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Showing posts with the label woke

Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

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  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra
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Woke Protests and the Olympics

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  Sports and politics are hardly divorced from each other. Each can be a means to achieve an intended objective. To Hitler and his Nazis, the 1936 Olympics was an instrument to tell the world their alleged superiority. There were open voices of racism through that Olympics. In 1972, Palestinian terrorists killed ten Israeli sportsmen after kidnapping them from the Olympic village. The treatment of Blacks in South Africa was not merely confined to sports but in fact sports played a major role in aggravating and later elimination of racism. The 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh were boycotted due to the British policy on South Africa as did the African countries in the 1976 Olympics due to New Zealand rugby tour to South Africa. The 1970 ban on South Africa in cricket was caused by their refusal to allow to Basil D’Olivera, a coloured cricketer in the England cricket team. In 1968 Olympics at Mexico, Tommie Smith and fellow medalist John Carlos raised a black gloved fist when the US n
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Of Freedom of Expression and Ripper Jeans

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  The freedom of expression is a sine qua non in a democracy would be an understatement. It is not just important to have your say but allow the right to disagree without recourse to violence. There are myriad points of view and it is the societal welfare that would be best served when these points of view are allowed to be expressed without fear. Natan Sharansky, a conservative thinker once proposed a town square test. It implied the real freedom would exist when someone could go into the town square and express his or her views without fearing for their life or liberty. India has recognized the freedom of speech as an integral part of the constitution by enshrining it among the fundamental rights. The courts too have upheld the right to free speech and expression many a times in their judgments. Yet, what has not gone unnoticed is the right of free expression is selectively applied. Perhaps it is only one ideology that seems to have a monopoly over free expression. This again has bee
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Counter-Cultures- Some Notes

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  The recent arrest of activists on grounds of anti-India activities does portend a disturbing signal. The signal is about the activists engaging in anti-India acts and perhaps treating them as anti-establishment or anti-government acts. There is a difference between anti-government and anti-country. Yet there is a very little distinction in the minds of these activists as they seek to move past that line however thick it might be into a realm of anti-national. In quite a number of cases, it is evident, there is a political thought that is behind the line of thinking. There are egged on political ideologies to combat the existing government and the establishment on a number of grounds and seek to foster disunity into the country. An instance of the same was the JNU protests and the chants of Tukde Tukde Bharat. This was overtly political and the activists knew of their intentions. But what is surprising in recent times, is activists from overtly non-political areas like environmentalis
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Woke, Archaeology and Alien Civilization Theory

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There is rather an esoteric article published on the CNN site. The article talks about archaeology which per se should not seem unusual. The link to the article is tweeted by the CNN Africa twitter handle. That again should not sound unusual. But what is unusual is the content of the article. It talks about the long standing esoteric theory of aliens responsible for civilization and thus many wonders of the ancient world thus attributed to them. These include the pyramids in Egypt to stone built structures in remote Easter Island as also in Stonehenge to Nazca lines in Peru. This unusual sort of an article is enough to rile up archaeologists across.   It is natural for archaeologists to criticise these theories that seem outlandish. There is enough work done by archaeology that seem to point to the human origins to the building up of these ancient works. Yet the tone rather than pointing to the evidence for the human origins is pointing towards something else. This is the era of
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Deciphering Woke Capitalism

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A phenomenon that one observes in recent times is the tendency of many leading firms or what one calls the Fortune 100 firms to appear politically correct. In more ways than one, they seem to be focused on pandering to what is termed woke activism. They seem to comment quite often on social justice issues with points of view being what is dubbed as politically correct. Firms from Pepsi to Gillette among many others seem keen to go out of the way to demonstrate their woke credentials. This assumed certain important proportions when many firms decided to boycott Facebook for a month and thus not advertise on the platform. The ostensible reason is the Facebook not demonstrating its liberal credentials sufficiently and its ostensible inability to monitor what woke activists term as hate speech.   Facebook does monitor hate speech and has been aggressive in taking down offensive posts. But woke activists are not impressed enough. To them, it is a conservative platform that seems to prid
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The Consequences of Woke Individual Liberalism

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The piece Diminishing Returns of Woke highlighted the counter reactions emerging towards imposition of wake culture. Political backlash is pretty visible, the backlash is spreading down to lower echelons of the society. Yet instances are being reported of woke liberals engaged in a witch hunt on the deviants from the alleged woke line. The case of an Ola driver to doctor in Kerala to an earlier instance of chef in the Gulf are pointers towards ‘micro-Dreyfuses’. An unpopular view of the same, however unfortunate it might be, is there will be victims of this battle. Foot-soldiers often pay the price and perhaps of higher magnitude in relative terms. Yet the cost of witch hunt would be significantly higher for woke liberals. To a woke liberal, long run success would be of conversion of ordinary human towards their side and if not at least not push him or her to the other side. This collective interest is at odds with the individual self-interest of woke liberal. He or she wants t
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The Diminishing Returns of Woke

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Roger Scruton who passed away recently had a reputation for being eternally politically incorrect. Individual preferences are an outcome of several factors. In theory, the right of free speech mandates the protection of these preferences unless it encroaches through a process of physical or mental harm the exercise of preferences of another individual.   In the context, individual could mean group too, an aggregate of all individual preferences in that group. Yet private preferences when expressed in public often create a storm because ostensibly they are not deemed to be views of educated, polished, cultural, literate person. To exhibit one’s literacy, polishness, education etc. individuals are expected to rise above narrow strata of thought, parade their cognizance of the injustices apparent or real across the world around them and must be seen to stand for the alleged victims of these professed injustices being meted out. This is something has come to be termed in popular circles
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