Dust and Rubble

I am a cursed being. I love books. I always have. I have completed the book a day challenge, all 365 of them à la Shashi Tharoor.

I am also old school. I cannot stand a book's e-counterpart. I refuse to buy a Kindle or use any kind of e-reader. I have always found the concept insulting to the idea of reading. Reading a paper book means curling up with a friend -- old or new -- and discovering joy, mystery, and intrigue. Every page has a memory even if most wash off. When I open my eyes in the middle of the night I glance at my book shelves taking in the warmth they have exuded ever since I've been a child.

My curse is not that I love books. It is far more embarrassing and chastening.

I am allergic to old books. The sort of book that makes ardent readers excited. That makes them sniff the pages and relish its dusty smell. That sends them down involuntary detours of fantasies about the book's previous owners; about the history elapsed from the time the book was published through the rollicking journey it may have had to ultimately reach the present owner. The annotations in the margins. The inscriptions.

It's not that I haven't resisted. Every once a while I pluck up the courage and get myself a battered yellowing old book to read. And though I have failed almost every time the allure of conforming to the habits of my brethren refuses to perish.

*************

Neuromancer is a famous book. As the first novel to win the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K. Dick awards it stands out as the mighty Sirius in the star studded map of Science Fiction literature.

"How far you’ve come, to do it now, and what grotesque props. . . . Playgrounds hung in space, castles hermetically sealed, the rarest rots of old Europa, dead men sealed in little boxes, magic out of China. . . ."

Neuromancer is widely considered to be one of the first major works of cyberpunk (the dystopic genre of Sci-Fi that is described by Wiki as high tech and low life). The story follows the exploits of a delinquent wasted individual, Case, who is a has-been cyberspace thief (a "hacker" for lack of a better word). Case lives on the edges of society as an outlaw doing petty crime and dragging out his existence in a hell-hole in Japan all the while scraping the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet.

Things take a dramatic turn when he meets the samurai shotgun Molly (a memorable and awesome character) who offers Case a way back to health and, more enticingly, the work he reveled and excelled in. There is a price, of course, setting in motion an exciting chase as the protagonist and his rag-tag associates seek answers to a deepening mystery.

Case's skill is to jack himself into the Matrix and find ways of breaking the ice -- Intrusive Countermeasures Electronics -- of organizations. The Matrix is a world removed from the normal world and allows Case to switch between personalities and locations at will. His targets eventually lead him to an AI which controls the mercenary guiding him. Matters deepen as the AI wants stuff that promises to wreck havoc with the usual order of the world.

I found the book in one of those cardboard boxes hastily labeled with a marker-ed "FREE BOOKS" that are reasonably common in any university. There it was, lying between a Dover classic by Le Corbusier and a ragged old book on the Economics of Crime. I had heard enough about Gibson's masterpiece to lay claim to the book. As well as its neighbors.

The copy was dangerously old. This was going to take effort. And some skill. Most definitely some pain too.

The reward to reading Neuromancer is perspective. Neuromancer makes The Matrix trilogy and Inception look like derivative works feeding off the incredible imagination of William Gibson. In fact, in the novel, one can enter a deeper state than the Matrix where time flows more slowly for the outside world even as weeks pass by in the innermost state. It's that familiar.

Iacta alea est.

*************

My own journey began with trepidation. The first two days of reading ended with angry rashes on my hands and chin. My body was rejecting the old book with astonishing ferocity. I had to regroup. Use my unreliable brain to figure a way out.

A tissue box. Aha.

Two pieces of tissue carefully enclosing the fingers on my left hand. Another two guarding the right. And thus began my painstaking quest to read the book. No archival scholar, no Egyptologist and certainly no surgeon ever paid more steadfast attention to the movement and exposure of their fingers as I trying not to touch the ruinous substance on the pages. (Apparently it's the acid used in curing that causes the reaction.)

Thankfully, I do this at home. My parents are used to my eccentricities. My sister rolls her eyes. Visitors think I am delving into the depths of eternal knowledge. Our domestic help, Valli, doesn't understand what I am up to but she gives me the benefit of doubt.

It worked. Barely. I could see I was reading large chunks of the book in one go stopping only because the smell of the book ultimately irritated my nose and made my scalp itch.

Four days like this and the deed was completed. I sent the book on its way, hopefully, to an owner who doesn't share my vulnerabilities.

For all the praise I've bestowed on the book, it is written in a faintly clunky manner. The writing quality has its moments but one struggles to find reading flow.

But maybe it was just the clunky way I read it. Mission accomplished.

A 2-page proof

I was reading about Hao Huang's pursuit of the "sensitivity" conjecture in theoretical computer science and how he was able to prove it after many years of thinking not by treating it as an all-consuming mission but as a guilty secret to indulge in when possible. Deep questions take time to answer. But those are the ones worth going after.

The final proof was two pages long.

Draft Pick III: A Life Update

[Written on 24th September, 2016]

I treat the Econ PhD program as a kind of baptism by fire that brings me back to what I always wanted to be. When I was a teenager among the many visions of the future I had was imagining what my teenage self would say to what I became in the future. For me at that time, becoming a scientist was the only path that made sense. It was pure, it was beautiful, and it was enduring. Running a company was never even a possibility - despite my father having been in the corporate world - and I wasn't even sure what was meant by engineering.

The knowledge about the IITs came some time in the 11th grade and I was resistant. It seemed a dumb thing to try for boring derivative stuff like engineering (I mean you were applying principles; yuck). For an entire year, I didn't study anything related to any exam. I was part of the NASA build-a-space-city challenge, a Delhi Government Vision 2020 contest, I was socializing (and miserably failing), and I was reading cool stuff about physics (not least of which was a paper by Seth Lloyd on Black Hole Computers). 

Till that time my life had been based on some principles, long discarded. Number one, exams didn't matter. Don't get me wrong, I was always in the top five of any class but rarely, if ever, at number one. I loved giving exams because they were intensely exhilarating but I didn't believe in preparing for them. Number two, it didn't matter where you studied or what grades you had. I thought such superficiality had no place in modern society. I knew many friends who were studying very well but they were never impressive enough. And then there was this world of creative tinkerers who had reasonable grades but were doing awesomely.

**********

Today, I am finding it difficult to study. After starving myself for over 30 hours (no real reason) I went over to Chipotle to have a burrito. In the past few weeks the burritos have been a God send. I have always hated Mexican food but with home so far away the combination of "rajma" (Pinto beans) and "chawal" seems familiar and tasty. The burrito was heavy and unhealthy. I loved it.

I came back to my room to start revising Microecon except I looked at my bed and a voice told me it'd be better to study on the bed. You know where this goes. The blanket never seemed more comfortable and I barely remember dozing off to better process my burrito. The nap was comfortable but ended with an old school friend visiting me in a garden. I woke up at this point (again not sure of the reason) and realized my entire body felt like a mottled old cardboard carton. Every joint was paining. I turned left and right in bed trying to sort my body out. I got up eventually. The last thought I had before sleeping was the strangeness of life and how incredibly far fetched (but probably true) was the fact we were living in a glorious vacuum of indifference. It's like the discrete metric. If it's not about you it's equally far away but no point is really better than any other. 

Having promised a friend I was going to study with him was just about enough to take me to the Social Sciences library. I walked the now familiar way there, with the St. John's Cathedral looming over my head as I turned left to look at all the fashionable people on the street (they look the same to me); I ascended towards my department. The library was closing early. So much for that.

I am now sitting in the Science and Engineering library. As I entered twenty minutes back I felt this feeling of familiarity and a recognition that I was acknowledged by the world where I truly belonged. Economics is a great discipline but it doesn't match the purity of the pure sciences (with due apologies to the engineers). It's a pretty decent compromise, doing a PhD in Economics.

I think my teenage self would give a terse nod to the decision I made.

[The previous post in this series.]

Best Books Lists 2019

Putting them all in one place. Will be updating this post over time.

1. New Yorker
2. The Economist
3. New York Times
4. Smithsonian
5. FT
6. Wall Street Journal
7. Electric Literature
8. The Guardian
9. Time

Am I missing a list? Please share them in your comments!

Quote of the Week - V

I segreti de' regi al folle volgo
ben commessi non sono

"It behoves not kings to confide their secrets to the foolish populace"

~ Torrismondo (according to Tasso)

Previous post in the series.

Academics on Twitter

Twitter's been my refuge for 10 years. It has offered a rich mélange of information beaming in from the land of the ordinary as well as the exotic.

Which is why the whole idea of academics using Twitter to discuss research sucks. I should have anticipated different disciplines hijacking the medium to weigh on their research topics but as a happy kid exploring the expanses of the universe through an impersonal and non-reciprocating vehicle I feel cheated.

Twitter is my way of socializing. Of comfortably interacting with the world and keeping my distance. It is also so much more than the boring debates of any one discipline.

Must I move on to Mastodon?

Book review - The Third Pillar by Raghuram Rajan

Around the time of independence, Gandhiji and Babasaheb Ambedkar clashed over the kind of structure the new nation of India would possess. Gandhiji believed in what would today be called a version of localism as he wanted most of the powers of the state to be vested with villages with the federal government having minimal interference. Ambedkar, having lived a life full of discrimination and social exclusion, did not agree. He saw villages and local communities as regressive centers of oppressive customs and traditions, with a hierarchy meant to subjugate those at the bottom, and which would not give all Indians the freedom that they should deserve.

Fast forward to today. Raghuram Rajan writes a book that is part of the many, many...many books out there at the moment on (i) the ills plaguing (predominantly) the developed world; (ii) an analysis of the conflicts therein; finally, (iii) offering a set of solutions. As is unfortunately the case with all these books, written by very smart people, the analysis is often highly informative and enlightening but the solutions are impractical or hopelessly naive.

What comes out is a book that has an intriguing thesis - that there is a third oft ignored pillar of the community that can bolster the support systems that individuals need in a time of great turbulence, and which can more efficiently take decisions for the people living in their communities.

There is much to agree with the thesis. Rajan is a nuanced person. He does not think in terms of ideological manifestos. He does not, at least for the developed world, think Ambedkar was right, but he doesn't want us to push out the state and the market to the extent that Gandhiji would have wanted.

The book itself, though, leaves a lot to be desired. In a topic as complex as the one Rajan has picked - of analyzing the community's role and empowering it in specific ways - the big flaw that comes out, and I can't believe I am saying this, is that he chooses to look at most of these problems purely as an economist. Not always, I hasten to add, but almost everywhere of note. Therefore, the analysis (historical and current) is often based on incentives. Give the right incentive and communities will not be overly insular or discriminatory, even in subtle ways. This line of thinking is not persuasive not least because there exists a history of regressive community structures and bad equilibria where the community chooses to live in a manner that is hostile to all kinds of outsiders as well as interruptions to their way of life. Despite these decisions affecting those communities economically. Despite the state trying to interfere.

In addition, the solutions miss an important aspect of so much of populist anger in the world today (something that Rajan himself mentions earlier in the book). People are not convinced the world is fair. That there is justice out there. People will not feel better by rising in their local community boards or church groups as compensation for feeling excluded from those who are far wealthier than they can imagine themselves to be. The number of roles that the community is ostensibly supposed to support is huge. One cannot see how all these roles can be smoothly and uniformly fulfilled. If people feel that they cannot live in the same elite circles as the elite, or have their children study in the same public schools, or see a way up if they work hard enough, the communities will not be able to compensate for this kind of distrust and disgruntlement.

I think the book would have done better if it had a more practical view of how changes can be implemented. Who is going to make the change? How do you engender this change endogenously? Or at the very least, what's the sequencing of the many tweaks and modifications (admirably) analyzed and recommended. One would expect that changes to how fair the system is perceived has to come first, for example.

Finally, the book is far too long for what it wants to present. Part I has a hurried jaunt through history and is neither insightful nor coherent; there are far too many digressions. The point of the argument struggles to come across. Part II is the analysis of the current situation. This is where Rajan's immense scholarship in the field of finance, contract theory, policy making etc comes to the forefront. I learnt a lot from this section. Part III is the solutions part. Interestingly, I found the author's analysis of solutions for the market and the state to be highly thought provoking; the solutions for the community are vague and seem to be a rather long laundry list of possible steps that can be taken.

All in all, the thesis is interesting. Some parts are very good. And to be fair, it is probably the start of a debate on this topic. This is not Rajan's best book but then, we hold him to the highest standards of expectation.