Minorities In Pakistan - Census Statistics

I had always thought minorities get a raw deal especially in Muslim countries and hence they are usually converted into the local religion or killed or forced to emigrate. 

I got into discussion with a friend who said I was completely wrong. As an example she told me that the treatment of Hindus in Pakistan was fine considering that Pakistan is primarily an Islamic country.

I was shocked by this assertion. So we decided that I will look up some statistics about minority population growth / decline in Pakistan over a decade or few decades. If there was a substantial decline it might indicate that minorities weren't treated well.

So I started googling.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_Pakistan

According to Pew Research, the Hindu population will reach 5.6 million and Hindus will constitute 2.47% of the Pakistan population by 2050.However, Hindus in Pakistan feel that they are treated as second-class citizens and many have continued to migrate to India. Hindus comprised 15% of Pakistan's population in the year 1947 while Sikhs comprised 5% of the total population. After Pakistan gained independence from British India on 14 August 1947, 4.7 million of West Pakistan's Hindus and Sikhs migrated to India while 6.5 million Muslims moved from India to live in West Pakistan.

The above provides a historical perspective and a prediction about the future.  

From the same link the population of Hindus in Pakistan is 3,231,220 million (2011) which is 2.12% of the Pakistani population.

Next we come to the Hindu population in 1998 which is given to be 2.443 million. And we look here to look at the overall population of Pakistan in the same year 1998 - we get a value of 132.3 million from the graph

The Hindu population in 1998 as a percentage of overall Pakistan population is 2.442/132.3 = 1.8%.

Thus the Hindu population percentage in Pakistan seems to have gone up from 1.8% in 1998 to 2.12% in 2011. (Incidentally the Hindu population was 15% of Pak population in 1947. There was a good amount of migration of and carnage of the minorities on both sides of the border).

Assuming the statistics are reliable, I guess my friend was right. Hindu population has increased as a percentage of overall population in Pakistan from 1998 till 2011.

As on Aug 5, 2020
I read an article in New York Times which threw more light on this topic. The New York Times: Poor and Desperate, Pakistani Hindus Accept Islam to Get By.

"At independence in 1947, Hindus composed 20.5 percent of the population of the areas that now form Pakistan. In the following decades, the percentage shrank rapidly, and by 1998 — the last government census to classify people by religion — Hindus were just 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population. Most estimates say it has further dwindled in the past two decades."

So, yes the percentage of Hindus is largely same from 1980 till now. Between considering 1947 as the base, the story is different. Well what one can expect from a nation that is thrilled primarily about its religion and has little else to talk about.

Additional reading

• https://www.dawn.com/news/1515863/the-strange-case-of-the-silent-women
• Sewer Cleaners Wanted in Pakistan: Only Christians Need Apply.

What Drives A Conversation

When do we have a conversation with a person we cannot tolerate?

Often times we are driven to have a conversation with a person whom we cannot tolerate. It's not because we want a favor of them. No, we do not need anything tangible from that person.

We want companionship - a need to talk. And that person has something in their conversation that we intuitively realize we want. That the person is a pain in other ways and is one we would normally go miles to avoid is not relevant because our current need for a conversation is so high. And mentally perhaps  we have calculated that the trade-off is worth it.

Why do we not like this person? Maybe it's because the person is self centered or opinionated or a cheat or chauvinistic or sarcastic or whatever. Despite knowing the person, we want a piece of (conversation with) the person. It's like an addiction, indulging in something which we ought to know isn't good for us.

What is this trade-off?

Subconsciously we tradeoff - we know we (our S2, read http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html) will discard the person. But it's the immediate craving, coming from S1, that we feel the urge to address. This drives us to have the conversation with a person who is inappropriate. And then we take a cathartic shower after the conversation.

Why do we want to talk to this person?
I think it's because we are mostly surrounded by people who do not bring out an X (something that we love - say, an appreciation of humor or intelligence, confidence) in us. And this person, despite their "dark" nature, brings out just that. That X is so important to us we are willing to let go of our good sense, temporarily. Certainly we do not feel any love towards this person. Maybe we also are comfortable opening ourselves up to them which we would do rarely with anyone else, nice person or not. 

In case of married people, the awakening of the X is also perhaps a route to an EMA (Extra marital affair). It provides the right combination of X and "no love" that is essential for the birth and healthy sustenance of an EMA.
Continuing further, if you want to know whether someone is in love with you determine whether the other person has the X factor for you or love.

Recipe Gotsu, Sambar, Vetha Kozhambu, Chenai Masiyal, Vaazhakkai Koottu, Mor Kozhambu, Varuthu Aracha Mor Kozhamnu (VAMK)

Gotsu, Sambar, Vetha Kozhambu (VK) are dishes which are kinda similar.

In each of them, boil imli juice (puli thanni), a bit of solid hing (asafoetida), cut green chilies and tomato, salt. Sautee mustard, methi, urad dal, haldi powder. Add curry leaves. Add the powder(s), vegetables and boil.

Longitudinally cut vegetables (LCV) - drumstick, pumpkin, brinjal, bhendi, can be added for sambar and VK.

Read this in landscape mode if you are using a small screen

                                                Gotsu             Sambar          VK
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Powder to be added              1:1                     1:0            1:1

Click above link for recipe                                             
for making powder

Ratio of sambar powder to vk powder mentioned above
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Additional Vegetables         Fried onion +          LCV                LCV

                                            fried brinjal +       (as explained above)

                                 mashed boiled potato

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Additional seasoning             Chana dal               None             Chana dal + 

                                                                                                   Chundakkai
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Additional leaves        Dhaniya, curry     Dhaniya, curry   Only Curry
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In Chenai Masiyal(CM), Vaazhakkai Koottu (VK), Mor Kozhambu (MK), VAMK - coconut needs to be ground in each of them.

Yam (Chenai)  must be cut in the size 3/4 inch square by 1/4inch thick. Raw banana should be cut into 1cm cubes. 
Mix the vegetables in water (in case of VK, use imli water), add salt and additional  spice and boil. Grind the stuff after frying. Add the ground stuff to boiling stuff. Add dhaniya leaves. Sautee mustard, urad dal, haldi powder and hing powder. Finally add the stuff for sourness (in case of VK, imli is added in the beginning itself).

                             CM              VK                      MK                 VAMK
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Sourness               Lemon         Imli water        Buttermilk        Buttermilk
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When to add 
sour stuff               End              Start                   End                    End
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Vegetables            Cut yam       Cut raw banana     LCV                  LCV

                           (as above)    (as above)             (as above)       (as above)
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Any other spice    Solid hing       Solid hing             None             None
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Fry                       None             Chana dal+         None           Chana dal+
                                                Urad dal                                 Urad dal +
                                                                                              Methi
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Grind the fried   Red chili +           Red chili +          Methi+          Red chili +
stuff PLUS         green chili +                                green chili      green chili
coconut PLUS     ginger
Jeera 
PLUS                   
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Coconut is also to be fried at the end in VK and VAMK before its ground with the rest.

Pooshnikkai / snake gourd koottu:

Cut white pumpkin / podalangai into small pieces. Boil it. 

Grind coconut, jeera, green chilli, little rice, salt. Mix this with boiled vegetable. Add tarka.

Tarka will include chana dal apart from hing powder, haldi powder, mustard seeds, urad dal. 

In Tomato Kozhambu:

Grind roasted dhaniya,  chana + tuvar dal + red chili + pepper + jeera 

Boil tuvar dal

Boil tomato, drain the water, remove the skin, then mash tomato, add solid hing,  cut green chilies, boiled tuvar dal.  Sautee mustard and urad dal. And boil.

The first step can be replaced by putting rasam powder.

Boiled Tuvar dal and the rest.

Final Tomato Kozhambu

In Pattani Chadam (Peas rice)

1. Boil peas mixed with salt. 
2. Fry cashew,  sautee mustard + urad dal.
3. Or grind tuvar dal + chanal dal,  red chili + dhaniya, jeera, pepper
4. Mix all with boiled rice and dhaniya leaves.

Step 3 can be replaced with rasam powder.

Nudges (Book) By Richard Thaler And Cass Sunstein

Nudge is a lovely book recommended by Daniel Kahnemann in his book Thinking Fast and Slow (read: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html). The book can be downloaded - see here http://calmisc.blogspot.com/2011/11/free-books-online.html.

Quotes from this book (without permission):

Most Americans have an Automatic System reaction to a temperature given in Fahrenheit but have to use their Reflective System to process a temperature given in Celsius; for Europeans, the opposite is true. People speak their native languages using their Automatic Systems and tend to struggle to speak another language using their Reflective Systems. Being truly bilingual means that you speak two languages using the Automatic System.

Automatic System refers to System 1 or S1 and Reflective System refers to S2. How nice it must be to speak in many languages using automatic system..

It is possible to predict the outcome of congressional elections with frightening accuracy simply by asking people to look quickly at pictures of the candidates and say which one looks more competent. These judgments, by students who did not know the candidates, forecast the winner of the election two-thirds of the time! 

The author hence concludes that voting is through S1. We vote for the person whose face looks competent and that happens through S1.

The Automatic System can be trained with lots of repetition—but such training takes a lot of time and effort. One reason why teenagers are such risky drivers is that their Automatic Systems have not had much practice, and using the Reflective System is much slower.

In many domains, the evidence shows that, within reason, the more you ask for, the more you tend to get. Lawyers who sue cigarette companies often win astronomical amounts, in part because they have successfully induced juries to anchor on multimillion-dollar figures. Clever negotiators often get amazing deals for their clients by producing an opening offer that makes their adversary thrilled to pay half that very high amount. 

There are apparently three causes of systematic biases

• Anchoring - we go towards an initial estimate.
• Availability -  we are affected by what we hear or read about more often even if they are less probable.
• Representativeness - "The idea is that when asked to judge how likely it is that A belongs to category B, people (and especially their Automatic Systems) answer by asking themselves how similar A is to their image or stereotype of B (that is, how representative A is of B)." "We think a 6-foot-8-inch African-American man is more likely to be a professional basketball player than a 5-foot-6-inch Jewish guy because there are lots of tall black basketball players and not many short Jewish ones".

The following are more quotes from the same book:

"people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing. "

"Heads you win $X, tails you lose $100. How much does X have to be for you to take the bet? For most people, the answer to this question is somewhere around $200. This implies that the prospect of winning $200 just offsets the prospect of losing $100... loss aversion operates as a kind of cognitive nudge, pressing us not to make changes, even when changes are very much in our interests."

People are unrealistically optimistic even when the stakes are high. About 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and this is a statistic most people have heard. But around the time of the ceremony, almost all couples believe that there is approximately a zero percent chance that their marriage will end in divorce—even those who have already been divorced!

Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive feature of human life; it characterizes most people in most social categories....Gains and Losses People hate losses (and their Automatic Systems can get pretty emotional about them). Roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same thing makes you happy. In more technical language, people are “loss averse.”

Human beings are optimistic unduly and also risk averse unduly (as shown in the coin tossing $100 / $200 experiment). 

If you are reluctant to give up what you have because you do not want to incur losses, then you will turn down trades you might have otherwise made.

If that is the case then most entrepreneurs won't estimate the probability of success of their venture to be higher than average. They would rather maintain status quo. This probably means that there are some people who are unduly optimistic and some who are risk averse and either these are two sets of people are people are overly optimistic about some things and overly conservative about some other things.

Most teachers know that students tend to sit in the same seats in class, even without a seating chart. But status quo bias can occur even when the stakes are much larger, and it can get us into a lot of trouble.

Those who are in charge of circulation know that when renewal is automatic, and when people have to make a phone call to cancel, the likelihood of renewal is much higher than it is when people have to indicate that they actually want to continue to receive the magazine. The combination of loss aversion with mindless choosing implies that if an option is designated as the “default,” it will attract a large market share... Default options thus act as powerful nudges. In many contexts defaults have some extra nudging power because consumers may feel, rightly or wrongly, that default options come with an implicit endorsement from the default setter, be it the employer, government, or TV scheduler. 

Suppose that you are suffering from serious heart disease and that your doctor proposes a grueling operation. You’re understandably curious about the odds. The doctor says, “Of one hundred patients who have this operation, ninety are alive after five years.” What will you do? If we fill in the facts in a certain way, the doctor’s statement will be pretty comforting, and you’ll probably have the operation. But suppose the doctor frames his answer in a somewhat different way. Suppose that he says, “Of one hundred patients who have this operation, ten are dead after five years.” If you’re like most people, the doctor’s statement will sound pretty alarming, and you might not have the operation. Framing matters in many domains. 

Framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless, passive decision makers. Their Reflective System does not do the work that would be required to check and see whether reframing the questions would produce a different answer. One reason they don’t do this is that they wouldn’t know what to make of the contradiction. This implies that frames are powerful nudges, and must be selected with caution. 

To simplify things we will consider just the two end points: hot and cold. When Sally is very hungry and appetizing aromas are emanating from the kitchen, we can say she is in a hot state. When Sally is thinking abstractly on Tuesday about the right number of cashews she should consume before dinner on Saturday, she is in a cold state. We will call something “tempting” if we consume more of it when hot than when cold. None of this means that decisions made in a cold state are always better. For example, sometimes we have to be in a hot state to overcome our fears about trying new things. Sometimes dessert really is delicious, and we do best to go for it. Sometimes it is best to fall in love. But it is clear that when we are in a hot state, we can often get into a lot of trouble.

This is something the behavioral economist George Loewenstein (1996) calls the “hot-cold empathy gap.” When in a cold state, we do not appreciate how much our desires and our behavior will be altered when we are “under the influence” of arousal. As a result, our behavior reflects a certain naïveté about the effects that context can have on choice. 

For most of us, however, selfcontrol issues arise because we underestimate the effect of arousal. This is something the behavioral economist George Loewenstein (1996) calls the “hot-cold empathy gap.” When in a cold state, we do not appreciate how much our desires and our behavior will be altered when we are “under the influence” of arousal. 

Self-control problems can be illuminated by thinking about an individual as containing two semiautonomous selves, a far-sighted “Planner” and a myopic “Doer.” You can think of the Planner as speaking for your Reflective System, or the Mr. Spock lurking within you, and the Doer as heavily influenced by the Automatic System, or everyone’s Homer Simpson. The Planner is trying to promote your long-term welfare but must cope with the feelings, mischief, and strong will of the Doer, who is exposed to the temptations that come with arousal. Recent research in neuroeconomics (yes, there really is such a field) has found evidence consistent with this two-system conception of self-control. Some parts of the brain get tempted, and other parts are prepared to enable us to resist temptation by assessing how we should react to the temptation.1 Sometimes the two parts of the brain can be in severe conflict—a kind of battle that one or the other is bound to lose. 

The doer is S1 while the planner is S2.

When self-control problems and mindless choosing are combined, the result is a series of bad outcomes for real people.

David’s inner Planner knew that he needed to stop procrastinating and get his thesis done, but his Doer was involved in many other more exciting projects and always put off the drudgery of writing up the thesis. (Thinking about new ideas is usually more fun than writing up old ones.). 

This seems to indicate that doer (S1) is a P and planner (S2) is J. It doesn't match with what I had figured earlier. That P is S2 and J is S1.

Mental accounting matters precisely because the accounts are treated as nonfungible. True, the mason jars used by Dustin Hoffman (and his parents’ generation) have largely disappeared. But many households continue to designate accounts for various uses: children’s education, vacations, retirement, and so forth. In many cases these are literally different accounts, as opposed to entries in a ledger. The sanctity of these accounts can lead to seemingly bizarre behavior, such as simultaneously borrowing and lending at very different rates. David Gross and Nick Souleles (2002) found that the typical household in their sample had more than $5,000 in liquid assets (typically in savings accounts earning less than 5 percent a year) and nearly $3,000 in credit card balances, carrying a typical interest rate of 18 percent or more. 

The academic effort of college students is influenced by their peers, so much so that the random assignments of first-year students to dormitories or roommates can have big consequences for their grades and hence on their future prospects. (Maybe parents should worry less about which college their kids go to and more about which roommate they get.)

It is almost as if people can be nudged into identifying a picture of a dog as a cat as long as other people before them have done so. Why, exactly, do people sometimes ignore the evidence of their own senses? We have already sketched the two answers. The first involves the information conveyed by people’s answers; the second involves peer pressure and the desire not to face the disapproval of the group. ..Remarkably, recent brain-imaging work has suggested that when people conform in Asch-like settings, they actually see the situation as everyone else does... Sometimes people will go along with the group even when they think, or know, that everyone else has blundered. Unanimous groups are able to provide the strongest nudges—even when the question is an easy one, and people ought to know that everyone else is wrong 

There is an important clue here about how seemingly similar groups, cities, and even nations can converge on very different beliefs and actions simply because of modest and even arbitrary variations in starting points...The clear lesson here is that consistent and unwavering people, in the private or public sector, can move groups and practices in their preferred direction...More remarkable still, the group’s judgments became thoroughly internalized, so that people would adhere to them even when reporting on their own...In a series of experiments, people using Sherif’s basic method have shown that an arbitrary “tradition,” in the form of some judgment about the distance, can become entrenched over time, so that many people follow it notwithstanding its original arbitrariness.

 All this tradition and nudge is about S1 at work, not S2.

An important problem here is “pluralistic ignorance”—that is, ignorance, on the part of all or most, about what other people think. We may follow a practice or a tradition not because we like it, or even think it defensible, but merely because we think that most other people like it. Many social practices persist for this reason, and a small shock, or nudge, can dislodge them. 

The moral is that people are paying less attention to you than you believe. If you have a stain on your shirt, don’t worry, they probably won’t notice. But in part because people do think that everyone has their eyes fixed on them, they conform to what they think people expect. 

Most strikingly, the success of songs was quite unpredictable, and the songs that did well or poorly in the control group, where people did not see other people’s judgments, could perform very differently in the “social influence worlds.” In those worlds, most songs could become popular or unpopular, with much depending on the choices of the first downloaders. The identical songcould be a hit or a failure simply because other people, at the start, were seen to choose to have downloaded it or not.

Small interventions and even coincidences, at a key stage, can produce large variations in the outcome. Today’s hot singer is probably indistinguishable from dozens and even hundreds of equally talented performers whose names you’ve never heard. We can go further. Most of today’s governors are hard to distinguish from dozens or even hundreds of politicians whose candidacies badly fizzled. 

A few weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Kerry’s campaign seemed dead, but then he unexpectedly won Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then primary after primary. How did this happen? . . . When everyoneis looking to someone else for an opinion—trying, for example, to pick the Democratic candidate they think everyone else will pick—it’s possible that whatever information other people might have gets lost, and instead we get a cascade of imitation that, like a stampeding herd, can start for no apparent reason and subsequently go in any direction with equal likelihood. . . . We think of ourselves as autonomous individuals, each driven by our internal abilities and desires and therefore solely responsible for our own behavior, particularly when it comes to voting. No voter ever admits—even to herself—that she chose Kerry because he won New Hampshire.

This example shows absence of free-will.

If you want to nudge people into socially desirable behavior, do not, by any means, let them know that their current actions are better than the social norm.

When they were merely told that their energy use was below average, they felt that they had some “room” to increase consumption, but when the informational message was combined with an emotional nudge, they didn’t adjust their use upward. 

Priming refers to the somewhat mysterious workings of the Automatic System of the brain. Research shows that subtle influences can increase the ease with which certain information comes to mind.

But social scientists have discovered an odd fact: when they measure people’s intentions, they affect people’s conduct. 

It turns out that if you ask people, the day before the election, whether they intend to vote, you can increase the probability of their voting by as much as 25 percent! 

Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee. This, too, happens quite unconsciously. The three social influences that we have emphasized—information, peer pressure, and priming—can easily be enlisted by private and public nudgers. As we will see, both business and governments can use the power of social influence to promote many good (and bad) causes.

people will need nudges for decisions that are difficult and rare, for which they do not get prompt feedback, and when they have trouble translating aspects of the situation into terms that they can easily understand. 

Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time. 

 Wowowow.

Unfortunately, some of life’s most important decisions do not come with many opportunities to practice. Most students choose a college only once. Outside of Hollywood, most of us choose a spouse, well, not more than two or three times. Few of us get to try many different careers...Generally, the higher the stakes, the less often we are able to practice.

Suppose instead you were putting the golf balls but not getting to see where they were going. In that environment, you could putt all day and never get any better. Alas, many of life’s choices are like practicing putting without being able to see where the balls end up, and for one simple reason: the situation is not structured to provide good feedback. For example, we usually get feedback only on the options we select, not the ones we reject. 

Two of the best restaurants in Chicago (Alinea and Charlie Trotter’s) give their diners the fewest choices. At Alinea diners just decide whether they want fifteen very small plates or twenty-five tiny ones. At Charlie Trotter’s, the diner is asked only whether to limit the dining to vegetables or not. (In both, one is asked about dietary restrictions and allergies.) The benefit of having so little choice is that the chef is authorized to cook you things you would never have thought to order. 

WOWOWOW

Take the problem of choosing a mutual fund for your retirement portfolio.  What an investor needs to know is how a choice between those funds affects her spending power during retirement under various scenarios—something even an expert armed with a good software package and complete knowledge of the portfolios held by each fund can have trouble analyzing. 

For irrational consumers to be protected there has to be competition... Consider the case of extended warranties on small appliances, typically a bad deal for consumers. To take a specific hypothetical example, suppose that a cell phone costs two hundred dollars. The cell phone has a free warranty for the first year, but the cell phone company offers, for twenty dollars, an extended warranty for the second year of the phone’s life. After that the consumer plans to buy a new phone. Suppose that the chance that the phone will break during the second year is 1 percent, so on average consumers will get two dollars’ worth of benefits from having this policy—but the price of the extended warranty is twenty dollars in order to include a normal profit to the insurer and a kickback (er, commission) to the salesperson at the cell phone store... If consumers have a less than fully rational belief, firms often have more incentive to cater to that belief than to eradicate it.

Flat plates [on doors] say “push me” and big handles say “pull me,” so don’t expect people to push big handles! 

My pill(s) every morning, when I wake up.” Taking the pill becomes a habit, and habits are controlled by the Automatic System.

One strategy to use is what Amos Tversky (1972) called “elimination by aspects.” Someone using this strategy first decides what aspect is most important (say, commuting distance), establishes a cutoff level (say, no more than a thirty-minute commute), then eliminates all the alternatives that do not come up to this standard. The process is repeated, attribute by attribute (no more than $1,500 per month; at least two bedrooms; dogs permitted), until either a choice is made or the set is narrowed down enough to switch over to a compensatory evaluation of the “finalists.” When people are using a simplifying strategy of this kind, alternatives that do not meet the minimum cutoff scores may be eliminated even if they are fabulous on all other dimensions. So, for example, an apartment that is a thirty-five-minute commute will not be considered even if it has a dynamite view and costs two hundred dollars a month less than any of the alternatives.

Customers looking for a movie to rent [on Netflix] can easily search movies by actor, director, genre, and more, and if they rate the movies they have watched, they can also get recommendations based on the preferences of other movie lovers with similar tastes, a method called “collaborative filtering.”...Collaborative filtering is an effort to solve a problem of choice architecture. If you know what people like you tend to like, you might well be comfortable in selecting products you don’t know, because people like you tend to like them.

Structuring choice sometimes means helping people to learn, so they can later make better choices on their own. 

Suppose in this light that government wants to increase energy conservation. Increases in the price of electricity will surely have an effect; making the increases salient will have a greater effect. Cost-disclosing thermostats might have a greater impact than (modest) price increases designed to decrease use of electricity.

Your Social Security check depends on the amount you have paid in taxes and the number of years you have worked. The payouts are even adjusted for inflation, so you know exactly what you will be paid (unless Congress changes its mind, as it is entitled to do; the Constitution does not protect your right to Social Security benefits).

For what it is worth, many employees say that they “should” be saving more. In one study, 68 percent of 401(k) participants said that their savings rate is “too low,” 31 percent said that their savings rate is “about right,” and only 1 percent said their savings rate is “too high.” Economists tend to belittle such statements, and partly for good reason. It is easy to say that you “should” be doing many good things—dieting, exercising, spending more time with your children—and people’s actions may tell us more than their words. After all, few of the participants who say they should be saving more make any changes in their behavior. But such statements are not meaningless or random. Many people announce an intention to eat less and exercise more next year, but few say they hope to smoke more next year or watch more sitcom reruns. We interpret the statement “I should be saving (or dieting, or exercising) more” to imply that people would be open to strategies that would help them achieve these goals. In other words, they are open to a nudge. They might even be grateful for one.

Wow. Very nicely put. The author has differentiated between a nice-to-achieve-goal and a non-goal.

One study finds that the more options in the plan, the lower the participation rates.10 This finding should not be surprising. With more options, the process becomes more confusing and difficult, and some people will refuse to choose at all.

The following is an amazingly cute description of our preference to diverisfy:

Naïve diversification apparently starts young. Consider the following clever experiment conducted by Daniel Read and George Loewenstein on Halloween night. The “subjects” were trick-or-treaters. In one condition, the children approached two adjacent houses and were offered a choice between the same two candy bars (Three Musketeers and Milky Way) at each house. In the other condition, they approached a single house, where they were asked to “choose whichever two candy bars you like.” Large piles of both candies were displayed to ensure that the children would not think it was rude to take two of the same. The two conditions produced quite different results. In the house with both kinds of candy, every child selected one of each candy. In contrast, only 48 percent of the children picked one of each candy when they were choosing in sequence in two houses.

In a revealing study, university employees were asked how they would invest their retirement money if they had just two funds to choose from.5 In one condition, one of the funds invested entirely in stocks, the other in bonds. Most of the participants chose to invest their money half and half, achieving an asset allocation of 50 percent stocks. Another group was told that one fund invested entirely in stocks and the other “balanced” fund invested half in stocks and half in bonds. People in this group could have also have invested 50 percent of their money in stocks by putting all their money in the balanced fund. Instead, they followed the 1/n rule and divided their money evenly between the two funds—ending up with mostly stocks. People in a third group were given a choice between a balanced fund and a bond fund. Well, you can guess what they did.

They found that the more stock funds the plan offered, the greater was the percentage of participants’ money invested in stocks.

The above seems to contradict the authors' own belief that when Humans were given more options they get more confused and avoid choosing.

individual investors tend to be trend followers, rather than good forecasters, in their asset-allocation decisions...The more choices you give people, the more help you need to provide.

Framing matters: people are more likely to engage in self-examinations for skin and breast cancer if they are told not about the reduced risk if they do so but about the increased risk if they fail to do so. 

McFadden’s team members gave seniors a break. They tried to give them a reasonable chance of making a good choice. Seniors didn’t have to worry about pharmacy networks and prior authorization. They were offered only four options. To make the choice even easier, a person’s particular economic circumstances were also thrown out the window. The four plans offered were worth the same amount of money. They differed only in the level of protection provided as drug bills rose. Even in this simplified environment, a high percentage of seniors made poor choices among the four available plans, because they failed to connect their choices to their actual health, prescription use, and attitude toward risk. In all, nearly two-thirds of enrollees failed to choose the plan that minimized their out-of-pocket costs.

Suppose that each of us needs a kidney, and each has a sibling who is willing to donate but does not have the same blood type (which is essential). If Sunstein’s sister was a match for Thaler and Thaler’s brother was a match for Sunstein, then a trade could be set up. Much work is now being done in an effort to orchestrate such matches, using techniques similar to those we discuss below involving school choice. A question to ponder: Why is it socially acceptable for Sunstein and Thaler to arrange this trade but unacceptable for Sunstein to offer to buy Thaler’s brother a new car in exchange for his kidney?

Using an online survey, the researchers asked people, in different ways, whether they would be willing to be donors. In the explicit consent condition, participants were told that they had just moved to a new state where the default was not to be an organ donor, and they were given the option of confirming or changing that status. In the presumed consent version, the wording was identical but the default was to be a donor. In the third, neutral, condition, there was no mention of a default—they just had to choose. Under all three conditions, the response was entered literally with one click. As you will now expect, the default mattered—a lot. When participants had to opt in to being an organ donor, only 42 percent did so. But when they had to opt out, 82 percent agreed to be donors. Surprisingly, almost as many people (79 percent) agreed to be donors in the neutral condition

Recall that people like to do what most people think it is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do. 

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Richard Thaler's book (Nudges) make an interesting comparison. The former imagines human beings being Econs with enormous thinking power and restraint while Thaler assumes human beings are largely Humans. And Thaler is "righter" than Rand! I shudder to think of Ayn Rand's response when she is told that different default options result in different behaviors or different choices being taken. No wonder she didn't get any (Nobel) prize. Her notions were more theoretical - meant for Econs and kinda unfit for Human consumption. And we know Econs are fictitious beings.

This unanticipated consequence suggested that all by themselves, disclosure requirements might be able to produce significant emissions reductions... In 1998 Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards that had to be displayed in restaurant windows. The researchers found that the grade cards caused the restaurant health inspection scores to improve, consumers’ sensitivity to hygiene in restaurants to increase, and hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses to decrease.

The rate you pay depends on the deductible you choose. If you elect a small deductible, such as one hundred dollars, you will pay a much higher rate than if you pick a large deductible, such as one thousand dollars. (Hint: always take the largest deductible you can. It will save you a lot of money over the long run.)

This is interesting. That a high deductible policy is better. 

For the moment, just notice that it isn’t always to your advantage to be forced to buy the right to sue. Suppose, for example, that people had the right to sue their hairdressers if a haircut went badly wrong, and that the cost of this insurance raised the price of haircuts by $50 after someone who had received a particularly gruesome haircut won a $17 million judgment. Would you be interested in saving $50 per haircut to give up the right to sue if you got a bad one? 

One factor that influences a patient’s decision to sue is whether the doctor apologized for the mishap and admitted fault. If an apology prevents a lawsuit, then the deterrent effect of the right to sue is further reduced. 

Marital stability is usually good for children (though children can also benefit from the end of a bad marriage). 

Most of the ideas in the book Nudge are about utilizing the behavior of S1. 

Many of the examples and thoughts of Thaler and Kahnemann seem so alike. pg within pdf 216 now.

Books recommended by authors:

• The Design of Everyday Things - wonderful book by Don Norman.

Additional reading:

• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/s1-and-s2-daniel-kahnemann-my-examples.html
• http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/6Coj6nxDsXMQbIMeWQYrQK/Why-Thalers-Nobel-means-a-win-for-consumers.html

Statistics And Conclusions

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/10/27/560268250/does-smoking-pot-lead-to-more-sex - this is an interesting article that seems to conclude that men and women have more sex when they use pot than when they don't. And women have more sex than men. See quote below:

Women who consumed marijuana daily had sex 7.1 times a month, on average; for men, it was 6.9 times. Women who didn't use marijuana at all had sex 6 times a month, on average, while men who didn't use marijuana had sex an average of 5.6 times a month. 

Do the stats above mean that there were fewer women than men but each having a little more sex than men? 7.1 against 6.9 and and 6 against 5.6? Or were bisexuals included? Assuming there are equal men and women,  wouldn't the number of times each gender had sex be equal. Initially I thought maybe women who had weed had sex also with men who didn't have weed while men who had weed had sex only with women who had weed. That would explain 7.1 and 6.9. In which case how is it that men who didn't have weed had lesser sex than women who didn't have weed? 

Another quote from the article.

In other words, it seems that people who like to smoke weed may have other character traits that lead them to be lustier. Or maybe it really is the weed. "It's possible it makes men or women more interested in sex," Eisenberg says. In one study, researchers found they were able to induce sexual behavior by injecting a cannabinoid, the class of psychoactive compounds in marijuana, into rats. But people aren't rats, of course.

My Examples - S1 and S2 - Daniel Kahnemann

In this post I will list various examples which indicate S1 or S2 at work.

1. In the first ten minutes of the movie  Sully, we are shown how the captain of a passenger aircraft, with 150+ people on board, whose engines cease to function because of bird hit - how he makes a swift decision within a couple of minutes to not go to back to the airport just 7 miles away - rather to land on Hudson river. Subsequent analysis proved his decision to be extraordinary and right. Did he do a detailed analysis through S2 or a quick S1 decision? I believe it's the latter.
2. Having seen Sully's S1 we now go to the movie "National Treasure" where the hero Nicholas Cage tries to guess the heroine's (Diane Kruger)  password. He lifts her fingerprints from the keyword and gets the keys / letters AEFGLORVY which he communicates to his friend who is elsewhere on a computer. The friend tries various combinations to crack the anagram on the computer (use of S2). The hero rejects all the suggestions. The hero cracks it finally on his own  - "Valley Forge" which actually has an extra E and an extra L.  His S1 makes the right associations,  includes an extra E and L which were not part of the original anagram which he himself had lifted from the keyboard. The causal story (specific instances of the story, in this case the heroine's love for American history), often deprecated by Kahnemann, was instrumental in the hero cracking the anagram. I am not saying Kahnemann was wrong. But this post is about our use of S1 and S2 in various circumstances. 
3. Next, I am reminded of 2 friends who were surprised that I did not think through different ways of packaging a message and that I happened to just say things without understanding who I was talking to. Each of the two friends independently told me that they would mentally run through different options before actually communicating a (verbal) message. They were using S2. Like many others, I do not use S2 much while communicating.
4. Going on to a different example, many people think carefully about what to wear for an occasion. Most people, especially women will appreciate this and I will not go into how people think through various options before finally deciding. Now many people I know just pick up something from the wardrobe and get it done with. The former are using S2, the latter do not.
5. Next example: Couple of friends of mine got annoyed with my tendency to work out difficult Sudokus or play Dumb Charades with brute force (meaning with s2 without the elegance of S1). Both were independently disgusted with my way.  One of them would do Sudoku only when she was stressed and automatically assumed I was stressed when I did Sudoku.  I do Sudoku for pleasure. The other friend would only solve (mime) dumb charades through S1 association of ideas - not laboriously by breaking down long words into smaller bits and then solving the smaller bits one by one. It had to have elegance. Both friends felt that the use of S2 for frivolous puzzle solving was weird. They (P people) would use S2 for more social things where the return is tangible. The different ways that T and P people use S2 is fascinating. 

I will now mention a quote attributed to Eibstein - "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift while the rational mind is a faithful servant. "

Additional reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/on-s1-and-s2-daniel-kahnemanns-thinking.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/freewill-contd.html
3. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/define-freewil.html
4. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html

Autism - On S1 And S2... (DK's Thinking Fast And Slow)

Continuing from my earlier posts http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html and http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/freewill-contd.html..

I was reading an article on robotics,  how robots are taught to pick things up and if they cant do that,  then its over. Failed. Meaning the ability to pick up things is the first thing a robot needs to learn.

I thought of learning new things. How easily it comes to some people and how difficult it is for others.

And how especially difficult it is for autistic people. My belief is such people are very strong J (as in MBTI) having very little OPENNESS (as in 5 factor theory). Now what is the cause for such learning disability?

I guess learning new things needs a part of the brain which needs openness to exist. Is openness in s1 or s2? I don't know. Little children learn very fast and they largely have S1. S2 comes later in life. Is it then an S1 issue that causes autism?  Not learning new things, doing the same things over and over, remaining in one's comfort zone (a very narrow zone). All these are because of an inherent learning disability? 

I need to check whether autistic people are ever P or what % are P? I suspect autistic people are strong J's.

Freewill ... Contd

Continuing from my earlier post on freewill http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/define-freewil.html.

Quote from Thinking Fast and Small by Daniel Kahnemann.

System 2 works on data that is retrieved from memory, in an automatic and involuntary operation of System 1. System 2 is therefore susceptible to the biasing influence of anchors that make some information easier to retrieve. Furthermore S2 (short for System 2) has no control over the effect and no knowledge of it.

A couple of days back my cousin had come over and brought a cake. She came with her twins. The girl had many teeth missing and I was teasing her. 

My cousin said that her daughter had participated in some drama about Ravana and that there was Surpanaka in the drama. I said maybe her daughter cut Surpanaka's nose who in turn pulled her daughter's teeth out.  My cousin burst out laughing. 

Now

What is humor?  It is making an association that is unexpected and funny. Or playing with words.

How does the association happen? From S2? Definitely not. You don't hear or see something and then wait for something funny to say - in which case it might take minutes or hours. 

The funny thing has to come out immediately from S1. Suppose I had called my cousin later in the evening and told her "Remember you told me about your daughter,  Ravana,  Surpanaka..... Pulled her teeth out. ". Would that have been funny then?

Even a sense of humor is from S1. I am predicting it exists in N or F people only.  Consequently STJ people are likely to have the least sense of humor.

Now is S2 (short for System 2) the same as free will?  No, S2 is just a computational engine. it relies on S1 for data. And. as we saw in the quote earlier, S1 supplies data based on its own preference and not always fairly and correctly. 

Who invokes S2? S1 yes.. Anyone else?  I don't know yet.

S2 creates output after processing and this output sometimes is stored within S1. Hence subsequent S1 responses are to some extent affected by S2. But S2 itself is invoked only or largely by S1. 

Where is freewill then? We have assumed that freewill does not reside in S1 since S1 is about intuitive and automatic reactions. When automatic subconscious reactions (Subconscious thought or emotion or whatever = STEM) determine our behavior, which we are not even aware of, we are not operating under freewill. S2 on the other hand is like a program - that computes and uses logic and hence time consuming and predictable. If something is very predictable - for example the software that we run on a computer produces the same output given the same input - would we say it has freewill? Would we say a computer program has freewill? 

If something is very consistent and predictable, then the thing's output is always predetermined. The output can be known if the input is known (and of course the nature of the organism or software is a known one). 

What is the definition of freewill then?
Something that is not consistent. And something that is not guided by STEW. What is it?

In a lighter vein,  freewill resides only where logical thinking is absent - the feminine people.

Roman Urdu - English Dictionary

My vocabulary in most languages is pretty low. Urdu is a language I love. And it was painful not understanding dialogs in movies. So I started this post a couple of years back. Every time I came across a word that I didn't know I would add it here along with the meaning and a hyperlink to where I got the meaning from. I should say it was a sweet exercise. 
While native speakers of Hindi, Urdu would find most of these words to be rather elementary, it was not so for me. As I mentioned my vocabulary in vernacular languages is abysmally low.

https://urduwallahs.wordpress.com: This seems especially good.

I got an online "Roman Urdu" - English dictionary here and here

Meanings of some words (mostly Urdu):

1. Aabroo: Honor, Fame, Dignity
2. Aab E Haayat: Fountain of life
3. Aahat: A feeling of someone or something  is close by when usually when one is alone, Approach, Sound. Noise
4. Aarop: Accusation
5. Aarzoo: Desire
6. Aas: Desire, Faith, Hope
7. Aafat: Evil, Disaster, Misfortune
8. Aamdani: Faaida, Profit
9. Aaqil: Intellectual, Wise, Discerning
10. Aarakshan: Reservation
11. Aashiaana: Home, Shelter
12. Aazmaana: Prove, Tempt, Test, Try
13. Abhari: Obliged
14. Ada: Style
15. Albeli: Charming Young Woman
16. Alfaaz: Words
17. Anokhi: Extraordinary
18. Anushaasan: Discipline
19. Afsaana: Fiction, Romance
20. Afzal: Superior
21. Ahl-e-siyaasat: Politician
22. Ahtaraq: To light up, inflame something
23. Alhamdulillah: Praise be to Allah 
24. Ahmaq: Fool, madman
25. Ahmiyat: Importance
26. Akdu: Stubborn
27. Alfaaz: Exotic
28. Amantran: Informal Invitation
29. Anivarya: Unavoidable, Compulsory
30. Anushaasan: Discipline as in which discipline
31. Aib: Culturally inappropriate
32. Ajooba: Miracle
33. Akad as in Akad ko: Putting on air, Fastidious
34. Amaanat: Something precious given to a person for safe keeping
35. Anhonee: Impossible (Honee: Possible)
36. Apaahij: Incapacitated or disabled person as Sanjay Dutt was in Saajan, handicapped person
37. Arj: Esteem
38. Ashk or Ashq: Tears
39. Astitva: Identity
40. Atal: Unswerving, Adamant, Consistent
41. Ayadat: To go to meet someone when they are facing troubling times
42. Ayat: Sign, Clue, Proof, Holy verse
43. Ayyash: Debauchery
44. Baaghbaan: Gardener
45. Baariki: Close
46. Badaulat: By the grace of, Through
47. Badchalan: Ill mannered, immoral
48. Badgumaani: Not having good thoughts about another person
49. Bahumat: Majority (as in election) 
50. Bajaaye: Instead
51. Balma: Lover
52. Bataur: As a 
53. Behnoi: Sister's husband
54. Behuda: Frivolous
55. Bebas: Helpless
56. Beghairat: Without esteem or honor or empathy or Shameless
57. Bekas: Friendless, Lonely
58. Bekhudi: State of being hopelessly in love, forgetting other things, senselessness
59. Bemisaal, Apoorv, Anokha: Unprecedented (or unsurpassed)
60. Berahm: Merciless
61. Berukhi: Callousness, aloofness caused by anger, indifference
62. Betaab: Impatient
63. Bewas: Beware
64. Bewasi: Not in one's control
65. Bhatak: To wander in search of something
66. Bheja: Brain
67. Bikhra: Scattered
68. Chaman: Garden
69. Chand: Some (as in few)
70. Chataee: Mat, Paai (Tamil)
71. Chetavani: Warning, Admonition
72. Chhutkaara: Relief, Exemption, Acquittal, Disengagement
73. Chipkali: Lizard
74. Chunauti: Challenge
75. Churail: Witch or female ghost
76. Daagabaaz: Someone who betrays,  Daaga means to betray
77. Daakhil: Enter (as in enter data)
78. Daaman: Skirt
79. Daaroga: Inspector, Superintendent, Governor
80. Darasal: Actually, In fact
81. Darj Karaana: Enter same as Daakhil
82. Darkhwaast: Request, Appeal
83. Darmiyaan: In the middle of
84. Dastak: Knock
85. Dastaras (mein aa jaaye): At hand
86. Dastur: Law (as practiced not theory)
87. Dayaar: Placehttps://urduwallahs.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/habib-raqeeb/
88. Dauraan: During the course of discussion
89. Deedaar: Pleasure of seeing someone, glimpse
90. Dhong: Pretense, Hypocrisy
91. Dilnawaaz: Attractive, Beloved, Mistress
92. Dushwaar: Difficult
93. Faasle: Distance
94. Fakr: Pride (as in Mujhe fakr hai)
95. Falak: Sky
96. Faaqa: State of living without food
97. Faraar: Absconding
98. Fareb: Deceit, Fraud
99. Farig: Free, not busy
100. Farishta: Messenger of God
101. Fariyaad: Plead, Shout, Scream, Request, Complain
102. Fasaana: Tale, Romance, Afsaana
103. Fitrat: Nature as in behavior
104. Fitur: Madness or obsession
105. Fiza: Atmosphere
106. Furqat: Separation (as in Teri furqat ne pareeshaan kiya mujh ko in the song Mere Mehboob)
107. Gadar: Upsurge or Rebellion
108. Gagan: Sky as in Neele Gagan Ke Tale
109. Gaigar: Self-respect, Honor, Shame
110. Gesu: Hair, Strand, Tress
111. Ghan Chakkar: Person with a fickle mind, Crazy person
112. Ghatak: Lethal
113. Girah: Knot
114. Gulfaam: Rose color, Rose like, Metaphorically a mistress
115. Gulshan: Flower, rose garden
116. Gumaan: Pride, Feeling of love
117. Gumshuda: Lost person
118. Guzarish: Request
119. Gumraah: To pervert or distort
120. Guroor: Pride
122. Habeeb: Lover
123. Hallaat o Waqiaat: Circumstances
124. Hairaan: Confused, Amazed
125. Hairat: Surprised, Amazed, Astonished
126. Hakim: Doctor
127. Haraam: religiously prohibited
128. Hasrat: Unfulfilled desire or wish
129. Havaadis: Misfortune
130. Hawas: Lust, Desire
131. Hosla: Courage, Spirit
132. Humdum: Partner in a journey, soulmate, conformity or like mindedness
133. Humnawaaz: Friend
134. Ibadaat: Worship, Devotion to God, Penance
135. Inaayat: Kindness, Obligation, Favor
136. Inteqaal: Means dead. But in literal sense, inteqaal is to get transferred. From Islamic perspective, it means transferred to hereafter
137. Inteqaam: Revenge
138. Iqbal: Blessed or Fortunate
139. Iqraar: Pledge, Promise, Confess
140. Iqtiaar: Haq, Right
141. Izhaar karna: To express
142. Iztiraab: Painful anxiety, anguish, trouble, tortured/agitated
143. Jaahil: Ignorant person or disbeliever (of Islam) - see usage here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-review-of-Jolly-LLB-2-2017-movie
144. Jaanib: Taraf, Towards
145. Jaagrukta: Sensitization
146. Jalwa: Charisma/ Lustre/ Splendor 
147. Jasbaat: Emotions (Jasbaati: Emotional)
148. Jashn: Feast, Celebration
149. Jehd-e-Musalsal: Continuous effort
150. Jigar: Kind Hearted, symbolizing love and affection, Liver
151. Jugaad: Innovative fix or a nice workaround
152. Jugnu: Glow worm
153. Junooniyat: Obsession
154. Justajoo: Connection, Curiosity, Desire to achieve something
155. Kaarnama: Miracle
156. Kaayar: Coward
157. Kaifiyat: Explanation
158. Kajra: A woman with kaajal
159. Kambakht: Damned, Cursed
160. Kankar: Pebble
161. Kaleja: Heart, Liver - Metaphorically Courage
162. Karishma: Miracle
163. Kasak: Continous pain
164. Kasauti: A stone to determine purity of gold, An ordeal
165. Kashish: Sensation, Reflection, Emotion
166. Kashmakash: Dilemma
167. Kathhai: Brown, (Absolutely? As in kathhai pasand nahi)
168. Khaalish: Unease
169. Khafa: Displeased, Angry
170. Khairiyat: Well, fine as in Everything is well, I am fine
171. Khanjar: Knife
172. Khaleja: Liver - Metaphorically: Courage, Spirit
173. Khata: Mistake, Slip, Oversight (as in Huzoor kya Khata hui)
174. Khauf: Fear
175. Khidmat: Service
176. Khokla: Empty
177. Khuddar: Self respecting
178. Khud Numaayi: Ostentation
179. Kirdaar: Role
180. Kosna: Damn
181. Kukkad: New target (as in murga)
182. Laalach: Greed
183. Laachaar: forlorn = pitiful
184. Laanat: Shame
185. Laazim: Necessary,  Compulsory,  Important
186. Lakeer: Line
187. Lalkaariye Mat: Do not challenge
188. Lehsaan: Garlic
189. Lihaaz: Regard, Consideration, Respect
190. Maajra: Incident, Condition
191. Maansik Tanaav: Tension, Psychosomatic disorders 
192. Maayoos: Despondent
193. Maazrat (Ke Saath): With Apology
194. Madbhari: Heady as in heady breeze (Madbhari yeh Hawaayein)
195. Majaal: Strength, Power
196. Mansooba: Iraada=Intent
197. Maqaam: Place, Location, spiritual stages
198. Masla: Problem, Complication
199. Masroof: Busy, The root word is “srf” which means spending or consuming. So In Arabic Masroof means: 1) something that is/has been/to be spent 2) someone busy i.e a person’s energy and time is being spent in something
200. Mauj: Waves of a sea, wave, surge, enjoyment
201. Mazhab: Doctrine, Faith, Religion
202. Mazloom: Victim, Downtrodden
203. Mehfoos: Safe, Secure
204. Misaal Dena: To give an example, To compare
205. Mithhaas: Sweetness
206. Mohtaj: Wanting, Lacking
207. Muddat: Long time
208. Mukammal: Complete, Finish
209. Mulzim: Accused
210. Mujahida: This word has been maligned severely since it comes from root JHD, which reads jihad. It means facing hardships to progress spiritually. However, more commonly, it is used to refer to state of hardships in general
211. Munaseeb: Appropriate
212. Muqammal: Unblemished
213. Muqtasar: BriefMusht-e-gubaar: A handful of dust
214. Naajaayaz: Illegitimate
215. Nafas/Nafs: Comes from Arabic and denotes self. Also used colloquially in Hindi as nabz/nafs to refer to heartbeat. However, the original term popular in Urdu is pretty complicated and is spirit of life
216. Nafsiyati: People who love everyone, Psychotic
217. Namuna: Specimen, Sample
218. Nargis: Beautiful white flower, sweet and soft
219. Nasihat: Edification
220. Nau Do Gyara Ho Jaana: To run away from a scene
221. Nawaasi: Resident, Granddaughter
222. Nauj: Seek protection or preservation
223. Nawaaza: Prince, Kind, Generous
224. Nawaazi: Hospitality
225. Nawaazish: Thanks
226. Nazaaqat: Nice, Softness, Delicacy, Neatness
227. Nazar Andaaz: Ignore
228. Nazraana: Fine (penalty) or a forced contribution
229. Nehooda: Crass, Course, Indecent, Stupid
230. Nek: Good Natured
231. Nichaawar: Shower (as in Nichaawar karna = shower you with)
232. Nichorna: Squeeze
233. Nigaahen: Eyes
234. Nimantran: Formal Invitation
235. Nisaar: Submit, Sacrifice
236. Nishpaksh: Impartial
237. Niyat: Intention, Purpose, Will
238. Nochna: Scratch
239. Numaaish: Exhibition, Fair, Pretentious
240. Osool: Doctrine, Principle, Essentials
241. Paighaam: Advice, Message, News
242. Paleet: Soiled or likely to soil with dirt or grime; "dirty unswept sidewalks"; "a child in dirty overalls"; "dirty slums"; "piles of dirty dishes";
243. Palkhein: Eyes, eyelashes (as in jhuki palkhein)
244. Palkon: Eyelids
245. Panoti: Difficulty, bad omen, disgrace
246. Parakh: Test
247. Pari: Fairy
248. Parinda: Bird
249. Paryaavaran: Environment
250. Pehar (as in Is Peher): At this HOUR
251. Pehlu: Side or shadow
252. Prakratik: Natural or Innate
253. Prashasan: Administration
254. Prashansha: Compliment
255. Pratibandh: Committed, Restraint, Forced
256. Prerna: Inspiration, Stimulation
257. Qaatil: KillerQaraar: Peace
258. Qaayam: Subsist, Dwell
259. Raahein, Raahon (Raah: singular): Paths
260. Rafa Dafa Karna: To get rid of something
261. Ran Neeti: Strategy
262. Rasiya: A man of emotions - pleasure seeker
263. Raqeeb: Rival in love
264. Rawaaiyaan: Attitude, Stance, Behavior
265. Riqqat: (Almost) beg softly
266. Riyaasat: Estate
267. Rochak as in Rochak aadmi: Interesting
268. Rongte Khare Hona: Goosebumps
269. Rukhsat: Same as Ijazat, Permission, leave, indulgence
270. Saahil: Beach, Coast
271. Saangdil: Merciless, Zaalim
272. Sahaafat: Journalism or press
273. Sailaab: Flood
274. Sajjan: Good person
275. Samet: Rolling up, Gathering together
276. Sarfarosh (also here): Revolution, fearless, traders of head
277. Saaya: Shadow
278. Samarthan: Support
279. Sammedhhaan: Constitution
280. Sarguzasht: Autobiography
281. Saudaagar: Merchant or trader
282. Seerat: Inner beauty, Quality, Nature, Disposition
283. Sehra: Shore (Desert?), "a poem sung at a nikah (Muslim wedding) in praise of the groom, praying to God for his future wedded life. Sehra (headdress), a headdress worn by the groom during Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi weddings."
284. Shab Bakhair: Good Night
285. Shabaab: Youth, Jawaani
286. Shabe Intezaar: Night of waiting
287. Shaita: Polite
288. Shaulat: Power, Dignity
289. Sheen: Beautiful, good
290. Sheetal: Cool
291. Shiddat: Intensity
292. Shistachaar: Etiquette
293. Siyasat: Politics 
294. Siaasat e Madani: Politics of a city or state
295. Siddhaant: Canon, Theory, Dogma, Philosophy
296. Sirphire: Mad
297. Taalim: Nurture, Educate
298. Tabaahi: Disaster / Destruction
299. Tabdeeli: Change, Translation
300. Tabela as in Tabela Banna: Stable
301. Tajurba: Experience
302. Tale: Beneath as in Neele Gagan Ke Tale
303. Takalluf: Ceremonious, Formal
304. Tanqeed (as in Tanqeed nahi karte): Criticism
305. Taraana: Harmony, Symphony, a kind of song
306. Taras: Pity
307. Tarqueeb: Solution, Plan, Method
308. Tasleem: Submission, Salutation
309. Tauheen: Disgrace, Dishonor
310. Tehzeeb: Good in something, Well mannered, Humble
311. Thoom: Garlic sauce
312. Vidhaata: God
313. Viraasat: Legacy, InheritanceUjad gaya: Ruined
314. Ukhaad: Dislocate
315. Ulfat: Love, affection
316. Unsiyyat: Acceptance or state of neutrality or mild acquaintance
317. Upaasana: Worship, Devotion
318. Uttejit: http://dict.hinkhoj.com/उत्तेजित-meaning-in-english.words
319. Vaardaat: Instance
320. Vipul: Plenteous
321. Viraasat: Inheritance
322. Waadiyaan: Valleys
323. Wahdut al wajood: Unity of being
324. Wajood: Existence
325. Waqif: To be aware, familiar
326. Watan: Country (a patriotic word)
327. Zaalim: Cruel, Sangdil
328. Zaahir: Visible, Present, Fact, (Someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else.), (Zaahir si baar means Obvious)
329. Zameer: Mind, Heart, Thought
330. Zariye: By way of, equivalent words in Hindi: Dwaara / Madhyam se
331. Zehen: Acumen, Wit, Sagacity, Memory
332. Zehmat: Inconvenience / Trouble
333. Zehreela: Poisonous
334. Zikr: Memory, Reminder

Additional reading:

1. https://rekhta.org/ghazals/gulshan-ko-bahaaron-ne-is-tarah-navaazaa-hai-saghar-azmi-ghazals
2. Different colors: https://urduwallahs.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/colours-in-urdu/