Common sense and/or application of mind

What differentiates smart people and dumb people or idiots?

It is the power of common sense, a keen eye to observe things, validate what they hear or read, not take things for granted. It is about application of mind on simple things and not doing things blindly or mechanically. A lot of graduates know or taught only doing tasks and not application of mind. Over a period of time and a lot of skulduggery of their bosses and by learning from mistakes they become wise and start using common sense. They start perceiving information and how to relate it to what they already know. But some people are unwilling to learn or disinterested to learn and are sometimes pre-occupied with other than office work to continue being ignorant and committing a lot of errors and blunders at which point in time they are either given lesser responsibilities or are forced to leave the organisation.

A major part of the ability to think on things and apply their minds and be conscious of the environment and data while performing a task or taking a decision is dependent on the way the people are brought up during their schooling or college days. The environment, the people and the projects that encourages them or forces them to think through things is the key to understand how things work and what things affect and how they affect a certain object/objective. This enables them to do a self check with readily available knowledge/information in their head to understand the trade offs and take a decision or perform the task right in the first instance.

Curiousity is another factor that enables people to learn and apply their minds. Curiousity also leads to creative thinking and adds value to things and brings about new solutions. Curiosity too is a factor that has to be encouraged in the childhood and cannot come suddenly at an old age. This factor in turn can be identified and leads to a talent.

Determination helps people focus. Another key factor that avoids innumerable distractions and stops others needs taking over your identified goal. This also allows people to bring more of their resources (time, money, connections, etc.) to the goal instead of using their resources to do other things.

So, to be smart and use common sense, encourage people to increase their curiosity and help them achieve their goals for them to see the value of their goals achieved through determination.

The future of PPFAS

Yesterday was a sad day for the financial sector in India with the passing of Mr.Parag Parikh. He was one of the famous value investors in India. His mutual fund, PPFAS is a pioneer of sorts. It has only one scheme, no dividend option and the owner, the manager and the employees themselves have stakes in it. 

Although its returns have not been extraordinary in the short period of time it has been active, its concept is in long term value investing and not going by the flavour of the season and hence, is difficult to criticise considering the concept.

Now, with both the leader, Mr.Parag Parikh and its fund manager Mr.Rajeev Thakkar having passed away in a car accident, what is the future of the mutual fund where a majority have invested in their faith of Mr.Parag Parikh's thinking, insights and knowledge? Is the concept institutionalised enough to carry on the legacy and thinking of its founder? Will it shut shop soon? Will new investors be willing to invest their moneys now? Investors would/should be anxious and be waiting to hear from the company on the steps ahead.

RIP Mr.Parag Parikh and Mr.Rajeev Thakkar.

How to find the truth behind what your (financial) agent tells you?

Here's a list of things that are mentioned here to detect lies by an agent.
How to tell when an agent (insurance, loan) is lying to you
Beyond this, there is one true test because at the end of the day, because actual "Numbers don't lie"*

Many agents typically sell you an investment product saying you pay x amount yearly for y years and the end of it, you get z amount. Plus, there is a bonus amount paid at the end of m years and every n years later. The agent says it as if the bonus is something free, something over and above what the company generally gives/supposed to give. This is just 'playing into' the customer's mind. Since, there are a number of different products, each with its own different flavour and rules, it is very difficult to comprehend what is the real returns expected out of the product. To decipher the real return expected out of the product, do the steps below. If you are not familiar with xls, take help of someone to follow the steps mentioned below:
Ask your agent to give you year wise, the ouflows (investment made, premiums paid, basically money going out of your pocket) and the inflows for every year (typically, a single or multiple bulk amounts at end of a number of years).
Open a new xls and enter the dates, the amount going out of your bank accounts as negative, the expected amounts as positive (in forms of bonus, returns, dividends, etc.) in three different rows.
Add these two amounts (outgo and inflow) in the next row (Row 4). (Click the pic below to zoom)

Then use the XIRR function with the net amounts as the first parameter and the dates as the second parameter to get the real compounded annual growth rate(CAGR).
CAGR describes the rate at which an investment would have grown if it grew at a steady rate. You can think of CAGR as a way to smooth out the returns.
Read more on CAGR

* Numbers don't lie, but reading the numbers in a false context/background/with bias, interpretation of numbers could lead to lies. e.g.: The Indian stock market had gone up by leaps and bounds between the period 2003 and 2008 and those numbers do not lie. But expecting that same kind of growth at any other point in time (as the environment would be different wrt to interest rates, policies, inflation, currency rates, oil prices, global liquidity, attractiveness of Indian stock market vis-a-vis the other global stock markets, investor sentiment, etc.) could be equivalent to lies. If an agent shows you the best period of growth and tells you that this can be expected in the future also, do ask for the worst period of returns and ask him/her why that the worst could not repeat.

Top five regrets of the dying

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying?fb=optOut

How stress changes the look

The astonishing pictures show how a tour of Afghanistan transforms the features of these relaxed-looking men and women into careworn, hard-bitten masks. 

Even more amazingly, their faces dramatically soften again on their return from their three-month trips.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086319/Faces-war-The-soldiers-courage-suffering-etched-line.html 

London riots - Proof of Deindividuation - "Civil society": An oxymoron phrase

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/02/10/deindividuation/

The London riots just prove that the innermost bad desires are inherent in every person irrespective of whether they are in the developed world or in the developing world, whether in a civil society or not. As a matter of fact, the phrase "civil society" seems to be an oxymoron phrase now. People are civil by intimidation or by force, it just doesn't seem normal. Greed, action, thrill, survival instincts are all part of true human nature. It is only by continuously conditioning that we stop doing it and think twice before burning down other's properties and looting others' things.

P.S: written long ago, but forgot to post it.

The last words of people who were executed

~ Che Guevara

~ John Wayne Gacy, before being executed by lethal injection

~ George Appel, executed by electric chair in 1928

~ Gary Gilmore, executed by firing squad in 1977

~ Robert Erskine Childers, to his firing squad during the Irish Civil War in 1922

~ James W. Rodgers, asked if he had any requests before facing the firing squad

~ Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of The Crips, executed by lethal injection. His executioners appeared to be having trouble with the machinery.

~ Edward R. Rulloff, the last man executed by hanging in New York state.

~ Sir Walter Raleigh, to his beheader

~ Carl Panzram, serial killer, hanged in 1930

~ Melchor Ocampo, Mexican politician, when asked to kneel by his executioner

~ Harry Morant, Australian war criminal

~ Joe Hill, after hearing his executioner say: "Ready...aim..."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/the-last-words-of-people-who-were-executed

Faith and fraud

Blind faith and fraud go together. Looking at the below 2 instances (out of many other miracles), I am led to believe what I have thought of many a times. The blind faith in God itself is a fraud perpetuated by our ancestors for personal gains. Separate the people based on religion and ask them to fight your wars. In short, divide and rule. Buy out shops/areas around a religious place, and then spin a story based on that temple and make throngs of people visit it daily and make super-normal profits by selling all things the people need there. In short, create demand where there is none by spinning a story.

Lets look at the two instances:

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/board-admits-makarajyothi-at-sabarimala-is-man-made/1/136300.html

http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/7/lingam.htm

 I am not an atheist, but being an open and logical thinker, I am forced to question my faith in faith.

How to Steal and get Rich

A good article on how many of the inventions we owe to someone is actually someone else's.
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/how-to-steal-and-get-rich/

People power

Crowd-sourcing has reached tipping point with this event.

DJs, promoters, label reps and 'professional party people' from the Netherlands have persuaded Dutch airline KLM to add an extra flight to its roster. In a new twist on crowd-buying, the initiators of Fly2Miami made a bet with KLM on Twitter to organize a non-stop flight from Amsterdam to Miami.

More on this here:

http://www.springwise.com/tourism_travel/fly2miami/

Big views, any takers?

Even Mukesh Ambani http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/Think-of-economic-growth-in-qualitative-terms-Mukesh-Ambani/articleshow/5703503.cms backs my view I had expressed some time back in http://ajitjagan.blogspot.com/2010/01/case-of-perpetual-growth.html where I said "The concept of growth has unfortunately moved from qualitative growth to quantitative growth."

Innovative outsourcings

Outsourcing prisoners to another country? Nice idea :P

http://www.businessinsider.com/schwarzenegger-outsource-prisoners-to-mexico-2010-1

Love & war 2

"War (like love) is easier to start than to stop": H.L.Mencken

Woody Allen quotes

“I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.”

“To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.”

“Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.”

“If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.”

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

“When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.”

“I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said 'No.'”

“I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.”

“In my house I'm the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.”

“Sex between 2 people is a beautiful thing; between 5 it's fantastic.”

“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

“My brain? That´s my second favourite organ.”

“I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.”

“Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right”

“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”

“I've often said, the only thing standing between me and greatness is me”

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

“Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.”

“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.”

“What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?”

“I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.”

“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”

“The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.”

“Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.”

“If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.”

Know your enemy

If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not split and reevaluate: Sun-Tzu.

The message of AIDS

http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=386

What AIDS has done to her, we need to do the same to the planet...

Whats on people's mind?

The latest results of "Whats on People's mind?" update is here.

"How to hack into orkut accounts" is a new entrant of what people want to know in India...

The others are regular on the list of "how to" with "how to get pregnant" as always the topper of the list.

Cognitive miser

In today's excerpt - the human brain is a "cognitive miser"- it can employ several approaches to solving a given problem, but almost always chooses the one that requires the least computational power:

"We tend to be cognitive misers. When approaching a problem, we can choose from any of several cognitive mechanisms. Some mechanisms have great computational power, letting us solve many problems with great accuracy, but they are slow, require much concentration and can interfere with other cognitive tasks. Others are comparatively low in computational power, but they are fast, require little concentration and do not interfere with other ongoing cognition. Humans are cognitive misers because our basic tendency is to default to the processing mechanisms that require less computational effort, even if they are less accurate. Are you a cognitive miser? Consider the following problem, taken from the work of Hector Levesque, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto. Try to answer it yourself before reading the solution.

Problem: Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

A) Yes

B) No

C) Cannot be determined

"More than 80 percent of people choose C. But the correct answer is A. Here is how to think it through logically: Anne is the only person whose marital status is unknown. You need to consider both possibilities, either married or unmarried, to determine whether you have enough information to draw a conclusion. If Anne is married, the answer is A: she would be the married person who is looking at an unmarried person (George). If Anne is not married, the answer is still A: in this case, Jack is the married person, and he is looking at Anne, the unmarried person. This thought process is called fully disjunctive reasoning - reasoning that considers all possibilities. The fact that the problem does not reveal whether Anne is or is not married suggests to people that they do not have enough information, and they make the easiest inference (C) without thinking through all the possibilities. Most people can carry out fully disjunctive reasoning when they are explicitly told that it is necessary (as when there is no option like 'cannot be determined' available). But most do not automatically do so, and the tendency to do so is only weakly correlated with intelligence.

"Here is another test of cognitive miserliness, as described by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Shane Frederick.

"A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

"Many people give the first response that comes to mind - 10 cents. But if they thought a little harder, they would realize that this cannot be right: the bat would then have to cost $1.10, for a total of $1.20. IQ is no guarantee against this error. Kahneman and Frederick found that large numbers of highly select university students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton and Harvard were cognitive misers, just like the rest of us, when given this and similar problems."

Keith E. Stanovich, "Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss," Scientific American, November/December 2009, pp. 35-36.

Vision of Mankind 2

Referring to my previous post on the vision of mankind, http://ajitjagan.blogspot.com/2009/11/vision-of-mankind.html, I think I have found a solution...

The vision of mankind is same as that of cockroaches. And that is to propagate and have continue the generations.

I think the cockroaches are better at risk management than all of mankind combined. They have survived for millions of years with just one technique: "When you sense risk, run like crazy". We human imbeciles haven't even learnt that well. The amount of humans dying/suffering as a ratio of total human population is greater than a similar proportion for cockroaches. The mighty cockroaches have survived metrorites, ice ages and what not.

Humans also just want to survive and keep propagating. They want to reduce the risk of dying and being extinct. So they started cultivating food to avoid starvation, started using fire to protect themselves from animals and from the cold, etc. One day, when the next ice age occurs or meteors strike, temp of earth reaches 50 degree celsius or water submerges all land, we may have technologies and ways to survive extinction.

Say for the next ice age of 100,000 years, humans may freeze themselves in machines and come out automatically when the ice age stops. We may genetically modify ourselves to breathe underwater or live in 60 degree celsius without being burnt.

Humankind sees the benefits of diversification. From experimenting with ligers and tigons, now we have gayism nad a few crimes of people mating with animals. What next? Interspecies mating? Maybe the human genes can get better with the diversification and a hardier gene pool with hardier characteristics for better survival for gene propagation.

Humans dont want to accept a simple reality of death of the human kind at some time. So the adventurous imbeciles keep doing something or another to change the reality. So far, so good imbeciles! But at the end of every millennium, you are no greater than a cockroach whose goal is to just survive and propagate its genes to the next generation.

Life isnt about balance

"I have a belief that life isn't about balance, because balance is perfection....Rather, it's about catching the ball before it hits the floor.": Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo!