Classic P (as IN MBTI) And T Vs J Vs P

http://m.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/put-it-off-and-be-creative/article8406249.ece: Creativity in procrastination.

When I first met some P's in my life I didn't understand them. I thought they were unprioritized, irresponsible, undisciplined.

When I got to know a P well, I understood later. They were prioritized, except they didn't think every job had to be done right now, every decision to be taken immediately and the subject closed. They have their goals clear, who is IN in their life and who is not. Their resources and efforts are spent on what / who is IN and not based on what is their responsibility to do. They may make a marginal attempt to do things which are not their priority but which still are job to do, if circumstances demand it.

As the author describes, not all decisions need to be taken right now, many may become irrelevant with time, more options may come up later which would make decision making easier.

More importantly as another P (let's call him Y) told me about a colleague (let's call the colleague X) of his: X would say that it's important not to do things immediately. One should wait until the issue becomes critical. The effort then spent (X said) on solving the issue is appreciated much more. While doing anything, (X continued) one should always see what rewards are associated with doing it and what penalties are associated with not doing it. Y was very impressed with X.

Y himself told me many  decades back... "If you are going to do something good for someone it's important to ensure that it becomes known. If no one knows about the good thing you did, you might not have done it at all."

Of course, the author has not talked about the things that X and Y did. The latter are from my personal experience. But they kind of throw some more light to the nature of a P. 

Neither does the author seem to have considered that the behavior of procrastination (that of a P) is not a chosen one. Meaning one doesn't choose to procrastinate. Each of us is built in a certain way. Some of us are P's and some are J's - each with some pros and some cons.

A conversation with a friend resulted in some more thoughts.

Why was Y impressed with X, despite both being P's? Y was impressed with X because X had something that Y could learn. 


My friend asked me whether altruism and J always went together and and selfishness with P. She was referring to Y's belief that a good deed done without anyone getting to know might as well not have been done.

I am not saying (most) J's are altruistic and that most P's are selfish but FP's are usually selfish - opposite of Ayn Rand's kind of selfishness. Ayn Rand selfishness is very obvious. FP's selfishness and avarice is not obvious, theirs being shrouded in well meaning words and packaged well. One has to peel the layers to sense it.

Difference between T, J and P
T's operate with their thought. The decision about something is based on what is logical (not necessarily on what is conventional). An NT operates with the adult state while an ST may not.

J's orientation in life is to complete all tasks they are responsible and strive to have zero pending tasks at any point in time. They do not focus on their feelings - if a job is to be done, it has to be done and on time too.. No matter what. J's set of things to be done is always based on protocol. They are strict, and operate largely with the parent state. P's are usually concerned about their own selves first and foremost. Nothing is more important than their feelings. All tasks can wait until they feel it's the right time to do the job. Barring a few people for whom they might give their life for.... all other things and people are secondary to P's.

A T and a J can sound similar because both seem to driven by rules and not by their heart..The T is driven by the mind or logic while the J by conventions and protocol.

An F and a P often seem very similar to me. An F processes things with his heart than with his mind. An F can be driven by protocol and be meticulous, organized in case he is a J. A P can be driven by thought also instead of by F. A P's focus is NO RULES / PROTOCOLS. 

TJ's are inflexible (J) and do not generally think with their heart (T). Can you imagine how heartless they would seem? FP's on the other heart follow their heart (P) and use their heart when they walk through life unshackled by convention and protocols. (P)

A strong FP (high energy one) usually thinks of himself as being superior. And that rules that apply to others do not apply to him. And this is where an FP may become more obnoxious than a NT who is not particularly strong with his feelings. 

A simple question asked of an FP often would not elicit a simple answer. The response would be preceded by a calculation involving what the person asking is looking for, what the best answer would be to keep the relationship with that person at a desired level. The tendency to "calculate" for important things is phenomenal in FP's despite their stronger F.

A J would look more disciplined and organized while he would also be inflexible, nagging. A P would look sweet, flexible etc and she is also likely to come across as being undisciplined. 

All the P's I know negotiate a lot, meaning they would not assume anything is fixed or inflexible. And they are very good at it. I guess it doesn't matter whether they EP's or IP's.

Wonderful XVV

Have a wonderful, peaceful and blessed XVV. 

An Interesting Thing About Primes

I read this article today: http://www.wired.com/2016/03/mathematicians-discovered-prime-conspiracy/. It was very interesting, so I read more about primes and Mersenne primes. Then I came across a theorem that goes like this:
if 2^n-1 (where ^ refers to exponentiation and let's call that expression "n exp" henceforth) is a prime, then n is also prime. 

Exponentiation explained:

2^3=2*2*2 (3 times) = 8

3^2 =3*3 (2 times) =9 

I was like what??? Though there was a link to a proof, I wanted to study this myself. 

Armed with Microsoft excel and a laptop, I started looking up values for this "n exp" for various positive integral values of n. I used formulas to find out whether the "n exp" was a prime or not. I could only go up to n=49 (due to some limitations: "n exp" was a 15 digit number for n=49) which was good enough to start with. I had tweak the excel a little to improve performance. MS Excel 2016 performance beceme horrible when the number of rows exceeded 60,000.

• Where n was a multiple of 4, 2^n would always end in the digit 6 and "n exp" would end in the digit 5,  hence would always be a multiple of 5 and so "n exp" will not be a prime.
• Where n was a multiple of 2, "n exp" always turned out to be a multiple of 3. Actually this point, covers values of n in the previous point also making the previous point redundant. That left only odd values of n to look at. 
• Actually where n is a multiple of 2 (let's say n=2k), "n exp" becomes 2^2k - 1 = (2^k)^2 - 1^2 = (2^k + 1) * (2^k - 1). Hence "n exp" is composite for even values of n. The only exception is when k =1, "n exp" = 3 whose factors evaluate to 1 and 3, yet 3 is still prime for obvious reasons.
• Now we come to the case where n is odd. Here I found an interesting thing. Where n was a multiple of 3, "n exp" always had 7 as a factor. For example: with n = 3, 6, 9, "n exp" equals 7, 63, 511: each of which is a multiple of 7. This was weird. I didn't know there were hints / rules for finding whether a number was a multiple of 7. I wanted to see if this was always true. I tried to use induction. 
• Let's say n=3a where a is a positive integer.
• "n exp" = 2^3a-1 =7k (being a multiple of 7)
• 2^3a=7k+1
• Evaluate "n exp" for the next value of a (=a+1): 2^(3(a+1))-1 = 2^3a * 2^3 -1 = 8(2^3a) - 1 = 8(7k+1) -1 = 56k +8  - 1 = 56k +7 = 7 * (8k+1). Proved through induction. Remember k is an integer.

I had proved that "n exp" is a composite when n is an even number. Now coming to the point of "n exp" being always a composite even when n is an odd composite... my thoughts are these.

Let us assume n = a*b where a and b are both odd integers. n will then be an odd composite number.
2^(ab)-1
=(2^a)^b - 1 which has factor 2^a-1 as per factoring rule number 7 here. 

• Incidentally when a=3, 2^a-1 = 8-1 = 7.  Hence 7 is a factor of "n exp" whenever n is a multiple of a=3. 
• Same way, whenever n is a multiple of 5, "n exp" is a multiple of 31. And so on.

The same proof could be used for cases where n is an even number. I guess I went in a roundabout fashion!!.

The next thing to look at is: why is "n exp" a composite for some prime values of n such as 11, 23, 29, 37, 41, 43 etc.

• Where n=11, "n exp" has 23 as a factor.
• Where n=23, "n exp" has 47 as a factor.
• Where n=29, "n exp" has 233, 1103, 2089 as factors. Obviously each factor will have another corresponding factor equaling which is the quotient of "n exp" and the original factor. 
• When n=37, "n exp" has 223 as a factor.
• When n=41, "n exp" has 13367 as a factor.
• When n=43, "n exp" has 431 as a factor.
• When n=47, "n exp" has 2351 as a factor.
• The question I have is: what is common to 11, 23, 29, 37, 41, 43, 47? How come "n exp" is not a prime for these values of n? is there a pattern to the factors listed above (23, 47, 233 etc)?

The first few Mersenne primes apparently are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 61, 89, 107, 127, 521, 607. I have confirmed with my working on excel the Mersenne primes till 31. 

Additional reading:

• https://primes.utm.edu/notes/74207281.htm
• https://primes.utm.edu/lists/small/10000.txt
• https://primes.utm.edu/lists/small/millions/ 
• http://primes.utm.edu/mersenne/index.html
• https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130519-unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/

How Do Birds And Animals Know What Food Is Good For Them?

This is a question I pondered. The other day I saw a crow trying to drink from a pool of fresh cow urine. It took a sip, probably didn't find the taste good and flew away.

How do snails or dogs or birds know what is good or what is poisonous and to be avoided?

Then I read this article. In 30 years, storks in Portugal had changed their migrating behavior and their food habits as well. 

I guess the answer is partly intuition coming from memories from across generations which they carry in their genes / DNA and just plain experimenting as the storks must have done.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

I had previously mentioned about LEH and her rather horrendous experience one night when she was about to leave for home from school. 

The purpose of this post is to narrate a recent similar incident and try to understand the root cause.

Couple of days back she was in a meeting with the vice principal (VP) of her school discussing some question paper that she, LEH, had set. LEH narrated the incident that happened after the meeting with the VP to another person (TN) - LEH requested TN not to reveal the details to me. 

And obviously TN lost no time in calling me up.

For the benefit of my readers I will try to present the incident briefly - in bullet points.

• LEH completes the meeting with the VP at 6:45PM in the VP's room, which is in the ground floor. 
• LEH remembers that her own bag is in the staff room which is 50 feet away but in the 1st floor.
• At that ungodly hour most of the staff would have left for home.
• LEH is reminded of the previous incident and vows to play it safe this time. She meets Meeramma at 6:48PM, who also works in the school and asks her whether anyone is up there. Meeramma replies in the affirmative "Yes, God is".
• LEH, by this time shaking just a little, explains to Meeramma that her question was not a philosophical one. Was there any person in the 1st floor - LEH rephrased the question.
• Meeramma, being the efficient soul that she is, replied that LNU -  a male teacher -  was in the 1st floor.
• 6:50:12PM: LEH starts climbing the steps. At this point, to describe what really happened, I am going to show a video -  this scene from the movie Chandramukhi is very very similar to what happened to LEH. Watch the video and Alt-Tab and continue reading here - so you will get a kinda running commentary of the events that unfolded in the school in the next few crucial seconds.
• 6:50:12 to 6:50:28: LEH kept calling to LNU knowing that LNU had to be up there. Meeramma was never wrong. She belonged to the group of personnel in the school who always knew who was where and doing what. If Meeramma said that someone was in the 1st floor then even God didn't have a choice. God had better beam that someone to the 1st floor pronto. 
• LEH reached the 1st floor and frantically searched for LNU. 
• By the time it was 6:50:22PM, LEH was in a state of stupor and stumbling just as you see vadiveLEH at the end in the video.
• At 6:50:28PM, LEH located LNU who was sound asleep in a room. 

I am told that LEH has no memory of subsequent events and she doesn't know how she reached home that night. Unfortunately for her, lightning did strike the same place (at 6:45PM too).

Now if we do a quick recap and analysis of the events described above:

1. We can't blame the VP for ending the meeting at 6:45PM. Some meetings are known to extend till the milkman comes to deliver.
2. We can't blame LEH for wanting to pick her purse up from her workplace. 
3. We can't blame LNU for not responding immediately to my friend's call. He was in deep slumber considering the late hour. His choice of a room that wasn't visited often is also easily understandable. We all know how stressful it is to maintain a sweet innocent facade, that too in front of about 50 women.

Now who was responsible for this incident? Why did my friend LEH go through this painful incident (that too, once again)? 

And I squarely blame one person - Meeramma. Meeramma knows all. She is expected to know all that goes around, even about such things that don't go around. 
She knew that LEH would be trembling as she climbed the steps and calling out LNU's name, she knew where LNU was, in what state he would be in and that LNU would not be able to reply to LEH's call. All this would have flashed through the mind of the fiend Meeramma in a fraction of a second.  And yet Meeramma allayed LEH's fears and encouraged (at least allowed) LEH to go up to the 1st floor all alone knowing what would ensue subsequently.

Meeramma.... Vechutangaya aappu ("diye dilen baansh" in Bengali for those that aren't familiar with colloquial Tamil).

PS:

There could be some minor discrepancies in my recounting of the incident. You see, I didn't see the incident with my own eyes. I heard it from another source who heard it from yet another source. I have done my best to accurately present the events of that fateful day. 

Astrology And Partner Matching

I was discussing compatibility issues with a friend using MBTI theory as a reference point. As an example, how it would be for an NT to live under the same roof as an SF or for an NF to live with an ST. 

My friend asked me whether Vedic astrology also didn't try to check compatibility of would be spouses and if so why was it unable to prevent wrong matches. Good question, I thought.

Here is my thought. Vedic astrology is a thousand years old. Very little got added to that body of science (or art) since 1000AD. And the purpose of matching was primarily to ensure that the man and women had equal longevity (so neither was widowed early) and that they could have children.

So long as the charts of Man A and Woman B indicated that they had equal or good longevity and that progeny was indicated in their combination, it was deemed a good match. Of course, other factors such as looks, wealth, education were also considered but  these were outside of the scope of astrological horoscope matching.

Now, we can see that the matching did not include aspects of  compatibility of their natures. 

As to why it didn't, I have to recall a conversation that I had with another friend who lives in a joint family. Her mother in law told her that the amount of time that a man and a wife spend together is at most 3 or 4 hours. The rest of the time the man is out at work or with his friends or brothers / uncles etc. And the woman spends most of the time inside the house with children and other women in the house. That being the case, where is the need for great compatibility like in the case of Darcy and Elizabeth?

If Elizabeth and Bingley had been married to each other and lived in a joint family with Bingley's 3 brothers and their wives and children and with his parents, would their marriage have been a colossal failure? Probably not.

In the last 1000 years (more likely in the last 50  years), the family has become more nuclear. A woman sees no other close relative other than her husband on a daily basis and hence she has a higher need for compatibility. This is true for the husband as well. There are no brothers or uncles for him.

Such a situation as we have now was not known to the people that lived 1000 years ago. Maybe that's the reason Vedic astrology "screws up" while matching horoscopes - because we are expecting things that were not within scope when the sages founded astrology.