Unconventional sources of knowledge

Knowledge is acquired at school. Knowledge is acquired through books and knowledge is acquired through television. But these are not the only sources of knowledge. In this blog, I want to go through a few channels through which knowledge is acquired, at least for me

1. Music 

Music is an art. An art is the application of predetermined principles and theories. Playing music is hence an art and to some extent, even listening to music is. knowledge is not defined by any boundaries. Due to this, I believe that music can provide rich knowledge. It is true that we learn from others’ experiences and music does an excellent job in portraying others’s feelings. Of course, the kind of music does affect the gain. For example, music by artists like Logic, Nas, Nf and J Cole definitely improves one’s knowledge about the world. These artists speak about their lives and what their struggles were through life. They also speak about how they overcame these struggles and who motivated them. Logic speaks about social stigmas like suicide, racism and classism whereas Nf speaks about drug abuse and painful relationships. Even if you have not experienced these personally, you can always experience them through the eyes of artists like the aforementioned. conversely, if you listen to “artists” like 6ix9ine, NAV, Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Pump, you are bound to lose brain cells. 

2. Being alone 

Nobody likes to be alone. But, sometimes, one would rather be alone than be involved in something. Being alone has amazing benefits. However, it is very downcast by society as something nobody should do. But, if you are like me, you will eventually break norms. I have tried being alone voluntarily for long stretches of time. Being alone means not talking to friends outside school for a long time, not greeting too many people, not making conversation and even reading non fiction. So what can you learn? Being alone gives you a lot of free time. eventually, you will end up thinking about the world and slowly, you will start forming philosophies about yourself which you will stick to forever. It is in the adolescence when you really become who you will be for the future and it is essential to choose who you want to be. I feel like not a lot of people take time out to really ask themselves what they stand for and what is their deepest belief. I feel everybody should practice being lonely. But it is essential to end this practice in time just like I did.

3. ANIME

This year, anime has been the best source of knowledge for me. I can say that in 8 months, I’ve seen 52 anime shows and movies and i can proudly say that I’ve learnt something new from every show. My top 3 shows are shows from which I’ve learnt the most. 

3. Death Note- what happens when you have unlimited power? This story revolves around the smartest 17 year old in Japan who picks up a notebook on the ground in which, whoever’s name is written, that person dies within 40 seconds. Light Yagami decides to become the ruler of the world through this death note. however, the best Japanese detective, the mysterious L decided to play his game and probably the best cat and mouse chase begins. 

What I learnt- death note asks the question “what is justice?” It makes you ask what is good and bad and who decides whats good and bad. in the eyes of everybody, they believe that they are doing good but in others’ eyes, they may be wrong. The show also shows megalomania, where Light, decided to change the world killing every criminal in the world and the notebook actually manages to kill 259,000 people. It also shows how a person gets overly absorbed in power and how it causes his ruin. It is the smartest show I’ve ever seen and it was the second anime I ever saw. 

2. My teen romance comedy SNAFU/ oregairu 

Don’t let the title fool you. This anime is NOT about romance. It is about a loner. It is about a loner who chooses to be a loner and the whole show shows his ideology and his beliefs. In a strange way, the ideology is so perfect that it can be applied to any situation. But this is just the surface. If you dig deeper, the show shows that everybody has a facade which they put up. The whole show is about how Hachiman Hikigaya and his friends and peers break their facade. It is amazing how they do it and the whole show is a stereotype of teenage life, except Hachiman, who resembles a black swan. Oregairu is a must watch if you want a different perspective on life.

3. Shigatsu wa kimi no uso/ your lie in April

This is my favourite show of all time. I wrote the summary as an exam essay and got really good marks. The story is about the best Japanese child piano player who is dead accurate with his notes. He has a very very driven mother who is almost like an overlord governing his lessons until one day when she dies. Kosei Arima’s life changes and his life becomes grey. He becomes a loner with two friends. He stops piano and can no longer even hear his own notes, until he meets Kaori, a violin player. This is all I can  say about the story. It is the best story with the best animations, the best music, the best life lessons and the bets of everything. I’ve seen it 4 times in 3 months and the last episode is a masterpiece. 

I can never put in words what I’ve learnt from anime and I know that goes against the point of this blog but try watching a few and you will understand yourself. Your lie in April is available on Amazon Prime.

Weird choices which expose you weirdly

Consider a situation in which you have to choose one option- 

You have a sure chance of getting 900$ 

You have a 90% chance of getting 1000$

Which would you choose?

I tested this out on couple of friends and I found out that almost 80% of them would opt for the first choice. They would rather have a sure thing than risk a chance of gaining nothing. 

The problem I saw here was the people being very afraid of that 10% probability coming true. It is virtually impossible for it to happen and they would rather settler less than risk a higher gain. I feel like this is the kind of thinking I detest and this thinking will cause one to remain mediocre for the rest of their life. Another factor which led me to taking risk was that even if the 10% does come through, I am not losing money and I will remain the same. Sure there will be some regret, but a businessperson must learn to handle this.

Consider this situation- 

A sure loss of 900$ 

A 90% chance of losing a 1000$ 

Here, my friends opted for the risk of losing 1000$. 

This seemed weird to me. Why would they change their opinions on risk aversion and risk opting in the situations. Ideally, they should have chosen the same for both. 

The thing that irked me is that they answered without thinking. If you go to see, the chances of you not losing any money is only 10% and that is almost never possible. Even though the value of the loss is more for the second case, people still hang onto that ray of false hope that they will be the 10%. Everybody considers themselves different and they all try to think differently. But what they miss out in this journey is to think hard. They think with their automatic system, leaving nothing to common sense, which of course is hard to come by nowadays. Personally, when I looked up this experiment, I chose a sure loss and a risk for gaining.

Consider this: a coin is tossed:

If heads, you win 200$

If tails, you lose 100$

Is this gamble attractive? 

To understand this, you must assess how you would feel for both cases and compare them. Most of the test subjects did not find this attractive at all because they were more afraid of losing the 100$ than winning the 100$. This is generally and automatic response.

However, if you change the value the winning to 2000$, then everybody will jump onto the deal. All of a sudden, the loss, which is the same in both cases, is forgotten about and everybody is happy to risk money. These are the same people who opted for a sure gain and risked a higher loss. 

here, the human greed component comes in where humans would forego the loss part and jump for the gain. The truth is still that you have a 50% chance of losing. But if that were to come true, they would not mind it in the second case but would get enraged in the first case. 

why you always guess the wrong number of beans in a jar

Have you ever played the carnival game where you have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar? If you have, I’m pretty sure you got the number wrong. I am also sure that you were off by a large amount. I am also sure that the average of all the guesses made by the participants was dead close the the actual answer. 

That is the magic of averages. You are always wrong! 

But do not worry because everybody is wrong as well. The only reason an answer for the game can actually be correct is either you are lucky, or a large number of people guess different answers causing their average to be close to the answer. 

Averages are the deadliest things in economics. We use averages to decide important things like government policies, rationing, etc., but more than often, we go astray when we follow averages. 

The reason is that the average represents a number which is the middle number of a cumulation of all the possible answers or values. The problem arises when there is an outlier or a number which is and extremity. Lets consider this example: 

Marks in accounts for 5 children in a class are- 44, 48, 47, 46, 99. 

The average accounts marks of the class is 57. This makes sense but the problems arise when you are to assess how good the class is in accounts. If you are given the average without any more information, you would assume that the class is fairly decent with a 57. However, this is incorrect. Just because one person got 99/100, the whole average is skewed in its favour raising it to 57. This causes a massive standard deviation causing incorrect analysis of how good the accounts class is. 

This problem is pertinent in macroeconomics as well. While calculating the average per hectare wage, if a few areas in the country have a massive outlier value as compared to the other areas, grave errors can be made during assessment. 

So don’t believe in averages. Averages may seem nice for some people like a struggling batsman who has a poor strike rate the whole season. If in the last few matches, his rate explodes, the whole average changes in his favour. 

But this is just one case. Averages seem to be an easy way out in solving problems. One does not need to individually scan through all the data and can just make a judgement from the averages. But that is the easy way out, and as I always write- an easy way-out will never lead you anywhere. Look out for outliers, they will lose you lots of money on betting.

diplomacy and escaping remarks part 1

This blog is in two parts 

My commerce teacher keeps telling my classmates that they ‘butter her up’ or suck up to her. She is aware that they do this and often laughs it off. My friends often compliment her with a crooked smile, especially when they are on the verge of falling into trouble. Even if they do fall in trouble, they continue talking sweetly and smoothly to the teacher. I must admire their perseverance and their high success rate of escaping trouble by talking smoothly. 

Delving deeper into this idea, I asked myself what converted a normal conversation into a smooth or sweet talk. I soon concluded that the only reason that Rahil or Ishaan ever get away from trouble is because they frame their sentences in a particular way. 

Framing, or the way of saying things, is and essential part of society. Without framing, sales would never have existed, countries would be crushed due to the lack of diplomacy, and my friends would have probably been expelled. 

The way you frame sentences can have a huge effect on the next few moments or even the far future. Words are like bullets- once shot, they never return to your clip. So we must use them wisely. 

Consider the two statements-

Adolf Hitler was born in 1887.

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889.

If these two sentences were placed in two random places in a random essay, and I asked you to tell me when Adolf Hitler was born, you would most probably say 1887. This would, of course, be incorrect as he was born in 1889. The reason you were led to believe that he was born in 1887, was that the sentence is in bold. 

Consider the following example: your task is to say whether each word is lowercase or upper case-

upper

lower 

LOWER

Upper

UPPER

Lower

LOWER

Upper

I am sure that you were able to blitz past this exercise. Identifying the left column was very easy. But, the right column made you think for a bit and your immediate response could have been wrong. This activated the thinking part of your brain. 

We often get confused when we see something that is somewhat off. A written example can be- green yellow orange.

There is no particular solution to this problem but the best way to avoid this is to look real hard. We let the autonomous part or our brain work for most of the time. The brain works on autopilot. Ever so often, wee see something wrong and out thinking part turns on. We should aim to always have out thinking part of the brain working. 

A twist story

Warren was a boring man with a boring job. He always wanted more from life and a 9 to 5 job just did not seem to make the cut. 

He worked in the big apple in a big company as a supervisor. However, business was slow, so staring out of the window wistfully seemed to be a daily part of the job. 

It was a few days before Christmas and the office was let out early so that workers could be with their families for the holidays. Warren was neither married nor in a relationship. It seemed to be a lonely walk back home, up until he crashed into a dark figure. The dark figure turned out to be a tall man in a black trench coat. The handsome blonde face had crashed into warren causing his briefcase to break open, spilling out all the papers which it contained. The tall, blonde handsome man apologised and bent down to pick it up, wrinkling his very expensive shirt and trousers. It took a while finding some papers which conveniently flew away because of the wind. After the joint effort, the man apologised for his actions and asked warren to share dinner with him. Warren was to refuse but only takeout sat in his refrigerator back home, so he agreed to eat with the kind man.

They stopped by a very posh diner to eat the famous cheeseburger. Over dinner, the man introduced himself as a wealthy stock market broker by the name of John. Putting his hand on his mouth as if to cover his lips, John leaned over and told warren that his best friend has recently discovered an untapped gold reserve in borneo. To warren it seemed like nothing, but the best friend was a gold miner and John interpreted this only as a sign to get rich by investing in his friend’s company- “JONATHAN AND CO.” warren knew next to nothing about investing and share markets but John seemed to be a trustworthy person and money was tight at home, so he wanted in. 

John could only gladly agree and decided to settle the deal at his office the next day. 

The next day, John met up with warren and they headed to john’s office. It took a train ride to reach there as it was pretty far from where warren lived. Warren came to wonder why John was roaming around near warren’s office so late at night if he worked so far away. Nevertheless, it did not matter as warren would get rich soon. The office was a small building and looked far older for its age. It was only three years old and it looked as if it was part of the second world war. The interiors were even more bland with white walls and wooden desks and barely any furniture, just as one would expect a failing company to have. How could John afford such an expensive lifestyle?

As this thought crossed warren’s mind, he found himself seated on a table with John and two other men who seemed to be john’s colleagues.

Throughout the meeting, warren was hit with a library’s worth of business jargon and he finally agreed to invest a sum of $40,000 into this plan. 

Over lunch, John and one of the colleagues Abel began discussing boxing as they were enthusiasts. The discussion turned into an argument and ended in John betting Abel $1000 that he would beat Abel in a boxing match. The bet was accepted and both of them looked at warren to be an impartial referee.

That day, the deal was finalised and warren payed his investment amount in cheque to John and the four people went to a local boxing ring to have the bout. John was athletic and seemed to dominate the match. The ring was small and the room was also small with only one door leading outside which could be locked from inside and outside. Warren paid attention to the boxers. suddenly, Abel threw a clumsy punch which landed hard on john’s face. Blood spurted out as John fell on the mat. Warren began counting but John never woke up. He bent down and began shaking John which caused blood to stain on his shirt. John wasn’t breathing. Abel screamed in terror and ran towards the door. The other colleague called the police, and in the mayhem also ran out of the room. Warren could not leave the body and was momentarily surrounded by police who blamed him for murder because he had blood on his shirt and nobody else was around. 

Warren was given a life sentence. In all the mayhem, he had forgotten about the $40,000. He spent a week alone in prison until the jailer rang him and told him that he had a visitor. Slowly, he walked to the talking booth with the two policemen arrested him and saw a dark figure on the other side of the transparent wall. The figure wore a black trench coat and a hat. Removing his hat, a blonde John revealed his face and smiled. One policemen shook warren. In shock, warren turned, only to see Abel. Blood froze in Warren’s veins, refusing to flow. Everything was a scam. Warren’s life was over.

Syria or Zayn Malik?

There always comes a time in a writer's life when he or she asks herself a very certain question. This question came to mind as well and I asked my self- “Am I the same as a newspaper or am I my own writer?”

Let me start by saying that I consider myself very very different from your average media source. 

To me, the newspapers are very one sided or biased. They gather their information according to what the readers enjoy the most. For example, lets say that a large number of readers of newspaper X enjoy reading articles about celebrity doing absurd things over war and peace news. 

Then newspaper X would rather post many more articles of Britney meltdowns. 

We say that things today can be very personalised when we choose it to be. This is true for even media which adheres to the golden rule: “consumer is king.” However, though the consumer is king, it seems that there is a higher motivator than providing news to the king- money. Money is the reason you see more actor related news than Syria related news. Money is the reason you see sooooo many advertisements instead of relevant articles. Money is the reason these companies work. 

Its true that without money, media companies would go under and it is essential for any business to make money, but in the path of making money, the media companies have forgotten the true essence of journalism- to provide transparent news. 

Providing useless news can be traced back tot he incentive super response bias. The blame, on one side of the coin, is the consumer’s as well. Out generation of readers has become very lethargic and information about serious issues has seem to have taken the backseat behind entertainment news. The consumers put out a want for entertainment news. At that time the amount of entertainment news and serious news was balanced out. The news companies saw this want and capitalised aggressively on this and with time, we saw the massive showbiz takeover our regional news outlets. 

The donkey reacted intensively to the carrot dangling in front of it. 

Today, very few (if any) independent media outlets exist which are not driven by monetary desires and just want to project clear and true news.

I feel like small bloggers like me are one of them. I just want to tell you my mind and am not really interested in making gains from my blog. If I were, you’d see my blog filled with advertisements. I do give my opinion on topics, but that goes only as far as your first ear. To remove it from your other ear or not is your decision

MY FRIEND BOUGHT OFF-WHITES OMG OMG OMG OMG

Have you noticed the headline brands today? Off-White? Supreme? Or Yeezys and Nike Airmax? There is high chance that you must have on Instagram because every next post is somebody wearing them and flexing the clothes and shoes. It is as if wearing them is a social status symbol and anybody who cannot afford it. It seems as if one person bought a Supreme hoodie and everybody thought it was cool and a herd formed which overdosed on the brand as if it was a drug. A few people who were waiting in a queue at a supreme shop were interviewed and were asked why they liked supreme. Most people had no answer and a lot of them did not even know which collaboration was being released that day. This just goes too how the mindlessness of the herd. If everybody buys something, just to fit in, another person will.
The main reason behind herd formation is that people are afraid of social ostracism. We fear that if we do not buy these 'hype beast' items, them we will be looked down upon by our friends who will stop talking to us. As surprising as it sounds, it is true. Due to this, we see a bunch of kids in high school wasting their parents' hard earned money on these $1700 shoes.

The problem with us millennials is that we are too absorbed by others to remember who we are. there is absolutely no space for individuality and for personal exploration. We wan to be like each other and do everything everybody does, just so that we do not get ostracised. This is probably the same reason that you see a bunch of kids in any given school who nobody really talks to because they are very different from everybody. They do not go clubbing every weekend, they do not listen to noisy rap, they read plentiful books and do not drink alcohol or smoke herb. That is more or less every millennial in a nutshell. I salute those kids for being different and true to themselves
This leads me to ask: what are we missing?
The most important thing we miss is personal exploration. By this, I mean understanding oneself, one's strengths and weaknesses and how one can do well in life. Most people nowadays hesitate at what they will do in the future or who their idol is or what their favourite book is. Reading has no value anymore and those few who do read, read garbage. I mean no offence, but every teenage fiction is a recycled version of another novel. The essence of literature has truly lost its touch.

The only way to survive and be anything in life is to try to be different. this may seem easier said than done but it is essential. You'd could start this in small ways which will soon ingrain a certain mindset into you.
1) STOP BUYING GARBAGE.
2) Do not just do something because everybody is doing it because

If fifty million people do something wrong, it is still something wrong.

3) Try being different in everyday living too. Try dressing different, talking different, or even listening to different music

in conclusion, being different is very important today but is never spoken of. Everybody is a sheep and the herd is led by a foolish shepherd towards a wolf. A wolf here is the end of the world.
So, instead of wasting $10,000 on a pair of Human Races, you'd rather buy your mumma a cute purse or a yourself a new book