Catch - 22

I have read a lot of books that haven't made an iota of difference to my life. These books have made me happy, sure, but only because I was done with them and wouldn't have to read them again. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, isn't one of them. An incredible satire on the foolishness of war and the attached bureaucracy, it has been widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful books of the previous century. It was also the origin of the famous phrase (its name), and means a situation where there is no possible solution with a positive impact. One is, figuratively (and sometimes literally), stuck.

So what makes this book so great? The hero of the book, Yossarian, is a bombardier for the US Army in the War, and is stationed at the island of Pianosa. In describing his travails, the author makes a compelling point about the stupidity of war, and how all military actions are motivated by personal wishes of those in power, which are almost always silly. I read somewhere that the author himself was a bombardier during the war, so one can presume that the character is autobiographical, or the author's ideal of himself at the very least.

The character of Yossarian is best summed up by one of his exchanges with his camp doctor Doc Daneeka. He says that he doesn't want to fly missions anymore, because he didn't want to get killed. The doc (who was slightly more patriotic, given that he never had to fly) asked him what he thought would happen if everyone thought that way. To which Yossarian replies, 'Then I'd be a damned fool to want to fly, wouldn't I?' The character of Yossarian captured the imagination of millions of people, who always wondered whether or not he survived the war (doing my best to maintain ambivalence regarding the end of the book). Well, he did, which was confirmed by a later novel by the same author, Closing Time, which spoke of Yossarian's life after the war. This novel was clearly motivated by the public's strong interest in the hero, epitomized by some placard that the author saw someone holding somewhere, (I have absolutely no specific idea, as you no doubt guessed) saying 'Yossarian Lives!'.

But let me speak a bit more about the title. Readers come across catch 22 situations many times in the book. But the one situation that best exemplifies the title is the rule which says that an insane person need not fly missions. However, if an insane person were to come up to a military doctor and say that he was insane, such an action would be motivated by an urge to protect oneself, which is a highly rational and sane wish. In short, an insane person need not fly, but pointing this out would mean that the person is sane, as only sane people would have a strong desire not to fly. Being proven sane, the person would have to continue flying. Pretty impressive, huh! Yossarian thought so too, when he first heard it.

This kind of catch 22 is fairly similar to a problem in economics that we call The Prisoner's Dilemma. Consider two people, who have been captured by the police, and whom the police are attempting to get a confession out of. If neither confesses, both get a jail term of 2 years. If one of them confesses, however, the other gets a jail term of 10 years, while the confessor gets only 1 year. If both confess, they each get 5 years. The optimal solution here, for both prisoners, is for neither to confess. However, this will not happen, as there is a fear of the other prisoner betraying you. What always happens, (and there are economic terms for this of course, all of which sound really sophisticated) is that both prisoners confess, and get a jail term of 5 years. Thus, while this is clearly not the best combined decision, no other decision will ever be made, because the best independent decision for either prisoner is to confess. Kapish?

So please read the book, if you can. Or see the movie; it's an exhaustive take on the book. You won't regret it at all. However, there's another very hilarious character, whom I must mention. The mess officer of the camp, Milo Minderbinder, hits upon a fantastic plan to make money off the war. He uses restocking the mess as an excuse to fly around all over Europe, buying and selling stuff to collect margins for a 'syndicate', which no one knows whether one is a member of. Milo, of course, insists that 'everyone has a share'. Well, so Milo ends up with the entire cotton crop of Egypt, which he then tries to include in mess food (but he isn't a domineering tyrant, so he coats the cotton balls with chocolate syrup). In another absolutely ROFL moment, he and his accomplices take off in the camp's own planes, off the camp's own runway, to bombard the very same runway. Obviously, everyone on camp had a share in the contract which Milo entered into … with the Germans! Anyway, read this book, and tell me what you think.

It all started with a flip of a coin, 11 months ago…

I recently watched The Butterfly Effect. I must say, I think the director is very gifted (apart from, of course, the actors available to him… this movie top-lined Ashton Kutcher of That 70s' Show fame). The manner in which he tells the story is quite interesting, to say the least. I also saw Pi, another very good movie directed by Darren Aronofsky. He is more famous for a later movie, Requiem for a Dream, a movie I'll never see (I don't believe I can take depression of such a manic kind). His next movie, The Fountain, however, is a movie I watched, and found very interesting (expect a blog on that movie pretty soon, methinks).

Anyway, what connects Pi and The Butterfly Effect? Both touch, directly or indirectly, variants of a celebrated mathematical idea called the chaos theory (Pi talks more about chaos). And they both present very interesting ideas, which are worth exploring, at the very least (Fear not, for I shall do only that).

Chaos theory is a very catchy name for what is really a theory about the significant impact of initial conditions. No prizes for choosing the more glamorous one correctly (aap paanchvi paas se tez nahi hain). The theory says that changing the initial inputs to a process by very negligible amounts can sometimes have non-negligible effects on final conditions. What this means is that what seems to be a disorderly situation is actually a deterministic effect of some invisible changes in the manner in which things started. Therefore, and I think this is very interesting, chaos theory actually says that there is order in everything. One very good example of how initial conditions can affect what happens in the end is a Honda advertisement made a few years ago. The advertisement starts with a very harmless gear rolling into a slightly bigger one. The ad goes on for about 2 min, with every new auto component moving another, till, ultimately, an SUV moves a bit. Any slight change in the momentum of the first gear or its direction would probably have derailed the experiment long before culmination. And as expected, the ad-makers required 606 takes to get everything right. I don't know whether I can post YouTube videos here, so I'll just paste the link. Do go have a look.

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc

See what I mean? Anyway, The Butterfly Effect is named after the famous chaos theory quote: The flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon halfway across the world. Cool, huh? Well, not exactly true, but you get the drift. The protagonist is a guy who realizes that he can alter his memories, and in so doing, can actually modify the past. Now, the few of us who saw Back to the Future III know that this is not really true; all he does is create a parallel universe. But hey, guys, this is just a movie! Allow the guy some directorial license! Jokes apart, the movie is about how this guy keeps going back in time, changing every little thing, but coming back to the present to find out that something else has gotten messed up. There's another discrepancy too, which we shall ignore (after I mention it, of course). None of the changes he makes (like killing a guy) are negligible in any manner of speaking. But the movie ends very well, and all in all, was a good investment of my time (not a very busy boy, am I?). The line of the movie, for me, was when this kid goes to meet his father in a psychiatric hospital. His father was put in there, for he suffered from the safe gift/curse (Spider-Man fan alert!) as his son, the protagonist. So he tells his father, 'I'll send you a post-card once I make everything right.' The father says, 'You'll never be able to do it, son, for your actions will always have unintended effects.' And then proceeds to try and kill him.

Pi is slightly different, in that it talks of chaos, not chaos theory. It's about a crazed mathematician who believes that numbers alone can explain all natural phenomena. The apparent chaos will clear away once one is able to see the numerical patterns. And his goal in life is to find such a pattern in the stock markets (something malicious-looking stock-pickers constantly hound him about). Somewhere along the way, a Jewish mathematician (also crazed, I am sure) starts trying to attract him towards the search for a 216-digit number that will unlock future prosperity. When our hero's computer spews a 216-digit error code (actually 218 digits – a directorial error), he begins to smell a connection, and the plot thickens considerably (and how, for one sees brains lying around in railway stations, and drills are no longer used just for making holes in walls). The underlying theme of this movie is the search for this elusive (and incredibly long) number that will help the protagonist see the whole world clearly (and give him Matrix-type powers too, I bet). Whether he gets it or not, is for you to see and find out.

Looking at things one way, we can see that the chaos theory does make a lot of sense. An example from the book Black Swan can be paraphrased as follows. A path of a billiard ball as it hits the sides of a billiards table can be calculated reasonably accurately for a few bounces by taking into account the coefficients of friction of the table and the sides, the coefficients of cohesion, etc. But new factors keep being introduced as the number of bounces off the sides increases, as their effects become important. For instance, after the 7^th bounce, the masses of the people standing next to the table become important. After the 50^th bounce, the movement of an electron at the edge of the universe will also make a tangible difference to the path. This is bad news for those among us who suffer from over-analysis (they have problems anyway). But let me also say that if lightning strikes you as you make your way to work tomorrow, rest assured, it's not because you left your residence at 9:00:23 a.m. as opposed to your usual 9:00:10 a.m. And of course, you're already dead, so it's a moot point.

Don’t Look Now, But There’s Money in the Trunk

Conspiracy theories make people rich. Not you and me, of course (unless you are paranoid or have an extensive imagination, in which case there's hope for you). The conspiracy theory industry makes millions of bucks a year, at the very least. This includes books, movies, lecture series, and even serialized newspaper reports.

Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, which have been near-defunct for many years now, still make huge amounts in membership fees, presumably because at any point of time, there will always be some people seeing Birth of a Nation (a highly controversial movie, banned in many countries) for the first time. And I'm sure almost all of you remember the furor that rose in journalistic circles when Princess Diana died. The then-Premier of the UK, Tony Blair, had to publicly denounce the 'Diana Death Industry', as he put it, and even then, the gold rush was scarcely derailed.

There are numerous books, periodicals, etc that focus on such sensationalist theories. Don't take my word for it, search for the word conspiracy on Amazon.com. In fact, I read in an excellent article on the subject that a new edition of the afore-mentioned Protocols of the Elders of Zion is available on Amazon, and has sold at least 64000 copies, which is a pretty handsome number (for a book whose origins have been proven to be fake).

When we talk of movies, many conspiracy movies have done well. The Fugitive, Men in Black, and to a lesser extent, The Matrix (although people like the series for different reasons) are all examples of movies where someone suspects that life isn't all that ordinary at all. And surprises of surprises, they are right. The biggest fish of all, of course, is the X-Files franchise. This series made tons of money for its producers, and was even made into a movie.

This is, more or less, all that I have to say on the subject (and Thank God for that!). I hope I have managed to convince at least some readers that conspiracy theories need to be consumed with a ton of salt. Of course, maybe this is all a conspiracy too, hatched by some evil sociologist who's cashing on our gullibility by forming an international syndicate of conspiracy theorists …

The Truth is Out There! (haunting music in the background)

The above line, made hugely famous by the X-Files TV show, conjures up the equally famous background score to mind almost immediately. The innumerable number of subplots of the main one – that there is information about extra-terrestrials that the government is hiding – have helped the producers mint quite a bit of money. But more on that later (surprise surprise). For now, we'll move to something at least as interesting.

Let us look at a few conspiracy theories, and I'll try to show where they come up short. The Pearl Harbor conspiracy is fairly popular. The proponents say that US officials were aware of the imminent Japanese attack, but purposefully chose to do nothing. Such an allegation is based on two assumptions: that the US officials had all the necessary information, and that they consequently acted rationally. Graham Allison (of Rationality Theorem fame) found that while the government did have all the necessary information, this information was scattered across departments. The entire picture wasn't formed in time. Bureaucracy was thus the main reason for the government not acting in time. Also, some of the information was actually misunderstood – the harbor was on alert, but for Japanese sabotage, not an aerial attack.

The Bible Code, a book by Michael Drosnin, was fairly popular a few years ago. In this book, he shows that many things that happen today in the world have actually been coded into the Old Testament, i.e. the Torah, which is written in Hebrew. He uses a computer to find certain terms in the Torah, by searching rows, columns and diagonals. He also went on to show how the Bible predicts the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the then Premier of Israel. Now, this is not a true blue conspiracy theory, but it does have elements of one (if you receive a lot of forwards, you might be able to draw parallels with how one can fold a $1 bill in a certain manner to predict the 9/11 mishap). The problems with such a theory are equally obvious and startling. Such a finding is quite random, in the sense that if one looks in any voluminous book in an old language (which the Torah certainly is) one is bound to find a column or diagonal that matches a certain word. This is just plain old and simple probability. A similar error occurs in Zeitgeist, where the filmmaker says that the advent of Jesus was simply an announcement of the beginning of the age of Pisces (see the movie to understand what this means). He goes on to prove this by presenting approximately ten paragraphs from the New Testament that mention the words 'two' and 'fish', and mind you, they don't always occur together in these chosen lines. Consider an exercise, where one uses a computer to generate a million paragraphs randomly, using nouns and filler sentences that are present in the Bible. Any math professor (or student) will guarantee that in a million such randomly-generated paragraphs, one will be quite likely to find at least 10 with these two words in them. This is akin to the famous analogy coined by Nashim Nicholas Taleb in Fooled By Randomness, where he says that if one has a billion monkeys typing on typewriters, one of these monkeys will definitely end up writing the Hamlet (Although it is widely believed today that Shakespeare was a plagiarist, I in no way want to add to speculation that he kept a private army of lesser primates).

One last theory must be debunked, at least partially, before I call it a day. Let me move on to the Pentagon conspiracy. Proponents say that a Boeing never hit the Pentagon, as the only released photos show no sign of the debris that one would expect from a Boeing collision (of course, the reasons are more numerous, but this is the basic one). The fact that the FBI refused to release any security camera footage has added to the speculation. The simple reason (Occam's Razor) for the fact that the photographs show a shadow approaching the Pentagon, and then show the damage, is that the number of frames captured per second is less than that required to capture such a collision. And the simple reason for the lack of any debris is that probably the debris fell on spots that the camera didn't capture (recall the no evidence of disease = evidence of no disease fallacy).

So you see, conspiracy theories are, more often than not, simply an indication that somebody out there is making some elementary logical errors. As a consumer of such theories, one must curb one's appetite for sensationalism, if one wants to maintain a realistic perspective. But of course, there's one more angle to this long-winding story – the economic one. When we look at that, we'll probably understand the most emphatic reason yet for the existence of these amazing inventions of idle minds.

Rabbits are DUMB!

And why is that? Is it because of their overzealous imagination, their propensity for disbelief, or their extreme paranoia? All three, actually. Especially since they mean the same thing (ok, don’t snigger at my cheap trick). Let me continue what I was saying earlier, about conspiracy theories. In particular, let’s look at what the common mistakes made are.

The first mistake that many conspiracy theorists make is that they do not account for the famous rule-of-thumb known as Occam’s Razor: Complicated stories are less probable than simple ones. Many such theories unnecessarily complicate what happened, usually to account for one tiny flaw in the ‘official’ story. There’s nothing wrong with such an approach, except that from the universe of possible corrections, the theorist chooses the potentially controversial one. Further, such theories very often employ logical fallacies. One example of a widely noticed fallacy is analogous to a doctor assuming that a person definitely doesn’t have cancer when evidence of cancer is absent. Such an assumption is valid only when evidence of no cancer is present. Putting this slightly differently, one could say that inconsistencies in a narrative are not necessarily indications of the opposite. Another important thing to think about is the number of conspirators. A simple rule is, ‘The more the number of conspirators required in a theory, the less likely it is to be the actual turn of events’. Conspiracy theories also need to be falsifiable. This means that the specific claims of the theory have to be such that they can be disproved. If this is not the case, it might mean that the theory is nothing but a convenient explanation of the facts.

Very often, conspiracy theories are like old-age economics. Just like the latter, they believe that all individuals act rationally, and always maximize the utility of consequences to them. However, most of us would realize that this is not the case at most times. This is the reason people doing MBAs have subjects like Behavioral Finance along with Economics. This argument was developed by Graham Allison in his book Essence of Decision, and he called it the Rationality Theorem. When people believe in rationality, they automatically exclude factors like bureaucracy and misunderstandings from their explanations of events, and consider only available data and results. In the rational world, all events are explained on the basis of rationality of participants. But a stubborn teenager’s fight with his dad should be more than enough to convince us that the opposite is often the case.

There are more problems with conspiracy theories, which I am sure you aren’t surprised to hear. Many such theories use ‘never-before seen government documents’ or ‘restricted files’ to arrive at conclusions. There is no way one can prove or disprove such claims of convenience. All one can say of such theories is that their veracity is questionable, at the very least. Finally, coming back to an allusion I made earlier, people tend to believe that significant events have significant causes. A study has been reported, in which four versions of an event were presented to the subjects where a foreign president was

1. Successfully assassinated
2. Wounded but survived
3. Survived with wounds but died of natural causes at a later date
4. Was unharmed

The subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of major events, i.e. where the president died, than in the other versions.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly was startled when I read of this study. But somewhere in my head, I think it all fits in with our subliminal need for excitement. Like our Indian batsmen, who play badly to make the game more exciting for the audience (unrelated, actually, but what the hell! … all bloggers voice their opinions on matters of public interest). Next time, I’ll try to be a little more interesting, considering that I myself fell asleep writing this portion. I’ll try to trash some popular theories. Won’t do too much, but hopefully, you’ll get the idea…

Nobody Framed Roger Rabbit

For those who don't experience any déjà vu on reading the title, it is a take on popular children's movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. This post on my blog regards conspiracy theories, examples of which I find immensely interesting and usually, equally inane. In the world where conspiracies are the norm, Roger Rabbit is always framed. In the world where conspiracies are the exception (also known as the real world) however, he almost always isn't. Why then, if my surmise is correct, do such theories grip our imagination? Well, they sure do make for interesting coffee table topics, don't they? That's probably the reason why. Anyway, over the course of the next 3-4 posts (I have successfully broken up my discourse), let me expound on some popular theories, and the reasons why conspiracy theories are usually fallacious.

I finished reading Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum last week, which draws exhaustively on Europe's history of the Dark Ages, to satirize conspiracism. His protagonists try to ridicule conspiracy theorists by deliberately linking different groups of people at various points in European history, and thereby inferring a comprehensive, world-changing conclusion. Much to their amazement and horror, the very people they are trying to spoof end up believing them, with some funny and some not-so-funny results. I also saw the documentary Zeitgeist, which elaborates on various 'conspiracies' that institutions have spun to keep us under their control. It was with these stories at the back of my mind that I decided to analyze conspiracy theories and try to figure out what it is about them that grabs our attention, every once in a while.

At the very outset, let me say that the normal human being laps up everything that is served to him in the newspaper. The conspiracy theorist is a completely different animal. His beliefs follow one or more of the following patterns: appearances deceive; conspiracies drive history; nothing is haphazard; the enemy always gains; power, fame, money, and sex account for all; and the tagline of the very unimaginatively titled movie Conspiracy Theory (a 1997 Mel Gibson starrer), 'What you know could kill you'. Don't such plots catch your eye? They sure do, because, like my life, your life is probably boring too, and such stories bring a lot of excitement with them. There is another belief that pervades all such theories, a belief that is potentially their greatest failing - that all significant events have significant causes. But more on that later, when I try to systematically show where conspiracy theories usually go wrong.

There are a few well-known conspiracy theories that have been doing the rounds in the past century. While most of them have never been proved (or disproved), a few of them have turned out right. Most notable of these was the text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was purported to be an authentic Jewish text by the Russian Tsar's Secret Police in 1903. The material contained in this text was the main reason for the rise of anti-Semitism. The document was proved later to be a fake, but alas, this happened only after the horrors of the Holocaust, which, in a slightly trivial sense, this conspiracy was responsible for. So, are conspiracy theorists justified? Yes, one would say. Except for the very tiny minority of them which are true, the rest make for very attractive reading. One does feel nice pointing out flaws in such theories. Many such theories abound, most 'world-changing' (and hilarious from time to time) being the 9/11 conspiracy theory family, the Bible Code, the Pearl Harbor theory, Paul McCartney is Dead (he'll surely die laughing, if not anything else), the Apollo Moon Landing Hoax, and various New World Order theories. I could talk about each of these at length, but Wikipedia contributors have done a much better job. Instead, I will talk about a few of them later, when I try to show where they fail.

That's it for now, though. Next time, I shall write about the common mistakes that one sees in run-of-the-mill conspiracy theories. But I hope you can appreciate the qualities of such pulp fiction which invariably draws us towards it. 'So you like reading Sidney Sheldon? You'll probably like this fantastic new book that I read, which shows how the local convenience store is an integral part of a plan to overthrow the world ... and its not even fiction!' Brilliant stuff, eh?

Here I go

This is my first attempt at a blog. There have been many times in the recent past when I decided to begin writing one, each time relegating the thought to the back of my mind due to the absence of any further initiative. This was probably because of the lack of ideas as to what I would write about. My only thought was that I would like very much to write. What about, was anybody's guess. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I am one of those guys who has an opinion on almost everything. And what's worse, I don't mind changing these opinions at the drop of a hat, and arguing vehemently in favour of whatever is my flavour of the season. This blog attempts to put to paper (or magnetic storage) the manner in which books and movies (and a myriad other things) influence me. To assuage my brother's fears, I must say this is not meant to be a platform where I criticize movies (he hated it when I pronounced my opinion of the Hindi movie Life in a Metro, an opinion which I cannot express in a non-restricted blog). It would be more of an attempt to critique the story and the thought process behind the movie, as well as to say more about the topic. It would also not be a commentary on the 'treatment' of the movie or the book, a word which my future-movie-maker bro uses a dozen times a minute. That would be better left to him. In some senses, this blog is also an attempt at structuring my thoughts, as I have always found that putting pen to paper (which this is, in a futuristic manner of speaking) helps one clear one's thoughts. Please forgive me if I sound too high-handed or unnecessarily elaborate in my future posts, for it has been a very long time since I have written anything non-specific (I last answered questions like 'Why MBA?' approximately 2.25 years ago). I am already working on breaking up my next post, so I know that this will definitely be the case. In keeping with my tendency to over-reach, let me also say that all humour in this blog is on purpose, and all puns are intended. Of course, there will be many times when you will pause and wonder why I wrote a particular line. Chances are, that was probably my attempt at a joke, one of many such which inevitably fall flat on their face (a fact that my friends will vociferously vouch for).

True to form, that was much ado about nothing. Till my next post, then.