"Humanity is overrated"

One of my favorite TV shows is House M.D.. It is set in a hospital with Dr. Gregory House, a genius, leading a team of doctors to solve a difficult medical case in each episode.

The team uses a "differential diagnosis" technique to eliminate each possibility and in the end, House generally comes with an out of the box idea to solve the case. While House is a genius when it comes to medicine, he has several character flaws which makes it interesting when he has to work with him employees and boss.

Whats interesting to me is not only the medical side of it but also the dialogues, Houses' witty retorts (House-isms, like the title of this post), the evolution of the characters in each episode and the way each episode is loosely connected to the previous one. I also like the way he takes inspiration from totally unrelated things and gets ideas for the case.

House starts off as a jerk, a misanthropist, used as he is in getting his way because of his smarts. But a series of events change him and he eventually begins to show emotion. And in a recent episode, he says: "I'd rather be happy, than smart."

Happiness is all we need

"Today, I asked my 6 year old son what he wants to be when he grows up. He said, "Mommy, all I want to be is happy." -- Source

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Einstein

Instant Karma

Narayana Murthy said "A clear conscience is the softest pillow".

But the problem with that is that most people are not conscientious or are delusional about themselves and they will try to game the system. This puts the conscientious guy at a disadvantage.

Assuming that morality is only an evolutionary trait and that there is no concept of hell, why be good?

Do you think bad people lead a miserable life? (not in your eyes, but in their own eyes.)

Back in the day...

As a kid, I loved going to my grandparents home on weekends to play with my cousins. And we used to go there almost every week.

I was in 1st Standard and it so happened that one weekend, my school, 'Greets Academy' (which my brother used to call 'Monkey Greets' for some reason), announced an event on the Saturday and Dad decided that we would skip this weekend. I was angry, obviously, at the disruption of my normal weekend routine to attend school on the weekend.

But come Friday and the principal announced that the Saturday thing was cancelled.

Yippe! Now we can go but how do we get a car? We didn't have a phone at home at that time.

As I was walking past the 'V Gaurd' office on the way back home after school that evening, I realized, I could make a call from there.

Of course, I didn't have the money to pay for the call, but I knew that if the call was quick and because I was small, they wouldn't ask for money.

So, I entered the office, went to the manager and asked him if I could make a call. He showed me the phone and I made a call to my uncle in Kochi to send a car that evening because I didn't have 'school' on Saturday.

After the call, I put my hand in my pocket as if to reach for money and asked:

"How much?"

"Hey, don't bother." said the manager there.

Phew. I said "thanks" and walked out quickly home.

When I reached home, I told this to my mother who didn't believe me until the car arrived to pick us up.

Whoa!

Mindblowing thoughts from Arundhati Roy on the 'charade' of democracy in India.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/28/author_arundhati_roy_on_conflicts_and

Are these claims true? Or she trying to win the Nobel peace prize? Or is she mad?

Just another brick in the wall

I saw this 1975 movie 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' yesterday. Brilliant movie starring Jack Nicholson.

The central plot of the movie is around how patients in a mental institution become institutionalized under an authoritarian nurse and become patients forever rather than looking forward to go to the outside world. The nurse breaks the patients spirits and makes them a patient for the rest of their lives.

I couldn't help thinking about 'institutionalization' elsewhere.

Employees of an organization which doesn't respect their creativity, end up losing their spirit and become dependent on the system so much that they are afraid to leave the organization to find a new job. Govt employees for e.g. are institutionalized. Employees in large corporates too.

Too many people who are capable of doing better things are instead doing mundane work just because they are afraid of change.

I read an article a while back which said that kids when they start out are very curious about things and quickly grasp things. Curiosity declines in school and finally plateaus when he enters the workforce. Something is wrong.

Pink Floyd nailed it in this song:

My manager often used to say that if not for these rigid organizations, mankind would have made 'Star Trek' a reality by now. I agree.

Essence of a Hacker

Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules ("reality"). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge.

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform "miracles" -- things which violate the perceived rules.

We're often told that there are no shortcuts to success -- that it's all a matter of hard work and doing what we're told. The hacking mindset takes there opposite approach: There are always shortcuts and loopholes.

Important new businesses are usually some kind of hack. The established businesses think they understand the system and have setup rules to guard their profits and prevent real competition. New businesses must find a gap in the rules -- something that the established powers either don't see, or don't perceive as important.

To discover great hacks, we must always be searching for the true nature of our reality, while acknowledging that we do not currently possess the truth, and never will.

From Applied Philosophy, a.k.a. "Hacking"