Define Freewil

Free will is the ability to take a decision without being coerced by other parties. For example if I am doing recruitment, I do not have freewill if I am forced to select / reject a candidate by someone else (say,  X). That X is overriding my free or independence assessment.

Taking this analogy further.. What is free will within me?

If I am able to make a decision - it doesn't matter if the decision is right or wrong,  good or bad - so long as I am able to make an independent decision I have freewill. Now if subconscious thoughts or emotions or whatever (STEW or what Daniel Kahnemann calls System 1) force or guide me to make a decision then this STEW is no different from the X mentioned previously - meaning the STEW has taken over my decision making process. All that I am allowed to do is sign the document and take credit for having made the decision. 

So a decision or action made with freewill is one where the STEW either has no role to play or it may suggest some options but where I am aware of these suggestions and am capable of overriding these suggestions each time. Meaning that if I overrode the suggestion for one decision,  I dont feel guilty and won't give in to STEW for the next action or decision. If I give in,  I don't have freewill.. But if I believe that STEW's choice was justified then I might go for it. That is freewill. Freewill, perhaps, is then System 2 (=S2, terminology of Daniel Kahnemann) at work. In which case 2 is supposedly lazy,  it won't do if S2 does a sloppy job and just endorses what S1 said. Then that isn't freewill at work. So decisions whete S2 puts in a lot of effort will result in expression of freewill. 

Now,  how many times are we aware of STEW's decisions which we implicitly follow? How often do we act or decide which are not dictated by STEW?  

Which act or decision of ours is not mostly or wholly impacted by STEW? Even if your System 2 (S2 for short) was invoked,  it was invoked by S1=STEW. If you didn't have access to the STEW how will your decision be?  It will be like that of the first man on earth during his initial stages of life who had no STEW. What kind of acts would he have done? I guess only random ones -  learning to eat and procreate. Hardly an evolved being.

We evolved from no S1 to S1 to high S1 actively invoking S2.

Additional reading:
http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/03/krishna-and-kalyavan.html

Me And Trains

About six years back I was traveling from Chennai to Calcutta en route Guwahati in Assam. My train was to reach Howrah at about 1130 and my connecting train from Howrah to Gauhati in the Northeast was at 3:20PM. I thought there was sufficient time between the two trains, enough even to go to a favorite egg roll joint in town.  Unfortunately my train from Chennai was delayed by about 4 hours when it started from Chenna Central. And, well, at 1:3.PM when we reached Kharagpur it was still running late by 4 hours. And we were expected to reach Howrah at 3:30PM. My train to Guwahati was to leave at 3:20PM. I could now only hope now that the connecting train would be delayed. Even then Howrah station has 23 platforms. My train from Chennai being SER (South Eastern Railway) and the Guwahati train being ER would likely be in two platforms on opposite  ends of HWH station complex far from each other.  Plus Kolkata's Howrah station being a terminus,  there are no overhead bridges to go from one platform to another.  One had to go to the beginning of the platform (near the station exit) and then walk to the other platform and... You can imagine it. Then I thought. Until about half a km from HWH station, both eastern railways and SER run next to each other. After that SER goes West while ER goes North. So there was one last hope.  I hoped that before reaching HWH station I could spot the Guwahati train, in which case I could alight from my train, cross the tracks (remember 23 PFs) and climb up the other train. Guess what!!  At around 3:25PM, when our train was slowly edging into HWH station, I spotted the Guwahati train about 4 tracks away slowly moving away from HWH in the opposite  direction. I had my backpack on my back. 

I slowly climbed down, then walked across the tracks. It was monsoon season and there were puddles of water. I stepped over them gingerly constantly look at the two trains and to see if any other trains were coming on the tracks that I was crossing. Luckily there were no other trains. In my hurry, one of my slippers got loose. I didn't wait to retrieve it.  The Guwahati train was now picking up speed.  It was now about 10 to 20 seconds since I had alighted from the Chennai train. 

When I was very close to the Guwahati train,  I realized one more thing.  The vertical steel bars that you hold on to near the door is more than 6feet above the ground.  I had to jump up into the moving train ensuring that I should catch those steel rods. Luckily I did. I was on the steps of the train holding on to the rods tightly. The door was locked. I knocked on the door - a passenger was kind enough to open the door for me. The compartment that I got into wasn't the one in which I was alloted my berth.  I walked to my compartment, got into my seat, locked my backpack and then went to the toilet to clean myself up wearing only the one slipper I had on, the other still lying somewhere between the platforms. Later at night a young guy lent me his extra pack of old slippers. In subsequent trips I always packed an extra pair of light weight slippers. No vendor sells slippers on trains or at stations. 

I noticed one interesting thing after I got into the Guwahati train. It was only about 2 minutes since I had got out of the Chennai train.  The features of people in the two trains were starkly different. Wow. 

About a month back when I was returning from a short trip something happened in train. I was standing near the exit door of my compartment after we crossed Vyasarpadi. As the train neared Basin Bridge a gentleman asked me to move back so he could alight at that station since the train was moving slowly, it being an express train it wouldn't stop at Basin Bridge. He got down and slipped and was falling backwards towards the crack between the train and the platform. I caught him with my left arm and wrapped my left hand around his neck and pulled him back into the steps of my train (I was holding on to the train with my right hand). People behind me were loudly telling me to leave the man and that he would pull me down with him.

The man got his balance with my help, got into the steps of the train and then alighted into Basin Bridge platform easily now since the train was moving very slowly. He didn't look back or say anything. He kept walking. This incident is kinda similar.

Anyway.. It was like a movie scene - actually both the incidents were so... I was wondering. I usually only observe and never do anything heroic in life. Do i become a different person when I am in a train? 

A lady RPF constable saved a passenger from getting run over on the tracks: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/rpf-woman-constables-quick-action-saves-commuter-from-being-crushed-under-train-at-chennais-egmore-station/article65356145.ece/amp/ 

I was reminded of myself when I read this on Apr 26, 2022.

This post was typed on a phone. 


Additional reading:

1. Kabhi Jaisalmer Kabhi Naa: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/08/colored-eyes-golden-buildings-and.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-weekend-budget-trip-to-rameswaram-rmm.html
3. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2014/04/going-on-trip-tips.html
4. https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/woman-dies-after-falling-from-train/article22839828.ece/amp/

Lord Ganesh, Munna Bhai, Kabhi Haan Kabhi SRK And Shortcuts

A student wrote herself additional marks in an exam paper in red ink and tried to fool her teacher into believing that the teacher had not totaled the marks correctly. The student did this because her (student's) mother had warned her daughter that if she didn't get good marks she, the mother,  wouldn't talk to her daughter. The daughter was not interested in exams or in marks and she chose the red pen as the tool to address this issue. 

This is very similar to what SRK did in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa where he got a fake certificate and Mark Sheets to prove that he passed his exams because he couldn't stand the taunting of his father. SRK again, in the movie,  had no interest in marks or in passing the exams. 

We come to Munna Bhai MBBS.  Sanjay Dutt (or Kamal Hassan in Vasool Raja) couldn't stand his father's taunts and hence fooled his parents into thinking he was a doctor. Again in the movie Sanjay / Kamal had no interest in being a doctor.

Now we come to the final example. Lord Shiva and his wife conducted a test for their two children. They said whoever could go around the world first would get a reward. Now Karthik (one of the sons) was physically adept and he immediately set off for on his around the world mission. The other son Ganesha was a boy who lived in a mental world and he was physically not strong. He twisted the target set by his parents - he went around them and claimed the prize explaining that for any person their parents constitute the world. The parents were dumbstruck and then very pleased and rewarded Ganesh. Whether Karthik (aka Murugan) complained about his brother's unfair practices is not known. 

Now we read 4 stories. In each of them the parent expected something from their child. The child had no interest in it. But in order only to satisfy the parents, the child took a shortcut. In the first three cases, the shortcut is found unacceptable. In the case of Ganesh, the shortcut was found admirable, even though his parents never imagined such a solution.. 

Did Ganesh violate the rules of the game?  In my book yes. 

Now,  Kabhi Haan and  Munna Bhai are fiction stories. The first example I mentioned is a real life example. It is quite possible that the girl's parents had often told her the very same Shiva-Ganesh story mentioned as the 4th example in this post. And yet we blame the girl while we adore Ganesh for his smartness. 

Vikram, Vetaal And Some Friends

This is a (true) story about a married friend of mine and two of her friends.  

1. She had a friend SUT a few years back.  My friend had a strong marriage - she and her husband were quite close. Now this friend SUT,  for some reason, couldn't stand my friend's good marriage and tried different ways to mess it.. My friend was unaware of what was happening while her husband figured it out. Her husband couldn't stand SUT. He told his wife to stay away from SUT. My friend, being a docile person, did exactly the opposite and let SUT spoil her marriage further.  

2. My friend had another friend SUD,  a neighbour actually, who was a businessman with a wife and children. One fine day the man returned home from work,  told his wife to pack her bags and go for some time to her parents' place. After the lady left with the children, the man committed suicide. He apparently had run up huge debts.

Note that we do not know whether he was a dirty businessman or not. 

Now this is all I know about both SUT and SUD. 

My friend felt that the man SUD was guilty of 1. having had poor business acumen 2. Having given up and ending his own life 3. Leaving his wife and kids in dire straits

My friend was more positive about her lady friend SUT who despite everything was, most importantly, alive and also happy. 

Like the Vetaal I ask this question: was my friend right in her appraisal - that the man SUD was a more awful person than the lady SUT?

Is there any Vikram out there? Is surviving somehow more important?  The most interesting thing in this whole story is that my friend is one of the cleanest people I have come across and would never do anything like what SUT did.

I guess my friend gave more weight to surviving against odds (which SUD didn't) than to character (which SUT didn't have). Well, my friend has been under a lot of stress  recently and has been known to make mistakes with weights elsewhere too.

I forgive her.

Recently, in Mar 2018, my friend told me she was pissed off with another friend of hers (TLS). The reason being that TLS gleefully told my friend that she, TLS, had helped her (TLS') good friend (P) divorce her spouse. TLS, incidentally hates the institution of marriage. One can only speculate what exactly the problem was between P and her husband. And even whether there was a problem.
Now, here comes the twist. My friend was furious with TLS because, as per my friend, TLS had helped destroy a family and then bragging to my friend about it.

I pointed out to my friend that TLS had, most likely, good intention at heart and thought that P world be better off without her husband. And that TLS had only done P a good turn. But, SUT truly had tried to destroy a marriage, and to this day my friend comes in support of SUT. But her anger against TLS is enormous.

Women...

Phone/Internet Location / IP Used in A Legal Case

https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEC24XTnV1GfoBd5IXieTm0IqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowzrL9CjDC7vQCMK2y1gU

I always used to wonder about phone location being used in legal cases to prove / disprove the presence of a person at a location. 

Now in the link above, a person was proved to be online and hence acquitted from a murder rap. Since the person was online as per the Google's IP records. Now he could have 

1. been online on a computer / phone and taken a break and committed murder. Especially on a phone. Even from a laptop with a mobile wifi or Jiofi (or its equivalent).
2. Someone else could have been using his phone from a phone or even from computer and accessing stuff online. 

That my user id was online from 4PM to 11PM - does it necessarily mean I wasn't doing anything else offline?

Thinking Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahnemann

Quotes from various sources (without permission):

Thinking Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahnemann: 

Intelligence is not only the ability to reason: it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.  

Meaning if attention is not deployed or if relevant data isn't retrieved it is a shortcoming of intelligence. If you have retrieval problems or amnesia hence would your IQ be low?  Or did the author mean that metadata with respect to specific relevant memory is stored in S2 and intelligence in S2 gets this metadata and hence sends a lookup request in S1 where memory is stored. And in case of amnesia, the lookup doesn't return anything. We say that we knew something but we are unable to recollect.. So this metadata or cross-indexing does exist. I am assuming it's in S2. If it is in S2 how is intuition - a property of S1 explained? 

Most of what you (your System 2) think and do originates in your System 1, but System 2 takes over when things get difficult, and it normally has the last word.

Does this mean that S2 can be invoked by something other than S1? What can invoke S2? Or can S2 just wake up (invoke itself) and start acting?
In this context F people (as in MBTI) who primarily run on S1 constantly monitor their own behavior, which they do, which uses S2. On the other hand T people who constantly use S2 do not monitor their own behavior. Meaning everyone uses S2 - F for one purpose (Self control of behavior) and T for thought processing. I am reminded of a lady who said I think little before I speak and I know exactly what she meant. I would say the same thing of her and of course my meaning would be very different (I would refer to her absence of rationality). 

Picture below is loc 1995 of 9376. The law of small numbers chapter 10

The associative machinery (S1) seeks causes.. This is in order to make the story more coherent.. All F (as in MBTI) people do this easily. I say don't look at the reasons. Look at the WHAT independently. Later perhaps at WHY.  For feelers the what, without why, doesn't make sense at all. 

it seems almost impossible for S1 not to do more than S2 charges it to do. 

An inability to be guided by a "healthy fear" of bad consequences is a disastrous flaw.

Most emotions including desire come from s1. Intelligence exists in S1. Even a sense of humor is from S1. It exists in N or F people only - i am predicting now. 

Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, Not necessarily that the story is true.
Individual winners like to lock in their gains by selling "winners" - stocks that have appreciated since they were purchased, and they hang on to their losers. Unfortunately for them, recent winners tend to do better than recent losers in the short run, so individuals sell the wrong stocks. 

My question
Doesn't regression to mean happen? Won't recent winners become losers? 

Whether professionals have a chance to develop intuitive expertise depends essentially on the quality and speed of feedback, as well as on sufficient opportunity to practice. 

if so how do we explain Einstein's intuition which led him to understand about speed of light, theory of relativity etc. what experience did he have?. 

You know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious. " this quote is so beautiful. 

When we know doing something is not good (S2 decision),  and we still do it e-g., drinking alcohol, carrying bitterness, taking a non-optimal option we are using S1. This is obvious but it struck me forcefully.. (For example read this: Why do we have a conversation with a person whom we don't like much - http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/what-drives-conversation.html)

Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment is correct.  Confidence is a feeling,  which reflects the coherence of the information and cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to b  admissions of uncertainty seriously,  but declarations of Hugh confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a continent story in his mind
The average selling price was double the average buying price.  The magic of the market didn't work for a good that the owners expected to use. a basic rule of fairness we found is that the exploitation of market power to impose losses on others is unacceptable.
When you take the long view of many similar decisions, you can see that paying a premium to avoid a small risk of a large loss is costly.. Constituent overweighting of improbable outcomes - a feature of intuitive decision making-eventually leads to inferior outcomes.

A brilliant example from the book:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

Ego depletion has also been implicated in guilt and prosocial behavior. The feeling of guilt, while unpleasant, is necessary to facilitate adaptive human interactions.[17] The experience of guilt is dependent on one’s ability to reflect on past actions and behaviors. Ego depletion has been shown to hinder the ability to engage in such reflection, thereby making it difficult to experience guilt.

From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

In their theory, there are two different routes to persuasion in making decisions. The first route is known as the central route and this takes place when a person is thinking carefully about a situation, elaborating on the information they are given, and creating an argument. This route occurs when an individual's motivation and ability are high. The second route is known as the peripheral route and this takes place when a person is not thinking carefully about a situation and uses shortcuts to make judgments. This route occurs when an individual's motivation or ability are low.[5]

Now we know that often children who were not good performers turn out often times to be good later on as adults. Now did their ability improve or their motivation? I am inclined to think its the latter. As children were perhaps not motivated to do things which did not lead to meeting any objective of theirs (which is fun, eating sweets, playing games etc.). As adults with the motivation to get things for themselves they perform far better than they did as adults - also they tend to perform far better than people who performed well as children.
http://upfrontanalytics.com/market-research-system-1-vs-system-2-decision-making/

Market researchers should keep in mind that the more complex the research collection process becomes (more question types, complex answer matrices, thought experiments etc.), the more likely they are to collect responses generated by System 2. Since most of the System 1 decision making process is unconscious, respondents are more likely to offer what they consider to be plausible rationalizations for their decisions rather than their true underlying attitudes and motivations. In situations where there is social pressure to respond in a particular way, System 2 may even filter these rationalizations to create “appropriate” responses. 

http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by/kahnemans-mind-clarifying-biases.amp

He was astonished that economists modeled people as “rational, selfish, with tastes that don’t change,” when to psychologists “it is self-evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish, and that their tastes are anything but stable.”   

http://bigthink.com/delancey-place/the-two-systems-of-cognitive-processes.amp

People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. 

Some people are strong in system 1 (S1), some strong in S2. 

For example, a friend of mine was planning to buy an apartment. She had to pay an advance. She did not have liquid cash to make the down payment. She had an FD the value of which was much more than the advance that was to be paid, but that was to mature only after 6 months. So she was stuck.. 

Now which system of hers decided that she couldn't do anything? The system that believed FD should not be broken prematurely - regardless of circumstance.. Where is this rule stored?  This is a blind reaction from J - unthinking response. Like i tell you often.. J has a builtin idiocy.. This "won't break FD" is such an example. This is system 1. 

If you hand over control to system 2:Cost of breaking FD = penalty comes out to about 15,000. The house cost is 30+ lacs.. How big is 15k (=15000)? The penalty for breaking FD is a very small amount - but before S2 can handle,  the J in S1 comes with a silly answer. CANT BREAK FD and hence CANT BUY HOUSE.

S1 is the system that makes 1000's of decisions everyday in our lives without us being even aware of it. And most decisions are good.. That's why we are still alive. If we let S2 handle all our decisions we can handle only 100 in a day max and then have a splitting migraine everyday. Plus we would be too sore and tired to do any S2 work required by our job.  

Most animals survive having S1 only. How do animals know which food to eat and which to avoid?  Through efficient S1. Evolution is all about System 1. When S2 is handed over control, the decisions are calculated and not intuitive. Not using S2 is not too bad.

Intuitive Feelers (largely S1) would not be impressed by this book - unless they can profit tangibly by it. Some people invoke S2 only for abstract things such as for reflecting on this book. For them reading it feels good and they may get a better understanding of the decisions of human beings. Any profit from that understanding is remote. Both types may have good S2. But both use it for very different purposes. 

As per DK, good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, increased dependence on S1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach and increased effort go together.
Amazing. The 1st set seems to be of Venus and the 2nd of Saturn.

The questions I have:

1. Is everyone's S2 at the same level or my S2 is more powerful than yours? And yours is lazier than hers because you abort your S2 sooner more often?
2. What causes or propels use of system 2? How is ambition related to system 1,2?
3. What is the role of energy in personality trait? A person with a strong Mars behaves very differently from a person who has weak Mars - other things being same.
4. What kind of people have larger System 2 and what kind of people are primarily System 1? My belief is that N, F, J (as in MBTI) are largely S1 people and T, P are system 2 people.
5. If S2 can not be ever invoked by anything other than S1 and if S1 cannot be controlled, being automatic, then S2 also cannot be controlled. In which case which part of our mind is under control? Is there a free will?

Interesting Books / other artifacts referred to by the author:

• A Checklist Manifesto How To Get Things Right by Atul Gawande 
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel 
• Baynesian Statistics - the logic of how people should change their mind in light of new evidence
• Big Short film by Richard Thaler
• Black Swan by Nassim Taleb 
• Clinical Vs Statistical Prediction. A Theoretical Analysis And A Review Of Evidence by Paul Meehl (Must read)
• Decision Making In Organizations by Herbert Simon (Nobel Prize Winner)
• Expert Political Judgment. How Good Is It How Can We Know by Philip Tetlock 
• Halo effect by Philip Rosenzweig
• How To Solve by George Polya
• Judgment In Managerial Decision Making by Max Bazerman
• Articles / books by Kathleen Vohn about how money priming affects our behavior.
• Moneyball by Michael Lewis 
• Nudge by Richard Thaler.
• Rationality and the reflective Mind by Keith Stanovich and Richard West (on why some people are more S1 or S2)
• Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smarter (Oxford Univ Press) Gerd Gigdrenzer
• Sources of Power by Gary Klein
• Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowieci

Additional reading:

1. https://healthymemory.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/sq3r/
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/define-freewil.html
3. https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory/up-next?utm_source=whatsapp&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread--b#t-1187322
4. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow,_by_Daniel_Kahneman
5. http://innovationgarden.typepad.com/innovation-garden/2014/11/thinking-fast-and-slow-book-by-kahneman.html

When Your Boyfriend Is Someone Else's Husband

A friend of mine sent me this:

FINAL EXAM PAPER for *LAW STUDENTS:*

Q. A Woman was driving a *Maruti* car. She mistakenly hit a *BMW* car.

The lady came out from her BMW, insulting the other lady for not being careful, asking her to repair her BMW

The Maruti car Woman called *her husband*, he replied -"I am very busy & please try fix up the Matter by urself"

The BMW lady called her *Boyfriend* and said *Sweetheart someone just hit the Birthday Gift you gave me,* I am so angry, please come over.."

Few minutes later her *Boyfriend arrived.* He is the *Husband* to the lady with the *Maruti* car!!!!

Discuss the possible *legal consequences* for all 3 parties.. (20 Marks).😉😜😂😂🤣🤣😬

My response:

Well as i see it, the man might have realised that his girl friend and his wife were the ones whose cars hit each other, since both of them called him about an accident and both would have told him about Maruti and BMW. Now if he was smart he would behave like he was only an acquaintance of his girl friend. His girl friend would also understand and treat the man accordingly. She would behave as though her boyfriend was held up and couldn't come.  She would be unhappy though that the man can't speak for her in this issue. The wife is the only person who truly won't know what her husband means to the other lady. But if she was truly feminine she would figure out and then realize he gifted a BMW to the other lady.  THEN the issues would start. The two women would end up swapping their cars.  Now if the wife was innocent, there really remains only a minor issue of 2 cars damaged for both of which the man might have to pay for. 

But i have read a variation of this story where each woman calls her boy friend to handle the accident. And... Each husband turns out to be the boy friend of the other.. How is that...

Additional reading:

https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiECoUzqkHvrm9GFob4QKu5vcqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowzrL9CjDC7vQCMJPi1gU

Playing My Favorite Songs From USB Drive On Saregama Carvaan Radio

The radio I bought has an option to play from a USB drive. So I bought one and copied all my favorite songs. Only then I realized that the radio could play only audio songs. All my files were videos. 

So I searched for and downloaded a software (DVDvideomedia which converted video files into audio (mp3) files.  The software seemed to have a bug - it hung often. I fiddled with it and realized I could convert about 70-80 files at a time. Then I played these audio files from the USB drive and voila...Now my transistor can play my favorite songs.

Whom Do We Like? What Does It Say About Us

The other day I was talking to a friend (A) of mine who told me that her husband is picky about what people are really like while she herself likes people whom she can relate to and doesn't care how her friends are intrinsically or how her friends behave with others. She specifically pointed out to me that her husband was more interested in what people were basically like rather than how he got along with some X. You got the difference?

When I heard this I just acknowledged what I heard and didn't think too much then about what she said.

Until I spoke with another friend (B) of mine today. She has a brother-in-law (BIL). From what she, my friend B, had told me about her BIL and his wife (we will call her SIL), I had taken an intense dislike to her BIL and SIL years earlier  - remember, BIL and SIL were married to each other and their marriage was and, I assume still, is a good one.

My friend B herself didn't disapprove of them as much as I did. They lived in a joint family and I had never spoken to or met either of them (SIL, BIL). Subsequently family events turned out such that my friend was hardly on speaking terms with the couple. And today she told me that she finally spoke to her SIL. While they didn't kiss and make up, they both wished each other the best and acknowledged that they never will become bosom buddies. Well they aren't going to be talking much to each other either in the future.

Now, I disliked the SIL and BIL right from the beginning. While my friend B was ok with them earlier and now. But in in the interim when events turned out badly, she could hardly speak a word to either of them.

Now we come to the fun part.

Both my friends A and B seem to like people without regard to what they deeply are like. So long as people were OK with them that was enough. Deep evaluation of, and subsequent rejection of, people wasn't the way they operated.

Unlike A's husband and me. We disliked people based on what they were really like. We didn't have to wait for events which affected us personally to reject people.

What makes A and B behave one way and A's husband and me another? Perhaps it's a question of introverts and extroverts? Or Feelers and Thinkers? Or Intuitives and Sensitives? Or Judgers and Perceivers (as in MBTI)?

NEETliness Should Be Next To State Boardliness

Anitha, a poor Dalit girl from rural Tamil Nadu, committed suicide because she couldn't get a medical seat despite excellent marks in the state board plus two exams: http://www.news18.com/news/india/anitha-the-face-of-neet-protests-in-tamil-nadu-commits-suicide-1507155.html

One assumes that NEET is an appropriate exam for evaluating whether a candidate is fit to be admitted to a medical college as a student. And if a student who got 1176/1200 in the state board exams does very poorly and in the medical entrance exam and hence didn't get admission is it the state's fault? 

No matter how poor she was or that she was Dalit.. It is sad but if on the basis of this girl's death were we to remove NEET it would be even worse a scenario. 

What is the basis of the state board syllabus and education? 

That children should get 12 years education and should not be failed and that the syllabus and exams should help ensure minimum failure.

How is this system going to create the best engineers, lawyers and doctors of tomorrow? 

Having said this, i wonder now. What if Anitha was my daughter or my sister or my wife?  How would i feel? 

A student that gets 98% in board exams is unable to get a medical seat. She comes from a rural poor community. She has banked her entire future on her getting an MBBS seat and it is now denied her. 

How painful it must be when you have done all that you could and performed exceedingly well only to be thrown out based on some idiotic NEET?  If I never knew about NEET and never prepared for it and if my teachers never taught about or for NEET, it will never be relevant to me. Or to my sister or daughter. Am I at fault if I felt dejected. 

What if we followed Bhagvad Gita and put in our best efforts and never focused on the result only to find out later that a result focus is imperative in life and actually more important than putting in the best efforts. How would we feel? That's what happened to Anitha. The interesting thing is no matter which side won (NEET/CBSE or State Board) there would have been some Anitha who would have taken the drastic step. We have children IN TN state who had focused only on NEET and did not focus on State Board exams. 

What is the issue here?

The issue is the dual conflicting goal that we have. That the state board is foisted with or cherishes the goal of simple rote memory led education. 

The professional courses or industry requires something very different and perhaps more difficult.

Should we:

• Make NEET syllabus the lowest of all board syllabi?
• Should all state boards change their syllabus to those meeting IIT,  NEET etc requirements?
• Should TN colleges not allow other board students at all? 

Additional reading:

• http://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/how-tamil-nadu-education-system-has-turned-into-a-vicious-chain-of-apathy/844356/
• https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEMEHQO6Z7dU5BuARNHVQj-AqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowwqP5CjDypeECMI6VwgU