Times of India, a leading newspaper in India, published the following article about the recent rise in rape cases.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/330_rape_assault_cases_in_Delhi_in_08/articleshow/2994429.cms
581 rape cases in 2007? Just from one city? Surely, this is a sign of moral fiber of the society breaking down! How can we say we are making progress when we see numbers like this?
No way how you look at it, rape is a henious crime. It traumatizes an innocent human being, usually a woman or a young girl. The effects of rape last much longer than the event itself, the scars rarely heal. I am a man and have never been raped, so it is impossible to imagine for me how dreadful it is. So when I talk about the issue, it is purely from the statistical point of view. The contention is that if you have fewer number of henious crimes, that's the sign of progress and civilization. 581 is a huge number. The ideal number is ZERO. I don't want to belittle the individuals involved, and the trauma they went through. But before we conclude that the society is going down the drain, we must ask what were the conditions like earlier. After all progress means better than what was earlier, right?
The biggest reason the numbers you hear nowadays are numbers that are unheard of, is because of the populations involved. We are mentally capable of tracking, imagining people in 10's or at the most 100's. A typical village where everyone knew (almost) everyone else has a size of 100 to 1000. Beyond that we really cannot grasp. When the numbers starts going above 10000, we don't have grasp of what they mean.
Population of Delhi is 14 million on the lower estimates, and 21 million on the higher estimate. Of course, it depends on which parts you include and when you measured. If we take the lower number for conservative estimates, 581 rapes means 1 rape per year in 24,000 people. It is like saying in a village of 1000 people, 1 rape in 24 years. Now we don't have any data for villages in earlier times. But try to imagine yourself living in a village, and hearing statistics about the neighboring village 500 people "you know, in the last 48 years, there have been 1 rape. It's a horrible situation!" What would you say? Would you be as shocked as the Delhi statistics? Of course not. But this is exactly what's happening in Delhi - there are just thousands of villages put together. The consolidation of the statistics gives you a number that is large in absolute sense.
Now some people will say that the number 581 represents just the reported cases, there must be thousands that get hushed up. I agree wholeheartedly. The society has taboos associated with the rape, and punishes the victim. But this has been going on for centuries. In fact there are more and more women now who can come forward now and name the perpetrator, than earlier. Women are lot stronger than they used to be a 100 years ago - they are more educated, more independent, they earn more. Fewer of them have to succumb to the family pressure to hide it and live with the pain.
The process of adding up all the numbers for a crowded city makes a number appear staggering. This did not happen when we knew only about what is happening in our village. In a sense, this is a good thing, because it raises awareness of the population, and forces the authorities to take action. And the actions get taken for long term improvement. It is a slow process, but it does work. Some as a direct result of a law or an initiative (like the seat belt laws reducing the number of deaths per passenger mile). Some changes happen as a result of general improvements in education, health, communicaiton, technology etc. The slow changes are difficult to see, and we start taking them for granted. But they are there.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
I, Human
What defines a human being? What's so special about us? What are we proud of? What do we cherish? What is it that separates us from the other animals?
If I were forced to give a single word answer to the questions, I would say it is "mind". Most living beings have brains, some have very rudimentary languages, some basic emotions... The closest rivals to humans are chimps and dolphins. They do pretty okay by their standards, but compared to humans, the difference between minds is huge. It is like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari.
The fact that the mind is the most important thing for humans has not escaped the human intellect. The history of human progress is that of the freedom of mind.
For the millennia that people have occupied this planet, the struggle has been to free the body first. Mind cannot survive without the body. And making the fragile human body last against the elements was not easy.
The human societies did what poor men with no savings and low income does. They used the precious mind power to survive. And some of them saved the power, starving themselves, and invested it. Some of these investments paid off, some simply died out. But one by one the groups that survived had more excess mind power floating around, and more learning as the generations went by. They say that making the first million is the most difficult one. The first major breakthroughs were difficult, and it took thousands of years to reach the agricultural society stage that really gave a big stability, like fertile soile for the available mind power to blossom.
The recent BCs and early ADs humans transformed themselves from exerters of physical powers to controllers of physical power. The first obvious choice to replace human muscle power were animals. As the time went by the power needs of humans increased, and they started garnering the power from water, air, steam, coal, oil. They started machines that did the mindless, non-creative actions nobody really wanted to do. By the end of the 20th century, humans are essentially not doing any physical labor. This does not mean there aren't people who do hard labor. What it means is human being are using 99% of the energy needed sources other than human muscle.
If I were forced to give a single word answer to the questions, I would say it is "mind". Most living beings have brains, some have very rudimentary languages, some basic emotions... The closest rivals to humans are chimps and dolphins. They do pretty okay by their standards, but compared to humans, the difference between minds is huge. It is like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari.
The fact that the mind is the most important thing for humans has not escaped the human intellect. The history of human progress is that of the freedom of mind.
For the millennia that people have occupied this planet, the struggle has been to free the body first. Mind cannot survive without the body. And making the fragile human body last against the elements was not easy.
The human societies did what poor men with no savings and low income does. They used the precious mind power to survive. And some of them saved the power, starving themselves, and invested it. Some of these investments paid off, some simply died out. But one by one the groups that survived had more excess mind power floating around, and more learning as the generations went by. They say that making the first million is the most difficult one. The first major breakthroughs were difficult, and it took thousands of years to reach the agricultural society stage that really gave a big stability, like fertile soile for the available mind power to blossom.
The recent BCs and early ADs humans transformed themselves from exerters of physical powers to controllers of physical power. The first obvious choice to replace human muscle power were animals. As the time went by the power needs of humans increased, and they started garnering the power from water, air, steam, coal, oil. They started machines that did the mindless, non-creative actions nobody really wanted to do. By the end of the 20th century, humans are essentially not doing any physical labor. This does not mean there aren't people who do hard labor. What it means is human being are using 99% of the energy needed sources other than human muscle.
What happened to the muscle power in the last three centuries, is now happening to the brain power. There have always been boring, tedius jobs that were essentially mindless. Writing things down, copying, adding numbers, multiplying, keeping accounts... This is what a lot "learned" men did a century ago. Now these lower level tasks are done by computers. There is more and more mind power liberated to do creative work.
There will come one day when humans will "work" only when they want to. And the work will involve doing something constructive, something beutiful, something that gives pleasure. There will be more time to connect with other people, and the humans will. The barriers that separate people will start to vanish - cultural biases, racial hatred, will diminish as people become more educated and start valuing individuall lives lot more than countries and religions. Most will live past 100 years, and live healthier, richer lives. Most will get a decent education, get a chance to explore the world around them, and contribute to the knowledge.
This is what all the progress is for. And we are on track to achieve it in not so distant future.
I am a human being, and proud of my race.
Monday, April 21, 2008
The CEO of Earth
"It's small step for one man, but a giant stride for mankind". The first step on the moon definitely was an amazing moment, a tip of the achievement of a civilization. A highlight of the 20th century. But was the humanity splurging its resources on moon, and forgetting the masses? Many people think so - and constantly worry that the world is going down the drain.
When I was kid, we always had to write essays or prepare for elocution competitions with topics like "If I became Prime Minister of India". The simplistic view that everyone was supposed to take, rang hollow even then. "I will make food free for everyone, and help poor". Of course, the modern day politicians' promises aren't much different. Only as I grew older, I started realizing how complex the problem is for any ruler, let alone a democratic leader.
But let me invite you to keep the complexity aside and think with the same youthful exuberance and optimism. Imagine, what you would do if you were the ruler of the world in the year 1900. (the reason for the year 1900 is that we can compare what you would do against what actually happened) Or better still imagine that the earth was a corporation, every human being an equal shareholder, the bottom line is combined happiness of everyone - and you are the CEO of this corporation, again, in the year 1900. The board of directors is occupied by people like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha... all the good people you can think of, even though they are anachronists. You can hire and fire anyone.
What will you do? Give this quesiton a serious thought before you read any further.
Well, you will probably hire some good sociologists, economists and known humanatarians (if the board of directors is not enough!) and find out where we are. The picture they paint will be bleak. There is suffering all across, the average life expectancy is in 30s. There is no equality between men and women. Literacy % can be counted on both hands. Two thirds of the world population is enslaved by colonizing powers, famines and deseases are killing people at will by the millions. People are dying not just because of the lack of medicines, but because the lack of knowledge that a bit of sugar and salt added to water will save lives. Almost every woman sees four of her children die prematurely - and can hardly do anything beyond giving 6 to 7 births in her lifetime. If you tried to simplify the problems, it will be ill health, poverty and ignorance.
And you don't just want a short term solution. You want a long term solution. Something that will grow. And the other constraint is that you need to do this through the people.
But the situation is not all bad. You have all knowledge of centuries behind you. When Buddha says to you from the board of directors that all human suffering is through strife, you can say back to him that true, but the malaria virus that kills millions of children has nothing to do with the strife. Let's remove the external problems and then deal with the strife.
The more you look at the macroeconomic picture, you will realize that increasing happiness is a tall task. The only thing you can do is reduce the miseries, losses of lives and the hardship; give them basic education so that they can enlighten themselves, and give them longer life and freedom so that they can find their own happiness and contribute to others'.
The question actually is not how you would go about doing this, or how quickly you will be able to achieve it, but what will you try to achieve. The four things you will concentrate on and measure as your bottom line will probably be
1. average life span
2. average number of years of formal education
3. average wealth with not to unreasonable distribution
4. % people under democracy
If the world made progress on these major fronts you would have saved billions of lives, made each life stronger for longer, and given everyone more material wealth to add stability and fuel for pursuit of happiness.
You were not the CEO of the world in the 20th century. Mostly corrupt and power hungry politicians ruled through rumbling beurocracies all over the world. And yet through all this mess, humanity made amazing strides over all 4 key measures. We reached the moon too - but that's just gravy.
When I was kid, we always had to write essays or prepare for elocution competitions with topics like "If I became Prime Minister of India". The simplistic view that everyone was supposed to take, rang hollow even then. "I will make food free for everyone, and help poor". Of course, the modern day politicians' promises aren't much different. Only as I grew older, I started realizing how complex the problem is for any ruler, let alone a democratic leader.
But let me invite you to keep the complexity aside and think with the same youthful exuberance and optimism. Imagine, what you would do if you were the ruler of the world in the year 1900. (the reason for the year 1900 is that we can compare what you would do against what actually happened) Or better still imagine that the earth was a corporation, every human being an equal shareholder, the bottom line is combined happiness of everyone - and you are the CEO of this corporation, again, in the year 1900. The board of directors is occupied by people like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha... all the good people you can think of, even though they are anachronists. You can hire and fire anyone.
What will you do? Give this quesiton a serious thought before you read any further.
Well, you will probably hire some good sociologists, economists and known humanatarians (if the board of directors is not enough!) and find out where we are. The picture they paint will be bleak. There is suffering all across, the average life expectancy is in 30s. There is no equality between men and women. Literacy % can be counted on both hands. Two thirds of the world population is enslaved by colonizing powers, famines and deseases are killing people at will by the millions. People are dying not just because of the lack of medicines, but because the lack of knowledge that a bit of sugar and salt added to water will save lives. Almost every woman sees four of her children die prematurely - and can hardly do anything beyond giving 6 to 7 births in her lifetime. If you tried to simplify the problems, it will be ill health, poverty and ignorance.
And you don't just want a short term solution. You want a long term solution. Something that will grow. And the other constraint is that you need to do this through the people.
But the situation is not all bad. You have all knowledge of centuries behind you. When Buddha says to you from the board of directors that all human suffering is through strife, you can say back to him that true, but the malaria virus that kills millions of children has nothing to do with the strife. Let's remove the external problems and then deal with the strife.
The more you look at the macroeconomic picture, you will realize that increasing happiness is a tall task. The only thing you can do is reduce the miseries, losses of lives and the hardship; give them basic education so that they can enlighten themselves, and give them longer life and freedom so that they can find their own happiness and contribute to others'.
The question actually is not how you would go about doing this, or how quickly you will be able to achieve it, but what will you try to achieve. The four things you will concentrate on and measure as your bottom line will probably be
1. average life span
2. average number of years of formal education
3. average wealth with not to unreasonable distribution
4. % people under democracy
If the world made progress on these major fronts you would have saved billions of lives, made each life stronger for longer, and given everyone more material wealth to add stability and fuel for pursuit of happiness.
You were not the CEO of the world in the 20th century. Mostly corrupt and power hungry politicians ruled through rumbling beurocracies all over the world. And yet through all this mess, humanity made amazing strides over all 4 key measures. We reached the moon too - but that's just gravy.
Friday, April 18, 2008
The S Curve
Imagine setting fire to a very large field of dry grass. The shape of the field does not matter too much as long as you start small fires in different locations. Initially the small fires are burning, and start consuming the grass right next to it. The beginning is a little slow, because the perimeter of the fire is very small. But as the fire grows, the rate at which it starts burning increases, because there is more and more fuel available at the edge - as the small circles spread into larger ones. After a point when half or more of the grass is burned out, the fire starts slowing down. Burning continues, but the rates start becoming smaller. This happens because different circles merge, and the perimeter actually decreases. What starts out with islands of fire, becomes islands of grass. These islands shrink further and further, reducing the strength of the fire. Ultimately everything dies down when the whole field burns out.
If you took a picture of the fire at different times, and measured the area burned down, first few intervals will show slow rise. However, the growth acceslerate rapidly, almost exponentially till the halfway point. At halfway point, the rate of rise is steep, and in the later half when most of the field has burned down, the rate of rise is slow. This is the classic S curve.
Why is the S curve important? Well, to begin with, it applies to population. Population, too increases like the bushfire to increase rapidly at first and then settle down. Technically speaking the S curve may not exactly describe the human population, because unlike the fire example with the fixed space conditions by which the human population increases, and the causes by which it ceases to increase are not constant. For example, we may discover another planet on which to grow human race in future. Or the sociological changes will actually cause the population to decrease. Nevertheless, conceptually the curve is still valid. For a fairly foreseeable future - the next 100 years or so - we can safely assume that the population will plataue at around 9 to 10 billion.
The exact number is not really important. But what it tells us is that the doomsday scenarios that were common in 1970s about the population explosion were obviously incorrect. Those looked at the halfway point, fast burning, rapidly rising S curve, and blindly interpolated to go for some years. The math was not incorrect, it never is for typical scaremonger statistics. The error was in assumptions that the population growth will continue at the same vigorous rates.
The other extremely important aspect of S curves is that it approximates how a particular life improvement spreads through the world. The bottom part of the S curve represents the initial period of very low pervailance and slow growth. Typically in this period a particular item or freedom is available to only the cream of the society. The growth is slow, but it picks up. The second part is when the spread is very rapid, and in no time most of the society gets that item. This is the period when the item changes from luxury available to only the top 5 to 10% to a necessity that eventually 90% people possess. The last bit is little difficult, again because of various reasons. So sometimes the last 10% takes as much time as covering the middle 80%. But eventually almost everyone has it and the world starts taking it for granted.
If you take the "safty from predetors" like lions, tigers, hyenas etc as your variable and charted what percentage of population had this "luxury" you will see a similar trend. The stone age people and their ancestors did not have this luxury. Very few people were protected because they either were rulers of tribes could afford to live protected by others who faced the risk. As the civilization spread through, and the agricultural societies thrived, the villages grew (just like bushfires). The inner people were protected. Now we have completed the S curve (almost) and less than 1% are actually exposed to it. We have forgotten that it was a problem once, and that it killed large number of people every year.
Another example is the spread of the cellphone. This can be illustrated with numbers. [need a plot]. Before 1900, the conept just wasn't there beyond somebody's imagination. I am sure people must have sat around a campfires and wondered what wonderful life it would be if everyone could talk to their dear ones, friends at a press of a button, no matter where they were. Probably they had a good laugh about it and forgot. But the dream lived on and now it's reality. In late 80's there were very few people who could afford car phones or new fangled mobile phones that weighed a ton. That was the less than 1% phase. As of now, there are around 3 billion (need to confirm the numbers) equivalent to about 60% of the population that could use cell phones. We have quickly reached from a mobile phone becoming a necessity from extreme luxury. And only a 100 years ago it was science fiction.
The S curve for cell phone population is much steeper than the S curve for the safty from predators. It took a few thousand years for human beings to achieve the second, whereas it will take only 50 odd years for the cell phone being available to every human being. This is a new feature of modern times, the progress takes place right under our noses. The reaction time is fast. On the face of it, the difference looks like the difference between sociological change to a technological change. I personally have never taken much liking to lables. Ultimately they are the structures that get formed either to thwart predators, or transmit phone signals. Nevertheless, by the 20th century there have been enough changes, so that a thing like cellphone can be invented, and more importantly spread through amazingly quickly. So if you draw a meta S curve, we are on the rise - long time ago all S curves were very slow, now they are fast.
The progress is spreading like a wild fire...
If you took a picture of the fire at different times, and measured the area burned down, first few intervals will show slow rise. However, the growth acceslerate rapidly, almost exponentially till the halfway point. At halfway point, the rate of rise is steep, and in the later half when most of the field has burned down, the rate of rise is slow. This is the classic S curve.
Why is the S curve important? Well, to begin with, it applies to population. Population, too increases like the bushfire to increase rapidly at first and then settle down. Technically speaking the S curve may not exactly describe the human population, because unlike the fire example with the fixed space conditions by which the human population increases, and the causes by which it ceases to increase are not constant. For example, we may discover another planet on which to grow human race in future. Or the sociological changes will actually cause the population to decrease. Nevertheless, conceptually the curve is still valid. For a fairly foreseeable future - the next 100 years or so - we can safely assume that the population will plataue at around 9 to 10 billion.
The exact number is not really important. But what it tells us is that the doomsday scenarios that were common in 1970s about the population explosion were obviously incorrect. Those looked at the halfway point, fast burning, rapidly rising S curve, and blindly interpolated to go for some years. The math was not incorrect, it never is for typical scaremonger statistics. The error was in assumptions that the population growth will continue at the same vigorous rates.
The other extremely important aspect of S curves is that it approximates how a particular life improvement spreads through the world. The bottom part of the S curve represents the initial period of very low pervailance and slow growth. Typically in this period a particular item or freedom is available to only the cream of the society. The growth is slow, but it picks up. The second part is when the spread is very rapid, and in no time most of the society gets that item. This is the period when the item changes from luxury available to only the top 5 to 10% to a necessity that eventually 90% people possess. The last bit is little difficult, again because of various reasons. So sometimes the last 10% takes as much time as covering the middle 80%. But eventually almost everyone has it and the world starts taking it for granted.
If you take the "safty from predetors" like lions, tigers, hyenas etc as your variable and charted what percentage of population had this "luxury" you will see a similar trend. The stone age people and their ancestors did not have this luxury. Very few people were protected because they either were rulers of tribes could afford to live protected by others who faced the risk. As the civilization spread through, and the agricultural societies thrived, the villages grew (just like bushfires). The inner people were protected. Now we have completed the S curve (almost) and less than 1% are actually exposed to it. We have forgotten that it was a problem once, and that it killed large number of people every year.
Another example is the spread of the cellphone. This can be illustrated with numbers. [need a plot]. Before 1900, the conept just wasn't there beyond somebody's imagination. I am sure people must have sat around a campfires and wondered what wonderful life it would be if everyone could talk to their dear ones, friends at a press of a button, no matter where they were. Probably they had a good laugh about it and forgot. But the dream lived on and now it's reality. In late 80's there were very few people who could afford car phones or new fangled mobile phones that weighed a ton. That was the less than 1% phase. As of now, there are around 3 billion (need to confirm the numbers) equivalent to about 60% of the population that could use cell phones. We have quickly reached from a mobile phone becoming a necessity from extreme luxury. And only a 100 years ago it was science fiction.
The S curve for cell phone population is much steeper than the S curve for the safty from predators. It took a few thousand years for human beings to achieve the second, whereas it will take only 50 odd years for the cell phone being available to every human being. This is a new feature of modern times, the progress takes place right under our noses. The reaction time is fast. On the face of it, the difference looks like the difference between sociological change to a technological change. I personally have never taken much liking to lables. Ultimately they are the structures that get formed either to thwart predators, or transmit phone signals. Nevertheless, by the 20th century there have been enough changes, so that a thing like cellphone can be invented, and more importantly spread through amazingly quickly. So if you draw a meta S curve, we are on the rise - long time ago all S curves were very slow, now they are fast.
The progress is spreading like a wild fire...
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The invisible riches
Everyone knows the three monkies - see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil. But the reality is exactly opposite - we keep our eyes and ears open to find if there is any evil around, we tell about it to warn others, and that's how we have survived.
Harsh forces of evolution have taught us human being to be always vigilant. We are always on the lookout lest some predator be lurking behind the bushes or snakes under the stone. So every time we hear a suspecious movement, see something wrong we go into the fight or flight mode. We yearn to see it, crowd around to hear it, worry about it and spread the message by talking about it. The media of course makes there living by utilizing these innate tendancies.
The upshot of all this is that we are always more fine tuned to the visible, the tangible and the dangerous. Train crashes, explosions, terrorist attacks - all catch our eye, numb our minds and scare us. They stay with us in our memory - we remember where we were, how we heard it, proudly tell if we saw it. These add up in our mind to make a picture of a bleak and scary world.
The bad things that did not happen (and used to happen) on the other hand are invisible. You can't send a camera crew to a house, with the reporter saying "Neither of Mr. Smith's two children has died in the last twenty eight years, and he might become a grandfather soon - which would have been highly probable had he lived 20,000 years ago. Yey for them."
The point is that disaster is tangible. You can point a finger to a dead body. You can show the burned down bus. You can view the fallen buildings. And you can parade martyrs. Everyone knows that at least a few million lives were saved by penicilin, it is difficult to pinpoint - which millions? Who exactly? So there is no cheer for those millions of lives, but the mourning for ten deaths in shooting by a madman? It's on!
Let's take a very recent example. In United States, car occupant deaths have been almost constant at 35000 a year for 15 years between 1983 to 1998. This does not sound like progress - but during that time more and more states passed and enforced seat belt laws. The population increased, the travel increased even more than the population did. So if there was no progress, that means there should be about 52,000 deaths a year by now. But the laws, technology, better roads, and many other factors combined to reduce the numer of deaths per passenger mile. So a back of the envelope calcuation tells us that about 120,000 lives were saved. Do you know if you are one of them? Can you imagine those 120,000 families that did not go through devastation? There is no way to know who, but someone has to be it. (The following paper talks about gory details of each aspect of the law's effect)
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/341.pdf
And I gave these numbers because the data was easily available and quantifiable. That's the other problem, the data needs a fair amount of digging. But these numbers pale in comparison to the number of children saved by malnutrion over the last 100 year. That number is in billions. Do you know how many of them have become great artists, great scientists, or plain old fashioned good kids who took care of there parents, raised good kids themselves and did the hard work to make society prosper? (The health and life improvements are such a huge part of the world getting better, it deserves few articles in its own right.) Each and every one of us has benefitted from their contributions, every one of us lives in a world that is better because it did not suffer those deaths.
Maybe the monkies that have evolved into human beings aught to try hard to see, hear and talk about the invisible treasures that we take so much for granted, that we don't even know about it.
Harsh forces of evolution have taught us human being to be always vigilant. We are always on the lookout lest some predator be lurking behind the bushes or snakes under the stone. So every time we hear a suspecious movement, see something wrong we go into the fight or flight mode. We yearn to see it, crowd around to hear it, worry about it and spread the message by talking about it. The media of course makes there living by utilizing these innate tendancies.
The upshot of all this is that we are always more fine tuned to the visible, the tangible and the dangerous. Train crashes, explosions, terrorist attacks - all catch our eye, numb our minds and scare us. They stay with us in our memory - we remember where we were, how we heard it, proudly tell if we saw it. These add up in our mind to make a picture of a bleak and scary world.
The bad things that did not happen (and used to happen) on the other hand are invisible. You can't send a camera crew to a house, with the reporter saying "Neither of Mr. Smith's two children has died in the last twenty eight years, and he might become a grandfather soon - which would have been highly probable had he lived 20,000 years ago. Yey for them."
The point is that disaster is tangible. You can point a finger to a dead body. You can show the burned down bus. You can view the fallen buildings. And you can parade martyrs. Everyone knows that at least a few million lives were saved by penicilin, it is difficult to pinpoint - which millions? Who exactly? So there is no cheer for those millions of lives, but the mourning for ten deaths in shooting by a madman? It's on!
Let's take a very recent example. In United States, car occupant deaths have been almost constant at 35000 a year for 15 years between 1983 to 1998. This does not sound like progress - but during that time more and more states passed and enforced seat belt laws. The population increased, the travel increased even more than the population did. So if there was no progress, that means there should be about 52,000 deaths a year by now. But the laws, technology, better roads, and many other factors combined to reduce the numer of deaths per passenger mile. So a back of the envelope calcuation tells us that about 120,000 lives were saved. Do you know if you are one of them? Can you imagine those 120,000 families that did not go through devastation? There is no way to know who, but someone has to be it. (The following paper talks about gory details of each aspect of the law's effect)
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/341.pdf
And I gave these numbers because the data was easily available and quantifiable. That's the other problem, the data needs a fair amount of digging. But these numbers pale in comparison to the number of children saved by malnutrion over the last 100 year. That number is in billions. Do you know how many of them have become great artists, great scientists, or plain old fashioned good kids who took care of there parents, raised good kids themselves and did the hard work to make society prosper? (The health and life improvements are such a huge part of the world getting better, it deserves few articles in its own right.) Each and every one of us has benefitted from their contributions, every one of us lives in a world that is better because it did not suffer those deaths.
Maybe the monkies that have evolved into human beings aught to try hard to see, hear and talk about the invisible treasures that we take so much for granted, that we don't even know about it.
Monday, April 14, 2008
9 Billion Minds? What's that?
The name of the blog is based on the classic A. C. Clarke story "Nine Billion names of God". The story starts with a description of a group of monks in Himalayas, who are trying to write out all the names of their god - 9 billion of them. It ends up discussing the meaning of life and the purpose of existance. I highly recommend it.
Clarke's story tries to talk about the purpose of existance and suggests that the answer of why we are may not seem obvious, or rational. In the hindsight it may seem so but the current understanding and perception might be misleading. In this blog I want to explore the purpose of what we broadly call "progress". 9 billion minds is a short answer to the question "why progress? and progress towards what?"
By a curious coincidence, the world population too will settle at somewhere close to 9 billion in the late 21st century. As we become more technologically advance we will be able to support more and more people to live without any physical or animal pains. Our struggles will be mental alone.
If you watch the news, read the papers, you will find people strongly believing that there is no progress at all - in fact things are getting worse. They believe that the society is going down the drain. Fortunately, they are wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. Their views are not based on data, but more on perceptions, insticts and just plain old nostalgia that grips middle aged people like a mental virus.
In these pages, I want to address different aspect of this theme. Some articles may be debunking the existing misnomers about progress, some would be about global trends, some may deal with individuals, some will deal with how media lives by portraying bleak and sensational picture of the world.
Clarke's story tries to talk about the purpose of existance and suggests that the answer of why we are may not seem obvious, or rational. In the hindsight it may seem so but the current understanding and perception might be misleading. In this blog I want to explore the purpose of what we broadly call "progress". 9 billion minds is a short answer to the question "why progress? and progress towards what?"
By a curious coincidence, the world population too will settle at somewhere close to 9 billion in the late 21st century. As we become more technologically advance we will be able to support more and more people to live without any physical or animal pains. Our struggles will be mental alone.
If you watch the news, read the papers, you will find people strongly believing that there is no progress at all - in fact things are getting worse. They believe that the society is going down the drain. Fortunately, they are wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. Their views are not based on data, but more on perceptions, insticts and just plain old nostalgia that grips middle aged people like a mental virus.
In these pages, I want to address different aspect of this theme. Some articles may be debunking the existing misnomers about progress, some would be about global trends, some may deal with individuals, some will deal with how media lives by portraying bleak and sensational picture of the world.
The thinking planet
What a difference a few billion years make!
The Earth was a hot lump of spinning mass made of dust, land, water, lava and a bunch of toxic gases. Volcanoes spewed angry heat, the skies rained on a land mass that shifted and redefined itself, and the seas undulated to the rhythem of day and night. There were countless millenia of turmoil and other countless millenia of quiet period where nothing happened out of ordinary. Chaos reigned. In the chaos too, there was beauty - but no eyes to see it. No trees lined the distant horizons. The glorious sunsets of a younger sun went unseen, the thunderous storms unheard. It was barren and unappreciated world.
And look it now. I mean just look at it. It is filled with millions of different kind of animals, plants, fish, and of course humans. There are eyes that absorb the vista, ears that listen intently, bodies that touch the world and each other. There is life - throbbing, pulsating, warm life.
As the night of lifelessness ended and a day of living began to dawn, the blindly reproducers combined, formed colonies of cells, became more and more aware. It was like very slowly opening eyes to first let in just tiny sliver of light and then opening it some more to vaguely see outlines, and later to well defined shapes and forms. The intelligence developed from all the way to ameoba to monkeys to humans. Only recently has the sun of awareness has moved its head above the horizon, and grown from a sliver to a bright red globe. The journey was not easy.
Mankind has been around for thousands of years, fully gifted with the brains that can think and hence conclude they exist. But a vast majority were trouble by problems of existence and died before they could be bothered with existantial angst. It is only recently - in the last 100 years or so that they have begun the ascent that did justice to their mental faculties. The journey is not over yet. The sun has come up - and will become brighter. This sun is not the one that sets. On the contrary, it will become brighter and yet genter and kinder.
It was Marx's dream to free the humanity from animal suffering. The need for survival, pressure of earning tomorrow's bread, the famine, the untimely deaths - human minds are too precious for all these. Their sufferings need to be that of higher quality - the lover's sorrow, the yogi's search, the dreamer's angst.
Today there are more and more people who are close to this dream. And one day the whole world will be free of strife. We are getting there, albeit slowly. The planet that began 3 billion odd years ago as a lifeless planet, continued till the last few millenia as filled with bodies with life, will one day be teeming with minds.
The journey is going on, let's enjoy the ride.
The Earth was a hot lump of spinning mass made of dust, land, water, lava and a bunch of toxic gases. Volcanoes spewed angry heat, the skies rained on a land mass that shifted and redefined itself, and the seas undulated to the rhythem of day and night. There were countless millenia of turmoil and other countless millenia of quiet period where nothing happened out of ordinary. Chaos reigned. In the chaos too, there was beauty - but no eyes to see it. No trees lined the distant horizons. The glorious sunsets of a younger sun went unseen, the thunderous storms unheard. It was barren and unappreciated world.
And look it now. I mean just look at it. It is filled with millions of different kind of animals, plants, fish, and of course humans. There are eyes that absorb the vista, ears that listen intently, bodies that touch the world and each other. There is life - throbbing, pulsating, warm life.
As the night of lifelessness ended and a day of living began to dawn, the blindly reproducers combined, formed colonies of cells, became more and more aware. It was like very slowly opening eyes to first let in just tiny sliver of light and then opening it some more to vaguely see outlines, and later to well defined shapes and forms. The intelligence developed from all the way to ameoba to monkeys to humans. Only recently has the sun of awareness has moved its head above the horizon, and grown from a sliver to a bright red globe. The journey was not easy.
Mankind has been around for thousands of years, fully gifted with the brains that can think and hence conclude they exist. But a vast majority were trouble by problems of existence and died before they could be bothered with existantial angst. It is only recently - in the last 100 years or so that they have begun the ascent that did justice to their mental faculties. The journey is not over yet. The sun has come up - and will become brighter. This sun is not the one that sets. On the contrary, it will become brighter and yet genter and kinder.
It was Marx's dream to free the humanity from animal suffering. The need for survival, pressure of earning tomorrow's bread, the famine, the untimely deaths - human minds are too precious for all these. Their sufferings need to be that of higher quality - the lover's sorrow, the yogi's search, the dreamer's angst.
Today there are more and more people who are close to this dream. And one day the whole world will be free of strife. We are getting there, albeit slowly. The planet that began 3 billion odd years ago as a lifeless planet, continued till the last few millenia as filled with bodies with life, will one day be teeming with minds.
The journey is going on, let's enjoy the ride.
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