Ideal and Practical Solutions

I've been busy with a deadline the past few weeks, and the hellish amount of effort, and the stuff happening in that time gave me this idea. Let me start by saying that in the world of Computer Science, there are all kinds of solutions to problems, but they usually end up being classified - rather informally - into ideal and practical solutions. For example, you can propose complicated algorithms for problems which are amazingly fast, but no one will ever implement them because they're so complicated. On the other hand, people will be more amenable to using quick and dirty solutions simply because they're easy to use. And this is something I see happening in the real world too.

The key lies in understanding that ideal solutions may not be practical, in the real world too. They make assumptions and simplifications that just don't hold up in the real world. So, we end up creating practical solutions that are close to the ideal solution, but not quite there. This is especially true of problems which are very complex, where an ideal solution requires just too much. Take equality for example. The ideal solution is to ensure there is no discrimination in any sphere of life, based on any factor. But, we all know some of these are buried very deep, either because of the way we are, or because of the environment we grew up in. Now, I've yet to see an example where training can overcome such deeply buried views. Which means that equality isn't a problem which can be practically solved within a generation, no matter what the change proposed. In fact, since how we're raised contributes significantly to this, I'll be a little stingier and claim that a few generations are needed before any proposed changes creep into the nurture process. Which means the war for equality is something that's going to yield changes over a century span, rather than, lets say, a 5 year span. Which makes it fairly disheartening for anyone fighting for it. But, it's important to understand that the temporary 'equilibrium' that we achieve during that century depends a lot on how much we strive for the ideal solution.

Let me go on a tangent for a bit and explain the law of thermodynamic equilibrium. Don't get scared of it, all I care about it in this context is that if you have two sources of temperature, the equilibrium temperature depends on both the sources. This might seem like a fairly simple thing, but it has massive implications, particularly when you're trying to do things like insulate your house for the winter, or cool it in the summer. I'll leave the technical details aside, just point out that this is why air conditioners are rated for a particular range of temperatures, if it gets too hot, they just can't work if they haven't been designed for it.

Getting back, how this tangent applies to the "real" world is that how hard activists fight for equality right now, has a direct consequence on what the temporary fix we get for it. Which is why there are so many lobbying firms that get so much money. If not for any reason, but simply to affect a temporary solution, because most people can see how things will go in the long term. The particular example I'll use here is fairly contentious, so I'll try to stick to logic and avoid getting into opinions, particularly my own.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about gay marriage, the equality of marriage and the whole concept of marriage as a whole. Both sides argue over the fairness of their side and how not following their view would be detrimental to the world as a whole. But, arguing over what the government considers as marriage should only begin after one looks at the history of why the government got into the business of noting who married whom. This goes back to medieval times, when there weren't really governments but lots of lords and kinds who ruled their fiefdoms. The big problem was who gets the property or any belongings of a person when they died, and how to avoid quarrels of any such sort. Ideally this was also meant to resolve matters of succession, but history is littered with examples where the powerful simply chose to overlook the laws. But, in most cases, this helped. The person who was legally married to the deceased got dibs, i.e. their offspring were legal heirs, and the others, bastards. Legal marriage was attested to by the lord or king, whoever ruled the land. Such attestation was important to prevent impostors, not just in matters of property, but also the profession. This is exactly how surnames associated with jobs arose, and sadly enough, the caste system. But clearly the original reason for a ruling body or government recognizing marriage was to ensure that the rights of the loved ones of the deceased (or living) was maintained and free from challenge by the rest of society. This idea stood the test of time, which should give it some measure of sanity, in as much it must have been developed by some leading minds of the time. Since in USA (where this discussion is taking place), the founding fathers are considered paragons of reason and virtue, it is logical to consider the people who came up with the idea of registering marriages, as smart enough. Going along the same argument, this would imply that the definition of marriage as understood by a government should be based purely on how it might help matters of protecting the rights of a person and their loved ones, particularly taxes, inheritance etc. That should imply that the government should not really care if this union is with a man, woman, or any other being or thing. As long as the person or persons referred can be transferred ownership of property without any ambiguity, the government should be perfectly fine with it.

Yes, I realize my argument implies that gay marriage should be allowed. And I do concede that it assumes the separation of church and state. But that's where my logic led me, I'd be happy to change it if someone shows me the flaw there. And if you're wondering where did the ideal v.s. practical theme go, here it is. The solution I've presented is ideal, because it's based on a dispassionate logical understanding. We as humans are not so, we have deeply ingrained prejudices which affect our decision making. Thus I don't expect gay marriage protagonists to win soon. As in I do expect they will get some legal victories soon, but a true adoption won't happen until people's prejudices are wiped out, and that's something that can't happen until the next generation. Even worse, it'll take ever longer for this idea to precipitate to other countries, cause they're a little further back on this change totem pole.

To conclude this rather long and rambling post, let me just say that the extreme protagonists on either side need to keep up their battle cries, no matter what their cause is. Cause how hard you push makes a dent, on both the short-term and long-term scales. And even if you don't see the change you want quite yet, take heart in the fact that your next generation will, thanks to your efforts. 

The 3am desparation

Ah sleep, why hast thou deserted me
An early-to-bed-early-to-rise types, I have the potential to be
It's all part of my grand plan, come here and see
But you're stubborn, it's 3am and I need to pee

A long time ago my parents scolded me for staying up too late
Now they're ecstatic, if I'm up at eight
Morning walks might still be pipe dreams,
But it's been a while since it wasn't lunch, but breakfast I first ate

What could I possibly have done...
...to deserve such a fate, I just had some fun
To all who ask me to sleep early, what am I, a nun?!
And I don't sleep all day, my day just begins with the setting sun

And beneath the moon I've seen some amazing sights
Taken some great pictures, and seen twinkling lights
But now people insist on calling me,
The thing that goes bump in the night

Until "Twilight" I had no problem in being called a vampire
Some vamplings, I once hoped to sire
But one more mention of glittering in sunlight,
And I'll walk out into the sun, to set myself on fire

But before I set myself ablaze,
I must rid myself of this daze
Upon the rising sun I must gaze
And see if waking up early is really as magical, as everyone says

And I must hurry, the damned idiot might tell the kids
How he found their mother, quite soon,
And I'd like to finish this PhD
So my life is no longer a sad toon
And so people stop calling me that loon
Who decided instead of taking a paying job, to work nights and stare mournfully at the moon

Imagine the limits of my desparation, that I'm using pop-culture references
I tried counting sheep, but they refused to jump the damn fences
I agree, I must be out of my senses,
But I've seen too many of my friends' thesis defenses

And now since my mental capacity is all too low
So much so, that I didn't use "pun" in the 13th, no 11th row
I must try to watch some boring TV show
To bed, I must go!

-- me

Untitled...

I've been in this world, for many long years
Put in my blood, sweat, and tears
Even had a couple of beers
I've taken leaps, and faced many fears
Have loved and lost, and suffered a few jeers
I've certainly lived, for many long years

'Tis true my friends, I've come a long way
Heard a few interesting things, and found a lot more to say
I may stop and rest some time, alas, 'tis not today
That day will come, when beneath the heavens I lay
Yet one, a few, the world, may remember me, for that I pray
I ask not for the sun, just a ray

But new little faces look back at me
In their eyes, their gap toothed smiles, I see
That innocence, that wide eyed boy I used to be
But I'm yet that boy, playing on the shores of a deep blue sea
Scared of the waves, but not enough to flee
There's more to suffer and learn, so to life I exclaim, Mais Oui!

-- Me


(Needs a little polish, and a title, but that never stopped me before :) )

Postponement (aka I'll do it tomorrow)

I am a kind of person that people might call lazy. What they seldom see, is that there is a complex mechanism of prioritizing underneath. That mostly serves to convince me that I'm not lazy. So I've decided to diagnose myself as suffering from what I've coined as "Postponement Disorder".

So lets get to the symptoms. The primary symptom obviously is the tendency to postpone current tasks into the future, for various reasons which may vary. But they can usually be categorized under the umbrella reason of "I didn't feel like doing it". But the underlying causes usually reflect your current level of frustration with life, work etc. What most people don't realize is that hard working people who are lazy otherwise are so because their work-life balance is off. Well sure, you might also hate your work, your life, or even your wife, but then you'll have a clearer idea about it. So, back to that elusive work-life balance. We all know about the hallowed thing, how we're supposed to maintain it, and how companies spend millions on trying to motivate their workers to do so as well. But we all know times come when we have to screw that balance for a certain duration cause of the work load. In fact, for real success, you have to screw it most of the time. This is especially pertinent in a grad school situation, cause work load is pretty intense, in addition to the fact that you really never leave work. That's the other problem. Jobs are nice in the sense that there is a demarcation between work and home. Grad school, is mostly treated as school, and not the work it actually is. Which means we work odd hours and all hours of the day and night. Especially close to deadlines and when our advisors lean on us, we keep everything else on the back burner and just work. And this everything else isn't just having fun, it's family, relationships, and even our health. I'm probably guilty of doing all three. But by the end of it, I've realized the folly of that approach. Sure, a lot of people know that secret beforehand, to them I say, lucky bastards, you've probably worked a few years. The ones that don't, I really can't say anything to convince them. This is a fact you either take or leave, it's hard to explain or justify, cause understanding it requires a having gone through the amount of pain and trauma you experience from the above. Which means it's a matter of faith, and that's where it gets hairy. Cause there is a certain threshold of that very pain beyond which you really can't work, something like a breakdown stage. If you're good, you can still maintain a work throughput which a lot of people can't achieve at full trot, so most people won't even notice it. If you're not, it'll be pretty evident to everyone, and they'll tell you, or fire you if they're your boss. And funnily enough, to most people it'll simply look like you're lazy and aren't putting in enough effort. A lot of said people will also tell you to suck it up and just work.

Which brings to the next part, except there really isn't one. If I had a quick fix to this problem, I'd use it and not write this whiny post :) If you do, tell me, I can use it!. Though I must say I'm starting to learn this balance a little better everyday, which gives me hope that I can recover from it minus expensive therapy :P All I will say to those who might also be going through the same is this. Live your life too, PhD's and other things take about the same time whether you kill yourself or not. Well, maybe not, but the rule applies for most things. More importantly, don't keep postponing everything else in your life, cause like willpower, you'll realize you have a limited postponement power, ergo use it wisely, or at least avoid using it as much as possible.

I see now that this post has absolutely zero structure and it didn't end anything like the beginning might have implied. So I'll end by saying this. I think this work life balance thingy sounds important. So I'll get right to it after my PhD defense!

Assumptions

If you've seen The Hurt Locker, you might remember a scene where the protagonist is talking to his baby. The dialogue goes something like this:

"You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don't ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older... some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you'll realize it's just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it's only one or two things. With me, I think it's one."

It's a wonderful piece of dialogue, something that stuck with me after the movie. My thought for this post goes along similar lines. When we're young we assume a lot of things. We live in a sheltered world, and a number of simple assumptions maintain that shelter. Things like how our parents and family love us, how they are probably the smartest people around and how they'll always protect us. Then follow the other ones like your friends being awesome etc. etc. Over time though, most of these assumptions get broken. But the ones that don't, form the backbone of our existence, our foundations so to say. Which is why it's so overwhelming and upsetting when one of our long held assumptions, or beliefs, get shattered. I guess the most important of these assumptions are the most primal, ones pertaining to our immediate family. Maybe it's different for other people, but that's the case for me. It seems like a reasonable assumption (no pun intended), since not having a stable home is known to cause behavioral issues among people. I'll even go far enough to postulate that love is somewhat of a fast track criterion for assumptions to be assimilated into the core backbone, cause that aligns it better with how bad breakups hurt.

And that's how faith works too, right? Cause at the heart of faith is a set of assumptions. That's the beauty of it, that assumptions do not have to answer to any form of logic. Which is also why people get defensive when their faith is questioned by logic or science, since it isn't based in logic. But it also emphasizes the importance of not shattering anyone's assumptions in faith for no better reason than someone's need for logical consistency. But most of all, what's important to remember is how deceptively well hidden these buggers are. We're so used to their existence that we don't notice them even when they're staring us right in the face.

When you think a bit more about it, you start to realize that our mind relies on a lot of assumptions in life. Most problems in CS dealing with human abilities, like sight, hearing, intelligence and comprehension are so insanely hard to solve because developing these assumptions using algorithms. We don't recognize everyone equally easily, only those we expect to see. That analogy carries to other senses too, like we understand languages using context. If someone uses words out of context, even the best language experts have to take an extra second to understand it. All this seems to highlight the importance of assumptions, they help us survive and exist. In fact, it's widely believed (or is proven, I'm not sure), that your mind can hold exactly 8 pieces of information at a time. Anything more and one of these things have to be switched out. I'm guessing that makes multi-tasking hard, and that people who can truly multi-task must have some interesting differences in this architecture.

But all in all, this seems to point to a nice avenue to help our species evolve, cause the newer generations seem to have better assumptions in place for technology and the ilk. So imagine if we can understand how assumptions are formed and assimilated, and are able to speed up the process, we'd pretty much be able to instantly teach people things. Or, on the evil spectrum of things, brainwash and control people. But it would definitely be a cool line of research. Maybe then the assumptions we develop ourselves will have that extra value, or rather I hope our mind would evolve to differentiate between the two. Till then, we'll just have to assume other people know what they're talking about and have some common sense :P

Remember remember...

...the 5th of November, that's how V for Vendetta starts off. It's one of my favorites, mostly for philosophy above anything else. The movie makes one very interesting point though, that an idea is bulletproof. After looking at the state of politics these days, I'm starting to believe that even an idea isn't immune to rusting.

Let me start by talking about another movie that I saw very recently, Lincoln. It's a Spielberg movie based on his biography (which now goes on to my ever increasing to-read list). It's after watching it that I remembered V for Vendetta once again. For those of you who might not know, Lincoln is one of the more revered American presidents, for a number of things, biggest of which was abolishing slavery. That's one hell of an accomplishment, but the story of how it was managed and what it took from the man makes it even more poignant. Passion like that made me wonder why politics seems so different these days. Except that I realized politics hasn't changed, Lincoln faced serious opposition to pass his law. The law that seems so self-evident was abhorred by much of the Parliament then, much like some of the recent laws. Which makes it seem like there aren't any big problems these days, or maybe it's hindsight that makes a problem seem great. The bigger problem is the apparent lack of faith in democracy overall. Every little thing is so heavily contested, opinions are so fractured that it makes democracy seem like an exercise in pain that'd make a colonoscopy seem pleasant.

Which brings us to the main point, why the hell is that the case? History seems to make the case that people haven't changed much, something else should be the problem. A more likely cause are the circumstances. In Lincoln's time, democracy was a gift, independence had just been won, and the generation that fought for it was still fresh in everyone's memory. So the people knew what was at stake, they knew what democracy was better than. On the contrary, the current generation has grown up in an era where democracy is assumed. In most of the western world, freedoms are assumed, and the concept of a time and place where autocratic rulers made arbitrary rules is very foreign. Don't get me wrong, but to people whom freedom is given without any costs, it seems vanilla. To others who haven't grown up with it, it isn't. Just to be clear, I'm not in the latter category either, the world I grew up in had all kinds of freedoms, which is why I react strongly to any loss of freedoms. But I come from a country which obtained its freedom much more recently than the USA, and as a consequence, holds its democracy a little dearer. Not that that means things aren't messed up with it, but that a whole other story. There's a saying that complacency breeds contempt, and it seems particularly appropriate in this situation. Because democracy has been around for so long people treat it with a certain level of contempt, and expect it to do things for them, rather than the other way around.

Winston Churchill famously said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". For all the chest beating we might do about it, we tend to forget that it requires a lot of compromise. The problem is that unless you know what the alternative is, it's hard to get the adequate motivation to compromise. Which makes me think that democracy as a form of government is reaching a stable state, i.e. the changes in it's existence, shape and form are done. The problem with forms of government is that people get bored with them once they reach stability. Cause all the rhetoric about how they can be glorious stops and people have to see the flawed reality. And the problem about seeing flawed realities is that then people start to look for the next glorious form of government that can work, and revolution starts. The one thing democracy has going for it is that there isn't a viable alternative yet, but the descent to anarchy seems quite close, especially if you see some of the stuff on news networks in USA. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but I jolly well hope not. Till then I suggest you learn more about Lincoln, and even Kennedy and ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

Holiday!

I awoke one day with a start
Maybe something was wrong with my heart?
But what is this I see
Fighting hard to overcome my urge to pee..

My mind told me it is a thing called the sun
People talked about it, I figured it was a pun!
They had urged me to try and have this thing called "fun"
Now that my deadline was done

I noticed something on my phone
When I clicked it, a voice started to drone
You have a flight in 3 hours, it said
You'd better be there, or you'll be dead

For it's time to meet people you once knew,
Before for this deadline, before you bid the world adeiu,
In a land far away your family awaits,
Far, yet in these united states :P

So get used to that spherical shape in the sky, that odd shade of red,
And on that note, get out of bed!
Of night-time knowledge you may be a fount,
And even look like Dracula, but you're not yet a count

Go on, go to York born anew,
Holidays like these, you get only a few
Another time, you may belong to the night
But thankfully, those days are not yet in sight

So I shut the phone and stare,
And wonder what to wear,
Surprisingly the laundry is done,
Past me, thanks a ton!

It's time to get ready and look smart,
For the ones close to my heart
There's a new one I get to meet
And she looks oh so sweet!

But since gifts I have none,
I must get there early, I must run!
Beg forgiveness from the queen all of four,
For she shall surely throw me out the door

So I'm leaving on a jet plane,
Sadly I know exactly when I'll be back again
I just hope it doesn't start to rain,
Cause getting home dry will be a pain,

Now I'll end cause this poem's becoming a drag,
And I have yet to pack my bag,
So to all, a good day, I'll see you soon,
Seems like I can write a funny poem, I might even try a toon!

-- Me