Emergent Misbehavior

Murphy'’s Law has been revered for decades as the only law to hold across diverse domains. The law states : "anything that can go wrong, will”. This article tries to find a scientific basis for this widespread existence of Murphy'’s Law and ponders on the implications of its findings.

Let us begin our analytical journey with Theory of Complex Systems. Complex systems are those in which global properties and behavior cannot be fully explained by an understanding of its component parts.Typically, the behavior of such systems is non-linear, arising from the interactions of a large number of simple processes. Due to their non-linearity, superposition doesn't apply, and thus they are literally more than the sum of their parts.

An important feature of these systems is that they are decentralized. There is no central controlling agency. The global properties that develop in them, do so, seemingly out of the blue. The resulting behavior if interesting, is also unpredictable. In a sense, these systems seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics – entropy, which states that the amount of disorder in the universe must increase.

Often, complexity arises in systems that are composed of interacting simpler systems. The simplest example of such a compositional system is a Cellular Automaton. A Cellular Automaton is a regular, n-dimensional grid composed of simple, identical, spatially interacting cells. Each of these cells is a finite state automaton, whose future state depends solely on its current state and that of its neighboring cells. Conway's Game of Life is a popular application of Cellular automata.

It is often awe-inspiring to see different configurations of these cellular automata evolve in time. With exceedingly simple rules for state transition (the Game of Life operates on just four rules), one can see beautiful and complex patterns develop. It almost seems like the grid has come to life (pun intended). The problem is, that given this behavior, it is extremely difficult to guess what the state-transition rules originally were.

The behavior of cellular automata have been classified into 4 classes by Stephen Wolfram -- Steady state, Oscillatory, Chaotic and Emergent Structure. In the Steady state, the system converges to a fixed state in a short time. Oscillatory systems develop periodic cycles, which then repeat forever. These are both system types where the behavior is '‘simple'’, or even uninteresting. The outcomes of both these systems can be predicted easily. Chaotic Systems in contrast seem to be delinquents of the automata world. Chaotic behavior is characterized by random, aperiodic and unpredictable patterns.

The 'Emergent-structure' class of systems develops unstable, but computationally rich patterns. Fractals like the Sierpinski triangle, gasket, and carpet are commonly observed. Patterns that are often seen in nature are also observed. Wolfram suspects that complexity in nature may be due to similar mechanisms. These, by far, have been regarded by everyone as the most interesting kinds of cellular automata. It is spine-tingling to see such simple rules create such complex behavior. This phenomenon is called Emergent Behavior.

Many complex systems show emergent structure. Ant and termite colonies, flocking behavior in birds, collaborative efforts like Linux and Wikkipedia, bit-torrent swarms, etc. Life itself can be thought of as an emergent property of the thermal, chemical, physical, electrical and mechanical properties of the new-born earth. Some believe that intelligence and consciousness too is emergent behavior.

It is a fine line that separates the dead (steady, oscillatory) from the unstable (chaotic). Emergent behavior appears at this boundary, termed as the edge of chaos. This line, though seemingly fine, may not be that fine after all. Emergent behavior appears all around us, all the time. Having a high affinity towards the edge of chaos, these systems are robust and self-organizing. Self-organization seems to be an emergent property of systems that contain positive and negative feedback, multiple interactions and a balance between exploration and exploitation. How exactly such self-organizing systems function is not yet known to science.

In this universe, there are emergent phenomena that are inherently destructive. One such destructive phenomenon in the limelight these days is Hurricane Wilma. Hurricanes are emergent properties of small disturbances in climatic conditions. Similarly, cancer is a destructive emergent property, of small mutations in cells that accumulate over time, interact in strange ways, resulting in a robust tumor that just won't quit growing. Epidemics, sepsis, forest fires, stock market crashes, national power failure and computer viruses have a similar modus-operandi. Small initial deployments avalanche into a rapid spreading, debilitating catastrophe. The butterfly effect and even the feared "Burrito effect" are all examples of such emergent misbehavior.

These emergent misbehaviors cause other systems they interact with, to fall into Chaos, causing all hell to break loose. This is the domain where Murphy rules all-powerful. Misbehaving emergent systems cause an increase in the entropy in the universe. In a sense, Murphy'’s Law ensures that there cannot be too much of a good thing. Entropy is conserved.

Misbehavior is inherently unpredictable in time, place, manner and intensity. Identifying the cause, given the chaotic symptoms is often horribly difficult, making their prediction and prevention virtually impossible. The burning question remains "What are the rules that cause the observed complexity?". There are many researchers currently engaged in trying to find an answer.

Since entropy is conserved, there will always be a balance between good and evil, order and disorder, behavior and misbehavior. Ever wonder why we constantly encounter Murphy? Why he has us covered whichever way we turn? The answer is simple: life itself is emergent-good-behavior, and the number of just the prokaryotes on Earth is a gargantuan 5 x 10³⁰! The ratio of the number of humans (a measly 6 x 10⁹⁾ to the total number of life forms on Earth is thus negligible.

Given the humongous amount of good-behavior, the amount of misbehavior will be equally humongous. Ergo, the probability, that us humans, will encounter Murphy, is astonishingly high. Murphy's Law can now be safely reworded to say "Everything (in the asymptotic limit) that can misbehave, will". Bottom line: there is nothing one can do about it, so don't sweat the yocto (10^-24) or the yotta (10²⁴) stuff.

--Sandeep Ranade

Believing, is Seeing

Is there such a thing as Absolute Reality? Or do we just concoct our own version?
Two people who experience a single event perceive it in different ways. If reality is always relative and based on individual perceptions of our environment, events and relationships, it would imply that our perceptions create our reality. Thus reality is just a function of our perceptions.

What creates perceptions?
Perceptions are filters that our brain creates to interpret different sensory inputs. The defining parameters of these filters are affected by a lot of factors. Lifestyle, genetic makeup, environment, upbringing, education, success and failure, subconscious state, etc shape the filters. These filters are nothing but our belief system. We see things tainted with our beliefs and that becomes our reality. Which is why, the same glass is seen as half filled or half empty or too much glass, by people with different belief systems. Thus, believing, is seeing!

Can we consciously change our beliefs?
Beliefs are simply learnt subroutines in the brain. They are simply interpretive functions that make sense of our senses. Beliefs are the paths our neural impulses take when faced with sensory inputs. Synaptic weights control the direction and strength of the traveling neural signal, thus controlling the type and intensity of the reaction. Both synaptic weights and neural pathways can be changed over time. This proves that the brains hardware comes with a reprogrammable interface.

How do we actually change these neural pathways and synaptic weights?
Synaptic weights, like most other body functions follow the "use 'em, or lose 'em" rule. Synaptic weights change when we force impulses along alternative paths. The strength of the synapse is directly proportional to the frequency of impulses traveling along that path, modulo a damping factor. This is done simply be consciously altering the flow of one's thoughts.

Imagine that X is in the habit of criticizing people for trivial things. Every time someone makes a mistake, X has to criticize them and show them the way he would avoid it. In the beginning, he may criticize someone, realize his mistake, and force himself to apologize. In the brain architecture, this translates into the creation of an alternative neural pathway. The more often he does this, the stronger the synaptic weights for this new path get. By the same token, the original path weakens. Eventually (this process often takes time, of the order of a month or two), a complete replacement occurs, substituting the old (critical) path with the new (non-critical) path.

Can any belief be changed? Are earlier beliefs completely destroyed by this change?
Every belief is the synaptic trigger that creates a thought. Every thought is an electro-chemical impulse thundering down neural pathways. All neural pathways can atrophy and regenerate. All synaptic triggers (weights) too are prone to change. Thus, we can change every belief we hold.

Where the destruction of the earlier belief is concerned, the answer is both yes and no. It is yes, in that impulses travel along newer pathways, defining new beliefs. It is no, in that the earlier path is not destroyed, just side-tracked. A neglected trail in the woods gets overgrown with brush, it can still be salvaged with just a few trail-goers walking down that path for a short time. Since only the synaptic weights have changed, and the neural path is weak, but still available, it can be rejuvenated quite quickly with just a few impulses traveling along it. This explains why it is so easy to fall back into old habits and beliefs.

For the path (and hence old beliefs) to be wiped off the face of the brain completely, time seems to be the only way. This is in accordance with the Law of cause and delayed effect. In time, the brain will recruit those unused neurons into other needed areas (most likely to form new beliefs, hence new neural structures) thus completely destroying the old paths. This process takes about a month or so in most people.

What happens once our beliefs change?
We have already established that our beliefs define our perceptions, and that changing our belief system is possible. Once we start looking at things with a custom-designed set of beliefs, we essentially custom-design the things we look at. Once we alter those beliefs that hold us back, we can mould our lives into whatever we want them to be. Who would have believed, that beliefs are so powerful? That, my friends, is a limiting belief!

What are limiting beliefs, and what are the most common?
Limiting beliefs are basically negative thoughts that hold us back. Most powerful limiting beliefs are simmering deep within our subconscious mind. We often do and feel things without knowing why. Most intuition can be traced back to some subconscious belief. Similarly, gut-feeling is subconscious in origin, not gastronomic.

Our entire constitution is defined by our beliefs. You are what you think. Everyone grows up having limiting beliefs. These are limiting because they limit our senses to perceive a broader, better reality. Losing weight, quitting smoking, achieving popularity and success, making a million dollars, having a loving relationship, becoming healthy are among the few effects of changing our beliefs. Somewhere, deep within our subconscious mind, we have chains that bind us, hold us back, limit us. All we need to do is identify that chain, replace the chain with a rocket booster, and fly towards our goal.

Common limiting beliefs are ...

• I can't do that
• I don't deserve to be happy
• I can never become popular/famous/rich/loved
• I can't seem to lose weight
• I am not attractive enough
  
• I can never win this contest
• Money is the root of all evil
• If I feel good, then I am doing something wrong
• etc...
  

The most common limiting belief is:

• Murphy's Law (If anything can go wrong, it will) seems to apply every time. This belief is so rampant and destructive, that it goes on destroying everything that you think will go wrong. In a way, its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The question is, can we come up with a good self-fulfilling prophecy?

Can we create our own reality?
We can control our reality by controlling our beliefs. The first step is to identify all our limiting beliefs. This is not easy, because the subconscious mind is a difficult creature to probe. Since most of our decisions are subconscious, we never realize how much of our life, these beliefs control. If we question every decision, intuition, feeling and emotion we feel, then we can trace them back to the belief that gave them birth. Soon, all limiting beliefs will be identified and we will become sharper at recognizing them.

The next step is to deliberately change these beliefs. Every time we have a negative thought, we should consciously re-word it in a positive manner, and truly believe in it. The important thing to realize is that we are dealing with the subconscious mind, which is a very powerful beast. Taming it requires time and patience. But the change shall happen. In time, we will change our brain circuits and we will start seeing the change in our lives.

Once we shatter the shackles of our limiting beliefs, we can live life to the fullest, savor each moment, be truly happy and at peace.

--Sandeep Ranade

The law of cause and delayed effect

Barring some quirky quantum mechanical effects, everything in the universe adheres to the law of cause and effect. For mechanical systems like planets and galaxies, terra-formations, cue sticks and nine-balls, cars and road kill, the effect follows the cause almost instantaneously.

We see mechanical systems around us instantly reacting to actions, and in proportionate quantities as dictated by Newton's third law and expect everything else to adhere to this guiding principle too. We are sadly mistaken. Newton's law only specifies the proportionality between the action and the reaction; no temporal components figure in the equations. Strangely enough, most interesting effects that we expect to be instantaneous are actually delayed, sometimes significantly.

Causality in the sphere of subconscious driven life-forms is quite tricky. In fact it's so subtle at times, that one mistakes the effect to be associated with another cause making for entertaining movie plots, exciting real life scenarios, sometimes even propagation of misinformation and frustration.

A significant hysteresis is observed in the creation and destruction cycle. The associated delay between most causes and their non-trivial effects is most notably observed with all those actions that cause creation, or generation as their effects. In contrast, actions that cause destruction happen much faster. A classic example is pulling down a house as opposed to building a new one. Razing a construction takes the better part of one day. Building it from scratch can take years. Miscarriages happen in a few minutes, while making a human baby takes nine long months.

A common example of this delayed effect is the phenomenon of weight loss. We expect that we will lose weight immediately after we reduce our calorie intake. The scale doesn't meet our expectations, and in a few days of self-induced starvation, we get depressed because our efforts don't seem to be bearing fruit (even on a fruit-only-diet). In our depression, we binge on heavy "sympathy" food, and end up cheating on our diet. However, this binge, being a destructive action, will show relatively quick results. This quickly leads to more depression and this snowballs into more weight gain, burying us in a ton of icy blues!

If we consider the delayed effect, we would gather up more patience, and starve a bit longer. Mind you, the delay varies per person and the type of action. But, given enough time, we ride the delay, and start seeing effects. Once we lose some weight, this becomes the motivation for continuing the diet. We feel better, look better and this snowballs into a healthy, fit lifestyle. Everyone who diets, sooner or later realizes this delay in the system, but not all successfully wait it out, and get disheartened too early in the game. A related delay is also caused by the stomach sending the "full" signal to the brain. The hormone Ghrelin takes about 20 minutes to get the message to the brain after the stomach is full. Thus we can potentially eat for another 20 minutes before the brain realizes, that we are over-full. If only we eat slowly, then we can tune our wait to eat just the right quantity.

Drugs have a variable delayed effect, making pharmacology a difficult science. An Advil may show effect in 20 minutes, but some medicines can take anywhere from weeks to years, making drug-cure correlation hard. Physiotherapy and psychotherapy too take a relatively longish time to take effect. Similarly, a positive attitude change takes some time to sink in and take root, not just within us, but in our environment. The same effect applies with exercising and working out, studies, new year resolutions, learning a new skill, relationships, love -- in short, anything that can be classified as self-improvement and needs will-power (or sometimes wont-power). Will-power helps us to remain patient in the face of seeming failure, and at the right time, the clouds part, and we are rewarded for our efforts.

A mathematical / feedback-system explanation of the phenomenon follows. Construction seems to be a flat function for some time and then a linear (or sub-linear) function in time, while destruction is often observed to be an exponential decay. There is a significant amount of energy needed to push the steady state into the creative cycle, also called as Activation Energy, in Thermodynamics text books. There is a lot of investment of various resources during the process of creation or growth, as opposed to that of destruction, or decay. Because of the delayed feedback cycle, the energy potential of the system can rise above the safe threshold significantly before corrective action is taken.

Often, the corrective action might overshoot, due to the miscalculation of the magnitude of the differential increase, causing oscillations in the system. The yo-yo diet, the date-rebound, the love-hate relationships, the high-highs and the low-lows are all oscillations due to the delayed feedback. Sometimes, depending to the error in the corrective action and the delay in the system, the entire system can become chaotic, turbulent or unstable, and sometimes even self-destruct. Once the delay is incorporated in the feedback and regulatory equations using damping factors, the system goes back to stable equilibrium.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to patience. In this era of instant gratification -- one-click online purchases, channel surfing, speed-dating, instant messaging and ready-made microwave dinners, we are forgetting patience as a virtue. We no longer enjoy the wait, because someone cuts the wait short for a small fee, and a string attached (in a small font). The thing we forget to see is, that most instant things are also fickle and die much faster. They flicker into our lives and disappear just as fast. The lasting things are the ones we wait for -- the good stuff in life.

--Sandeep Ranade

The multi-threaded brain

Research now shows that the brain is like a multiprocessor computer. In a multiprocessor machine, there are multiple processing unit with shared memory for communication. Each processing unit typically handles a 'thread' of control. The human brain is quite similar in architecture. Imagine the brain to be organized into multiple processing or functional units, each handling a separate function. Language processing, writing, auditory processing, image processing, emotional balance, aggression and fear are some of the functions. It also has a huge amount of short, medium and long term memory that is shared by all these areas in the brain.

It turns out that the brain can handle parallel tasks if these tasks are processed by different areas. For example, walking and chewing gum, listening to music and physical work, etc can be easily handled parallely. However, if we are talking on the phone and taking a note, we can't really concentrate on either, as both are handled by the language processing area in the brain.

So, the brain is a parallel processing engine where individual processing elements are inherently serial. Context switching between tasks, like reading and mathematics, is quite expensive for the brain, as both these tasks are handled by the same area, or processing element. It has been experimentally shown, that multitasking of similar tasks actually reduces efficiency by a considerable amount. Strangely enough, if the tasks are dissimilar, parallelizing them actually increases efficiency. Many students claim that listening to music helps them concentrate on their work (much to the annoyance of their parents). This is now shown to hold water and is due to the fact that the background task actually serves to block out other distractions! In short it keeps the idle processing elements occupied which would otherwise jump to process every interruption.

Given these basic structural and functional properties of the brain, we can talk about the evolution that has taken place in the multitasking hardware. People from a generation or two back had a lot fewer interrupts to process. In contrast, this generation has an explosive number of interrupts coming in per unit time. Hundreds of channels on cable, instant messaging, the internet in all it's glory, cell phones, IPods, super-complex video games and other human (and inhuman) distractions are available to us at the drop of a hat.

More research in this area of multitasking has shown that the current generation can actually multi-task with higher efficiency. My parents (and other members of that generation) can't even begin to imagine me simultaneously chatting with 4 friends, replying to email, talking on the phone (or listening to music), writing a design document and churning up some code. They completely lose their train of thought if they are interrupted. I (and other members of this generation) can multitask all these tasks quite efficiency.

This implies that the brain has evolved from a serial, heavyweight process architecture to a time shared lightweight process (threading) architecture in a short time. Just as in computers, context switching for thought processes is very heavy, causing the brain to reel under the sudden load, in turn causing the train of thought to depart without you onboard! In contrast, threads of thought have very small switching time, allowing a plethora of similar tasks to be handled simultaneously by the brain. The interesting question here is -- What has changed in the brain in these last 2-3 decades?

Some years ago, brain experts thought that the brain can change only upto a certain age, after which it freezes and there is no further change. We now know that the brain is surprisingly plastic and can change at any age. However, changes are quick to take place in childhood, till early adulthood, after which it takes increasing effort to change the internal circuits of the brain. This explains why people today are more efficient at multitasking, and why the generation to come will be even more so.

This generation was exposed to a whole arsenal of distractions in their childhood, and the brain seems to have adapted its circuits to make task-switching lighter and more efficient. The coming generation will have even more distractions to handle, and will have better hardware support for even faster context-switching.

An open question today is how the brain actually handles the hyper-threading. The computer science answer to hyperthreading is the use of shared memory. This neat technique makes it possible for threads to reside in the same address space while having independent execution existences. Does the brain employ a similar strategy? Does it have a fast shared memory cache in each processing area specially to save state quickly when switching between thoughts? How does it use synchronization and locking on this memory to avoid hairy hazards and dangerous deadlocks? Do the neural pathways actually form parallel circuits? Or is it that the brain has a more sophisticated interrupt-controller-dispatcher circuitry? These are all unanswered questions, as of today.

Multitasking has become an essential part of our lives. Driving to work involves processing numerous interrupts. Watching the road, looking at road signs (and other attractions), flipping through the radio stations or CD tracks, talking on the cell-phone, using finger sign language, etc. Watching TV is a classic example of time-slicing. I can usually watch 3-5 shows simultaneously (at least till they didn't have synchronized commercial breaks!) and mentally switch between each story line quickly. My aunt on the other hand gets hopelessly confused and hates it when I switch back and forth! Of course, working on the computer with instant messengers popping up small windows, programs asking "Are you sure you want to format your hard drive?", email notifiers, Skype "ringing" and other applications adding their own "bells and whistles" to this digital cacophony is quite a concerto of distractions.

While multitasking is definitely improving our ability to make simultaneous progress with several tasks, we are also losing the art of sitting down and thinking through a single concept. Concentration on one task is now considered boring. We are going wide with a larger number of tasks but our ability of going deep is sinking deeper into oblivion. With this ability to multithread thoughts, we can cover a lot of ground but lose efficiency in each individual task. As a result, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) cases are growing each year.

I would really like to finish this blog entry with a witty ending, but I have my Project Manager on the phone, 4 friends in the middle of a chat, 200 new emails in my inbox fighting for attention, a PowerPoint(TM) presentation under construction, the Season Finale of Friends and the series premiere of Whose Line is it Anyway?, my nose itching and my mom lecturing me on the virtues of concentration. That's one too many. My brain is now officially thrashing!

--Sandeep Ranade

Glossary

multi-threading: A form of parallelism where multiple threads run concurrently and communicate via shared memory.
multiprocessor: A parallel computer in which the processors share an address space.
context switch: A context switch is the computing process of storing and restoring the state of a CPU (the context) such that multiple processes can share a single CPU resource.
process: A program that is running. Usually much more expensive than a thread
thread: A thread is a processor activity in a process. The same process can have multiple threads. Those threads share the process address space and can therefore share data.
hazard: In computer architecture, a hazard is a potential problem that can happen in a pipelined processor.
deadlock: The condition in multithreaded systems in which two or more processes are blocked, each waiting for a lock held by the other.
interrupt: a signal from a device which typically results in a context switch: that is, the processor sets aside what it's doing and does something else.
thrashing: An excessive amount of disk activity in a virtual memory system, to the point where the system is spending all its time swapping pages in and out of memory, and no time executing the application. Thrashing can be caused the swap file is too small, when there is insufficient memory or when too many applications are hogging system memory.

The Burrito effect

A monarch butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazonian rain-forest, causes a tiny air current, makes a grain of pollen fly into a native's nose who sneezes, frightens a herd of elephants which then proceeds to stampede. The stampede raises so much dust that it alters air currents, causing it to rain, changing the local weather system. This small change interacts with neighboring systems, and eventually causes a tornado in Texas.

This is known as the Butterfly Effect which explains sensitivity of systems quite effectively. Highly sensitive systems respond dramatically to the smallest of variations in it's initial conditions. Complex, dynamic systems have inherently non-linear feedback loops, causing a small change to be amplified exponentially in time to manifest itself chaotically.

Sensitivity in the world is increasing, and I don't just mean emotional, political, or dermatological. The most notable changes have been seen in weather and society. Over the past few decades, the weather has been acting up. Hurricanes, melting ice-caps, crazy local weather, heavy rains when least expected, have become more frequent. Society has always acted in bizarre ways now and again, but the increasing frequency of crazy acts and degree of looniness may prove to be a trend rather than just an incidental occurrence.

These changes are so radical that we can't explain them using the Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly phenomenon falls short by several orders of magnitude. Drawing inspiration from the Butterfly effect, I would like to propose a conjecture to try and explain the changes in the world. This conjecture offers explanation to phenomena like political upheaval, economic fluctuations, terrorist activities, gasoline prices, traffic grid locks, computer virus attacks, and other catastrophes. I call this the Burrito Effect.

Imagine a person who orders a Chipotle's grilled chicken Burrito with black beans, refried beans, green chilly and sweet corn, lettuce, jalapeno peppers, onions, salsa, sour cream, cheese and guacamole, with a cold-chicken salad, chips and salsa on the side and a Mountain Dew. As he is walking down the street after his lunch , he feels an imminent burp. Giving in to his instinctive diaphragmatic reflex, he releases some air audibly, causing the lady walking in front to say "How Rude! Hrrumph!". He scowls at her and goes back to his office. He then displaces considerable anger towards his colleagues. They, in turn, scowl at others and the day ends in a fist fight, divorce, suicide and a heart attack. These events form a chain reaction and cause some client in the Middle East to become angry who swears revenge, and causes a couple of bomb-blasts on the subway. The divorcee writes an internet worm that spreads rapidly to millions of machines, and starts spamming like there is no tomorrow. All this spam causes people to mistakenly delete important e-mail, causing further irreparable damage.

The original burp also causes a fly to choke and die, aggravating Animal Rights Activists who demonstrate in front of the White House and cause a gridlock on I-95, and a flood of expletives. The rising hot exhaust of so many cars in one location causes changes in the air currents, that cause an airplane to land hard, and this upsets the mood of 150 hungry, tired and cramped passengers. About half of them stop at a nearby Mexican joint and order burritos.

The 70 passengers, armed with 95 burritoes and 36 salads, cause 3500 gastrointestinal detonations and set off 286,000,000 chain reactions of varying magnitudes. Some of these chains end up as hurricanes like Katrina and Ophelia, as tsunami's and earthquakes, others as the market depressions, massive layoffs and inflation. Gasoline prices don't seem to be so bad now, do they?

The Burrito effect is a very powerful turbulent force of today. A malodorous burp in Time Square has orders of magnitude more potential to wreak havoc, than one tiny butterfly flapping it's wings in the middle of the rain-forest. No doubt, the Burrito is now the most powerful weapon of mass destruction. The really scary thing is, a burrito is cheap, easily available, trivially transportable, deliciously edible, acts in mysterious ways, and there is no way to stop catastrophic side effects.

So, what did you have for lunch today??

--Sandeep Ranade

Occam's RAZR

Occam's Razor states "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity". According to the Razor, if there are two theories explaining a phenomenon, the simplest is often correct. I should mention at the outset that this law is a heuristic, and there are counter-examples. However, its been used prolifically in almost all fields including Computer Science, Biology, Medicine, Philosophy, Statistics and even Religion.

An attempt to apply Occam's Razor to itself yields the statement, "The simplest explanation is the best". This is a good heuristic that can be widely (and wildly) applied. Leonardo da Vinci extended this to the statement "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". He associated simplicity with sophistication and elegance. One can use this simple principle almost everywhere in life.

We use gadgets like computers, cell phones, music players, GPS navigation systems, etc. More often than not, these devices have very complex interfaces that only 13 year old kids can operate easily and with expertise. Almost everyone who was not 13 when the device surfaced in the market has trouble with intricate and often counter-intuitive interfaces.

There was a generation that defied Occam's razor and associated complexity and esotericity with sophistication and usability. Elegance was defined as a 3 mega-pixel camera that cost a thousand dollars, which only the owner's pre-teen nephew could operate. Computer programs would almost always boast hugely complex menus, large scary sounding dialog boxes, millions of features no one ever used, hundreds of buttons on the screen, etc. In fact, if it didn't have these attributes, it often became a marketing nightmare to convince the users that it was useful. Website designs, advertisements, musical scores, government forms, corporate processes, logos, etc were invariably full of intricate detail. Those years should be called the "Era of Complexity".

In the later half of this decade, people have been giving more thought to the fact that simplicity may actually enhance usability. This line of thinking is quickly ushering in the Era of Simplicity. Thinkers, Designers, Artists, Programmers, user interface developers for applications and devices, media people have started pushing the idea that the simplest interface is in fact, the best. This is a restatement of the Razor for the technology era.

Taking simplicity seriously, and the world by storm are Google (the minimalistic search interface created a fanatic fan following), Apple with it's IPod Nano and Motorola with the simple, yet elegant cell phone RAZR, both of which have become fashion statements. The Das Keyboard takes Occam's principle to the limit -- an all-black keyboard with completely blank keys!

The nerd acronym for Occam's Razor is KISS (Keep It Short and Simple). This is a good heuristic for most things. We can apply the KISS philosophy to language, lifestyle, design, law, etc. The simplest way to say a sentence is often the cleanest way. The Constitution was written in the Era of Complexity and this excludes many from understanding the law clearly. Complex language also can create multiple interpretations thus making law a very lucrative career. Disaster often happens when people misinterpret complex instructions which were worded that way for sake of lucid comprehension. Adding complexity for disambiguating semantics often muddles it.

A simple formula gives us the amount of information packed in a given chunk of data, and redundancy reduces it's quality. This is a direct derivation of Occam's Razor. This means that the amount of information doesnt depend on the number of bits the data chunk contains, but rather on the lack of redundancy (also called entropy). Thus, a stream of a million A's has very little information content, as it can be simplified to the form {A, million}. In contrast, a stream of purely random numbers contains a large amount of information as further encoding may actually increase the size of the stream. This is a well known result in Information Theory, and the take-away message is -- "the simpler the encoding, the better the result".

Logos, scores, websites, Ads, posters, interfaces, clothes, furniture and even recepies are getting simpler. Some are almost minimalistic. This in my opinion is a good trend. If it's redundant, remove it. More of us should apply this law to make our lives simpler. In fact, the whole world needs a user interface review, to attempt to remove all unnecessary complexity and boil it all down to the simplest possible useful interface.

I am not saying that we should eliminate complexity. Its all relative. There will always be complexity in the universe. There will also be a threshold beyond which, adding any more intricacies will be useless, and even hamper efficiency. Every bit of complexity added increases the likelihood of error. Given a model, we should strive to find the simplest possible explanation; given a problem, to find the simplest possible correct solution.

The motto of the "Era of Simplicity" should simply be Simplest is Best.

Are we the weirdos on Planet Earth?

I visited the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington DC a week ago. It was very impressive -- a large campus splattered with a variety of trees, but it got me thinking. As I made the rounds of the zoo, a sudden realization shattered my homo-centric thinking patterns.


Humans think, that humans, by definition, are normal. We believe that we are the golden standard to which all living beings should be compared with. As I was touring the zoo observing various co-habitants of Earth, I realized that we may not be the golden standard after all. Do technological advances really mean that we are an advanced species?

We keep animals in cages and often charge people to gawk at them. The zoo officials get to play god to these defenseless animals while the management gets to sell Giant Panda "teddy bears". If humans are put in cages and made into an entertainment/educational show, everyone will agree, that is cruelty. But we do much worse to the animals and call it conserving wildlife! Zoos around the world are involved in conservation efforts, but I am not convinced that this particular method for preserving nature is the right one.
I observed the Zebra caged in an enclosure near the Spotted cheetah. That's like putting me in a cage adjoining one that houses my school Gym teacher. In both cases, normal digestive functions are suspended as the bowel retracts in fear. That, in my opinion, was beyond cruel.

As I was reading the names of exotic species outside their displays, I was appalled at the insensitivity we show towards our co-species. "Red-bellied Tortoise", "Three-toed amphiuma", "Rat-tailed Rat snake", "Black Tailed Prairie Dog" were the kind of names that we have given to spectacular animal species. Is this not politically incorrect? If I call someone "Lilly-Livered, Yellow-bellied chicken-hearted scardy-cat", I'm sure I will be subpoenaed. This insult is not only insulting to flowers, poultry and cats, its also colorist. Names like "Emperor Newt" and "Common musk turtle" are undoubtedly racist. If we make an effort to be sensitive and politically correct when humans are concerned, why cant we do the same towards other life forms?

The Giant Panda and it's new-born baby was the big new exhibit at the zoo. The Panda mother was sleeping in a creeper-lined cave that opened towards us. It was a hot afternoon, and the poor panda was catching up on forty winks. The people around noisily photographed her with blinding flashes. It is painful to imagine even one afternoon when I am trying to nap, and people are staring, talking loudly and photographing me with bright flashes. I felt sorry for the captive panda mother who has to face this torture from 6am to 8pm, 7 days a week.

The invertebrate exhibit fascinated me. The most spectacular, goose-bumpy denizen of the deep was the giant octopus. Floating in a glass cage barely 4 times it's volume, it was orange in color, it looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger when it filled it's "mouth" with water and expelled it, propelling it's body in the water. With it's eight graceful sucker-enhanced tentacles, it looked surreal as it hovered in the water. It's eyes made it seem angry towards the world, and its pulsating body gave the impression that it was cursing silently at it's predicament. The octopus almost looked alien (by standards established by most science fiction writers), which itself is an insult to it's species, as it has been in existence for more time than humans have.


Invertebrates like spiders, crabs, sea urchins, coral, anemones, ants, cockroaches, lobsters, centipedes etc inspired a thought -- if we think that they are weird and creepy, we must be even weirder and creepier. These creatures have inhabited earth for billions of years more than us humans, and deserve respect. We are the creepy ones with obsessions and perversions. We have been playing God with these innocent beings, and we must find better ways of giving them space and privacy, and the answer is not Zoos!

We talk about being inhuman, but is that the correct term? Are we humane by definition? Do we care, respect and love our co-habitants? Do we alleviate their suffering? Is 'Humanity' a human characteristic? I tend to disagree. Being cruel, uncaring, self-centered and dominating is the defining human characteristic. There are very few humans in the world that feel and do otherwise. They are the exceptions to the rule.

Thus the word humane in my dictionary would look like:

Humane (Adjective)

Lacking kindness, pity or compassion; cruel, deficient in emotional warmth, monstrous.

I have coined a new word to express this new insight.

Animane (Adjective)

characterized by kindness, mercy or compassion,as is the nature of animals (except humans)