Am I racist?

I've been inundated with racist vibes over the past few weeks. Not as a victim, just as a bystander. Bystander best describes it, because I hardly ever partook in the discussion.

It's not that I didn't realize that racism existed, but it's just that I've been made acutely aware of it over the past few weeks, or even months. Some of this was due to people I cared about being of the race which was the target of some racist remarks, and at other times, just due to realizations of how deeply divided we as the human race are.

We are so tribal in nature that we are compelled to divide ourselves into different sects. I've read that we are capable of treating a maximum of 150 people as 'tribesmates'. Anybody beyond this number is outside the tribe, and hence, not of particular concern.

The implications of this is that we truly care for only about 150 people. Maybe that's not accurate - maybe the number's 1500. Or 15000. But the point is that after a certain degree of separation, we tend to think of people as 'them' rather than 'us'.

For different people, this means different things. For some, it might not make much of a difference. With enough empathy, you'd cry every time you'd hear of anybody's death or other tragedy. Clearly, this is not so. On the other hand, this might mean that you don't give a shit if 1.5 million people die in a flood in Cambodia. This, I'm afraid, is closer to the truth.

But more importantly, this leads to other behaviors like racism, dishonesty, etc. After all, it's easy to cheat somebody at a gas station when you don't know them that well, and even easier if it's the first time you've met them. But it's far more difficult if you know and care about that person, like if it's a friend.

It's also not difficult to imagine somebody hating a particular race, until they become good friends with somebody of that race. Their being inside their 'tribe' forces you to change your view of the world. You have to either wrap (or rather warp) your world-view around them, by thinking "all except XYZ of this particular race are ____", or to accept that "maybe this race isn't _____".

I've always wanted to believe that I'm not racist. I've never believed that any of the human races is superior to any other. I believe that over time, we evolve differently in different parts of the world, but in a very irrelevant, tiny manner, which leads to absolutely no differences between any two people of different races. Any characteristics we might observe in the current generation of a race is a short-term (a couple of 1000 years maybe) adaptation of that particular race.

I believe in individual superiority - that is the only measure that can have any importance. It doesn't matter where you came from, who your related to, what color your skin is, what language you speak, what food you eat, what gods you pray to (or don't), what area of land of the Earth you came from, what your previous generations had to go through, how rich/poor your forefathers were................

....all that matters is what you make of yourself.

Of course, I'm using the term 'superiority' lightly. I don't believe that any of us is better than any other. I might be better than you in Football, but I won't be better than you. There's a difference.

The title of this post comes from the particular prejudices I know I carry. I feel strongly about certain sets of people. Just observing certain characteristics immediately leads me to conclude that there's a high possibility of them having certain other undesirable characteristics. A certain style of dressing, might for example, indicate orthodoxy of religion. I do always try and account for exceptions - I don't assume that my first impression is always true. I let the person prove who they are or aren't.

But this prejudice might be unfair, considering the burden of proof is on them.

Also, what I view as 'negative characteristics' are of course, my opinion, and of relevance to me alone. I don't pretend to think that anybody else should think that way, or that my way is always the right one.

However, I believe that this is the way it must be. If I assumed the best of everyone, I would be setting myself up for disaster. Trusting a stranger is illogical, and is asking for trouble.

What I don't do, however, is hate somebody, based on one of these prejudices. If they turn out to be exceptions to my assumptions, I will gladly open my mind to the possibility that I was wrong about them.

Ponderings

I recently read a blog entry by an old classmate of mine. This was a guy that I remembered as being quite intelligent and rational. I was therefore quite surprised to see what seemed to be a narrow-minded, bigoted and sexist rant from him. I didn't want to form an opinion until I had read the entire post, so I did. After reading the post, I was flabbergasted. Was this even the same guy?!

As if the post wasn't bad enough, the comments were just ridiculous! I know my classmate well enough to know that he was probably just mistaken in his viewpoint. But most commentors, it was quite obvious, were just taking advantage of this opportunity to indulge in sexist drivel.

He was posting about 'feminist bullshit', and more specifically about a website called Blank Noise set up to combat eve teasing. According to my friend, eve teasing was not a real or common problem. It was just being blown out of proportion by the overzealous media, 'elders' and education system. He was apparently a victim of "fear of being teased". The point he was trying to make was that women were being so over-protected that men were suffering massively as a result.

The 'feminists' were playing it up, apparently, to garner attention. I would like to state at this point that I don't like feminists - or any other -ists. He has 'never seen an instance of eve teasing in public'. Talking to women, he couldn't come up with 'one single first-person experience or be able to quantify it'. What utter bullshit! That's A-grade horse manure right there!

Besides, what exactly was he trying to prove? That because he hasn't seen this happening, it doesn't happen? So I guess 'cause he's never seen a rape, murder, dowry murder, sati burning, etc., that they've never happened in India? He must not have read the newspapers on the day that drunk revelers molested a girl in public near the Gateway of India (how fitting) - 70 men, in a crowd of 1500. Or when a 12 year old mentally handicapped girl was raped in a Mumbai local. India is not safe for women.

But more to the point, I don't know how he's never noticed any instances of eve-teasing in public - 'cause I've seen plenty. I don't know if he's 'living in a very good society', or if he's just in denial. Or worse. I distinctly remember an incident in Kerala, where this and other classmates of mine were discussing a recent newspaper article. The article talked about a woman who an inebriated man ejaculated on in a public bus at night. What disgusted me was the retort that one of these guys made, and other nodded their head to - "She deserved it - what the fuck was she doing out at 8PM alone at night?". Leaving aside the question of how utterly ridiculous that statement is, gentlemen, please - nobody deserves that. Eve teasing exists. It's a real problem, it's nasty.

Unwanted attention
I think I have some idea of where he was coming from. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, let me assume that was under the mistaken impression that him, and his masculinity were under attack. I remember reading about sexual harrassment, and being outraged at what I felt was extremely unfair and biased laws. These laws, I realized, could easily be misused to blame a guy of an offence he didn't commit. Innocent actions could be misunderstood to be sexual advances. This can be devastating for a guy.

But then it hit me - these were in place to protect women, not punish men. Most women don't want to slap a fake sexual harassment lawsuit on you. Most women don't want to falsely accuse you of eve teasing or molestation. The edge-cases where this happens has the same distribution as false accusations of any other nature.

But what does it mean for the horny, red-blooded male and female? Must we now live in a society where we can't flirt with a girl for fear of being ostracized? Must we now keep our distance and behave like asexual non-men? Do women want this?

Ha ha, snort, snort, that's funny! Anybody who believes this just doesn't get it! The only purpose of this is to prevent unwanted attention! If a woman says no, she means NO! Pursuing her, stalking her, molesting her is what the losers do.

I've always been a gentleman pervert. I flirt shamelessly with girls. I make crude, lewd jokes, touch them inappropriately, take liberties I shouldn't. And they love it! They love the attention! Why? 'cause I respect their decision - if she says NO, then it's over. I move on. But if it's not, if she finds me attractive, then it's game on!

Why this seeming hypocrisy? Well, it all goes back to evolutionary biology. I won't waste time expounding on this, but in a nutshell, we're all looking for excellent mating partners. If a women feels that a man might make a good mate, 'cause of his sexy genes, she'll be attracted to him. Ditto for men. The problem arises when a female rejects a man. The man is trying to propagate his genes, so his goal is to have sex with the woman. This can't happen if she rejects him, now can it? And this leads to all sorts of uncool stuff, like I've talked about above. Note that this doesn't in any way excuse this behavior.

So where does this leave us? I don't know about you, but it leaves me dejected. I look around, and I feel like there's a war going on. A war between men and women. And I don't understand it. There couldn't be a more beautiful union than a man and woman*. Can't we all just get along?

*Yeah, ok, that was a bit mushy - fucking move on already!

Choosing amongst many - the deal breaker method

I am in the process of finalizing which PHP framework (in short, a web programming toolkit) for a project I was working on.

As I was researching the frameworks available, I was disappointed to note that there seemed to be a gazillion and one frameworks out there, each one of which seemed a likely contender. I wanted to select one of them and get cracking on the project, but I didn't want to risk choosing one of them, and realizing later that I had made a mistake. This could have been for two reasons:

1. The option I had selected was not good enough: This could be because it was not allowing me to do something I was trying to do, or it was making it much harder to accomplish some goal. There could be some underlying flaw in the option that made it a bad (or totally infeasible) option. It could have failed some of my initial goals (more on this later), or it could have become a bad option due to a changing requirement that I had not foreseen. Real world example:

Problem: I wanted to build a house. I needed to select a building material to construct it with.
Options: Wood, Cardboard, Bricks
Selected option: Wood
Why is it not good enough: Fails one of my primary goals - safety - it catches fire too easily, which is something I hadn't realized. Or maybe, it's much harder for me to construct another floor because the wood isn't strong enough.

2. There was a better option: This, for some reason, is what many people are more afraid of. As I'll explain in one of the methods I've found for solving this problem, this isn't really that scary a problem. This problem occurs when we realize that a better solution for our problem exists. By having chosen the other option that we did, we can no longer proceed with this one. Real world example:

Problem: Let's take the previous example - building a house
Options: Wood, Cardboard, Bricks, and another new option on the market - Fiberglass (hey, gimme a break, I'm not in the construction business)
Selected option: Wood
Better option: Fiberglass - after I had gotten halfway through construction, I realized that fiberglass would've been a better option. Damn! Since I've already chosen wood, I can't change to fiberglass now. I'll keep kicking myself about this every time I enter my house!

To defeat these problems, I have developed a simple method that works well. The first step is to ensure that you have defined your goals. Sounds simple, but it's something that's quite difficult to do, and can be easily overlooked!

Goals need to be very specific - it doesn't qualify to say that the building material must be 'awesome'. Here are some sample goals:
1. The material must be safe
2. The material must be extensible - I should be able to add more floors, drill holes in it, hammer nails in it, etc.
3. The material must be easy to use and work with

Why the heck would I want to do this? U you define your goals, many infeasible options will appear to be plausible solutions.

By defining your goals, you have developed a kind of acid test for the options. You are able to quickly able to measure each one against your goals. You just select the one that satisfies the goals. Simple.

Sometimes, this is not enough. In spite of defining your goals, and refining them again and again, you are still unsure. You are still unable to select from a few of the remaining options.

Ok, now comes the more important part of my method - I call it the Nike approach. Just friggin' do it!

It's quite simple: You need to complete your project. Spending months and months of research trying to select the perfect solution doesn't always work. Why? Because human beings are highly susceptible to suggestions.

You might have formed some preliminary opinions about an option, when some new input makes another option seem more attractive. This might be a colleague praising another option, or bashing your preliminary finalists.

You might have read something in an article somewhere, or some snippet of a conversation between two experts. You might have seen an ad for the other option that was just sexy (don't underestimate the power of presentation - I account for it in all my decisions).

So where does that leave you? Unsure and slightly confused. This leads you to hover in a state of insecurity about any of the options. You would like to select one, but you're not quite sure if it's the one. This is in start contrast to the times when you are immediately able to identify what you want - like the time you wanted the iPod. You didn't care what other alternatives existed in the market, and you weren't the slightest bit concerned that you would ever regret your decision. When somebody pointed out a flaw in your decision, your confidence in your selection allowed you to advocate your choice, and argue about its merits. That kind of confidence feels good, doesn't it? You can see how distant it is from the hesistance we're talking about.

So what do you do? Of the remaining options, you select the one that your gut tells you to. Keeping aside the beliefs that your subconscious has weighed in many more of the options than your conscious brain realizes, there is another reason for this, which I'll expand on below.

By selecting an option, you are freeing yourself from paralysis by analysis. This is a state where you are so immersed in the process of making a decision that you never move ahead in the completion of your goals. You can read up on this later (focus, man/woman, focus!).

Once you've selected an option, what about the above two conditions (option not good enough/better option)? You don't care. That's right - you don't care. You have done your research. Your option has already shown itself to meet your goals. Any problems that arise will just have to be fought through. You do whatever is necessary to defeat the problems you've encountered and move ahead. You will make far more progress this way towards the completion of your goals. Rarely, if ever, will you find that the option you've chosen is so bad that you just can't work with it. In that case, just select the next best option from your research.

Sometimes, though, even after defining your goals, there exist so many options that even after defining your goals, it would take way too long for you to boil down to one option. In this case, you can apply the new method I've discovered - the deal breaker.

It's very simple. The first step is once again, defining your goals. Once you've done this, you go sequentially through each of the options, looking for the 'deal-breaker'. Imagine that you received an annoying phone call from a telemarketer. You're too polite to just hang-up the phone. What do you do? You look for an excuse. "...sorry, I can't buy your credit card because I am currenly in jail'", "I can't avail of your long-distance calling plan, because I don't have a phone!", etc.

You do the same for these options. You pretend that your ideal option is the last one (though we're just going through these options randomly, or alphabetically, or whatever). So each option, dressed in its best suit, needs to be given an excuse, why "it's just not the one - it's not you - it's me. But can we still be friends?". This way, you're not trying to select the option, but reject it. This makes the decision so much easier. As you're going through the options, some will be stubbornly good - but eventually they'll falter. One of these will just continue to look perfect. This will eventually be the option you'll chose! If there's two or three which satisfy the criteria (more than three? you've screwed it up - be meaner!), you apply the Nike method.

The wisdom of my methods might not be immediately apparent, but think about it a bit, and apply it in practice. I'm sure you'll be singing my praises in no time! ;)

Genius = monomania?

I read a very interesting article featured on /. recently: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking

The article talks about research that suggests that 'multitasking', the ubiquitous term that has come to mean the ability to perform multiple focus-intensive tasks simultaneously might not be a such a boon after all. You might want to think about removing it from your resume (oh, c'mon, don't pretend you didn't). Various studies seem to suggest that humans weren't meant to work on many tasks, all requiring their attention at the same time.

In fact, I would think it's not possible to multitask, in the strictest sense. What we're doing is rapidly focusing on one or the other tasks, switching back and forth between them.

In earlier times, people looked far less favorably at the preponderance to keep flutter from idea to idea, from thought to thought (from the article):

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

The following study, mentioned in the article, is categorized as 'unlikely', in my books. It does, however deserve a mention:

In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.” The psychologist who led the study called this new “infomania” a serious threat to workplace productivity.

What these suggest is that 'infomania' is the condition of not being able to focus on one idea, one task to the exclusion of all others at a time, while monomania, being able to doggedly stick to one line of thought, is the enabler of genius.

The article further argues that our brains are not wired to be able to multitask. Forcing them to do so forces them to adapt (or rather adjust) in ways that are detrimental. It affects our memory and recollection, and by not allowing us to solve as many problems as attacking it with a single-focus would, intelligence.

In day-to-day life, I have seen many examples that seem to support these conclusions. We all know the guy who gets pumped full of enthusiasm at the start of a new project, only to have all enthusiasm fall away as they face the prospect of steady, constant application. Haven't you noticed those times when you seemed to be so busy, but would at the end of the day wonder, what exactly it was, you had accomplished?

We've all sat down to finish that project, only to have our concentrations broken by the ringing phone, the barking dog, the yelling mom, the ringing doorbell. Conversely, we've had periods of super-productivity, where we've been able to blast away through pure, focused energy. I remember the days in college when I'd be able to learn more in 2 hours of focused study, having woken up at 4 AM, than I had in the weeks prior (really). I'd have done jack-shit studying earlier. I wouldn't be able to focus on anything, everything would take a major effort to remember and understand. But early in the morning, I was a sponge. Whatever I read, I would remember. I would comprehend all that I read, I would be able to skim through pages (I wonder if that's a contradiction of the idea), and absorb at a staggering rate. I never fully understood why. Now it makes perfect sense.

From the article,

In one recent study, Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.” His research demonstrates that people use different areas of the brain for learning and storing new information when they are distracted: brain scans of people who are distracted or multitasking show activity in the striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills; brain scans of people who are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information. Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.”

Bingo.

So is the key to being more productive just being able to filter out noise? Being able to ignore the barrage of noise (emails, phone calls, colleagues), while prioritizing and focusing on one task?