We all know that feeling when the past seems beautiful and there is an uncontrollable longing to belong to a time that has already passed. Most of us romance our carefree childhood and want to relive those special moments every now and then. Artists amongst us want to live in the ages when Picasso and Dali were creating their masterpieces. Present day scientists wish to witness the years when Einstein, Darwin or Newton were just about to change the Zeitgeist forever. And, don’t writers today pine for the times when George Orwell or Shakespeare produced one great work after the other? We entrepreneurs in computer/technology space, how much we fancy times when PC industry was coming to an age with Bill Gates’s BASIC and Steve Jobs’ Apple II. ...
All posts in Philosophy
Defying parents is mark of a thinking man
Remember your childhood? Those were the times when on a cool, breezy, slightly-sunny morning, you blissfully played on freshly dewed grass. You threw your sandals away, and while your eyes darted everywhere around, you ran barefoot, feeling small yet sweet pangs of cold seeping into your body. You were so lost in your joy that you didn’t realize that all you were doing is running purposelessly in circles. You felt blessed.
As a child, infectious enthusiasm was all you had and that produced an honest reality of your own that you believed in with full conviction. You invented that reality daily, but truly lived and breathed in it, never doubting its authenticity. When you saw or heard a ghost story, you actually believed in it and felt a beautiful joy of encountering it. Myths and fantasies of distant lands (mostly from absurd TV shows for children) were real. These fables were as real as your naive belief that one lucky evening you will get stuck in a candy or chocolate shop all alone. Didn’t you believe that Superman existed, and may probably come to help if you were in trouble? Or that Teletubbies were somewhere there having fun when you were not around? ...
Pick experiences over relationships
In a previous post, I wrote about what matters in life and what doesn’t. What I proposed was that these things don’t matter at all:
- Ego
- Material possessions
What matters instead is:
- New experiences
- Relationships
What if you have to choose between an experience or a relationship?
Such situations are always extremely hard. Imagine you need to go travel the world for a year but that means giving up (not fully investing) in a relationship (with friends, colleagues, spouse or parents). What would you do? Of course, there are many variables there but if you are really stuck at a decision, my recommendation is to pick a new experience over a relationship. ...
Professional success and personal success: two independent dimensions
All of us chase after success. For majority of us, success means achieving more in life. A better car, a bigger house, a promotion at job or a fancy watch. This particular definition of success pertains to what I call as professional success. Most of the stars, sports people, top shot CEOs and other celebrities that you know are at pinnacle of their professional success. They probably worked very hard to achieve what they have today and are also probably very proud of it. So far, so good.
But, there is another aspect of success. I call it personal success. If you compare two people: one movie star and another middle class office goer, do you really think movie star is more happy than the office goer? Deep inside they both have same happiness scale. In fact, for all the possessions and fame that a movie star has got, he may be actually not as happy as the regular office goer who gets to see his family every day and spend quality time with them. Regular Joe is happy as hell, why should he be ashamed of not being a movie star? ...
What matters in life (and what doesn’t)
I’m probably too young to be writing on this topic but observing countless souls distressed by daily life made me think hard on what is that really matters in life. Undoubtedly, there are happy and sad phases and that’s part-and-parcel of life. But what I’m really bothered about is general, daily bitching about how miserable one’s life has become. You find people complaining about work, commute, relationships, other people’s attitudes & personalities, neighbor’s barking dog, lack of parking space, and, heck, some people also feel stressed about how they are unable to install latest iPhone update. Yes, I’m concerned about those people. Are these things really worth stressing about? Allow me to analyze.
Material possessions: countless sages have professed it and I completely with them that material possessions are source of most of the stress we face in our daily lives. Modern technology (and compulsion to keep up with it) only makes it much worse. Your car radiator broke down, your phone screen got a crack, you are unable to install USB drivers, or your expensive massage chair needs maintenance. Possessions end up taking over your daily life and you don’t even realize that. Wouldn’t you be much happier and free if you need not bother about constant purchasing, maintaining and discarding of possessions? I’m not advocating complete asceticism but my point here is that it is OK to be still using Windows 98. It is OK to travel by bus or taxi, and not having that fancy car. It is even OK if you don’t posses a phone (or if you have poor network provider, like mine — MTNL). It is OK to be like a free bird without any heavy baggage of material possessions.
Ego: the number 1 stress factor you have in your life is no-one but you. The compulsive drive to prove yourself right (and others wrong), the obsession with (financially) outdoing your peers, neighbors & friends, the depression about how you couldn’t score 100% in math exam, the fights over how the wall is painted with the wrong shade of blue, and anger over how a friend misplaced your favorite book. Source of tension and stress in all these situations is not society or the other person you are fighting with, but it is you. In long run, do these little ego fights really matter? Are you enriching your life by these ego fights where either you or someone else ends up feeling bad? Wouldn’t it be much better for all if you started giving less importance to yourself? Maybe it is hard, but just try living a day making yourself unimportant and your life will be much more satisfying (as you can kick your ego aside and you can focus on what really matters in life — see below).
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Let’s start off by observing what doesn’t matter in life and why. Life would be much better and satisfying if everyone could do away with (or at least de-prioritizes following) two aspects:
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Startups and Nihilism don’t go together
Note: if meaning of life and startups don’t excite you, it is recommended that you skip this post. You will find it boring.
I know this is a weird title. But I have finally convinced myself that you cannot afford to be too philosophical if you are doing a startup. Doing a startup could turn out to be a terrible experience for those who especially adhere to philosophy of Nihilism. For those who aren’t aware of Nihilism, it says that life has no meaning or purpose and is in fact pointless. This philosophy was popularized by the German philosopher Nietzsche and became popular with atheists. After all, if there is no God, what’s the point of life?
Back to startups. Working on a new venture takes an incredible amount of hard work and things go wrong time to time. If you want to make your startup successful, you will need to focus relentlessly for years and show a great deal of perseverance. Now if you are a kind of person who thinks too much about meaning of life and purpose of all that effort (especially during the bad times), you cannot be successful with your startup. How can you possibly justify all the hard work you are putting 24×7 into your baby when you are questioning the purpose of all this in back of your mind?
Unlike religions, Nihilism provides no inherent meaning of life. In fact, it says life is pointless and futile. This is a direct punch-in-the-face on your startup philosophy where you are required a wake up every single day full of energy and enthusiasm to work on yet another 18 hour marathon. If you believe in Nihilism and are doing a startup, you have to answer this question: why are you doing this? Is it to change the world or to make more money? Even when you achieve the goals (hello, million dollar exit) what’s the point of all that money when you are not even sure what’s the point of life?
In nutshell, you can’t afford to start questioning purpose of life when you are doing a startup. Those two are simply not compatible concepts which can co-exist in a single, worry-free brain. So, drop either Nihilism or your startup. (I recommend the former. See below).
PS: In case you are wondering which school of Philosophy I adhere to, it is Absurdism. Like Nihilism it says that there is no meaning of life, but it also further states that the purposelessness of life is what makes it exciting and that one has to keep doing things one feels like doing (hey, startups!) precisely because there is no grand purpose you should be working towards. Makes sense?
The Turing-roulette Game
I don’t know if it has been proposed earlier, but the other day I had an interesting idea about creating a variant of Turing Test and mashing it up in a Chataroulette kind of environment. As you may be aware, Turing test comprises of a game where a human chats with an unknown entity (which may be a computer or another human). The job of a human is to figure out whether the entity is human or a computer. It is proposed that if a computer passes Turing test (that is, if it manages to fool the human into thinking that it is a human), then we may call that computer “intelligent”. Unrelated to Turing test, Chataroulette is an online site where random strangers are paired up for chatting.
What if we mix Turing test and Chataroulette and then turn the whole concept upside down? Well, I think the consequences will be pretty interesting. Read on.
THE SETTING: An environment with multiple human and computer (chatbots) participants. A human participant is randomly paired with either a human or a computer.
THE RULES: Human has to convince during the chat that s/he is indeed a computer (chatbot)! After the chat is over (or during it), human can decide whether the other entity is human (who also makes a similar decision) or is a computer (which doesn’t make any decision). For a human, if the other entity decides that s/he is a chatbot, he wins 10 points and other entity loses 10 points. On the other hand, if a human makes a decision the other entity is a chatbot (and it is indeed true), s/he wins 10 points and chatbot (creator) loses 10 points. And if a human decides that chatbot is indeed a human, s/he loses 10 points while chatbot (creator) gains 10 points. In the end, the human or chatbot with most points wins the game (and a prize money?).
THE ESSENCE: So, every human in the game has to act like a chatbot while at the same time discern whether his chatting partner is an actual human (disguising as chatbot) or a chatbot (disguising as human). And every chatbot has to act like a human.
What makes this game interesting is the dynamics of chat and element of suspense. Imagine if you were in this game, you will suddenly start chatting in a goofy fashion (because you are emulating a chatbot). You won’t try to be too-smart (so that you are detected as a human) and you won’t try to be too-dumb (because you will be caught as an obvious deception). As a chat bot creator, you are not just relying on intelligence of your program to win the game. You’d also like to exploit the fact that a human will be over-cautious while declaring the program as chatbot (because humans also disguise as chatbot). So, the actual chatbot need not be a perfect chatting machine!
THE QUESTION: As a human, how do you win the game? What sort of conversation would you hold in this game to disguise yourself as chatbot? And what clues during the chat will tell you that the other entity is a chatbot?
Startup evolution – from idea to IPO in 10 really hard steps
1. Having an idea is easy (not a problem at all)
2. Creating a product is hard (development problem)
3. Creating an awesome product is even harder (execution problem)
4. Having people notice it is real hard (marketing problem)
5. Making people use it is very, very difficult (credibility problem)
6. Generating cash out of it is simply not doable (sales problem)
7. Generating money and being profitable consistently is impossible (business creation problem)
8. Having successful multiple product lines is you-must-be-out-of-your-mind (successful business creation problem)
9. Rejecting acquisition offers is way, way harder (because it is tempting and odds are that you will never reach till that stage)
10. Doing an IPO is the ultimate hardest but simply awesome
2. Creating a product is hard (development problem)
3. Creating an awesome product is even harder (execution problem)
4. Having people notice it is real hard (marketing problem)
5. Making people use it is very, very difficult (credibility problem)
6. Generating cash out of it is simply not doable (sales problem)
7. Generating money and being profitable consistently is impossible (business creation problem)
8. Having successful multiple product lines is you-must-be-out-of-your-mind (successful business creation problem)
9. Rejecting acquisition offers is way, way harder (because it is tempting and odds are that you will never reach till that stage)
10. Doing an IPO is the ultimate hardest but simply awesome
The only alternative is to work harder
What do you do if you feel you are born unlucky? What do you do if you feel that the whole world is conspiring against you to make you not succeed? And, what do you do if you feel you have less intellect, less resources and less everything to succeed?
The short and sweet answer is to work harder. You cannot control luck. You cannot control amount of financial resources you have. But what you can definitely control is the amount of effort. Your competitior or neighbour might be advantaged in all respects but you can compensate all that just by working harder.
Really, putting in a lot of effort gives you a lot of chances to make mistakes, try out things and fail. What you have to loose here is your effort, which of course you must have unlimited supply of.
If your nearest competitor or neighbour works X hours, you must work for X+1 hours. If he pitches to Y bloggers, you must pitch to Y+1 bloggers. Of course, you cannot match him in his $5 million funding and a huge team of sales guys. But what you can match (and even exceed) is your persistence and sheer drive to succeed.
Yep, I know it is sounding a bit like self-help bookish type, but I have observed and realized that success is an equation with a lot of variables. Most of the variables you have little or no control on but one variable which has a lot of influence on the result is effort and persistence. Controlling the value of this variable is entirely upto you and hence affecting chances of being successful is your will.
What are your thoughts on this? Does hard work really increases the probability of success?
The mystery of number 23
I’ve been literally forced to write this post. My hands have been dragged to the keyboard and my mind has been controlled. Never would a person who claims to be rational, scientific and no-nonsense would write on something as unscientific as why number 23 is special. For the uninformed, there is something deeply mysterious, extremely special and wonderfully interesting about 23. The phenomenon is called as 23 Enigma.
When I first heard about it, it was yet another overhyped meme for me. But slowly, and definitely steadily, I started identifying 23 in everyday phenomenon around me. Now, not a day passes without me seeing 23 somewhere around me. And it is not just me, by showing examples, I have convinced several of my friends about this odd belief of mine.
That said, internally, I debate endlessly with myself whether what I observe is just an artifact of confirmation bias where what one observes is typically due to what one wants to observe. Soon I plan to start a journal where I would try to statistically see if observation of 23 is more frequent than what is expected by random chance.
Do you observe 23 as well? I would be really interested in listening to your story.
BTW: Would you be shocked if I predict that within next two days you are certain to observe number 23 somewhere around you 🙂