Extracts from a Diary

Traditionally, I wasn’t much of a New Year’s resolutions guy. Nor much of a “how has this year been” reflecting-type either. January 1st is an arbitrary date chosen to start a calendar year. One could just as well introspect about the past 365 days or initiate a resolution on, say, 29th Aug, and it shouldn’t make a difference. But, it does. And 31st Dec/1st Jan works great, at least in terms of neatly bookending events occurring in a given year. Last year, inspired by a practice that The Missus has been a regular with, I wrote a letter to my future self. You can write to yourself from here ( https://www.futureme.org/ ). It allows for different durations, or you can choose a custom date, and it’ll come to your inbox at the end of it. Consider. I also had second thoughts and some mild reservations about ‘publicly’ introspecting on the year that was, or the plans/hopes for the year that would be. Mostly because I am still finding my voice and am not sure if it is a good idea to write abou...

Nihilism: The Case for No Inherent Meaning to Life Two anchoring sets of facts: We’re on a pale blue dot called Earth that orbits a modest-sized star, barely noticeable in an otherwise average galaxy containing 10 11 other stars. This galaxy is part of a supercluster containing 100,000 other galaxies. There are probably about 10 million other superclusters in the observable universe. The universe began about 13.8 billion years ago. Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Modern Humans appeared around 300,000 years ago (~0.0067% of Earth’s current age), and all of written history — and any named human — are from less than 10,000 years ago (~0.00022% of Earth’s current age). These timelines and scales are so huge that they are humanly incomprehensible. People realise this and move in either direction — incredible religious awe as well as those around rejecting it. You could be like the young protagonist of Annie Hall (1977 movie), who on hearing that the universe is expanding ( 45 seconds ...

“AI is coming for your job!” “Government will need to step in and give a universal basic income (UBI) to everyone!” “There will be mass unemployment and civil unrest!” Or so I keep hearing these days in different groups. I am a bit more sceptical. I am simultaneously hyped about and underwhelmed by AI. Image generated using ChatGPT Some Famously Wrong Predictions We overestimate what can happen in the short run and underestimate what does in the long run. There are predictions from the 1950s, attributed to IBM’s then chairman, estimating the market size of computers to be 5 units. Not 5 million, not 5 thousand. Just 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. IBM, probably in the 1980s, thought it would be mind-boggling if there were a use case of more than 128KBs memory. Bill Gates thought there was little commercial potential for this thing called the internet in 1990s, and predicted the end of spam emails “in two years,” in 2004. The prediction about the internet was echoed by subsequent Nobel laureate in E...

Roger Ebert, the great movie critic, often had a grouse with many movies relying on a particular kind of trope. The criticism: the plot kept going because the characters act like idiots or fail to say basic things to each other. (‘Idiot Plot’, explained here .) Think of movies like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham where half the drama can be skipped if the characters just said what they wanted. Robert Trivers has this fascinating book (called Folly of Fools ) about the evolutionary reasons why we lie – to ourselves and to others. Lying to others gives us some benefits – more food because we claim to be starving, more rest because we claim to be sick, or more sex because we claim certain things that make us more attractive to the other person. We lie to ourselves because it makes it easier to lie to others, if we genuinely believe in the lie ourselves. Hence self-deception. Self-deception can be organisation-wide too and, at times, to disastrous effects. That’s also how ‘conv...

In the past, on these pages , I've written about my love for the South African cricket team. There have been so many heartbreaks, what-ifs, if-onlys, near misses, and so close but yet so far.  Let's just look at the past 12-18 months as a build-up to this moment. The South African board has been facing some financial difficulties for a fair period now. They attempted to raise funds by starting a domestic T20 league and after a few unsuccessful attempts, they finally launched in Feb '23. Following that, they had the second season in Feb '24. What that also meant was that all the marquee players were playing in the domestic T20 league and of the 14 players they sent to New Zealand, seven were making their Test debuts ( Cricinfo link  for article). They lost that series 2-0. June '24 was the T20 World Cup final between India and South Africa ( match scorecard ). Having played well through the tournament, South Africa were now in a solid position, 16 overs into their ru...

I've been intending to revive this blog for a long time. I call the time month year of death sometime to 2018, when I last wrote something here (coincidentally, on someone's death - mom's death if you're curious but don't want to click). I've had multiple different ideas still lying in draft stage. However, this time is different! Or so says every addict looking to quit; or in this case, the reverse - a person with inertia looking to move to action. Lots of updates in life but I'll just touch upon a few of them here. May (or may not!) cover in detail on some of these, in subsequent posts: Got married to a wonderful life partner - easily the most 'high leverage' decision that I didn't realise/think was as impactful as it turned out to be. Aside from/along with/higher than one's 'work', life partner is the other context that carries maximum impact to our day-to-day peace/irritation/happiness/frustration/satisfaction/depression. One c...

There, I said it! I am not a patriot and patriotism as a feeling is something I've not really properly understood, at least since crossing my teens or something. Why this, random and even provocative, claim, you ask? I am irritated by the recent flurry of facebook/twitter discussions, surrounding the whole Afzal Guru hanging episode. Anybody who is seen doubting the judiciary/government/popular version seems to automatically fall in the category of 'traitors of the nation', it seems. First off, I am someone who, in general, considers the judiciary to be much more qualified, experienced <and insert hajaar such similar disclaimers> than I am. I just have principles  (or well, stances for economic or philosophical reasons - 'principles' just sounded too big and constraining a word :D) that are different from what I understand as guiding the judiciary system of our country. And I, in general, view the government (of our country and elsewhere) with quite some...