well, Educational institutions, health institutions, NGOs of many hues, modern scientists, government workers. They are all telling us how good they are.  Stop the spigot of the private sector’s tax money being doled out and all of these collapse immediately. This is why they need to keep telling us about their moral superiority and mission.

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Why are Democrats the more scientific party?

You must surely have noticed over the decades that the Democratic positions on various topics are supported by Science.  Or that panels of scientists endorse various liberal positions.  There is always “panel of 16 economists” who endorse the Democratic presidential candidate. 

When I was younger, I might have sought to understand it in terms like “liberal positions are more scientific (vs conservative positions that are more religious)”.  But a simpler explanation is simply that scientists as a group tend to support liberal positions. There could be many reasons for this.  One is simply that the Democrats support spending taxpayer money on funding science (and arts and many other things) and Republicans are generally for less government spending.  If your career depends on one party being in power, wouldn’t you support that party?

A friend recently shared that Washington DC, where a lot of Federal government employees live, is also heavily pro-Democrat.

I see a similar pattern in state capitals. For example, in the 2024 election, even in states that went for Trump, the capital city of the state, where a high fraction of residents are government workers, went for Harris. There are only 12 states where the capital went for Trump. These are almost all hard core red states, with the exception of Carson City, NV, which is in a swing state.

StateCapital City (or county containing it)
AlaskaJuneau
ArizonaPhoenix
IdahoBoise
KentuckyFrankfort
MissouriJefferson City
MontanaHelena
NevadaCarson City
N. DakotaBismarck
OKOK City
S. DakotaPierre
W. VirginiaCharleston
WyomingCheyenne

Election data is only available at the county level. So, the table above is about the county containing the state capital. I’ll note that Phoenix and Carson City both went for Trump by only a narrow margin.

I’m not saying they are wrong.  Even broken clock can be right about the time sometimes.  Rather, that they have lost credibility.  Because of their relentless advocacy of the left, people don’t take scientists seriously. 

Posted on by Gotamist

Why people lie

No, I’m not speaking of the motivation for lying – it is always, of course, the greed for the short-term benefits from not speaking the truth.  As most of us know, the long term harm from lying far outweighs any short term benefit.  Most importantly, it causes a loss of trust and how can you have a relationship with anyone when trust is not present.  Leading figures, from the Buddha, to Kant, Gandhi and many others have, therefore, taught that speaking the truth is important in all contexts.

However, despite the long term harm being well known to most adults, lying has not disappeared.  As people grow up, they know that lies get caught and they stop saying some obvious lies without stopping lying. Why?

My observation is that they can outsmart others and can lie so convincingly that they think they will not get caught.  And this is the reason they lie. 

And the reason they get caught in lies is that they were wrong – people around us are very smart relative to us and it is not, in fact, possible to keep the pretense.

I have heard objections of the type: “That’s not true.  For example, children know quite well that they’ll get caught but they’ll still say with ice cream on their face that they did not eat it – just to escape punishment or someone’s displeasure in the moment”.  That’s actually not a counterexample, but an example of the very thing I’m talking about.  Why do they stop saying it – because they learn that this kind of obvious lie does not fool anyone.  They then continue telling other lies that they think they can fool people with.

In summary, liars lie because they think they are smarter than those they’re lying to.  So next time when you tell someone a lie, remember that not only are you endangering trust and the relationship, you’re also implicitly insulting their intelligence.