There are some distinct phases that almost everyone goes through. Childhood is marked by curiosity and learning. Youth is marked by energy, earnestness and confidence. Middle age is when you start losing the brand new life smell and relax into the same old same old. As you start getting even older, nostalgia starts to set in.
Why do we get nostalgic? My guess is that by then you have too much to reminisce, you have lost your youth for good, and facing the pain of old age and void of nothingness ahead. Memories are sweet. And more often than not you end up remembering them to be sweeter. You are also jealous of the young people, just for having what they have - youth. That's when you start saying the good old days were really good, and these undeserving yuppies have got it too easy. In short their grapes are sour, mine were sweeter.
Recognizing nostalgic statements is easy. Any sentence that contains the word "Nowadays" is almost certainly nostalgic. Especially when it talks about how things are bad nowadays. Almost no one under 20 uses the word “nowadays”. They are too excited by the new things that are happening today, and about to happen tomorrow. They hardly have time to talk about the yesterdays. Also any derogatory or even worried statement about the "new generation" or "kids these days" has a stamp of nostalgia on it. Any one talking about "family values" is talking through a nostalgic microphone. If you want to keep your youth, you should pay attention to your mind as well as your body. If you find yourself using these phrases a lot often than you used to try to think of the good old days, when you didn't do it as often.
Nostalgia is not a new phenomenon. It's been there for a few centuries definitely - because we have recorded statements. But I have a feeling it transcends civilization and cultures. I am sure an Egyptian who grew up to a ripe age of 50 reminisced about how the newer pyramids are just plain blocks of stones and theirs were works of art. It is difficult to say about nostalgia in prehistoric period, because most people probably died before turning soft and nostalgic. Those were the days, man!
Nostalgia rears its ugly head at many intellectual junctures. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that those considered intellectuals are already in the nostalgic phase. Anthropologists are especially prone to it (of course, not all). They call bones of people who died of unnatural cause as a proof of the society following "ritualistic killing" somehow making it sound better than murder. They also sometimes call graffiti as "sex symbolism". Nomadic tribes that killed their young because the food was scarce are called "in tune with the natural rhythm of plenty and scarcity". The eulogistic wording for what were really savage ways of our ancestors shouts of nostalgia. We are afraid of denigrating non-western, and ancient civilizations, even though the so called "civilizations" and communities had institutionalized oppression, slavery and murder. Historians too fall into this trap sometimes - calling certain periods as "golden age".
Nostalgic thinking combined with media is especially potent combination when there is a real problem to talk about. These experts come out of the woodwork to conclude that things are taking turn for the worse. The media loves them, they keep the reader/viewer glued - nobody turns the page or touches that dial.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Mother and child
A common theme for the modern world is about our relationship with the Nature. This relationship is usually expressed ruefully using many statements. “We have come very far from Nature”. “The modern man has lost the connection to the mother earth that the caveman had”. “We no longer have reverence for the Nature.”
The statements like this are not completely false. But how true are they? Rather more importantly, how useful are they? Mind you, they are not meant to be simple statements of fact. They certainly carry heavy moral judgment. We humans have been bad boys (girls are supposedly nicer in this respect). We have sinned, neglected our mother for our selfish interests. We have depleted her resources, cut down the beautiful trees, stopped worshipping the elements as we once did, we have become slaves of Satan.
The moral implecations are supposed to follow if the statements are true. But are they? Well, my feeling they seem like they have graduated from cliché-hood to truth, sometimes without passing the examination. Some are partially true, and some are absolutely false and even those that are true, do not lead to the serious moral implications. The picture is less of a flagrant sinner who raped mother earth, and more of a poor starved society that did not know better and was forced into using whatever they could to defend their existence. As humanity becomes more stable and powerful, it is undoing some of the harms, and ultimately will become as little intrusive as possible.
The trick is to remove the statements from emotionally and politically charged environment to dissecting table of sensibility and put them under the microscope of objective thinking. Make it less of a moral issue and take it to the realm of a problem that humanity needs to solve.
Are we going away from the Nature? Of course we are. Nature can be a very dangerous place. There are predators everywhere. Wild animals, snakes, various pests, harmful bacteria, viruses. These all take toll on human life - even the caveman tried to avoid them. Modern nature conservationists are not much different – they try to live in homes that are free of all the above. That's why you have never heard of "save cockroaches campaign" or "E-coli preservation act". The elements are not too nice either. It rains, snows, there are tornadoes. So we wear clothes, and make ourselves comfortable inside walls built of wood, stone, bricks and cement. To fit more people we build skyscrapers made with steel.
This much distance is good, I hope everyone will agree. So what other distance are we talking about? It is more of emotional distance that everyone worries about. We no longer revere nature as we used too. There were people who worshipped various natural deities, the Sun, the wind, the Rain. Sometimes they went a bit too far by sacrificing humans to these gods, but mostly they revered the nature. Or so the theory goes. It is this sense of reverence that is lacking in the modern humans, and who knows where it will lead to...
The question to ask is where did the reverence come from? And why don't we have it anymore? Maybe it was the fear that forced humans to make deities out of natural forces. They had no knowledge, no control, and were helpless against the forces that hurt them severely. If you are in this position, you to would try, as a last resort to placate the elements through rituals. It is really interesting to see that it is exactly like a relationship of a baby with his parents. No wonder we call it Mother Nature. Now we know better, and have a lot more power in terms of prediction and protection. We are no longer afraid, just prepared. It is a relationship of an adult with his parents. However, the childhood memories still linger on through years gone by. But like any grown adult, humanity has feeling of guilt about living away from the mother. What we don't realize is that Nature can be a very harsh and abusive mother. We stay away to protect ourselves, yet get together when we can, and pay our tribute. That's not a relationship to be ashamed of.
Yet we are learning to take good care of mother nature. We are cutting down on polution wherever we can, designing more eco-friendly cars, finding more and more energy from wind, sun and nuclear sources. We are potecting at least the cute creatures. But if you are sick and starving, and worried about your next meal, you can't be expected to give your mother the highest priority. You do what you can, and hope for a better future. One day we will find the best balance. Right now the problem of finding balance is not high priority for us. There are still millions of children dying, and billions living in desparate conditions. To improve their lives, we must keep the pace of progress up, so that they can grow strong enough, and their mind free enough to give mum a call once in a while.
The statements like this are not completely false. But how true are they? Rather more importantly, how useful are they? Mind you, they are not meant to be simple statements of fact. They certainly carry heavy moral judgment. We humans have been bad boys (girls are supposedly nicer in this respect). We have sinned, neglected our mother for our selfish interests. We have depleted her resources, cut down the beautiful trees, stopped worshipping the elements as we once did, we have become slaves of Satan.
The moral implecations are supposed to follow if the statements are true. But are they? Well, my feeling they seem like they have graduated from cliché-hood to truth, sometimes without passing the examination. Some are partially true, and some are absolutely false and even those that are true, do not lead to the serious moral implications. The picture is less of a flagrant sinner who raped mother earth, and more of a poor starved society that did not know better and was forced into using whatever they could to defend their existence. As humanity becomes more stable and powerful, it is undoing some of the harms, and ultimately will become as little intrusive as possible.
The trick is to remove the statements from emotionally and politically charged environment to dissecting table of sensibility and put them under the microscope of objective thinking. Make it less of a moral issue and take it to the realm of a problem that humanity needs to solve.
Are we going away from the Nature? Of course we are. Nature can be a very dangerous place. There are predators everywhere. Wild animals, snakes, various pests, harmful bacteria, viruses. These all take toll on human life - even the caveman tried to avoid them. Modern nature conservationists are not much different – they try to live in homes that are free of all the above. That's why you have never heard of "save cockroaches campaign" or "E-coli preservation act". The elements are not too nice either. It rains, snows, there are tornadoes. So we wear clothes, and make ourselves comfortable inside walls built of wood, stone, bricks and cement. To fit more people we build skyscrapers made with steel.
This much distance is good, I hope everyone will agree. So what other distance are we talking about? It is more of emotional distance that everyone worries about. We no longer revere nature as we used too. There were people who worshipped various natural deities, the Sun, the wind, the Rain. Sometimes they went a bit too far by sacrificing humans to these gods, but mostly they revered the nature. Or so the theory goes. It is this sense of reverence that is lacking in the modern humans, and who knows where it will lead to...
The question to ask is where did the reverence come from? And why don't we have it anymore? Maybe it was the fear that forced humans to make deities out of natural forces. They had no knowledge, no control, and were helpless against the forces that hurt them severely. If you are in this position, you to would try, as a last resort to placate the elements through rituals. It is really interesting to see that it is exactly like a relationship of a baby with his parents. No wonder we call it Mother Nature. Now we know better, and have a lot more power in terms of prediction and protection. We are no longer afraid, just prepared. It is a relationship of an adult with his parents. However, the childhood memories still linger on through years gone by. But like any grown adult, humanity has feeling of guilt about living away from the mother. What we don't realize is that Nature can be a very harsh and abusive mother. We stay away to protect ourselves, yet get together when we can, and pay our tribute. That's not a relationship to be ashamed of.
Yet we are learning to take good care of mother nature. We are cutting down on polution wherever we can, designing more eco-friendly cars, finding more and more energy from wind, sun and nuclear sources. We are potecting at least the cute creatures. But if you are sick and starving, and worried about your next meal, you can't be expected to give your mother the highest priority. You do what you can, and hope for a better future. One day we will find the best balance. Right now the problem of finding balance is not high priority for us. There are still millions of children dying, and billions living in desparate conditions. To improve their lives, we must keep the pace of progress up, so that they can grow strong enough, and their mind free enough to give mum a call once in a while.
Two positives make a negative
What is two plus two? If you use the mathematical terms, the answer is four. But we are not mathematicians, we like our language to be vague. We tend to use the word “plus” more like putting things together. It really depends on what those two are. And it depends on what you mean by putting them together. If you put the number 2 right next to another number 2, you might get 22. If you put 2 hydrogen atoms next to two oxygen atoms, you might get a tiny explosion and end up with a water molecule and a free oxygen radical. If you put two men together with two women, it might be a double date.
One way we commonly put two things together is when we say two different causes affect an outcome. The combination here is really important. For example, everyone knows that your health depends on how much you eat and how much you exercise. But the effects are not additive. If you exercise, and don't change your food intake, you will grow thinner. If you exercise a lot and don't each much, then you will lose muscles. If you don't exercise and increase food intake, you will get fat. However, if you exercise and increase food intake (reasonably), you will probably gain muscles. So the question is does exercise cause you to gain muscles or lose them? The answer is, it depends on how much you eat. Life is filled with such examples where something is good or not is determined by something else that is happening or not.
To add to the confusion, the yardsticks that we use are simplistic, and do not take these complexities in account. A typical measure for obesity is BMI – higher your weight for a given height, higher your BMI. The taller you are for the same weight, smaller your BMI. It is weight divided by height squared. Higher BMI usually means obesity. I said usually because the measure is simplistic. Here is an example. My friend was starting to put on weight. At 5'9" he was flabby and weighed 165 pound. That made his BMI = 26. His doctor warned against the weight gain and he seriously started exercising, and controlled his diet. After a while, he started liking what he saw in the mirror and decided to improve it. So he did a lot of weight training, with proteins. He built a fabulous body - almost no fat and bulging muscles. But the problem was that the amount of muscles he gained outweighed the fat he lost. He now weighs 170 pounds. His BMI is now larger - 26.5. If you did not look at him and simply looked at the two BMI numbers, you would say his health has deteriorated. But in reality he is fitter than ever.
This is what can happen when you have simplistic measure - you can have two positives (fat loss + muscle gain) appear as a negative (increased BMI). The word “appear” is very important. The appearance is only in the numbers. If you looked at his real appearance, it is a classic before and after case. But you are not his friend, you don't know him, the only information you get about him is from the BMI numbers. You can see him through a very narrow vision, like seeing through some special glasses. To make matters worse the glasses are curved - so they distort the picture. Two positives appear to make a negative.
Now imagine instead of my friends, a society. Almost any developing country might do. Let's say we know for a fact that the number of rapes that took place actually went down from say 1000 a year to 800 a year (let's assume the population was constant). Now as the rapes reduced, there was something else happening in the society - the taboos were breaking down, women were stronger and more independent, and their belief in the justice system improved - all very good things. As a result, more and more women came forward and were willing to report the heinous crime. Let's say the percentage increased drastically from 40% to 60%. Add the two good things together – decreased number of rapes, and higher reporting – and you will see the number of reported rapes going up from 400 to 480! That’s a 20% rise! Despite the fact that actual rapes dropped by 20% and reporting improved by 50%! What is happening here? And maybe if the police were more diligent, you will see convicted rapists going up from 200 to 300! That's a 50% increase in rapists! Oh my! What is the society coming to? Where are we going wrong?
Societies that are in transition often appear to have these "problems". But most of the times, these appearance are only on paper. Imagine hearing the following news: the proportion of marriages that end in divorce has gone up from 5% to 15%. Now is this bad in itself? A society that goes from rigid model of working husband and a housewife towards equality is going on the right path. A woman who is suffering abuse of a husband does not need to put up with him, because she can support herself, now can decide to end the suffering and opt for the lesser evil. Also the stigma that was once associated with divorce is reduced, or no longer there. We can look at the numbers and say, that maybe 10% marriages that did not end in divorce earlier, the parties involved suffered through because the alternatives were even worse. It is like suffering gangrene, because amputation was not an option.
Another example: you read that the number of people going to a psychiatrist to be treated for depression has increased from mere 1% to 6% in the last ten years. Does this mean we are more stressed as a society? Well, it might mean that more people are aware that the problem exists, that a solution exists, and more people can afford to use the solution, and it also may mean that the stigma associated with going to a psychiatrist has gone down significantly. All these are good factors, leading to a conclusion that is exactly opposite of the reality. The stress may not have increased, in fact the effect of the same stress has decreased because more of the worst affected people are seeking help.
There are countless other examples. More people wearing glasses does not mean the eyesight of humanity has worsened, it means exactly the opposite, more people are seeing things better now. But the theme is common, more people start accepting something as a problem, rather than hiding it, and more people solving the problem – these two good factors together makes the statistics to appear as the problem has increased.
One way we commonly put two things together is when we say two different causes affect an outcome. The combination here is really important. For example, everyone knows that your health depends on how much you eat and how much you exercise. But the effects are not additive. If you exercise, and don't change your food intake, you will grow thinner. If you exercise a lot and don't each much, then you will lose muscles. If you don't exercise and increase food intake, you will get fat. However, if you exercise and increase food intake (reasonably), you will probably gain muscles. So the question is does exercise cause you to gain muscles or lose them? The answer is, it depends on how much you eat. Life is filled with such examples where something is good or not is determined by something else that is happening or not.
To add to the confusion, the yardsticks that we use are simplistic, and do not take these complexities in account. A typical measure for obesity is BMI – higher your weight for a given height, higher your BMI. The taller you are for the same weight, smaller your BMI. It is weight divided by height squared. Higher BMI usually means obesity. I said usually because the measure is simplistic. Here is an example. My friend was starting to put on weight. At 5'9" he was flabby and weighed 165 pound. That made his BMI = 26. His doctor warned against the weight gain and he seriously started exercising, and controlled his diet. After a while, he started liking what he saw in the mirror and decided to improve it. So he did a lot of weight training, with proteins. He built a fabulous body - almost no fat and bulging muscles. But the problem was that the amount of muscles he gained outweighed the fat he lost. He now weighs 170 pounds. His BMI is now larger - 26.5. If you did not look at him and simply looked at the two BMI numbers, you would say his health has deteriorated. But in reality he is fitter than ever.
This is what can happen when you have simplistic measure - you can have two positives (fat loss + muscle gain) appear as a negative (increased BMI). The word “appear” is very important. The appearance is only in the numbers. If you looked at his real appearance, it is a classic before and after case. But you are not his friend, you don't know him, the only information you get about him is from the BMI numbers. You can see him through a very narrow vision, like seeing through some special glasses. To make matters worse the glasses are curved - so they distort the picture. Two positives appear to make a negative.
Now imagine instead of my friends, a society. Almost any developing country might do. Let's say we know for a fact that the number of rapes that took place actually went down from say 1000 a year to 800 a year (let's assume the population was constant). Now as the rapes reduced, there was something else happening in the society - the taboos were breaking down, women were stronger and more independent, and their belief in the justice system improved - all very good things. As a result, more and more women came forward and were willing to report the heinous crime. Let's say the percentage increased drastically from 40% to 60%. Add the two good things together – decreased number of rapes, and higher reporting – and you will see the number of reported rapes going up from 400 to 480! That’s a 20% rise! Despite the fact that actual rapes dropped by 20% and reporting improved by 50%! What is happening here? And maybe if the police were more diligent, you will see convicted rapists going up from 200 to 300! That's a 50% increase in rapists! Oh my! What is the society coming to? Where are we going wrong?
Societies that are in transition often appear to have these "problems". But most of the times, these appearance are only on paper. Imagine hearing the following news: the proportion of marriages that end in divorce has gone up from 5% to 15%. Now is this bad in itself? A society that goes from rigid model of working husband and a housewife towards equality is going on the right path. A woman who is suffering abuse of a husband does not need to put up with him, because she can support herself, now can decide to end the suffering and opt for the lesser evil. Also the stigma that was once associated with divorce is reduced, or no longer there. We can look at the numbers and say, that maybe 10% marriages that did not end in divorce earlier, the parties involved suffered through because the alternatives were even worse. It is like suffering gangrene, because amputation was not an option.
Another example: you read that the number of people going to a psychiatrist to be treated for depression has increased from mere 1% to 6% in the last ten years. Does this mean we are more stressed as a society? Well, it might mean that more people are aware that the problem exists, that a solution exists, and more people can afford to use the solution, and it also may mean that the stigma associated with going to a psychiatrist has gone down significantly. All these are good factors, leading to a conclusion that is exactly opposite of the reality. The stress may not have increased, in fact the effect of the same stress has decreased because more of the worst affected people are seeking help.
There are countless other examples. More people wearing glasses does not mean the eyesight of humanity has worsened, it means exactly the opposite, more people are seeing things better now. But the theme is common, more people start accepting something as a problem, rather than hiding it, and more people solving the problem – these two good factors together makes the statistics to appear as the problem has increased.
Absolute and Relative
Think of a large number. Did you? Good. Now is it really large? Large enough?
While reading the questions, you must have felt something amiss. A Large number of what? Large enough for what? There is no number that is large by itself - you can easily multiply it by a thousand, and presto, your original number becomes puny compared to it. There is no limit beyond which every number is a large number. You can talk about larger number or smaller number. These words are relative. The numbers themselves are absolute. The funny part is that a good relative comparison can be done for only absolute quantities. This is a very subtle point. It is like if you want to compare height, you want to look down and see if they are standing on the same ground. The word “large” lives in the gray area between absolute and relative. You have to ask large number of what? Ten million dollars can certainly be large amount of money, but the same number of raindrops might not even be registered. The word large challenges us by not only to make sure that the count is substantial, but it is significant. Sometimes this distinction is a little slippery.
Let’s look at the crime statistics in a hypothetical area. We read that in the last 10 years number of crimes went from 2000 a year to 2100 a year. You would say the situation has clearly deteriorated. The media will sound alarms, and theories of how exposure to television and free access to guns leads to increased violence would gain ground. But as any other numbers, they are relative. 2100 is larger than 2000 - any fifth grader can tell you that. The question is, do the numbers stand on their own, are they absolute? If you are smarter than a fifth grader, you would notice that in the same 10 years, the population of that area went from 2 million to 2.3 million. The crime rate has actually gone down, from 10 in 10000 people to about 9 in 10000. This is about 10% improvement. So the crime rate, is an absolute quantity that can compared from a society to society, from time to time. It is something like density. We usually say iron is heavier than water - what we really mean is iron is denser than water. If you took 10 pounds of iron and 10 pounds of water, they will weigh the same. Density is in some sense more absolute properties of the two materials - it is not relative to the amount.
The problem is that we usually talk about anything in numbers, and since numbers in themselves have the sense of absoluteness, it is easy to give that absoluteness to what they measure. But the most important thing to remember is this numbers are absolute only when they don’t have units. Once they acquire units, they lose that high priestly position, and become pedantic. One must look at the units to determine whether we can compare them without any problem.
When can we compare two numbers? The simple answer is that you need to do apple to apple comparison. All things being equal, 2100 crimes are more than 2000 crimes. However, whenever some of the things change, you need to take the change into account. In our example, the population changed. You can take this change out of the equation by dividing – like finding density. The reason for this is we want useful information by doing comparison. We want to know whether the crime situation in that particular area has improved over the given 10 year period. The assumption is that the number correctly represents the crime situation. This assumption is really a big assumption. In fact it incorporates multiple assumptions like
- The population did not change
- Reporting stayed exactly the same - (for every 5 crimes, 4 were actually reported)
- The crimes were similar in composition (there could be 1000 murders and 1000 petty theft 10 years ago, and now there are 300 murders and 1800 petty thefts)
Usually for a large enough population (there go the relative term again...) compositions remain similar over a short enough time. But if over the 10 years improved technology or improved awareness, and increased belief in justice system, let's say higher proportion of crimes got reported, then in fact the real crimes might be going down, but the reporting might increase. This is an irony of good things leading to bad perception.
I am not trying to say that nothing is comparable. You can do meaningful and useful comparisons. You just need to make sure we take the right relationships into account.
While reading the questions, you must have felt something amiss. A Large number of what? Large enough for what? There is no number that is large by itself - you can easily multiply it by a thousand, and presto, your original number becomes puny compared to it. There is no limit beyond which every number is a large number. You can talk about larger number or smaller number. These words are relative. The numbers themselves are absolute. The funny part is that a good relative comparison can be done for only absolute quantities. This is a very subtle point. It is like if you want to compare height, you want to look down and see if they are standing on the same ground. The word “large” lives in the gray area between absolute and relative. You have to ask large number of what? Ten million dollars can certainly be large amount of money, but the same number of raindrops might not even be registered. The word large challenges us by not only to make sure that the count is substantial, but it is significant. Sometimes this distinction is a little slippery.
Let’s look at the crime statistics in a hypothetical area. We read that in the last 10 years number of crimes went from 2000 a year to 2100 a year. You would say the situation has clearly deteriorated. The media will sound alarms, and theories of how exposure to television and free access to guns leads to increased violence would gain ground. But as any other numbers, they are relative. 2100 is larger than 2000 - any fifth grader can tell you that. The question is, do the numbers stand on their own, are they absolute? If you are smarter than a fifth grader, you would notice that in the same 10 years, the population of that area went from 2 million to 2.3 million. The crime rate has actually gone down, from 10 in 10000 people to about 9 in 10000. This is about 10% improvement. So the crime rate, is an absolute quantity that can compared from a society to society, from time to time. It is something like density. We usually say iron is heavier than water - what we really mean is iron is denser than water. If you took 10 pounds of iron and 10 pounds of water, they will weigh the same. Density is in some sense more absolute properties of the two materials - it is not relative to the amount.
The problem is that we usually talk about anything in numbers, and since numbers in themselves have the sense of absoluteness, it is easy to give that absoluteness to what they measure. But the most important thing to remember is this numbers are absolute only when they don’t have units. Once they acquire units, they lose that high priestly position, and become pedantic. One must look at the units to determine whether we can compare them without any problem.
When can we compare two numbers? The simple answer is that you need to do apple to apple comparison. All things being equal, 2100 crimes are more than 2000 crimes. However, whenever some of the things change, you need to take the change into account. In our example, the population changed. You can take this change out of the equation by dividing – like finding density. The reason for this is we want useful information by doing comparison. We want to know whether the crime situation in that particular area has improved over the given 10 year period. The assumption is that the number correctly represents the crime situation. This assumption is really a big assumption. In fact it incorporates multiple assumptions like
- The population did not change
- Reporting stayed exactly the same - (for every 5 crimes, 4 were actually reported)
- The crimes were similar in composition (there could be 1000 murders and 1000 petty theft 10 years ago, and now there are 300 murders and 1800 petty thefts)
Usually for a large enough population (there go the relative term again...) compositions remain similar over a short enough time. But if over the 10 years improved technology or improved awareness, and increased belief in justice system, let's say higher proportion of crimes got reported, then in fact the real crimes might be going down, but the reporting might increase. This is an irony of good things leading to bad perception.
I am not trying to say that nothing is comparable. You can do meaningful and useful comparisons. You just need to make sure we take the right relationships into account.
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