Author: manuscrypts

  • Truly Free

    I first read Kavi’s post on tattoos, which started with how he turned down even a temporary one. I could relate to that, and the post made me wonder what was my discomfort with getting a tattoo.

    My immediate thought was optionality. But thanks to some excellent coincidence, right below that post (in my feed) was one by The Marginalian which gave me a different perspective.

    We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness.

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  • Alchemy: The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity

    Rory Sutherland

    I think Alchemy is the first book I’ve read by anyone associated with marketing/advertising. For anyone involved in selling anything, I’d say this is a must-read. You should also read this if you’re intellectually curious, because in essence, this is a behavioural science book. It is even more relevant now because of the obsession with data. It isn’t that you should not look at data, but as Rory says, if you’re only using data, it’s like playing golf with only one club. “Logic should be a tool, not a rule”. This book is about the magic, which I think we’re forgetting in the fixation for data. Rory calls it psycho-logical, which is the way we make decisions in daily life.

    Thanks to books like Donald D. Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality and Andy Clark’s The Experience Machine, the hypothesis is that our entire biological system (body and mind) are built to navigate the world, and we only see a version of reality. The brain predicts based on its experience and hypothesis and we fill in the details. When we do not have a complete understanding of decisions we ourselves take, it is hubris to think that we completely understand the motivations of others. Especially without considering nuances beyond data. “By using a simple economic model with a narrow view of human motivation, the neo-liberal project has become a threat to the human imagination’.

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  • Burma Burma

    The last time we tried to get into Burma Burma on a Saturday night, we ended up going to Lucky Chan because of the wait time. They don’t take reservations on Saturday night. This time, we were prepared, and lurking around when they opened for dinner. That meant very few tables were occupied, and we got one that we liked. I have to confess, despite my disdain for vegetarian fare, I have been to this (Indiranagar) outlet multiple times, enjoyed the food, and also been to the Church Street one. I had no moral grounds really when D expressed her desire to have dinner here.

    Burma Burma
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  • The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

    Andy Clark

    The subtitle of The Experience Machine is “How our minds predict and shape reality”, and that’s what the book is about. The conventional notion of cognition, at least to me, is that it begins with sense organs perceiving and providing inputs from what we experience, and the brain quickly piecing it all together to present me a coherent picture of what is, and what I should do next. But if we go by the “predictive brain” thesis, the brain doesn’t just passively interpret the world but is constantly predicting, shaping, and refining our reality based on sensory inputs.

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  • Three shades of freedom

    At large

    It is freedom weekend in this part of the world. We make an impromptu lunch plan, and use the metro. Then go to a mall for bubble tea, our new comfort drink. There is something metaphorical about that – our bubble inside a messy reality. I noticed that at the restaurant, on the roads, in the mall, there weren’t a lot of smiling people. I reflect that maybe it’s a sign of the times. After all, if you go by social media, everyone else is doing better.

    And it isn’t just online, it’s a reality too.I think specifically about the service staff in the restaurant, security guards at the metro station. They are working on a day when everyone else has the day off. Waking up early, going back late. They are living lives of precarity, something I read in Eula Biss’ Having and Being Had.

    “…depending on the will or pleasure of another was the original meaning of precarious, and that it comes from the Latin for prayer. Precarity is everywhere, it seems. Maybe it is, as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes, the condition of our time. It is also the defining feature of an entire class of people, the precariat. 

    Illness or disability can force somebody into the precariat as can divorce, war, or natural disaster. The precariat is composed of migrant workers and temp workers and contract workers, and part-time workers. People who work unstable jobs that offer “no sense of career.” There are few opportunities to advance in these jobs, and no way to bargain for better terms.

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