Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1776, two events occurred in the world that had a momentous impact on the subsequent development of the modern world. They were separated by the Atlantic Ocean: one happened on an island on the east and the other on a continent on the west that it had colonized where an act of treason took place.

The first event was the publication of a book titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in two volumes on 9 March 1776 in London, England. (It’s March 10th, 2026, as I write this.) It can justifiably be regarded as the start of the formalization of the modern discipline that we call economics today.

The second event happened later that year on the 4th of July 1776 in the colonial city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, one of the 13 British colonies. It was the Declaration of Independence that announced the separation of the 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of those two seemingly disparate events. One was the publication of a book by a Scottish philosopher, born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and the other an act of rebellion by a bunch of traitors which eventually to a very large extent created the modern world we live in. What could possibly be common to both? Continue reading “Two Events from 250 Years Ago”

How long is the platinum-iridium bar that served as the world’s SI based unit of length, the meter, from 1889 to 1960? It was held at 0 degrees Celsius at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris, France. That platinum-iridium bar is now preserved as an artifact at the bureau near Paris, France.

About it, in Philosophical Investigations §50, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris. But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule.”

Wittgenstein’s remark relates to the grammatical game we play when we measure something. The bar in Paris was not an object we discovered to be exactly one meter long. It was the thing that gave meaning to “one meter long” to begin with. The question of how long that bar is cannot be answered by measurement. The bar simply occupies the role of a paradigm or a sample. Continue reading “How Long is a Meter?”

Margaret Thatcher remarked that Europe was the product of history. European nations were shaped by centuries of wars, dynasties, traditions, and cultural evolution, their identity deeply rooted in historical continuity.

By contrast, the United States was consciously built on philosophy: Enlightenment ideals of liberty and individual rights. Its founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—embody abstract principles rather than inherited traditions.

Europe grew organically from its past, while the United States was deliberately constructed around ideas, making it a nation defined more by philosophy than by historical legacy. An analogous story can be told about the religions and the dharmas. The dharmas are a product of philosophy, not history. Continue reading “Alan Watts on the Bhagavad Gita”

Ponzi schemes are an unfortunate fact of modern life.

Named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who ran a famous scam in the 1920s, a Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment scam where returns to earlier investors are paid using funds from new investors, rather than from legitimate profits generated by any underlying business activity or asset appreciation.

These schemes rely on a constant flow of fresh money to keep going. Eventually, when new investors dry up or too many people try to withdraw funds, the scheme collapses, leaving most participants with heavy losses. (See grok for more.)

Like many others, I am convinced that bitcoin is the greatest Ponzi scheme of the 21st century CE. It has no underlying productive activity and it needs a constant flow of fresh money from “bigger fools” to keep going. Continue reading “Bitcoin, the Brilliant Ponzi Scheme”

I’ve never been to Iran. I would have liked to have visited Iran but that was before the mullahs took over.

One of my close friends during my undergrad engineering days in Nagpur was an Iranian named Ibrahim Akbar Shahi from Isfahan. After he finished his engineering degree, he and his Iranian girlfriend continued to stay on in India in Pune. I lost touch with him when I went to the US for my PhD studies at Rutgers University.

I remember one of Ibrahim’s observations. He said that he found Indian Muslims to be rabid and disgustingly intolerant. He was a Muslim of course as most Iranians were, but he said that Iranians were relaxed about their faith. Then the Ayatollahs took over. Continue reading “Iran”

I recently came across a quote on the web that “many of the best investors in the world are really good at doing nothing for long periods of time.”

Doing nothing for long periods of time comes naturally to me. I am definitely not a lazy thinker but when it comes to doing, I am content to avoid any action until it becomes unavoidable. Laziness is an art form. 

I have always been in favor of idleness. See my post from January 2019, In Praise of Idleness, which begins —

It makes good sense for the slave master to persuade his slaves that idleness is a sin and he’s doing god’s work when he flogs the slaves to work harder. The harder the slaves work, the more the master can take for himself. But of course the real motive has to be concealed and clothed in moral raiment.

“Work hard, you b*tches, and stop complaining.” That’s what Mohandas Gandhi meant but put it so very piously by saying, “Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.” See what I mean? Continue reading “Contemplating Investing”

The world of today is changing at an unprecedented pace, and that pace of change is only going to accelerate. The good news is that the change is mostly in the positive direction along multiple dimensions such as material welfare, civic services, infrastructure, security, and so on. The negative aspect of the change is that inequality is increasing. That is to be expected. 

I don’t decry the increasing inequality as long as the economically backward are also advancing at an increasing pace.  Inequality is a feature, not a bug. That is, I don’t particularly care if the rich are getting richer so long as the poor are also getting rich. That has been the trend forever in most parts of the world and there’s no reason to expect that it will not continue into the future.

Let me make the case a bit more concrete by considering the case for India and the US. Compared to 50 years ago, both the US and India are much better off today. But the gap between the two has decreased significantly and evidently. Though the US was — and is — much richer than India, India has seen relatively more progress. Faster economic growth is not that hard when an economy is not at the leading edge of development. Continue reading “Thailand or India”

Today is Mahashiv Ratri, the day that Shiva married Parvati.

As we all know, the Hindu trimurti are Bramha, the creator who brings the universe and life into existence, Vishnu the preserver who sustains the universe, and Shiva who destroys illusion and decay, making way for renewal and transformation. As the transformer, Shiva dissolves the universe at the end of a cosmic cycle making possible regeneration and renewal.

Shiva is also the ultimate ascetic who meditates. He is the primal yogi.

There are aspects of the universe that can only be apprehended symbolically. As a Hindu, I am capable of and comfortable with symbolic reasoning and apprehending the universe symbolically. I am not forced take everything literally.

Bramha, Vishu and Shiva are symbols that refer to deep truths that undergird the incomprehensibly complex universe. Taking them literally reveals ignorance and stupidity. People who are too cognitively challenged cannot distinguish between symbols and what they represent.  Continue reading “Maha Shiv Ratri”

I Grew Up Clueless

Growing up in India, I was fortunate enough to attend a pretty decent school (SFS school) in a second-tier city (Nagpur). I say I was fortunate because at that time only a small percentage of Indian children could attend school and of those who could, most got a fairly mediocre education at best.

Our school was good by the prevailing standards. By sheer good fortune, many of my classmates ended up being fairly successful in various professions. Half a dozen became doctors, a couple very successful lawyers, a dozen engineers, a couple US-trained PhD economists (including yours truly), many teachers, a tenured US professor, and a handful businessmen. A fairly large cohort ended up migrating to the US.

Looking back at it, I’d say that the education we received was passable in math and science but sorely lacking in the social sciences. That was because education was controlled by government bureaucrats who knew little of any relevance and had no clue what education was about. I suspect that they were uneducated themselves. Continue reading “India’s Great Virtue: Democracy”

Decades ago when I was in high school, I came across a Samuel Johnson quote: “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

It struck a chord with me. That prompted me to read James Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson.”

An interesting bit of trivia. The credit for the first major dictionary of the English language goes to Samuel Johnson, also known as the great lexicographer. His “A Dictionary of the English Language” published in 1755 became the dominant English dictionary for over a century and is considered the first truly authoritative, comprehensive English dictionary.

Today I was reminded of that book during a conversation with a friend. The context was what Trump was doing. I quoted Johnson. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Johnson’s view was that pretended patriotism is often used as a cover for self-interest and deceit. He was critical of people who claimed to be patriots while acting in ways that undermined true national interest. Continue reading “Boswell’s “Life of Johnson””