The macro on decision logic

Decisions we take are either intuitive or based on a calculated risk. Decision takers include you and me, as also economists/bankers, politicians and gamblers (to define the spectrum of decisions that this post talks about).

Economists have their intricate mathematical models, politicians - their gauging of the collective sentiment and gamblers, their gut. All of these decision-making devices, fuzzy, neural, artificial, intuitive, etc are used on a daily basis to predict the future. That said, the world's population would all be paupers or trillionaires if any of these could boast consistency.

Given that such is not the case, i.e. there's only such a percentage of accuracy any decision logic machinery can claim, it's time to start looking at models that are organic - Letting reality and recallable (recent) history be the major inputs to your guesstimating. As an example, if the roulette ball lands on the 00 six times in a row, and you're unsure where to bet next ("hmm....even or odd?"), just go with the 00. Chances are the house is playing dirty. The Mahabharata would've been a shade less vengeful had Yudi figured this out before betting the kitchen sink.

Of course, this isn't revolutionary. It's part of any adaptive system in use today and all connectionist models rely on history (wiki this stuff). Here's another element to help focus the predictions - Your best guess for the future. Toss this element into the mix of inputs (i.e. along with what's happened already). An instance of where this might come in handy is with work flow automation at a call-center. If an extraordinary event has happened (an earthquake, discovery of a faulty part in the computers you sell, etc), it's safe to surmise that the future volume of calls will need more than the past week's call-volume as an input to forecast what's coming.

The last decision-making factor is the cornerstone of AI. Is there any information that can be derived from the interaction of your inputs? An instance of this is a loan officer assigning points to a prospective loanee based on standard criteria like their age (assume age directly proportional to points) and whether they rent or mortgage a house (assume renting gets higher points than mortgaging). This would mean that an elderly renter would be a better bet for the loan officer than a young house-owner. In the real world though, this is counter-intuitive, but you wouldn't get that from the discrete point-assigning system. And this is only two dimensional, the logical progression would be to extend this to n dimensions whose interactions can paint a picture.

My point though is to be able to spot patterns when theoretically none should exist - and to be an intelligent human, the macro-decider on when a decision needs to be made via an intelligent machine and when only in collaboration with one.

My life-hacker/zen habits

Here are some lessons I've learnt well. Some of these have come as benefits-on-the-side with my advancing years, others from the burnt-finger chronicles of my biography, and the rest from that holiest oracle of all, the last word in fountainheads, Bollywood.

1. Remember that there are always atleast three cameras on you, one of them capturing every detail in slo-mo. As true in the corporate world as on a cricket field and as in the final confrontation with Mogambo. You never know who's watching, and to what detail they're interested in your performance. When under pressure, he who resists the nose-picking shall move up. Helps to know where the cameras are though.

2. The movie isn't worth making if the hero hasn't struggled. If you're down but fighting the odds, you'll come back up. That's most of what Bollywood's about. If you're up, realise that there's a new trend of sequels. You going down real soon. There's a discussion in here, waiting to be trashed out, about what's up and what's down. Gives me another post.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff. Instead, invest time finding the right person that will. If I had to learn real estate to buy a condo, do my CA exam before filing my taxes, get a many-hued belt in an obscure martial art form before I could leap tall buildings in my next movie, I'd really never get anything done. Instead, I figure my time's better spent if I can locate portly doubles to do all of these things for me. Task delegation is key. My responsibility is finding the right person to delegate to. Of course, the accountability remains mine too.

The arranged Lavalife

Lavalife, eHarmony, entrenous, ........, shaadi, bharatmatrimony

The spectrum above is distilled below:

Lavalife.com introduces arranged marriages to the west

shaadi.com introduces an online dating service to the east

How have newspapers survived?

For the wired crowd, newspapers are a bit of a novelty. Unmanageable sheafs of paper delivering news that's a day old at best. Like tv, the news too is sometimes just a break between advertisements. So when pitted against the instantaneousness of the net, how has the daily goliath survived?

Against

• News is almost always a day old, if not more, save some of the stop-press items
• You don't get to choose the news in the paper. You can choose the sections you want to read though
• With its 40 odd pages, each the length of a dinner jacket, the paper's unwieldy at best
• Environment hazard

For

• There's an editor
• You don't get to choose the news in the paper. For some of us, if we did, the breadth of our awareness would be narrow
• Tradition and routine. We're comfortable with news being a day old. It's the optimum amount of time that we're okay with, knowing that reporters aren't relaying hearsay and that they've had a chance to confirm stuff they're reporting on. Editors have given it the thumbs up after a careful review
• To pack tiffin

To me, it seems like 'For' wins the day. At this time.

The bigger question is how much longer can the tradition of newspapers hold fort against all the other forces? In an article in the New Yorker, Eric Alterman says "newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago."

The reasons are many, and chiefly to do with competition from the net. Editors on the net are savvy about the audience they want, and with a decent editor at the helm, loyal readership is easy to build. Content-specific blogs, where the writer is often the editor, do quite well for themselves. The new information junkie sets up rss feeds from her favourite blogs and is wired for the day.

There is a semi-bright spot though. Online newspapers, i.e. the websites of the major newspapers that carry a cross-section of articles from the days' papers, are a compromise. That a newspaper runs a corresponding website gives the paper a way to connect with the crowd that's drawing away. Sadly though, the revenue a site like this generates through ads and the like probably isn't enough to sustain the site, given the reduced profits from decreasing circulation and falling rates for the print ads. Coupled with the fact that the online newspaper still needs the same machinery (journalists, editorial staff, reuters contracts, etc) to back it up as the printed paper, it's a lose-lose situation.

From my younger days

"Thought for the day"

We used to have these back in school. Sometimes, I'd choose to take it literally, to let it be the sole thing that occupied my mindspace all day. I'd often be tempted to actually learn stuff that day, or to, yknow, talk to folks, but I'm sure wiser minds than mine had deemed the 'thought for the day' truly encompassing enough to sustain.

So, on the day, my credo could be: 'It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.' - Sophocles or 'Not failure, but low aim, is crime.' -J.R. Lowell

or some other such. And call it a genetic virasat, but I could always blank my slate save the thought for the day. Got into much trouble.

A one-line tragedy

There have been others, but this here stood out -

"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

- Ernest Hemingway.

Dawn's best

I get my brightest ideas before it's bright out. That's right, every morning, just before sunrise, these epiphanous little movies play in my head. And they're actually really funny! Thing is though, that when you're asleep, the part of your brain that's responsible for storing minutiae, and storing them long enough that you can flip through them like notes later, is switched off.

I realised that I was letting many a riveting blog post slip by only because I'm always too sleepy to transcribe the stuff I see during those early hours. Last night though, I'd kept pen-paper handy, by a bedside table to beat the machine. And did I ever :) It's three in the afternoon now, and I have a whole page of notes here, albeit scrawled illegibly, but then, this is the stuff dreams are made of...wait back that up...my hyperbole just melded with reality..I'm feeling special now :-)

This post is written in real-time. I was pretty sure I had gold, so didn't bother constructing this post in my head first. Had I, I realise now it would've been a good idea.

Having made sense of my notes, I find I've written crap. I've learnt a little about myself today though. During the pre-sunrise hours, it isn't that I produce gold every morning, rather my threshold for what causes the chuckles drops like a blessed christian on GOD tv.

Maybe some other day.

The areas of my ineptitude

These are many, but the ones I chose for this top 5-er are those that frustrate me the most.

5. Sewing - At various points in time, my wardrobe's had perfectly nice shirts and trousers that've been rendered unwearable by a missing button or a come-undone hem. So I see the button lying there, the shirt pleading to be worn, and the thread/needle combination lying by the potpourri. Yet, I'm going to do nothing about it until I get to go home and have my mommy do the dirty.

4. Multitasking - I cannot talk to my significant other while trying to pretty up a presentation, nor can I pick out work clothes while listening to Anindo Chatterjee do an intricate rela.

The point is, these things need all the attention I can give them, with little (ability to pay attention) left over. In fact, when I chance upon somebody else multitasking their way through similarly involved activities, I'm left in awe. Can't do much else but admire.

3. Drawing - You'd be amazed at some of the replicas I can produce. Back in the day, my biology teacher gave me star*star*star when he saw my detailing of the cell structure. Without a dang picture or photo in front of me though, when what was needed was a little girl lost in thought, I've been known to produce a slug.

2. Dancing - I sprout appendages at the very thought. I'll have to forever say never.

1. Singing - I have my good days. The problem is that I have too many bad ones.