I came across this snippet of an interview of Dr. S Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister. Ouch! That's hard-hitting by @DrSJaishankar. pic.twitter.com/vLeoPh54Bc — ?????? (@maisooru) March 13, 2021 In this, among other things, he says that “in India, nobody questions an election” (in the context of some reports that India is not really a democracy). … Continue reading “Finite and infinite games, and questioning elections”
Ok here I’m integrating a few concepts that I learnt via Venkatesh Guru Rao. The first is that of Finite and Infinite games, a classic if hard to read book written by philosopher James Carse (which I initially discovered thanks to his Breaking Smart Season 1 compilation). The second is of “playflow”, which again I … Continue reading “Gamification and finite and infinite games”
I’ve written about James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games here before. It is among the more influential books I’ve read, though it’s a bit of a weirdly written book, almost in a constant staccato tone. From one of my previous posts: One of the most influential books I’ve read is James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games. Finite … Continue reading “Finite and infinite cricket games”
One story that my daughter knows well, rather too well, is the story of the Gruffalo. This is a story of a mouse told in two parts. In the first part, the mouse fools a fox, an owl and a snake from eating him by convincing them that he’s having lunch, tea and dinner respectively … Continue reading “Gruffaloes and Finite Games”
Stories in books or movies are “finite” in that there is a defined end-point. Real life, on the other hand, has to go on.
For the last 4-5 years, the ills of “political fake news” have been well documented – documented well enough that I don’t even need to link to them (I think). However, there is another kind of fake news that doesn’t get the sort of (negative) attention it deserves – unbiased or apolitical fake news. Before … Continue reading “Apolitical fake news”
This post is a consequence of a conversation I had with my wife this morning. I was telling her about how a friend, who also went to IIT Madras with me, recently said something like “I’m surprised XXXXX (another mutual friend) has so much confidence in himself even though he went to <local college>. A … Continue reading “Social Skills Decelerator”
Having “played” dumb-charades (DC for short) competitively at a school and college level, I don’t particularly enjoy playing it casually. I’m prone to getting annoyed when people around me (either on a picnic, or a party) exclaim with great enthusiasm that we should play DC. Till recently I used to think it was like chess … Continue reading “Charades of obscurity”