Reality Bites

There are just those times in life when reality, quite really bites. I had one such last week when I was visiting my neighbor. This neighbor runs a crèche and just as I was entering her house a fresh faced kid ran over and shouted: “So whose father are you?” Father??? Forget marriage, I look like I have a kid??? I retorted to this effect (with all the histrionics) and that poor soul looked rather flummoxed. Well he will probably understand how I felt when he turns 25.
This incident however did get me thinking about life, where it is heading and other such heady stuff. It’s all nice and fine up to the point of college when responsibility is still something of the future but now you are supposed to be living it. (Well, atleast in this department I am no better of than I was 5 years back). The way people look at you, their expectations all change. You are expected to have a plan for everything – a plan for a house, one for marriage, for kids & their education & I don’t know what else.
As I was treading this endless path I was reminded of the lyrics of famous Buz Luhrmann song Sunscreen -
“Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the
most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with
their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.”
This more or less settled it for me and I decided that I am going to go on as usual. But one thing is for sure - the next time some kid comes up and asks “Whose grandfather are you?” I am going to be prepared.

Emotional Choice

I recently stumbled upon a rather unique site called MovieProfiler. This site allows the user to select movies based on the eight primary emotions propounded by Robert Plutchik in his Psychoevolutionary Theory.
This seems to be a very novel way of choosing a movie rather than going by a review or suggestions. The user interface is very simple and the results seemed to be on the money (this is based on my knowledge/interpretation).
The glossary of Movie terminology is also an interesting feature. So the next time you decide to watch a movie, pick one based on your emotinal state.

The Inspiration

Traffic Theory

I had recently attended a talk on Game Theory by Robert J Aumann, Nobel Prize Recipient for Economics 2005.
For the uninitiated, Game Theory revolves around the Dynamics of Decision making in a group, particularly how human beings tend to behave in the face of personal gains as compared to gains for all.
My interest in Game Theory began after watching the movie "A Beautiful Mind" based on the story of John Nash and since then have been hooked to this subject and its practical applications.

The traffic in Bangalore mirrors a very famous game called the "Prisoner's Dilemma". Consider any traffic junction with no signals or a cop, now the personal gain for each person is in clearing the intersection and that's exactly what everyone tries to do resulting in absolute chaos. If vehicles don't clash then some egos definitely will and the result is often a hassled two wheeler blocking traffic and shouting for all he is worth, the end result is that all are stuck in a jam that takes a few hours to untangle.
If the people were however to consider the gain of the group i.e. be patient and possibly wait a few minutes in clearing the intersection in an organized manner there would be no Jam or in other words the gain for the group, while seemingly less than personal gain often yields better results.
Now the interesting part is that this situation occurs every other day in Bangalore (hence it can be classified as a repeating game i.e. one that occurs again and again) and yet always ensues in an ugly jam. Maybe we need to make Game Theory a must read for every Bangalorean and hope that the traffic situation gets better.