Old is fool's gold

I just read an article in today's (6/21/2008) Mercury News, Drive section by Richard Russel. The title of the article is "Now and Then". He compares how today's cars are superior to the automotive industry output 30 years ago. He compares a 1975 corvette and the same model sold in 2008. The comparison is eyeopening.

[need a table here]

You can see that whether you look at any aspect of the car, 2008 beats its grandfather hands down. It is faster, more powerful, more fuel efficient, and less polluting. Any engineering feat requires that we make a compromise. If we want to build a faster car, the milage might suffer. This is true for today's car. But the crucial point is that when you compare it to the cars a generation ago, we see that we have miraculously managed to improve each facet. And it is even cheaper - lot more people are affording cars like the 1975 corvette, than they used to 30 years ago. Heck, even a run of the mill 2008 honda accord is sportier than the 1975 corvette. (need to confirm, and quote sales figures for 2008 honda accord vs 1975 corvette)

Now you will say wait a minute, I am not comparing apples to apples. I am comparing a top of the line sports car of 75 to a family box of 2008. The numbers are obviously greater for the family sedan, than a sports car. But that's the whole point - in 1975, you paid a pretty penny to get 270 horsepower engine that gave you certain acceleration, speed and agility. Now that power comes standard on some of the higher end accords. The bar has been raised. The price has dropped down. More people are getting what only a select few got in terms of performance.

Of course you can't buy the mystic and glamor that the old corvette brought you in 1975. To get the same glamor, you might have to buy 2008 corvette - and that one has a comparable price. But glamor is such a funny thing. Glamor or bragging rights by definition have a small supply, and hence will command higher and higher price. I will be entirely happy if glamor keeps getting expensive. I consider it as a welfare tax on rich people that the rich people charge each other.

It is easy to misconstrue the above example. You might think that I am saying progress is only for rich people. After all, only rich people can afford corvettes. Even the honda accords are not that cheap - they cost about 5 times the world's per capita income. Even examples of computers becoming cheaper does not go down well with a poor farm worker in China.

True, that cars are expensive enough so that only the rich at this moment can afford them. But when we focus on objects, we loose track of the bigger picture. We need to think comfortable transport, with great flexibility - rather than a car. That is improving all the time over the last 100 years. Just before the advent of railways - 95% of the world population did not travel beyond 10 miles. Not that they did not need to, or did not want to, but because it was so darn hard! Travelling was fraught with danger.

The transporation machinary has been growing and becoming more comfortable too. And yes, the number of cars is increasing. With the advent of Tata Nano, (and the competition it has spurred) the huge population between 40th and 60th percentile earners can suddenly afford cars. We are at the beginning of S curve for the cars to become widespread. And if you have concerns about pollution, look at the corvetter comparisons. Modern cars simply don't pollute. Period.

There are some who complain about the carbon footprints and greenhouse effect. To them I can only say this is such a low item on the engineering problems humanity faces, it is below the cut line right now. When most other problems are solved, humanity will solve this problem too. (Unless everyone realizes that we don't have any control over it - but that's another article!)

Yes, I envision that the world of 9 billion minds will have something like 2 to 3 billion cars. Those all put together will cause less pollution than the 200 million or so that we have right now. In fact, they will probably run on electricity that is generated using wind, sun and nuclear power - hence they will have a smaller carbon footprint too. How will this happen, and why do I believe in it? Read in an article to be written soon.

The Do's of life (incomplete)

It is interesting to see how the attitudes of humanity are shaped by religions and parental attitudes. All religions tell you how to live. "Love thy neighbor" is certainly a positive message given by most religions. It gets converted to "don't ever get pally with non-neighbors, who incidentally are defined as people of different religion". Message for trust and friendship gets converted into fear and distrust. This probably comes from a general low self esteem, and fear of failure.

The question is what is the alternative? The biggest "do" for life in my opinion is "Love thyself". This is somehow missing from most of the religions. Religions regulate public life, interaction with others from the society. As far the interaction with self is concerned, it is very negative. In fact messages like "you are born a sinner" "your fate is determined by what (bad things) you did in the last life" are pretty common. The low self esteem helps the religion to make everyone fall in line, submit to the higher authority, walk the straight and narrow.

But everyone really liking themself is the key to developing any healthy society. It is the next step to the freedom of mind, once the body is freed from the strife of ill health, and drudgery of work.

This process has started, though it's still in its infancy. Just like thousand years ago only a handful percentage of people enjoyed long life and less than 50 hours a week of work, today only a few percentage of people enjoy the excellent mental health. There is some weak correlation between the financial strength and mental well being. (need data here).

The "don'ts" of life

This is an information age. Day in and day out we are barraged with information of all kinds. Most of the information unfortunately, is what I called "don't" kind of information. It tells you what not to do. It warns you of danger, or tells you not to do something, or says how something is recently shown to be bad for you. This kind of information takes the enjoyment out of life because it glorifies the pain and the risk associated with every pleasure. Don't eat ice cream or cookies because those have sugar and fats, and they are bad for you. Don't go in the sun because it will cause skin cancer, staying up too late is bad for you, don't spend a single dime from the 401k because it is bad for you... There are countless examples of direct advise that we get from every nook of the cyberspace.

The "don't" advise has a distinct parental tone to it. It is of course the voice of experience. It comes from the authority figures. It has the all knowing feel to it. It says, I know better how to live the life than you do. More often than not it focuses on the limited area. It has fear of failure built into it like Aesop's fables. The voice also makes some assumptions. These assumptions are not entirely wrong but like one size fits all clothing, they don't fit anyone exactly. On good days the advise is on the right side for most people, but on bad days, it is so off the track that it is not even funny. The voice of caution actually leads to danger. The caution is against a small yet very visible risk, whereas the danger you undertake by following the cautionary advise is more hidden. For some reason the visible small always wins over the invisible large. How many times have we seen a hero saving a little girl's life by risking a population of multitude?

One example of it is scare about bicycling as a dangerous activity. Now I know, that most parents encourage their kids to ride bike, and also the recent emphasis on wearing helmets. Helmets, like seat belts, save lives - there is no question about that. Yet, after a certain age very few people ride bicycles. Whether as a hobby or as a proper commuting vehicle, bicycle is used too rarely. Part of the reason is that we in the US rely so much on the automobile, and have built our lives around it - which in turn mean working far enough away from the home, not building an adequate public transport system. But one underlying cause of the preference for the car is the perception that riding is not very safe.

Those who cry out that the bicycling is not very safe, show the following statistics. [need statistics here]. But they never show the statistics of what not biking leads to. That statistics is much more difficult to get, and not visible. One has to deduce that given reasonable amount of biking, less people will drive. Which means there will be fewer accidents during driving. Also, the roads will be safer for bicycle riders too - meaning fewer riding fatalities. This is not in dispute, anyone with reasonable common sense will see this. But even beyond the road fatalities, there are lives lost to diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and other diseases. The main cause behind these is the sedentary lifestyle that we lead. If all of a sudden everyone started riding a bicycle, we will have fewer deaths. I have no doubt about that.

The reason that brought up this example is not to ask everyone to bike. The example shows how the nagging, shrill voices that caution you can actually lead to a worse life. They ask you to err on the safer side - but their definition of safe is here and now. They follow naive arguments like Action A leads to result B which is bad for you. Hence don't do the action A. What they miss is that lack of action A will lead to another result C which might be even worse.

The second problem is that result B may not always be bad or at least bad enough to warrant giving up action A. For example, a dont that we hear most often is that "Don't eat fatty and carb rich food, it will shorten your life". This is an absolute truth in a statistical sense. Too much of eating comfort foods will shorten your life span. But the question is how much of life are you gaining and how much fun are you giving up? There is a cost associated with giving up good food. Someone may argue that other healthier food tastes just as good, but I don't buy it. Eating creamy, sugary, fatty stuff feels really good. It satisfies not only the taste buds, but the entire body and mind.

I am not against moderation. Of course if you are eating 300 gm of carbs every day and you cut down to 250 you will not miss it too much, the cost will be small. This cutdown may lead to some amount of better health, which is your gain. The gain will outweigh the cost very easily. But every 50 gm of carbs you cut down, the cost will be progressively much higher. And the rewards will keep on getting smaller. There will be a point for each person where the costs are simply not worth the reward, and you settle at that point. This is entirely sensible. The voice of advise does a good thing by making aware of the rewards. However, it goes to the extreme of saying that increasing the length of your life is so important that you should keep on making this sacrifice and eat pretty much nothing but boiled veggies, boiled chicken, and fruit. I know I am exagerating a bit, but the example here is again to show that the donter miss this subtle balance that everyone decides for themselves. One reason for this shriller nature of don't voice is that Doctors are forced to give "safest is the best" advise. They face too much risk of lawsuits if they give advise like "you know, a couple cigerettes a day didn't harm no one. If you enjoy them, sure, go ahead". They simply go into black and white mode and say "No smoking. Period."

The point I am trying to make is that of the attitude. If we listen to the media, we end up getting the feeling that "boy, I am doing so many things wrong". This is attitude of pessimism, half empty cup. It is bound to build a low esteem society. Instead we should be saying "I am doing most of the things right, and boy I am succeeding." If we take some known risks boldly, we will in fact live better longer and not to mention more fulfilling life. It is with this positive attitude that we will achieve the confident world of future.