Children's Children

At times, I like to imagine that some relative/relative of friend of mine will, in some time far into the future, "discover" this blog. The familial links over time, place and generational tree will be so immeasurably complex and long winded that any possibility of communicating the existence of this "space" will shrink to negligibility.

In such a situation, then, the "discovery" will be both accidental and probably (hopefully) stimulating. To you, far removed reader, is this dedicated.

~

Back in the days when I was a jamuna-paar shady day scholar (I hope this phase is not completely alien), we had what is called "slang". Certain words used in certain ways to describe certain opinions, and their meanings diverge from the dictionary definition.

The thing about slang - which is one of my favourite words by the by - is that it possess certain characteristics that make it interesting:
(a) Extremely localized: the same set of words can have varying implications at different places; indeed meaning may vanish altogether.

(b) Extremely quick at changing: over time, words live and die with high velocity.

(c) "Cultural" implications: slang is often a short-form "instrument" for the communication of a set of ideas otherwise hard to express. The fact that such communication is needed may tell us something about the communica-tor and the communica-tee.

What is particularly interesting is how yours truly has himself changed/let go of/taken on slang as and when I've shifted around on this pale blue dot. 

~

Here are three words, then, that I used to use, or heard being used, while being the shady day-sci. Why three? Because three equals infinity.

1. "Arbit" - short form for arbitrary. When I first heard it I thought people were saying "Arbid". True story. It could either be form of mild contempt; or just plain wonderment at the mental faculties of the opposite party. Since my mental faculties were in their infancy, I got this a lot. Many years on, I suspect my mental faculties are still struggling out of their pram, the yolk spilling on the sidewalk (not pavement).
2. "Senti" - short for sentimental. Being "senti" was never a good thing. It meant your emotions were getting the better of you. If a tiny thing like emotion could get the better of me, that better part of me wasn't worth it! In the battle of emotion versus the better of me, I'm proud to say, emotion has always won. If you can marry being "senti" with "cold" logic, the fire-ice dance can be truly magical.
3. "Giving gyaan" - this usually meant someone talking about something they either knew little about, or the listener could not possibly care less about. Perhaps the last two statements are really saying the same thing. I don't know. I'm not giving gyaan here.

I have not used any of these in the last 5 years.

~

What about now, that is, the American United States? If you were quick about it, you'd have caught at least one piece of slang in the bulleted list above.

Here's two, then:

1.   "Shoulda-coulda-woulda" short for "should have been, could have been, would have been". I find this particularly interesting because it has at least two interpretations. Either it means that there is little point in think about what may have happened, since that did not actually take place. This is a very practical sort of thinking. Or it means that attempting to understand what may have happened is the only valid way of understanding what happened. This is even more practical. 
2. "Have a good one" - does it get any more American? This is technically incorrect English (have a good one what?), is extremely vague in what it means and yet conveys a sense of companionship without any idea of what it would take to be a good companion. Whatever it is you're having, sex, ice cream or a game of football, have a good one. Don't fake it, man, have a good one, go on.

That completes it then, the time capsule can now be closed. 

Get it out quick

If the goal of the economic process is to engage in exchange, then prices and quantities are ways of expressing the language of trade.

But although capable of rich expression, prices and quantities are not rich enough.

Hawk the Eager Young

In the middle of my applications, attempts at convincing people to employ me, I should be doing more of them, but here I am. For the following reasons:

1. I'm feeling the loss of not writing, it's been too many weeks, and I don't much feel like writing any economics.

2. Like someone says on Facebook, "I don't procrastinate, only don't feel motivated to do boring things." ha ha. 

3. This is an "important" time in my life, so it should be duly noted and recorded m'lord.

I maybe shouldn't feel so non-passionate about the job scene, but honestly I'm far too studied up to be out on the corner with begging bowl in hand. As I once politically incorrectly remarked in a seminar two years ago, "if that's what gets published, maybe it isn't so bad if I don't publish!". Kuch toh mil jayega, I tell a friend across the other side of the world.

A minor source of frustration finds itself in:

1. The lack of places looking for someone like me. Seems like most places care not a hoot about some institutional economics person. Who'd have thought it?

2. The incorrectly/poorly informed "mainstream" economists who profess to address the notion that peculiarly is still quite novel in economics: that people talk, such talk is often times an attempt to "gain surplus" (i.e. get more than what you ought to) and therefore ought to be attended to with some careful thought. Thus the profess-ors profess an incorrect profession. Aaargh!

Actually, it's quite good, all this you-guys-are-getting-it-wrong business, there is now "scope" for me to gain surplus, ah ha ha ha!

I ended up watching this English Vinglish movie, and was fairly let down. I simply don't get why the wife goes back to that awful bitchy family, instead of French hunk. Oh, and there had to be a French hunk, right? Why not the other stereotype - the South Indian engineer? (Which hello, but down South, us Indians learn to speak english, we got to, there's no melting pot Hindi to "unite"? ) What further put me off was the unnecessary anti-Amrika jibes, "ab inko hamse darna hain", all that.

What rubbish. Please. When you go for a Visa interview, there are separate lines if you wish your interview to be taken in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Oriya, Bengali, whatever. The US has its source of problems, but come on. "How will you survive without speaking english?". You don't need to speak in English to get a tourist visa! Go to your nearest American embassy if you don't believe me. Cue - Aaargh! - again.

We don't need more disagreement, people! We find it hard enough to get along as it is. Why create all this unnecessary tension, why why why. Sometimes, really, us Indians should take a proper look at ourselves, the xenophobia is truly abnoxious.

See - once again - the costs (and benefits) of talk? Most important principle, I believe, in understanding social behavior.

And, postscript: What the hell is up with Sridevi? How is it possible to look the same 25 years on, who are her doctors, did they lock her up in Michael Jackson's hyperbolic (that can't be right) chamber?

Enough about that. Test cricket is back, and there's nothing better than Test match commentary as background noise while you plead your case - The sum total of our knowledge does not come by a few isolated geniuses, but rather by a far larger crowd who stood on the shoulders of those who came before them to see a bit further. Making students see this will more often than not make them feel as
equal participants. - it is the very sound of civilization.

Talking to a friend who's trying the arranged marriage thing, and has turned down multiple "suitors", she claims she doesn't feel anything, and "I don't know what it is I should feel, shouldn't I feel something?". I do some silly verbal equivalent of a backrub "there there, let me get on to it, phir dekhna...".

But what strikes me most about this free spirit, now attempting to search for the right man, is how right Axl was.

"Don't you think that you need someone?
Everybody needs somebody, You're not the only one!"

Leaving Here

It's been quite a ride, said he. It was a dream, and remains one. *snicker*, find more cliches, will you? Was it here, that we ate, laughed, got pissed, got drunk, got sober, wrote exams, wrote papers, sobbed, dreamed, slept, argued, shouted. And does it have to end like this, with the queer, desperate silence of deadlines and definitive statements of intent.

Yeah, gettin' tired (gettin' tired), sick and tired (sick and tired)
Yeah, take a train (take a train), fly by plane (fly by plane)
Yeah, gonna leavin' here, yeah leavin' here
Yeah, leavin' here, ya gonna leave all here now
Baby baby baby, please don't leave here

Been 5 years, a little more, who knew it would play out like this. I am reminded of my first day in this country, a little after 3 in the afternoon on a Monday, wondering at the description of the shrubs outside the main door. From that to this, older, a bit wiser, enough to know there is more to things than meets the eye. I figure why, "underneath it all", people do odd things, and that Tolkien quote, all that is gold does not glitter. Hits you in between the eyes.

In a Wonderland they lie
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summer die

Yet another joke of questionable impact

What were the grandparents doing on their rocking chairs listening to Van Halen?

Rocking out, perhaps.


: D

Culture wulture

An economist says to a biologist:

"I'm really interested in culture"

and the biologist responds:

"So am I!"

Good phrases

From an appreciation of Little Richard:

"...wailing with gleeful abandon"

Is there a better way to state what there is to love about rock music? I think not. This also explains why I have only slight patience for folksy music - Paul Simon is an important exception to the general rule, because he seems to be gleeful in his musings.

In related news, Alice Cooper was at Lords talking about cricket and how music companies no longer want to invest in new bands. Best statement: "That Pietersen, he's a bit a of a rock star, I hear." Second best statement: "Lady Gaga is the only real star these days." Third best: "People are afraid to be rock musicians today...if Paul Simon made Sargent Peppers  today, no major music company would want to sell it."

Tasteful tastes

I always liked Mohra's "tu cheez badi hai mast":



Especially the verse bit. But this is extremely embarrassing to admit, for the same reason that I find it hard to say in the company I keep in these older days that I like Iron Maiden.

As proof that my taste is "good", it turns out - thank you Pandora! - that tu cheez is nothing but a bollywood-isation of



Note for note! I knew my taste is tasteful! (But notice how cacophonous the cover is, how they cheapen the whole affair).

Memmy-Deddy

I missed my parents yesterday for the first time in my life. It felt strange. I wanted to sit with them in IIC eating fish and chips, drinking Kingfisher beer (with cell phones on silent, because "guests are requested" to do so in "consideration of others"). Being a saturday, I spoke with them, my mother was talking about a friend of theirs who passed away, at the age of 62 and "that age seems far to you but to us it is very near".

I remember this friend, I wasn't too fond of them, I don't think my parents were either, but I do remember she once said about me that I was a handsome young man. My mother replied to that, putting me in my place, "handsome is what handsome does."


The thing about my parents friends is that I usually like them. They're older, have seen more of life etc. and are usually more than glad to have a young 'un at their disposal.

My father's friends are all buddies from the civil service, and while bureaucrats can be very very egotistical, they are usually pretty open minded. (Though it takes a while to convince them). But I like them - they are usually well read, with deep knowledge of many things Indian, and there is a certain class that such education + experience imparts. Conversations with them are always fun.

Mother's friends are typically high school English schoolteachers - again a demographic I have no problems talking with. Conversations are less high brow than with Papa's dost, but more fun. (And we need that as well). Plus, there's usually some Wordsworth or TS Eliot thrown in  at random intervals.

Why talk about memmy-deddy's dost log? Birds of a feather, flock together, is one theory.

I believe the real reason is that I like how my parents are with their friends. I see how they would have been before they became parents, if this makes sense. They're usually more relaxed, allow themselves an additional glass of whiskey (Papa) or rum'n'cola (Mummy), and momentarily forget I am their son.

***

 

Bitten nails

Advisor hasn't replied to my last two emails...! Makes me want to sing:



ulp!

The LIBOR scandal

Assume a scenario as follows:

You're a teaching assistant, your only job is to grade assignments and tests. A student comes up to you one day, after a mid-term, asking about the marks you gave in his/her last test. You explain what you did.

The student is generally accepting, except that he/she says at the end "Thanks for your time. I'm worried that I won't get an A, which means I lose my fellowship and will be forced to leave the program, so that's why I am worried." You check this later on, and find it is true.

Now the next test comes up, and the student makes exactly the same mistake as before. It is however very slight but nevertheless implies a B grade. If you give the student just a marginal, tiny amount of more marks, he/she will keep the fellowship and be able to finish their course.

What would you do?

There are certainly costs associated with the minor inflation - one, where do you stop when you start. Two, it violates a personal code of grading. Three, the student will maybe not learn from the mistake.

If you don't carry out the inflation, the student is forced to drop the program, or perhaps suffer an extended delay of graduation. There is substantial harm imposed on the student.

How do you compare these costs? Either the student never learns, or learns the really hard way; so hard possibly that the lesson is no longer relevant. (The student gives up hope and goes home to work on a farm). 

Policing morals

If A harms B, is it fair to blame A? Harm is caused by both A and B - if B wasn't around there would be no harm in the first place.

Is it cheaper, then, to ask B to leave or A to leave? Or, what amounts to the same thing, ask B to pay A or A to pay B?

Celebrated but undisturbed

Scramble

A particular kind of egg, enjoyed very much with masala made from onions, garlic and tomatoes.
A rush, the adrenaline kind, to write write write. A mess, usually imposed by an external authority.

If you're looking for a point (or a silent sky) you won't find it here. I write this on a table not mine, in a room with furniture not mine, having just got back to a wonderful productive r u s h from a nice break.

I like that. To make a point, one can utilize font style. How much I wish I could write my papers like this. Hey academia, I'm talkin' to you.

"Now, the FCC won't let me be, or let me be me, so let me see..."

See previous post for where I was, incidentally I got that picture of the internet, but I saw it by mine own two eyes. I was called mamu multiple times by the cutest little adorable kid of a cousin sis who has matured into this half elder sister half mother figure that still throws me off. Especially since her face still looks sixteen.  She's married well. I love visiting them. Upper east side, get off at 86th and Lexington.

In-laws were also around, so it was good, showing them around the city. Took the ferry ride yet again, I don't get bored on a boat. I like watching the water. We experienced a rude Chinese waiter which wasn't fun, and Central Park which was. Sis-in-law surprised both of us by downing three shots of (admittedly mediocre) Tequila on a night out in the city. But hell, Tequila is Tequila. Lotsa alcohol content.

Girl and me, we trekked around the city, got a bit drunk at Bryant Park. "It's nice isn't it, all these bankers around us" "Yeah, they look so clean even though it's the end of the day"... "S has really done well to keep calling all these years, na?" "Your friends tend to do that"

We also interrupt an old man taking a photograph, girl is all "oh sorry". Old man is of the sweetheart type, replies "it's you I wanted!"

But the key revelation: "Women here really wear nice earrings". It's true, I never notice earrings. Has anyone else realised this, how women do all sorts of things men never even see? In any case, if you want see nice earrings, come to New York. Also, a lot of the women wear these impossible heels, cousin sis also mentions this, yet they walk around okay.

Also, met up with old friend, who surprised me by telling me she used to live in those parts, for three years. During school. Ruminated a bit over the probability of the two of us drinking masala chai in lower Chelsea, of all places. A bit surreal, she said, this. Is of the generally fed up with work life, but don't know what else to do. "I want to write, but where will the money come from?" "Feed the soul"  "But what about my stomach?"

In New York

On a recent visit to the Big Apple:

 And yes, I did look at the catalog. It was free, after all.

A Selection Problem

People think that people who sleep around are "loose", whereas they may simply be looking for validation.

People think that people who don't sleep around at all are "uptight", whereas they may simply have never had the chance.

It is a natural conclusion from these two statements that people who have never had the chance, but have the self-confidence to not seek validation are probably what we may term "well-adjusted". Neither loose, nor tight.

Since one cannot "know" with perfect certainty what a person's motivations are - indeed, one may not even know one's own motivation - well, then...

Bleg Blog

How many blogs talk wistfully about Delhi, this one included?

And how many don't?

And where, for the ones that do, do the authors originate?

Staticity

"Oh where, oh where
Can my baby be?
The Lord took her
Away from me"

I can't bear to read anything these days. Correction. I can't bear to read any economics these days. I don't quite understand it. I can't bring myself to properly write; all I have been doing is gritting teeth, grinding my molars away, writing up a "literature review". Reading turgid, stultifying prose and trying to breathe, no, blow some life into it. Giving it my "spin", my "voice". Which, heaven knows, isn't professional at all.

Well, at the very least, I console myself, you get the relevant literature out of the way. It has to be read. May as well do it when motivation is dragging, that too at a time when it shouldn't be. Should be. Shouldn't be. Should-a could-a would-a. Allocation of scarce resource, Ricardo be proud.

It is really worrying, this dearth of properly constructed sentences. Introductions that are cut-copy-paste. Predictable. Nothing new to see here, move on. Ideas that are minimal at best. What are we doing? Creating this monster called academia, for what? To pull this dataset one way, then another. To make this assumption, that assumption, this equilibrium that solution. Drowning in our mediocrity, we gasp for the few tufts of air that seem to come once every twenty years so.

And then you have the friends, colleagues is the grown up word. Who laugh when you say research must reflect life. Or, when you complain about the dryness of academic writing. They make my head spin, my falafel sandwich taste of dust. Why are you even here? I wish to complain. Go sell some toothpaste. Or something. Don't spoil my world, I got enough cynicism for two here.

To recover from all this, I read Barzel, Coase, McCloskey. All within the space of an hour. Restore my faith in the ability of humans to think and reason. I see faculty walking around, I share a joke about the economic view of corruption, the old man laughs. Sweet relief. Here it is, finally, the reason why I get into this mess in the first place.

“The lighthouse is simply plucked out of the air to serve as an illustration. The
purpose of the lighthouse example is to provide,” quoting now from Gilbert and Sullivan’s
operetta, The Mikado, “‘corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative’” (Coase, 1974, p. 375).

~

I've been having debates about my work, mild little spars. Everything always comes down to the same thing - what do you believe is right? Belief; right-ness. How is anyone supposed to answer these questions? Here's my model, there's my regression. Don't believe it? Be my guest, I think, walk away. I can't argue with a belief. But I press on, no see, if what you say is true, then so-and-so must happen, but actually this-and-that does, so...

~

Had a happy conversation last night, she was laughing at nearly all my rubbish jokes. What a contrast to the nightmare I encountered - ha yes they've started what with all this 'where-is-my-life-going' conundrum that finishing a doctorate degree entails - a beggar woman we refuse to pay, who follows us, then starts to run behind us, I turn to her to face her, there's nothing but emptiness where her face should be, only a strangely sonorous chant of the Spanish word puta (go Google it). Ugh, I had to wake up after that. Maybe it was the recycled furniture in the room that brought it on; perhaps feelings cling to wood.

"And on my deathbed I will pray to the gods and thee angels,
Like a pagan to anyone who will take me to heaven;
To a place I recall, I was there so long ago."

Fly on the (economist grad student) wall

The following is an email exchange I had with my advisor. I was troubled by what I saw being published - naive idiot, yes - and railed against it in my typical juvenile fashion. 

Here's me:

"There appears to be some link between (leading article published by leading researcher in top journal) and (not so leading researcher publishing in a close to the top journal)

Another reason (yet another…) why writing this stuff out is making all these parallels come out. I decided to quickly go over the main points of the (leading researcher) paper – just scanning the introduction and the final discussion, conclusion bits – and here’s what I find...(some details)

 Wow. Not only is this missing out on the central message of the model, what message is coming out is also (apparently) incorrect.

Sometimes this kind of stuff troubles me; if one the leading experts is writing confusedly what does this say about the profession? Forget about being right or wrong, surely one should at least get the basic point of a paper…"

 

Here's advisor:

"You would be surprised how common it is for economists (even prominent economists) to misunderstand each others' work.  Papers aren't always 100% clear, and people are busy, so they read quickly.  And being a leading expert doesn't necessarily mean that you understand others' work any better.  You become a leading expert by publishing a lot, not necessarily by reading a lot.  In general, knowing what other work is being done helps a lot in writing good papers.  But that doesn't mean you need a perfect understanding.  And there are a lot of people who are good at doing original research and writing good papers, but not at all good at understanding others' work.

 

There are a few ways to tell based on CVs who is likely to be good at understanding others' work.  People who have substantial experience as journal editors tend to be in that category, for example.  So do people who look "overplaced" -- they have a relatively thin CV for the department they're in.  Look for the opposite cases -- people who are prominent but haven't done much journal editing, and people who look "underplaced" -- and those tend to be the people who aren't good at understanding others' work.  Of course, those aren't perfect indicators (particularly the over/underplaced measure).

 

Anyway, don't let this trouble you too much.  Errors like this do tend to get corrected eventually (though it sometimes takes a while)."

 

People are going to screw up. Even the well regarded ones. Takes the pressure off. In fact, I have only documented more of this sort of writing - confusing at best, incorrect at worst - so much so that I have virtually given up any hope of a general understanding being reached. But this is perhaps inevitable; an outcome of a process where freedom to question is generally allowed. Incorrect or misleading statements will happen. One must tolerate this, otherwise you end up being a servant of thought, not its master.

 

Art/Life/Duality

"Players may have different beliefs (priors) due to different information they acquired during their lives. Theoretically, one may try to model all this learning as simple Bayes' update of a prior one has at birth. Unrealistic as this may sound (or, indeed, be), this story could still be (a part of) a viable model, the reduction of all decision problems in one's life to one "grand decision.

Yet people surely differ even at birth. For instance, they have different genes which may
determine both their utilities and priors. Therefore, the argument goes one step further and
considers the "players" before they acquired the information contained in their genes.

Thus, we are asked to think of some intelligent entity capable of logico-mathematical reasoning but which does not yet know what actual player it will materialize in. At the moment of birth (or
conception, or even much earlier, depending on the reader's faith and social policy preferences),
this intelligent entity--the empty shell--learns the genes it got, updates its prior and becomes a
"regular" player with a utility function and beliefs that are now the posterior.

However, the "empty shell" argument concludes, before learning the genes, there is no
reason to distinguish between these empty shells. They are all identical, since any distinction
among them is assumed to be learned later on. In particular, they all have the same prior.

One extreme view of empty shells is that they are (almost) nothing but the logico-mathematical entity needed to "understand" the model and reason about it. According to this view, they are free from all that is mundane, and, in particular, have no preferences. Loosely, pure logico-mathematical entities simply don't care (about anything).

But if empty shells do not (yet) have preferences, one may not attempt to derive priors
from them a la Ramsey, de Finetti and Savage, and the concept of "prior" becomes somewhat
metaphysical."

-"Why the empty shells were not fired", Itzhak Gilboa, 2010

"I came from nothing before nothing began
Broke the window of existence and became a man
No sympathy for fools, my star is black and burned
I tilt toward the light, I suck your souls into my might

We are starchildren, coming out of nowhere and to nowhere return
Starchildren, a hundred million souls sucked out in one breath"

"Starchildren", Bruce Dickinson, 1996

The Basic Philosophy: Sure, Sharp, Economic

I've been on a Joan Didion trip recently, ever since I discovered, somehow, her book titled "Slouching Toward Bethlehem". I liked the vision in that title, apparently it's a quote out of Yeats. Or Keats. One of those poet type people who everybody quotes but nobody reads. 

I picked up a compilation, a fat, heavy monster leaning in on 1000 pages, this titled "We tell ourselves stories in order to live". Jaw drops to floor when I read that and immediately issue it (see I'm poverty struck I haven't bought a book in, I think, 4 years now. With my own money that is. Thank you, library!). A powerful line, but check the following extract, it's from a book boringly called "The White Album". Emphasis in italics, they are mine.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five...We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."

In many ways, the pursuit of a line of inquiry into the world  - otherwise known as "research" - is, implicitly or explicitly, exactly this. The problem is most people conducting the damn research are unaware, trusting in some misplaced notion of "Science" (with a capital S) as being this purely objective thing that arrived by itself and dribbles itself into our conscience every now and then. 

Recognizing that in research we are essentially carrying out "the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images" would benefit not just the researcher and the research, but also the world wide notion of what research is. Telling stories. To live. 

"You know, some people got no choice
and they can never find a voice
to talk with that they can even call their own
So the first thing that they see
that allows them the right to be
why they follow it, you know, it's called bad luck."

"Street Hassle", Lou Reed, 1978