A few minutes back I finished reading Richard McKenzie’s Why popcorn costs so much at the movies and other pricing puzzles. Since the book is not available in India, I managed to procure an online pirated version through a friend. And since the book isn’t released in India, I didn’t feel guilty about reading the pirated version.
Continue reading “The difference between Taleb and McKenzie”
Left-wing economics is idealistic, and the basic assumption is that everyone is a good guy, and he will work in the best interests of the system.
On the other hand, the basic assumption behind right-wing economics is that everyone is inherently a bad guy, and will work only for his own benefit. Hence, systems have to be devised so as to align a person’s selfish interests with the system’s interests.
To put it in other words, left-wing stuff is ideal. It assumes best case performance, or marginally below best case performance, from all players in the system. Similarly, in assuming that everyone has only a selfish motive, right-wing economics does what can be called a worst-case design.
Training in Computer Science inherently teaches you to think about the worst-case possibilities in everything.
In this context, isn’t it? surprising that so many people from a computer science background are leftist?
I have a proposal to make. If you are visiting Bangalore soon that is. As you might have figured out from reading my blog, a large number of books that I want to read aren’t available in India. I can ask a bookshop here to import it from the US but that would make the books prohibitively expensive, much more than my willingness to pay.
I notice on Amazon that there are “used and new” books also available for sale, at a cheaper price. Something like a second hand market. And I notice that a number of books are priced very reasonably in that. Unfortunately, delivery for these is only within the US. This is where I need your help.
I will order the books and give your address. You will need to ferry these books to India for me. Of course I know that you usually come back with your suitcases loaded, with gifts and chocolates for cousins up to four steps removed. In the middle of that if you can squeeze in two or three books, please let me know.
The ideal case for me would be to burden each of you with exactly one book. However, the free shipping of Amazon kicks in only when I’m buying a few books. Hence, you’ll be saddled with more than one book. Actually, I wonder if we could work out a mechanism where my books and your books can be ordered together, so as to get the free shipping, and then you can ship my books to India.
As for payment, well, I don’t know how well this will work but I have this mechanism. I’ll order the books much before you leave the shores of the US. Even otherwise, you have a long plane journey to endure on the way here. By carrying my book, you will get the opportunity to read it. I don’t know if I’m a good recommender of books. Nevertheless, I think you should find some useful stuff in these books.
If you can’t leave a comment here, mail me at skthewimp [at] yahoo [dot] com
So on Wednesday I watched a Hindi movie in a theatre after a gap of a year and three months. The previous time too, Ashwin was with me, though the rest of the personnel were disjoint. Anuroop also joined us this time, before he embarks on a mission to sell phones in the seven hills. I had seen Baradwaj Rangan’s positive review of Jaane tu ya jaane na and wanted to see it. And given that there was no other half-decent movie around, we decided to go.
My first post on this website. I’ll soon be moving all my LJ stuff here and in a month’s time this will be my primary blog. After that, I plan to do a number of other cool things here. I’ll keep you updated
?helped me pick this route. His initial choice was? flyover-to-underpass walk – which might have been a good followup considering that the first photowalk was called “flyover to flyover”.? I decided to extend the route a bit, so you will encounter the flyover on the way and then end at the underpass. And we’ll be starting very close to what is probably Bangalore’s first ever pedestrian road-over-bridge – so I guess that settles matters. And for good measure, we’ll be walking under a railway track.
As usual, this is going to be on the last Sunday of the month – 27th of July 2008. We begin at 8 am as usual, though this is a bit of a long-ish route. We might take about two and a half hours for this – as opposed to the usual two, so you are encouraged to have breakfast before the walk. You might want to know that there is an Adigas fairly close to the starting point.
We meet in front of Alankar Plaza on K G Road. This was perhaps the first mall in Bangalore (or maybe Safina Plaza came earlier) but it has never been known as one. It is supposed to be a good place to shop for cheap clothes, but I’m not sure if anything will be open on a Sunday morning. Anyways, that is not the reason we are going there.
We start from Alankar Plaza to the end of K G Road where it splits into two and we take the right path – the one that all buses headed to Majestic take. This is called Subedar Chatram road and most of the morning will be spent walking on that. We walk under the flyover at Anand Rao Circle, and then under a railway line a couple of hundred metres later. We will also be passing by a large number of old movie halls.
After a while, we reach what is popularly called as “Swastik Junction” and we take a left turn (no, I don’t mean that in the Prakash Karat sense). We turn right quickly enough, into Sirur Park road which we will follow till it ends. We then do a couple of quick adjustments and reach Malleswaram Circle which signals the end of the walk. An underpass was recently opened at this junction.
Again, standard rules apply. Please either leave a comment here or mail me at skthewimp [at] yahoo [dot] com in order to confirm your participation. If you like this concept, please give it some footage on your websites and tell more people about this. If you have attended any previous photo walk and have some comments to make, please mail me regarding them. If you have any suggestions with respect to THIS walk, please let me know again. And you are also welcome to contribute routes for future photo walks.
Date: 27th July, 2008
Starting time: 8 am
Starting point: Alankar Plaza, Kempe Gowda Road, Gandhinagar, Bangalore 560009
Ending time: Approximately 10:30 am
Ending point: Malleswaram Circle
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Hope to meet you people there. In any case, let me know if you are coming. And spread word.
When I got my house painted three months back, the head painter suggested a new method of calculating his fees. Instead of charging by the man hour, which is how usually painters are charged, this guy proposed that we pay him by the square foot. Once all the work was done, he and I together measured up our house, and calculated his fee based on that.
And he had different slabs of rates, depending on whether we were using a single or a double coat, and there was a different rate for windows and grill work (there’s a lot of those in my house). This method of fee calculation was extremely convenient from my perspective as I didn’t have to run after the painters and make sure they were working. In the traditional model of hourly payment, you need to run after the workers and make sure they are working. If they take a tea break, they are wasting your money. If they are doing something slowly, again you are at a loss.
The latest podcast on Econtalk has Duke economist Mike Munger talking about public transport, and how things have changed for the worse in Santiago after public transport was nationalized.
One of the points mentioned in the podcast talks about homogeneity in services after nationalization. Munger talks about how usage of the public transport system dropped after nationalization and people started using their cars much more. The reason, he mentions, is that earlier there were different classes of service. But the current left-of-center government decided that everyone has to travel in the same way and so the class system in buses was abolished.
Back when I was in school, my father brought me two “Hero” pens. One brown and one green. Soon enough, the barrel of the brown pen was broken, and the nib of the green pen followed presently. I put made use of what was later to be called as ‘Genetic Algorithms’ and continued working. I don’t know what I did with the spare cap though. The cap was once shiny gold in colour, but through constant biting and chewing, it’s become quite dull now.
Two years later, I decided to classify this pen as my “lucky pen”, based on one data point. I had used it to write my IIT JEE. Everything I did that day became lucky. The navy blue shirt. MES College. The breakfast (onion upma). The car in which I traveled to the venue. The Sankey tank route to Malleswaram. All based on just one data point. It was some eight years before I read Taleb.
Ok i’ve talked about this before. When you rant, you do so mostly to feel better. Get things out of your system. Just get rid of some trash so that you can structure the rest of your thoughts. And so all you need is a listener. A counterparty. A good listener. And it’s done. I’m not saying it’s easy to find a good listener. Those types are hard to come by. But it’s mostlty a generalist’s job. Whether you are pissed about your job or with your girlfriend or with the Prime Minister, and you want to rant, you need not find a different person for each!
Cribbing, as I’d mentioned earlier, is much harder. You need to find the right people to crib to. You need to organize your thoughts. You need to be able to ask the right questions. And you need to interpret people’s vague answers and figure out the component of their answer along the direction of your question. And then fit it back into the larger question.
Cribbing is also an art. First you need to find the right counterparty. Next, you need to make it clear to the other person that you are cribbing and not ranting, and so you need a solution. Then, as I mentioned in the last paragraph, you need to give the crib a good structure. And you should be able to objectively ask those right questions without letting your emotions and feelings come in the way. You should get over all those “I don’t want to pain this person with my rant” kind of feelings and think you’re just asking the other person for some specific help.
From a macro perspective, you need to keep separate accounts of rants and cribs. People are more likely to get cheesed of if you rant to them (unless of course they are close to you etc.) but not so much if you crib – I’m mostly talking about bad listeners (which is most of the people) here. If you are cribbing, the structure in your questions and statements helps the other person and it won’t be too heavy on them. also, they have something to do in the whole buisness -? to think of a solution, rather than to just sit and listen, so it’s more enjoyable for them.
Sometimes when I feel like cribbing to someone I feel “ok i’ve been cribbing to this person a lot nowadays and he/she may not like it”. I need to figure out if I’m going to rant or crib, and also filter the historical data on this parameter. And then apply the rule I put above. It’s going to lead to a much more optimal solution.
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