A Screwball Theory for Greed

Time for my latest screwball theory. May be ... just may be ... Greed is not as avoidable as you think ... may be it's built-in to the design of the economic system ... read how ants might help learn a little about ourselves ...

Like all great theories, this one starts with ants. Ever observe an ant-colony? These goddamn creatures are always restless - busier than even the President of United Nations - relentlessly carrying food, or taking trash out, and yet making time for a brief greeting with every ant along it's way !!! Aesop even famously joked that "They are definitely better than grasshoppers". Looking at an ant-hill, one feels like it's a miniature New York City : full of buzz; everyone is going places and clearly knows what he's doing.

"Actually NO" says Dr. Deborah Gordon of Stanford University in this eye-widening TED talk. Having studied ants with their teeny-weeny brains and their colonies for over 20 years, Dr. Gordon argues that with a few simple and unintelligent rules, the entire ant-colony manages to feed itself and brave all sorts of weather for almost 10 years. And the best part: NO ONE … no one with a gift of gab or an MBA degree claims to be running the damn show. Let's see how's it possible. The entire economy of an ant-colony involves primarily 4 functions done by 4 kinds of ants:



So, how does an ant decide what to do like "Ok! Today let me go and search for some food" or "let me take trash out"? First of all, an ant can't see very well. Next time you want to help an ant with some food, just do it - no need to move any of your hind muscles. But, what they have is a pair of awesome antennae implying a superhuman strength of smell. Every ant in the colony has a trademark smell and every ant engaged in each of the above activities develops an additional signature smell i.e. an ant doing the trash work develops a certain kind of distinguished smell and so on. So, our ant just starts randomly walking and it touches every ant that it comes across in that mysterious antenna-rubbing sequence which is not at all what perverted humans think it is. They are, in fact, figuring out, through smell,what is the other ant doing - foraging or patrolling or midden work etc. Then, our ant 'decides' what to do by crudely remembering the rate at which it meets other ants - if our ant runs into too many ants that are carrying food, it is likely to start foraging as well. So, the ant rules can be summarized something as:

    1. If you meet too many of food-gatherers, follow the trail - gather food  and get back to the hill.
    2. If you are meeting too much of sweepers, just find something to sweep and when you run into a heap of trash, dump it.
    3. If you don't meet as many folks as expected - OOPS! You are lost .. Go back.

It must be noted that the same ants adjust in "special circumstances" - like if there is too much trash on the food superhighway, more ants are mobilized to start the clean-up job. Every ant keeps changing it's activity based on what it's neighboring friends are doing. Plus credit must go to the lack of self-help books and idealistic schools of thought in helping them switch smoothly from one task to another without pausing to contemplate "Hey! Is this really my passion? Am I doing what God intended me to do?".

The ant-colony is a fascinating example of how simple rules can manifest seemingly complex behavior at larger scales. Complex functions can arise from a large number of real-time executions of these simple rules. It is , as though, complexity is intrinsically designed to be manifested at higher scales of abstraction. Similar structural behavior has been observed in a variety of other organisms. Ever wondered how a huge flock of birds execute a right turn resulting in zero auto-insurance claims or how a large school of fish delightfully dance to the background scores in "Finding Nemo" with no confusion?  It is also conjectured that even the neurons in our brains engage in a similar simplistic behavior. Systems like a flock of birds and the ant-colony has been simulated by computer scientists and they even use the algorithms (called "Boid") for applications like Data-Mining, for animated bird sequences in the "Lion King" movie etc. Absolutely simple rules and it seems like a well-rehearsed ballet dance. The ant or bird isn't a super-intelligent animal. Just like humans, if you observe closely enough, a lot of them actually might be committing goofy mistakes but statistically speaking, they overall make it work and the show is going on for millions of years.

Now to my main point. If you are reading this line, let me first congratulate your patience thus far. When fellow humans of my species complain about these greedy vampire squids called corporations, I am bemused to think that may be "Greed" is a natural property at the systemic levels inherent to the rules of business we have framed. I think, many companies are not planning greed on a daily basis - but they are merely following simple rules of business. Let's say all of us in every company goes to work with a simple attitude like

"I will work to maximize my yearly productivity and keep my boss happy"

I emphasize the word "yearly" because most organizations in the world decide professional performance based on something called an "Annual Appraisal Form". Let's say you, your boss, his boss, his boss's boss … and so on up to CEO and the board of directors follow the same rule - all of us trying to locally maximize our monetary contribution for the current financial year and keep the boss happy.  Of course, not you. You are a smart, intelligent and knows exactly what you are doing. But every cross-eyed guy in the next cubicle acts as if he can patent "servile submission to the superiors". Isn't it?

There will be exceptions but if statistically large number of people follow this attitude at work,  may be "greed" is inevitable. May be, we are all innocently complicit in the thing we so often complain about. Imagine this, folks. Every company out there has it's mission statement to increase the share price. Remember that any investor of the company's stock has no emotional or moral obligation except making money in the next year. If you take thousands of corporations with millions of employees in an economy all trying to locally maximize their monetary productivity  - we are all 'locked' into a system of greed if we decide to give promotions this year based on last year's monetary productivity. Apparently, this seems to be the attitude of the Investment bankers that has brought about the stock-market crash of 2008. May be, this is how that once nice kids-on-the-block like Google and Facebook get fancy ideas that they soon find themselves facing the heat on "net neutrality" and "privacy issues". May be this could be the reason, many industries incite liberals for hiring swarms of lobbyists and lawyers. It's all built into the design. Some planning might be going on but no one need not plan as elaborately as you think.

In all humility, I know I have trivialized certain arguments but I hope you get the idea.  This theory no way explains the vast diverse dynamics of human society, but it does seem like simple rules like above in addition with some more can explain capture the complexity of our economy at higher scales to some extent. I don't know any other alternative remunerative strategy at this stage because that's the best our math can do - money is the only objective value we can conclusively count and compare.  And  I leave with a passing thought that may be, may be  if we change the way we evaluate a company's stock based on not just monetary, but also taking into account it's ecological (like carbon foot- print) and social contributions, may be we can create a less greedy world - then may be, we can run after the real greedy people !!! I know it's not at all easy. Even if we gather a thousand Nobel-laureates to finally agree on a model that fairly evaluates such a thing, something like this will surely happen :



In addition to simple rules bringing out complex behavior, it is not surprising that complex rules can  surely bring complex behavior. Anyway, did you feel you nailed the whole report today? Congratulations, you have successfully been used by the system. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for reading. What do you think?

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A Concise History of Saying Sorry : Part - 2

*FOR PART-1, CLICK HERE*

It all started when I read the following line:

UNCONDITIONAL APOLOGY ??? What the heck does that even mean? Are we allowed to give apologies with any kind of fine-print? How does a "conditional apology" sound? Something like "I am sorry - but … I don't really mean it" ? If that's so, why should you even bother about saying sorry in the first place?

Hey, not long ago, saying a "Sorry" was an utterly simple concept. Let me illustrate:



Plain and Straight-forward. In fact, I think the concept of a "sorry" is an ingenious invention. Who ever thought of it is a mind-bending jedi-master of human psychology. "Saying Sorry" is the greatest social insurance policy for our unavoidable yet frequent inadequacies with it's miraculous ability to solve a lot of problems and fill the world with diabetic levels of love and peace among earthlings. But, sometime in the recent past of our great civilization, I realized the concept of sorry begun it's decline. Do you want to know when I suspected this was happening - When I started receiving a "sorry" each time I missed bumping into someone on the side-walk. A "sorry" is right on their lips. Thanks, but hello, may be I want to bump into you. A good, solid bump followed by an OUCH! of the genuine kind. At that moment, I KNEW that by uttering too much of unnecessary apologies, we are abusing this glorious gift from our ancestors who invented the concept after seeing a whole lot of tragic blood-shed.

*******
For those who came in late, let me explain what happened back there with the unconditional apology story. Congress party workers created ruckus, protested, burnt effigies when a retired, out-of-work RSS ex-chief - K.S. Sudarshan made the following idle remark on Sonia Gandhi:



So, what ensued is a natural comedy: When someone credited Sonia to be a secret CIA, you know like a Jason Bourne or something, we have ugly, unhygienic protesters from the Congress Party soiling the streets of the country. Goddamn it, you idiots … It was a compliment. Go after that idle activist Arundhati Roy who thinks Kashmir never "soulfully" accepted India … Soulfully? Shove that soul up somewhere ... I don't care ….  

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HEY HEY HEY !!! Can someone explain me what is going on here? What is this extraordinary enthusiasm and media melodrama about someone who said something and as if a "sorry" is going to smoothen things out.

An unimaginable amount of newspaper space and make-up mascaras on news anchors' faces is being wasted from our green planet to cover this "sorry"-full theater.

Politicians are demanding apologies, rejecting them, sometimes refusing to apologize or standing by their words, or taking back their words or even worse … clarifying them … justifying why they need not apologize. Sometimes, there are protesters wasting their worthless workday by standing outside some politician's house demanding an apology. Occasionally, there are physically manifest ways a political party acts which the public must construe as an apology - they either "snub" or "fire" a politician  - of course, at today's rates, you need to punch a giant hole amounting to at least tens of thousands of crores to be "snubbed" or "asked to step down". (On a separate topic, don't you think that ever since we got the new rupee symbol, all we hear is record-breaking levels of heists and scams. This is what happens when godless secularists choose an inauspicious day to release the symbol for our currency).  Don't get me wrong. Accepting an apology is fine, but why the hell is the political conversation being dominated MOSTLY by the quality and nature of apologies? Who cares about apologies? What about some policies, for a change? Is it just me or does anyone feel a little bizarre about the level of seriousness with which the elected officials are going to fulfill my dreams?

From a simple sorry-hug-kiss routine, the irresistible sex appeal of a "sorry" has been appropriated and abused by corporations, politicians, countries and other public figures. I never understood why any of the public figures or any kind of organization will need to apologize to the people. You see, saying sorry is a personal act. You are a public figure who either sucks at your job or possess a bad attitude. I would like you to get out of your office and pay back the money you stole from us rather than looking for some personal sympathy. Mindful of our impressive abilities to lie and fake, we have created an elaborate system of bogosity in form of laws, democracy, elections  and yet, the entire political discourse is about clamoring over the physical act of saying things audibly no matter what the intention is. If a corporation or a politician makes a news anchor scream, they should be paying the price for their incompetence and the nuisance- not waste my time by any type of inapplicable personal canvassing.

Let me remind you that this kind of behavior never happens in real-life between us people. If a friend pissed you off, you either beat the shit out of him or forgive him depending on where you lie on a scale of Joe Pesci to Gautama Buddha. There is never this circus of saying a conditional sorry or refusing an apology or staging a protest demanding an apology or  feeling bad that the sorry wasn't genuine or conspicuous snubbing in front of TV cameras to make a point.

If you are the kind of person who says "It's OK if he called me an 'uncompromising, incorrigible. worthless burping, inter-stellar hyper-sneezing mosquito of our cosmos '. But, hey, at least he said a sorry !!!" -  Right! you deserve that solemn apology. For the rest of us, I am telling you, folks. don't fall for this whole apology thing. It's sweet if a personal acquaintance apologizes for a personal inconvenience. If a public figure is apologizing to the effect of your emotional satisfaction, he's treating you like a bitch. Beware.

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Mythic Tales from the Land of the Lost

CAUTION: Do not try to argue with me on this one.

I am CONVINCED that things have legs. All my life, I have been regularly losing stuff and I need a good answer to the mystery. First of all, I am not as careless as you’d like to think. Ok? I just kept that damn thing here as I stepped out for the other thing and I return here and it’s GONE!!! The damn thing has escaped. The same story just happens over and over again, day in & day out. God knows how many of my possessions just walked away from me with no fault of my own. And hey, no one can walk away without an intentional pair of functional legs. Can they? Either that or the power of invisibility, perhaps.

You should know that I am not a person who likes to plan much about anything. At any given time, you can find me waiting for things to fall into my lap or me jumping into someone’s lap. And yet, believe me, folks, when it comes to securing my things, I have really tried. I tried to be careful; I tried to remember where I kept my things all the time. But, still, they fricking manage to disappear. It's spooky that it was just here hours ago. I wasted years of my life on this planet trying to search for stuff I allegedly misplaced – keys, wallets, laptops, cameras, socks, shoes, clothes, receipts, papers, pens, pencils etc. etc. etc. ... I bet my search time on this planet recently exceeded 5 years … and 5 years for these goofy materialistic orgy memorabilia  does feel like a whole waste of time.

As reluctant an activity as searching is, we still have to do it – because we need that thing right away! But, the search operation is never smooth. Isn’t It? In the middle of this cursed exercise, there is always a pesky friend who'd come along and cannot seem to contain himself from something like :

"Do you remember where you kept it? "

These are the times when I wish punching in the face was as socially pleasant as a handshake. If I remember where I kept it, I wouldn't be looking for it like a goddamn moron. Would I? Can't you think through this logic for 2 seconds before hastily uttering anything?

Or he would try to be optimistic and say :

"It must be somewhere around … it can't walk away on it's own. After all, they don't have legs."

Oh! Yeah? Mr. Einstein from the Department of Lost & Found ? Thanks for explaining to me that things don't have legs. I will remember to drop in a word for you at the Mensa club membership. I was under the impression it stepped out for some fresh air ... If any of these friends really want to help me, I suggest they go onto the internet and order an Amazon Kindle for me as I continue to search for my keys.

Hang on with me on this one. People lose things all the time in the most mysterious fashion and never seem to run into them ever again. If it happened to me alone, you could ascribe that to my negligence. But you know very well that you are not a careless, stupid and absent-minded person. Are you? Eh? And yet, you lose stuff. Don’t you? How can you explain this? Simple. Losing stuff is the one of most under-rated yet mystical and sometimes deeply spiritual experience that all of humanity shares. Friends, Think about it. The evidence is overwhelming. Things do have legs and they will choose to walk away from the owner. I know you are still thinking that it’s logically implausible and against the laws of nature. I am not at all unnerved by all this. This is not the first time mankind believes in something in spite of over-pouring evidence. For example, take the God question. Despite scientists' sincere efforts to convey the logical fallacy implicit in a belief in the existence of an all-powerful, omniscient God who is running the cosmos with his whimsical magic wand, people believe in Him anyway. So, come on. Please trust me on this one.

I can still see you are not convinced. May God help you. You know what? Convincing all you grown-ups draped in pretentious, impudent cloak of logic and reasonableness is a waste of time. As Michael Jackson once said, “Thou art incorrigible”. I will pass on my wisdom to kids. Thank God, these young marvels have not been brainwashed and they have a whole promising future ahead of them with a lot of stuff to lose starting with their box of color pencils today.

…..

Dearest Kids, 

Don't cry, dear. It’s not your fault that it has walked away from you. I can tell you what happened to it. A MAGICIAN STOLE IT. That's right, junior, a magician indeed. Ever since PETA protested against using animals in magic acts, incidents such as the following are on the rise …

Once again, don't try to argue with me on this one.

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