Showing posts with label Views. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Views. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Post No 4,07,00,00,001 on the Internet: Nature’s curve may not be exponential and other odd thoughts

As I write this article and made a search with keyword COVID 19, the search engine retrieved 4,07,00,00,000 article in 0.43 seconds. Why not another one?

Few of my odd thoughts are as follows


Thought 1: Nature’s curve may not be exponential

When nature starts to dance to the music of death, the curves it shows may not be exponential but in the current situation the articles/forwarded messages related to the topic are taking an exponential form. I do not have enough knowledge to explain why network-based epidemic modeling is a better approach than exponential modeling with R0. (The future reviewers/editors of my articles will be so proud that I am using the technical jargons of which I do not have any clue) However, those of you have any clue, let me direct you play a simple game based on the same theory. https://vax.herokuapp.com/game


Thought 3: Survival of the fittest. Don’t make it survival of the “shittiest”


In the unprecedented time we live in, I remember the scene from heath ledger’s iconic performance in Joker and the words he uttered “When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other.”. I understand the act of panicking helped our so-called uncivilized ancestors to run away from wild animal attacks, angry spouses but in today’s world when we call ourselves civilized we should have minimum decency not to hoard essential supplies.


Thought 5: Remember those who helped us in our bitter times when the time gets better


Most of us will survive this and maybe in a few months, we will go back again to our old tantrums of hating Mondays, blaming system failure everywhere with our perfect hindsight biases. But I hope we will remember those frontline workers, doctors, nurses, the workers in essential services and all those common men and women who stand guard in this uncommon time.


Thought 7: A Certified Introvert’s Guide to survive lockdown
Most of the cities across the world are in lockdown and governments are taking necessary steps to ensure that people stay at home. A plethora of advice on creating new hobbies, learning new skills floating around in proportion to the growth of the virus.


My advice is to try to sit still for a few minutes’ a day without the constant chatter of the mind. I guarantee you, if you do it for 21 days, if nothing else happens at least you will be older by 21 days.


As of me, paraphrasing the dialogue from the movie “Seventh Seal”; "I will carry the memory of these times between my hands as if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk. I will be grateful for the near and dear ones in whose prayers I take a position as per Heisenberg uncertainty principle."


In case you liked this article, do read my other imaginary article on “How to play Sudoku with imaginary numbers”

Monday, December 27, 2010

WILL YOU BUY IT , IF IT IS AVAILABLE FREE

The Question is ‘Will you spend money to buy something, if you can get it free ’





Yesterday evening, I alongwith my friend watching live performance by Sriram (Indian Idol 5 Winner ) . We were outside the boundary area where the show was going on, straining our eyes to have a peek at the show. Many a thoughts were coming to mind such as to bribe the security guard , to break the boundary wall etc etc.

Yes , you may ask the question , ‘why we were standing outside the boundary & why did not we buy tickets to watch the show comfortably sitting inside the show area ‘

I am tempted to answer that we were having a evening exercise for our 2 pair legs and 3 pair eyes ( as my friend also had specs on) and what is the fun to watch a show by buying a ticket’

However all I can say we did not buy tickets because of the economic theory which states ‘Almost everything you purchase is a bargain, in the sense that you get it for less than the absolute maximum  that you would have been willing to pay.’

In this case, the price of the ticket was above the absolute maximum we were willing to pay.

Then I was asking myself, If I had a chance to get inside and watch the show without paying anything ,
Could I have done that.

Before I can answer myself , we came back from that place.

There are two types of people (Actually there are as many types of people in this world as there are
people in this world) first type who believes everything should come at a price ( no piracy , no free stuff ) , the second type ,who thinks ‘everything should be free

I don’t know which group I belong to.

We live in a pirated world , listen to downloaded free music , watch downloaded free movies , read downloaded free e-books. We like things which come free

However those statistics they put regarding loss to music industry, movie industry, publishing industry etc due to prevalent piracy, makes one think regarding the results of our seemingly innocuous actions of downloading and distributing free stuff.

Not going into deal with morals , ethics of the actions I have the following point to make

Without any value assigned to the product , eventually the product will be worthless . Let’s say , by some miracle , from this moment onwards everything becomes free (or we all lost our appetite). Then tomorrow morning , will I go to office to do my job (as if it really matters) . N O WAY

This will happen to all. All we will do, roam around free , eat free food , drink free drinks (vodka martini shaken but not stirred ) , watch free movies , listen to free music etc.

Idea seems fine. To do nothing . To have absolute freedom . However I believe with nothing to achieve, life will be miserable. Eventually everyone of us will get bored with the kind of life and our race may get extinct due to sheer purposelessness of our lives. OR in the contrary we may find the true purpose of life because we will have time to find ourselves.

As we all know the miracle is never going to happen , we end up with the question , ‘what I am willing to pay’

In case my cost for downloading or distributing is more than the cost of buying music , movie , book etc , then we need not search for free stuffs in net. We can buy it and that also with satisfaction that we did something right.

But who is going to fix that absolute maximum ? may be the Invisible Hand revered by econmists