Nimbupani Designs - personal

Belief

divya — Sun, 16 May 2010 12:14:14 +0000

I have been long recommended that I read God Delusion given my disbelief in organized religion, thanks to Bharat Shetty, I finally did.

First, the book sets out to convince believers of the futility of their beliefs by way of logic. I think the book is setup for failure because of this. But, still, the book did have a few points of note:

Belief has as much impact as falling in love - Both cannot be explained, but have to be experienced. A lot of people consider religious experience “miraculous” and hence proof that God exists. Some people even have specific Gods speaking to them (when the God asks them to do something immoral, we call these people schizophrenic) or find evidence in God’s actions through all the positive events in their life. Interestingly, like love, there seems to be only one God you can love at a time (even though the modern society approves of affection for multiple siblings, parents, grandparents, children, it does not allow love and affection for multiple partners).
Belief has caused more misery than the absence of it. Violence has always been committed between people of opposing beliefs.
Believers are not rational in their belief. They might use rational explanations to convert someone else to their point of view, but inherently a belief is never rational only something “intuitive” or “experiential”.
Scriptures are not sources of morality. Every holy book has incidents that sound disgusting, grotesque and fail even as allegory or tales to draw morals from. This is true for any holy book that has been handed down over 1000s of years. We have all been meandering towards more liberal moral rules and these scriptures written/spoken in an age when it was not so liberal, fail to guide people in today’s world. This goes to show, our morals are not drawn from history but from the present. Religion is not a basis for morality.
If not for religion, the next equivalent belief is patriotism. They both have similar basis (or absence of basis) and in several countries, one could be mistaken for the other. It only goes to show, if not for religion, the mind is capable of building other artificial constructs, so even in a hypothetical world of only atheists, we are likely to still have violence thanks to such constructs.
All religions have myths and incidents that are hard to prove, or are uncertain. Dawkins quotes a fascinating cult that grew around someone called John Frum, and yet, despite its recent origin, there is no certainty that he even existed.
Culture, art, aesthetics grew with religion (it is true for most religions I know of), but is not necessary for religion to exist for that. Though, religion does impose interesting restrictions (e.g. the ban on using human faces in Islamic art).

I think this book is a good read for atheists, and agnostics who would like to understand why people are religious. But, the book falls vastly short of its goal of converting believers into non-believers, mainly because:

Belief is not rational, Dawkins glosses over this by stating you “should” be rational about your belief. But that gets us nowhere.
Humans love status quo. They do not bother about religion unless something drastically happens to make them question their beliefs. Most people are happy to exist with as little curiosity as possible. People born into a religion, continue to believe in one.
You need social support structure. It is easier to be a non-believer in places where you need little or no support from family (e.g. cities). If you depend on family/friends for support, it is almost unthinkable to question your belief for fear of losing the support.

It also does not help that Dawkins asserts that it is “enlightened” to not believe in God. I think there is nothing “enlightening” about it, it is just a matter of not believing something without evidence. That does not give atheists the right to act, just like most fundamentalist believers, that they are special.

I also think the question “Does God Exist?” is immaterial to the way we live or how we live. Blaming uncertainty or events that are beyond our understanding on an imaginary being, is simply a coping mechanism at worst, and morally, should not frame our relationship to other people.

This would have been a much better book if he had covered the culture and way of life that encourages religion (and vice versa) among major religions (here is a paper on why Europe is less religious than the American continent). I think it is primarily the way of life that people of a religion follow that has most impact on their beliefs rather than logical, rational thought. Most religions make it really hard to get out of those cultural habits, and think about a life without religion.

I really like this anecdote he quotes:

“Tell me,” the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, “why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?” His friend replied, “Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth.” Wittgenstein responded, “Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”.

I think this quote can as easily be applied to the question of god.

But, I do think this is an essential book. Just like religions need extremists to propagate, atheism or even absence of belief needs people like Dawkins and Hitchens to bring attention to the existence of an alternative to religion, even though I do not approve of their shrill voices against the religious and claims of emancipating the believers. It is unfortunate, but silence is rarely heard.

The Danger of a Story

divya — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:52:11 +0000

Have you seen this photograph?

I am hazarding, you would think, just as I did, that “Something must be done! This cannot be!” This Yahoo Answers thread is a great example of it. If you are enterprising enough, you would look for a website that takes donations to help people in that area or at least attempt to know more about the area where the photo was taken.

The problem with this story is that,it is just that, a story. This photograph can represent a million things. It can as easily be applied to Sudan as to any other country. It can be appropriated by anyone as their symbol of struggle and oppression.

But, here is an alternative story of this picture which is much less sinister and sounds more probable:

Again according to Silva, Carter was quite shocked as it was the first time that he had seen a famine situation and so he took many shots of the children suffering from famine. Silva also started to take photos of children on the ground as if crying, which were not published. The parents of the children were busy taking food from the plane so they had left their children only briefly while they collected the food. This was the situation for the girl in the photo taken by Carter. A vulture landed behind the girl. To get the two in focus, Carter approached the scene very slowly so as not to scare the vulture away and took a photo from approximately 10 metres. He took a few more photos and then the vulture flew off.

This is not to diminish the tragedy that unfolded in Sudan, but to simply point out the danger of a story. Stories that fit into a well-known pattern and titillate us with graphic and violent details are especially dangerous.

Stories cloud our perceptions and lead to a mob behavior, frequently seen online (like this story of Jon Engle which I implicitly believed in before more details came out). Anyone who asks to know an alternate point of view is treated as a “heartless” person or someone who must be in collusion with the devil or a traitor. This is the danger of a story, we get sucked into it without us realising we are reacting to it.

Thanks to the internet, you do not have to work too hard to know all aspects of a story to make up your mind. Tyler Cowen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have spoken much more eloquently on this topic, which I consider essential viewing for anyone wondering about the danger of a story.

As Tyler Cowen states, any story that is simple to understand, or is of the form Good vs. Evil, that translates to a good movie, or is a story that you like to hear, is worth investigating before assuming it to be true.

Make it a habit to never believe in any story reported in any media, until you know enough to form an opinion about it. More importantly, be willing to change that opinion as soon as more facts are known, or when it stops being plausible.

Don’t believe anything I have just said either :)

Mortality of Morality

divya — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:12:42 +0000

Morality, as Wikipedia says, is “a set of beliefs distinguishing between right and wrong behaviors”. There is a perception among many people that moral codes are permanent, that, what now is morally right will remain so eternally.

My assertion (which Wikipedia calls Moral Skepticism) is that morality meanders with time. Paul Graham covers some aspects of it in his essay about What You Can’t Say.

200 years ago, you were only allowed to love thy neighbour if he was also of the same social class as you. Slavery was moral. Women were morally obliged to mind the business of taking care of children instead of voicing their opinion about politics.

But, I can hear you say, the basic principles of morality are eternal. You only need to read the religious texts of several religions to see how common the moral codes are! But religious texts are always derivative, and interpreted. For example, the meaning of Hijab in Islam has changed over time.

A moral code is usually defined by the triumph of an opinion that influences a majority. 100 years ago, almost every state or region had a different moral code, but thanks to colonial globanization, most countries now share the what-was-then-Christian view of equality and human rights. Some European countries have become more liberal (legal drug use, gay rights, etc), and the world seems to be moving towards a uniform liberal moral code.

Thanks to the internet, these liberal moral codes have spread a lot faster than before. All you seem to need these days is a petition with 300K signatures (citizenship not necessary) to raise awarness for altering existing moral codes in any country.

Iran’s protests are an example of how moral codes are getting impacted with technology. Youtube, Flickr, Twitter have all featured prominently in the arsenal of a protestor, so much that China and Iran are taking steps to control them. Protestors have also got a bigger audience now, instantly. But interestingly, the new era of communication does not seem to make people protest more than simply putting a twibbon or adding their email to petitions. There has not been any kind of protests in the internet era like those that put an end to Vietnam War or Black Inequality. If anything, technology has made us complacent about morality.

Still, moral codes are changing. As an aeron-chair expert, I also think it is safe to assume a moral code is under attack and very vulnerable, when people find the need to defend it anonymously instead of identifying themselves with it. For example, most people will have no hesitation in stating their opinion about child pornography, but some people will rather talk “off the record” or “anonymously” about gay marriage. In fact, Washington judiciary approved a motion to make anonymous the names of people who were petitioning to revoke the rights to gay marriage.

I know some of you might be offended by this dissection of morality, but this is just a thought experiment. I do have my own codes of morality (which tend towards liberal), but I do understand my moral codes might change too. I hope this post provokes some of you to leave a comment with your take on morality!

Thanks to Nandini for making me think about morality while we were having a session at the Argument Clinic about Japanese culture.

There is a much more serious discussion on Moral Skepticism here.

A Decade in Review

divya — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:49:03 +0000

2009 marks 10 years of radical change in my life. I am not the one for writing stories, but would like to note down different experiences that affected me the most this decade. This decade brought about change like no other.

2000-2001

I was 15 when I passed the screening test for IIT (but did not make it through the main entrance exams), scored among top 1% of all Indian students studying CBSE syllabus, and was the President of my school’s Students Council. In other words, I was a frog that was successful in a small well. I got an opportunity to study Computer Engineering in Singapore which threw my world upside down. I was used to wearing only salwar kameezes (with dupatta), praying twice a day, speaking/thinking in tamizh, talking only to girls (I studied in a girls-only school), listening only to old hindi songs, and here I was among a crowd of kids who spoke in English/Hindi, wore—what I used to call, “western outfits”—had boyfriends/girlfriends and talked about their favourite bands. I have always been around my parents, and here I was in Singapore, with the prospect of at least the next 6 years alone. Needless to say, I was shedding tears everyday and getting comforted with ice cream.
2001-2002

I had reached a new low. I was shocked and disappointed when people I knew in the university refused to help me when I asked for help (though strangers did!) I was lonely, and more determined to make friends.

Meanwhile, I had discovered the internet (I did not know about its existence till I came to Singapore). I felt quite comfortable talking to people online. I then started speaking with confidence to my batch-mates in real life. I went to the gym, I started wearing clothes that blended in. Deepak taught me to assemble my own computer, and I was downloading songs/software, and installing flavours of Linux (and for my mom). Also, I had switched to thinking/speaking mainly in English.
2002-2003

I started to blog, and was spending late-nights learning Photoshop and Freehand. I worked on my Final Year Project, which was to generate a map that tracks your path through my campus on a mobile Linux system (PDF) (yes, the precursor to your Android Google Maps!). An IEEE paper came out of this project (because of my suggestion to use of XML for communication from the Map Server). Till this day, I receive spam from organizations asking me to “submit a paper”.
2003-2004

I became an economics and finance geek. I wrote about the Asian Financial Crisis (very naïve when I look at it now), and about the Gold Standard (again naïve), I did quite well in my business minor classes. I was very disappointed when finance companies did not hire me (I was hired by Motorola to do device driver development). I was envious of many of my batch-mates, who did not seem to show any interest in finance, but got hired anyway. On the bright side, my blog was one of those popular ones in India (I still have no idea why).
2004-2005

I got an opportunity to become an in-house designer and copywriter for a start-up. Meanwhile, I also completed the Landmark Forum which altered my thinking drastically. That was the beginning of me being a skeptic. I stopped practicing religion. I was more aware of the judgements I made of people, and less worried about “what would people think”. This was the year I deliberately practiced rational thought and decided to chart my own path to success instead of the one that society deems acceptable.
2005-2008

I started freelancing. I had a great time working from home, though I never had “holidays”. I managed to travel a lot more than before and on the cheap. I no longer feared not having any money (I knew I could work), and started to enjoy life instead of waiting for retirement to do so. My mom started blogging (pardon the intrusive advertisements).
2008-2009

I got married to Deepak (I don’t believe in marriage, but life is easier legally). I moved to Seattle. I am glad I am here. I have found so many people willing to welcome a stranger with open arms (all you Seattle people on twitter!). US is annoying and mesmerising in equal measure. My parents have discovered the wonders of Youtube (and spend less time watching TV).

So there is my story from the time I was 16 till now. I am sure everyone of you must have had life-altering circumstances and experiences sometime in your life (and I am definitely not alone in this), I hope this is of help to anyone who is going though similar period in life.

Presenting Your Self Online

divya — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:43:44 +0000

I have been interacting with people online since 2000. In fact, that is how I learnt how to be sociable in real life (there are dozens of people who can testify to that transformation). I have always had a set of vague principles that I use to decide what I do online. Mostly, when it “doesn’t feel right” I either don’t write it or if it is too late, delete it or apologise for it. To reduce the occurrence of the last two, I have written down these principles instead of having my “intuition” guide me.

Not all of your friends/followers online is a friend in real life. They can become your friends, but by default they are not.
If you appreciate someone online, say so and support their ventures if you find them useful. Meet them in real life, have a conversation. Social networks are simply tools to discover people you like, and once that is done, get to know them for real.
Will you show every stranger on the road, a video of your family? If not, why do it online? Do you paint your face red/blue and green in support of different protests around the world? If not, why do that to your avatars? Do you tell random strangers staring at you on the road where you are going? If not, why do you tell your followers on twitter that? Behave online as you would with people offline.
It is harder to lie online since you have to keep doing it on different networks and in different contexts. Besides, employers/dates/friends would catch your lie as soon as you say it.
Fact-check every opinion you accept as truth. Watch this video, watch it every time you feel you are getting sucked into a story. Everyone has an agenda, even you.
Everything you say online is stored. Be careful of what you say and know the consequences of your words. People have been executed for blogging.
Do not insult people online just because it is easy to do so and even if they have insulted you.
Do not talk about work unless you are authorised to do so (or you are self-employed), not even on your “anonymous blog”. Do not talk about your relationship with someone unless you have their permission (including husbands/wives/boyfriends/girlfriends/kids).
Write as you would talk to a person. Do not write like this:

Synthesizing interactive, content, sales, and marketing ideas into strategies that activate. Blending creative and analytical, fun and serious within a contextual approach focused on driving margin.
It is okay to promote yourself or your services online, but don’t disrupt other people while doing so (@ replying “influential” people to make them retweet your posts, sending Direct Messages to “friends” about the latest post on your blog). Do not say stuff like this (yes, I actually found it on a bio):

A natural leader, I’m an outstanding wingman. A natural at crafting and delivering the pitch, I inspire colleagues and clients with passion, perspective, and creative vision.

What are your principles? If you have not articulated them yet, it is time to do so. If not for guiding your online activities, it is at least a fun exercise in discovering what your personal filter is!

Genius Demons

divya — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:41:58 +0000

Michael Jackson’s death and the subsequent revival of allegations of child abuse against him, has just brought up some uncomfortable thoughts. It seems like most geniuses we know were/are eccentric. The stereotype of a genius perpetuates that relation too - so much so that we go looking for chinks in the armor of anyone who is acclaimed as genius. But what about those who were truly evil? Like Eric Gill? The full extent of what he put his family through didn't come out until 40 years after his death. His work, though, was exemplary. His typefaces are still alive and widely used. Is it possible to separate the art from the person? Would he have produced such artwork if he was punished when he was alive? Would he have been able to create such art if he didn't have that evil streak in him? Is art so important that we ignore basic moral tenets of humanity? Could we tolerate a serial killer artist (Phil Spector comes close)? Interestingly, MJ and Phil Spector were not convicted in their first court trials.

Don’t we presume those who inspire us can do no wrong? But at the same time, why do we relish any information we discover about their imperfections? When do you draw the line?

Is it possible that the very qualities that make a person make art that has never been done before, has them do the same in real life?

Analysing my Information Consumption

divya — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:42:47 +0000

I had tweeted about wanting to analyse my feed reading activity — mainly to track what different topics I followed over the years. Neither Google Reader trends nor NetNewsWire stats charted that kind of data. Luckily, the list of blogs I was subscribed to, in 2006 and in 2007, are still online (list for 2006, list for 2007 [.xml file]).

Here is what number crunching turns up:

My web design follow list hasn’t changed over the last 3.5 years. It is, more or less, the same.
In 2008, I discovered a topic outside my usual interests: Africa. This led to devouring books, music, news, twitter updates about various countries of Africa.
In 2009, I stopped tracking freelance jobs altogether (though I rarely ever read those feeds after 2006) as I started working full-time at Microgroove
In 2006, I was giving equal attention to graphic design / illustrations / decor. This changed in 2007, when I started devoting most of my attention to illustrations. This interest waned somewhat in 2008/09 where my attention was taken up by Africa.
In 06/07, I had a lot of interest in decor (which led to this). Recently, I have become more convinced of the benefits of leading a spartan life and lost interest in hoarding stuff (however nice!).
The number of feeds I read seems to be reducing steadily — though they keep fluctuating every month. The main cause of this reduction, I suspect, is the increased use of twitter. Since I follow some of these bloggers on twitter, I don’t feel the need to subscribe to their blog.

Here are the graphs for comparison:

2006

2007

2008-2009

Enough about my activities! I am very curious to know how your information consumption trend is like?

(Charts were generated using Google Chart Generator)

My Last Veena Performance

divya — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:03:55 +0000

I started learning to play the Veena when I was 11. It was the most irritating experience at that time. I did not want to play the Veena, I just wanted to read Tintin or draw. But I stuck with it and learnt till I was in my X standard (“O” levels by singapore standards). When I came to NTU I found a vibrant carnatic music scene (in the Indian carnatic music group called Shrutilaya) and I brought my (then) 5-year-old Veena all the way to Singapore to start playing and practicing. I also was getting training from the disciple of Veena Balachander and it was wonderful to learn about the maths and the rationale behind the structures of carnatic music. I learnt quite a bit and with a lot of enthusiasm. But my teacher left for India and my interest waned again. I never quite picked it up after that.

Since 2004 I have not touched the Veena. Yesterday, realising I need to do something with it, I called SIFAS (the Indian Arts Association in Singapore) and asked about donating a Veena. They asked me to come today. It sank in today morning that I was going to give up my more-than-15-year-old Veena. So, I sat down to play something. What follows is the video of my performance. I was really bad at playing it, after such a long period of time (especially without the required clips and vaseline). This version of the Indian National Anthem is not even what I have been taught, but something I tried on my own. So it is doubly worse. But still, I have a permanent reminder of the Veena that has travelled the distance with me during my growing up years. Here it is, for your entertainment:

Video taken by Deepak Jois

Goals for 2009

divya — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:31:33 +0000

Here is what I hope to achieve in 2009 (given that I hardly achieved anything I set out to achieve in 2008). I hope to keep blogging my progress with my goals.

Blog/Interest Goals

Blog at least once a week
Complete reading Web Analytics book
Upgrade Blog to Drupal 6 (waiting for all my cherished modules to become available in Drupal 6!)
Implement SEO strategies while analysing metrics for my blog (and blog about it!)
Read W3C’s HTML 4 specifications
Read Sitepoint’s CSS Stylesheet reference (and blog about this and the above)

Personal Goals

Go to Gym every alternate day
Lose 5 Kgs and keep those kilos off
Learn Driving
Illustrate once a week
Set up Etsy shop to sell my illustration prints
Attend web specific conferences like SXSW/Web Directions North

How to Live in a World Without God

divya — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:38:36 +0000

I read this article titled “Without God” by Steven Weinberg a week ago and had to blog my thoughts on it.

The article is a very thoughtful analysis of the weakening of religious belief in countries with advanced science.

He attributes the causes for it to these:

Explanation of mysteries as natural occurrences with scientific explanations (e.g. floods, earthquakes, etc)
These explanations have resulted in discounting of man as a special creation of God. Especially the discovery of evolution of man shows man is not a special saviour of the world.
The faithful seem to believe that the idea of determinism (in terms of laws of motion, gravity, etc) is against the idea of a non-deterministic miracle-causing God.
Traditional religions have a belief in infallible prophets or gurus. But in a scientific world, even Einstein could be wrong.

He then goes to talk about how to live without God. Here is the best part:

First, a warning: we had better beware of substitutes. It has often been noted that the greatest horrors of the twentieth century were perpetrated by regimes—Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China—that while rejecting some or all of the teachings of religion, copied characteristics of religion at its worst: infallible leaders, sacred writings, mass rituals, the execution of apostates, and a sense of community that justified exterminating those outside the community.

When I was an undergraduate I knew a rabbi, Will Herberg, who worried about my lack of religious faith. He warned me that we must worship God, because otherwise we would start worshiping each other. He was right about the danger, but I would suggest a different cure: we should get out of the habit of worshiping anything.

The article rightly then focuses on how to deal with the clinical nature of a scientific belief - the idea that our entire outlook, speech, belief, actions are explained by chemical reactions within the body. All in all a great read for all non-believers and agnostics!