You have journeyed all the way with me, and we are here. Let me remind you of our wonderful journey together. And let me re-introduce myself. I am the Entrepreneur. I was tiny and unicellular, I moved around in the prebiotic soup. I am sure , you mighty observer, must have dismissed my micro and insignificant activity. I was helpless and vulnerable, and many the likes of me just vanished without a whimper.I somehow managed to survive, barely. I just hanged on enough till the next major evolutionary step. Despite the harsh conditions (more…)

Tags: Evolution, Physical law, Psychology, Reality, Social Sciences

Courtsey: farm1.static.flickr.com

I love communicating with people and sharing ideas with them. And most of the conversations are
fulfilling and productive and we both end up learning from each other. However, there are times
when I find some glaring logical fallacies in our language which hinder communication and stunt intellectual growth.I do not mind them when we are talking informally, but in any serious conversation logical fallacies can create major misunderstandings.Those are the ghosts worthy of exorcism. Here are some common logical fallacies which I observed.

(1) “Statistically most of the Indian policemen have mustache. Mohan is an Indian policeman hence he should have a mustache.”
This sort of argument suffers from a basic statistical mistake. Statistics talks about things in bulk. It does not say anything about one particular case. Hence to draw particular conclusions from statistical data is fallacious. Mohan might be an Indian policeman but you cannot infer from that that he must have a mustache.

(2) “I found evidence of no disease.”
There is no such thing like (more…)

Tags: Fallacy, Informal Logic, Loaded question, Luck, Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic, Statistics

Mostly it is the questions which really matter. Einstein said that if we ask the right questions, much of our work is done.

Not a while ago I did an interesting experiment. I wanted to see how much order can emerge from randomness.So I made these two computer programs.And the results suggested some powerful questions. (more…)

Tags: Giant Panda, Humour, Program stream, Randomness

How much value you place on the next five years of your life?

I read a piece of news a few days ago about a person  falsely accused of sexual abuse. After spending five years in jail, it was found out  that actually he was innocent and the detective who investigated him was having an  affair with his wife.

The point which jumped out from the news article was that he got $16 millions over  the wrongful conviction. Note that the judge equalized the value of his lost five  years and harassment to $16 millions. The question I ask is  : How much value do  you place in the next five years of your life? Allow me to put an entrepreneurial twist  to the question: How much value do you think you can create in the next five years?  Is it more or less than the value placed on the life of a man who spent five years in  jail doing nothing? Can you at least aim for producing value worth $20 million  dollars in five years? Or $50 millions?

The problem with us is that (more…)

Tags: Gene, Human, Law, Mathematics, Nonlinear system, Physics

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S
relativity

~ Albert Einstein.

From the very beginning Albert Einstein’s life seemed to be an endless series of failures. He wasn’t able to speak before 3.5 years of age. His parents feared that he might be retarded.

When he was in school he was known to ask silly questions. His teachers said that he was so dumb that he was coming in the way of other student’s progress. One teacher directly asked him to spare others and leave the school. Naturally Einstein didn’t like going to school. He dropped out of high school, as a result he could not get a regular job. To secure a job he had to take a special exam. He failed in it. He took it again and then passed. He had to take a low paying, boring job as a patent clerk. There he got lots of time to think.

Like any genius he had a knack of asking very simple questions having earth-shattering results if you try to answer them(and answer them correctly). In his famous quote he said that 90% of the job is done if you ask the right questions. And he asked one simple question which changed the course of history and how we view the universe (more…)

Tags: Albert Einstein, Newton's laws of motion, Special relativity, Speed of light, Theory of Relativity, Time Travel

I had to choose a ” random” number between 1 and 7, for an idea generation technique that I use. The problem was that I was in a cafe.(You know, the ‘old town coffee house’. My favorite place even though the food is lousy).And I had no computer to give me a random number in that range. My first instinct was to take a piece of paper, tear it into seven pieces and write 1 to 7 in each of these papers. Fold them and randomly choose one(paper-folding method). And I was too lazy to do it.

Another option was to go ahead and ask a bunch of girls sitting near my table to pick a random number for me. It didn’t require a lot of work but somehow I felt that actually doing it might be dangerous. I have heard mental asylums in Malaysia are not so good.

So, I devised this method. (more…)

Tags: Algorithm, Large numbers, Mental model, Randomness

I lost my keys and I have been locked out(it has happened more than once), so I am sitting in the so called ‘old town coffee house’ sipping chocolate and doing what I love to do. Life has never been this good. Really!

I take breaks from my intense product development to do some other stuff, which is not so important as products but still holds a lot of significance for the company. One of the things is to pen down my thoughts(As I mentioned before, the reason I take action is primarily to aid my thinking, so it is only natural that I should pen down my thoughts as I am in action).

Today I will dwell on one deficiency of human psyche,so pay close attention. (more…)