Want to have some fun and waste time and learn all at the same time? Check out these optical illusions.
When I come across these sorts of things, I cannot stop marvelling at the amazing power of the world wide web.
Month: July 2005
An Integrated Rail Transportation System
I may be mistaken about this but I get the distinct impression that whenever India’s development is mentioned, the matter immediately shifts to PCs and internet, BPOs and call centers. It is as if the entire economy will be magically transformed if only everyone had broadband access and a web enabled cell phone with customized irritating ring-tones and had the ability to subscribe to a gazillion web logs through RSS and had the ability to publish his own stuff for the edification of the masses who were similarly engaged in publishing their own stuff.
By persistently going against the popular illusions of the age, one risks the possibility of being branded a crank. I expose myself to that fate because it is my desperate hope that I may be able to change a few minds and perhaps influence policy however indirectly.
ICT as the Nervous System
The crux of my argument is that information and communications technology (ICT) plays a supportive role in an economy. Not unlike in a body, where the nervous system though critical is worthless unless the musculo-skeletal is robust, the digital network is worthless unless there is an underlying non-digital economy of stuff such as manufacturing, agriculture, and services. You need to have factories and farms, roads and railways, schools and shops, houses and hospitals — not just broadband digital 3.5G MP3 camera phones for surfing the web.
Not paying attention to the fact that the “digital economy” has as its foundation the “stuff economy” has perverse consequences of providing the illusion of progress while the system insistently regresses. For instance, unlike in those bad old Pre-internet days, today you can visit the web site for the railways in India and make your train reservation in about a half hour. You no longer have to stand in line for hours on end to get to the ticket counter and find out that there are no seats available for weeks on end. The website will tell you that the trains are full after half an hour.
The illusion of progress — at least to those lucky few who have web access — is short-lived when you realize that though you can attempt to book the seats online, the underlying system has not changed much, if at all. The so-labeled “super fast express” trains make their way at a stately 70 kms an hour average, pretty much what they were capable of doing forty years ago. Thirty years ago, the Shinkansens were doing 200 kms an hour and today they exceed 300 kmph. But in India, we maintain a dignified traditional 70 kms an hour for decades on end.
What India needs to pay attention to is the underlying hard economy which is the infrastructure upon which the soft economy of internet and services can ride. In this one, I will briefly focus on one bit of the hard economy: the railroad transportation system.
The Railroad Transportation System
The big picture shows India to be a very large country with a massive population. To feed, clothe, and house this billion plus population requires lots of stuff. For obvious reasons very large number of people and goods have to be moved efficiently over long distances. There are three primary methods for this: roads, railways, and air.
Let’s take air first. Air transportation is relatively simple and for long distances it is expedient. It is also grossly expensive for a poor economy such as India. Besides, it is totally dependent on fossil fuels and this makes it seriously polluting. Air transportation is OK for moving rich people over long distances but for bulk transportation of goods, and for bulk transportation of not-rich people, it is not a good solution. Thus, for moving about 300 million really affluent people over long distances, air transportation makes sense, as in the US. Even in the US, bulk transportation does not use air. They use the roads and rails.
Next consider roads. Roads are expensive to build and extremely expensive to operate. For moving people, the best roads can at most do an average of 80 kms per hour over long distances under ideal conditions such as can be found in the advanced industrialized economies. Private cars are expensive to own and they use polluting fossil fuel. Indians cannot afford cars because we are too poor and there are too many of us. Besides we are seriously dependent on external supplies for fuel. Finally, roads are notoriously unsafe as compared to air or rail.
Common carriers such as buses are also not the right solution for India over long distances. A recent journey of 500 kms by a “luxury” bus took 15 hours. The bus was luxurious but the road was pitiable and the overall experience put the fear of travel in me. I would have preferred to take a slow train but severe capacity limitations of the railways ruled out that option.
The best solution for India’s transportation needs is what I call an “Intergated Rail Transportation System” (IRTS) which I will outline in this piece.
Intergated Rail Transportation System
First, the “R”. Steel wheel over steel rails is the most efficient method of transporting goods and people, especially when both volumes and distances are large. It is super efficient and clean because of a number of reasons. First, because steel wheels over steel rails have very low friction and with aerodynamically designed trains, you can have the least transportation cost per ton per mile. Next, you don’t have to use fossil fuels. You can generate electricity using whatever technology is most efficient and available to power the trains. Third, you can use the same system — the tracks and the signaling and switching system — for both passengers as well as goods.
Next, trains can be very fast compared to roads and can be compared favorably to planes over short and intermediate distances. Mumbai to Pune (a distance of about 120 kms) takes 3 hours by road, city center to city center. By a fast train, with a modest top speed of 200 kms an hour, the journey should not take more than an hour. Currently the trains take over 3 hours. And by air Pune-Mumbai takes about 4 hours. You drive to the airport, proceed through security, then take a flight that spends more time taxiing than flying, and arrive and then go from the airport to the city center (which can easily take over an hour at peak traffic time.)
Over long distances such as between Delhi and Bangalore, planes have an evident advantage for people but not for goods. But that advantage is restricted to only the very rich in India. The average person cannot afford the round-trip fare which approximates the average annual income of about $400. Imagine how many people would fly between NY and SF if the price was about $23,000 instead of the $400 it is.
So the core of the IRTS is a very fast rail network connecting the major population centers. The backbone of the system is high speed trains that move between metros such as Mumbai and Kolkata (via Nagpur), between Delhi and Bangalore/Chennai (again via Nagpur.) These I call the “Cross Links” which are different from the “Diagonal Links” which go between Mumbai and Delhi (via Ahmedabad), Delhi and Kolkata (via Kanpur), Kolkata and Bangalore/Chennai (via Hyderabad), and Bangalore to Mumbai.
The backbone of the system is therefore the diagonal and cross links. Trains travel at an average 250 kms an hour and make at most one stop. Mumbai-Delhi is done in 6 hours (instead of the 18 hours currently by the fastest train.) Mumbai-Kolkata is done in 8 hours. If you want to go from a town close to Mumbai to a town close to Delhi, you do the journey in three bits: two short distance segments (relatively slow) and one fast long distance train. The short distance segments will be served by the “integrated” part of IRTS.
For short distances, the road system and the existing rail system would suffice. For instance, a journey from Pune to Chandigarh would involve a bus or train from Pune to Mumbai, a train from Mumbai to Delhi, and then a train from Delhi to Chandigarh.
This is really a hub-and-spoke model with multiple hubs (Mumbai, Nagpur, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore), each serving a bunch of spokes that terminate in towns close to the hub.
Without going into details, I would like to outline some advantages of the IRTS. The obvious hurdles will also be dealt with simultaneously.
Costs
The most obvious point is that it is massively expensive to build a rail system. Even conservatively it will cost $50 billion. Here is the way out. Let it be private/public partnership. The government owns the land on which the existing rail system operates. So that could be the contribution of the public sector. The rails can be farmed out to the private sector on a “build and operate” scheme. And the rolling stock can be owned by private sector firms. These private sector firms can operate trains just as they operate airlines today. They can import the best available train technology from Japan and France just as airlines import planes from Airbus and Boeing.
The involvement of the private sector will not only free up public resources, but the increased efficiencies will propel economic growth which will increase government tax revenues.
The world is awash with liquidity these days. India needs to come up with projects which will attract these savings. Building a modern railways for India is one such project.
Employment
The IRTS will have to be built from scratch. Doing so will involve the labor of millions. Just like the interstate highway system did for the US, it will give a permanent boost the growth of the economy. Spending $50 billion will generate direct employment.
Economic Linkages
Then there are secondary effects which arise from backward and forward linkages. Forward linkages such as the development of a more efficient agricultural and manufacturing sector.
A significant portion of agriculture production is wasted as it cannot be moved efficiently enough. Manufacturing for domestic consumption and for exports is stunted because of the slow movement of goods. Both sectors will obtain efficiency gains.
Technology
India does not have state of the art railroad technology which has been developed by countries such as France and Japan. To begin with, India will have to import these and build up domestic manufacturing capacity. Since the requirements for India will be large, India has the bargaining power to insist on technology transfer. Then given that engineering and design talent is not lacking in India, it is possible that India can improve on the technology and be a leader in the field.
Vision
What we have in India is a creaky dilapidated outmoded transportation system. More than roads and airports, India needs a great rail transportation system which will form the bedrock upon which a modern Indian economy can move. It is a great challenge and if articulated well, it can galvanize the entire population. It will not be easy but then easy things are not worth doing and are rarely transformational in their impact. The movers and shakers of India should look for projects that transform, hard though they may be.
The beauty and elegance of a modern transportation system beckons. Are we up to the task?
[This post is continued at “The IRTS – Revisited“.]
{Related links: See these pictures of Shinkansen (the Bullet Trains of Japan). Wouldn’t it be amazing to have trains like these in India? Reuben at Zoostation had a bit about the new Shinkansens.}
Fixing the holes
I continue to fix the holes created by the move to wordpress. While doing that, I come across bits that I like and put them in the “My favorite bits” category. For instance, here is The Buddha’s Sermon on Economics. I find putting words in the Tathagata’s mouth a lot of fun. It is my way of paying reverence to the One Who Has Gone Before. All the Buddhists bits begin with “Thus have I heard …” because originally it was an oral tradition.
The other bit I fixed today was on the concept of opportunity cost. I call the piece “Casting Spells to Fix a Broken Car“.
Now back to our regularly scheduled boring stuff.
A Set of Useful Tools
Bertrand Russell considered the basic purpose of education to be the “formation, by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and a certain outlook on life and the world.”
I believe there is a small set of very powerful tools, or mental models, that can help us comprehend the dynamic world we live in. It is surprising that such a complex and complicated world is amenable to comprehension using only a small set of tools. But it is indeed true. The tools that I refer to are immensely powerful and flexible. That these tools exist is a powerful testimony to the ingenuity of humans. Seemingly innocuous and simple ideas have profound implications. Continue reading “A Set of Useful Tools”
IGT Education: Reader comment
A reader, “P”, wrote in response to my “intergenerational transfer model for education” and said:
I came across your blog and the intergenerational model. I thought it was brilliant. My only concern was to do with making graduates realize that they owe something back to the institution. I went to a REC, received a highly subsidized education but do not have immense feelings of loyalty toward it, at least not enough to give back to it. Continue reading “IGT Education: Reader comment”
It is a connected world
The magical thing about the world is that it is connected. Not just at the physical level, it is connected in the abstract level at which we comprehend the world. Physical connectivity of course is clearly evident. Above our heads, the weather system is global as is the hydrosphere which then connects all the continents. That is geograhical connectivity. Then there is biological connectivity. Every one of us shares common ancestors. We are all cousins, a few dozen times removed at most since we share common ancestors. It is sobering to realize that Sorenson of Norway is a cousin to Mugusha of Zaire although their family resemblence is not immediately apparent. But that relatedness between all humans is just the tip of the iceberg. Continue reading “It is a connected world”
Of Symbols and their Manipulation
My dear Abhishek,
You are a sentient human being who is capable of using symbols.
There is one fact that distinguishes us from the rest of creation: our ability to use language. Or to put it another way, our ability to do abstract symbol manipulation. That ability, more than anything else, allows us to call ourselves members of the species homo sapiens sapiens. All our best attributes flow from that unique faculty. How did our brains diverge from the brains of our pre-human ancestors? What were the evolutionary forces which molded our neocortex? These are questions that are fascinating to explore. Even the capacity to ask these questions and answer them in some fashion requires the ability to manipulate symbols. You will notice that there is a certain circularity involved in this process: we use the faculty to explore the same faculty.
We are part of that larger creation we call the Universe. We are also that part of the Universe which seeks to comprehend the Universe. So through us the Universe comprehends itself. Isn’t that the most astoundingly astonishing thing about creation? Through us, the Universe is self-aware. We make the Universe self-reflective. Our thinking about our ability to do symbol manipulation involves symbol manipulation and this is what makes the process recursive and ultimately makes it a recursive Universe. All recursive processes have a terminating condition. We are that terminating condition for the recursive Universe. We, through our ability to comprehend the Universe, bring the Universe into existence. That is what the ancients in India many millennia ago meant when they declared “Ahum Bramha” which means “I am the Creator of the Universe.” Lots of interesting implications arise from this realization. In modern day terminology, thinkers have called it “The Anthropic Principle” which basically states that the Universe exists because sentient beings exist within it which are aware of the existence of the Universe.
We will discuss more about the self-reflexive recursive Universe later in these letters. But for now, we will move on to the ability that allows us to comprehend the Universe: symbol manipulation. More specifically, we will concentrate on the symbols alone and leave the discussion on the manipulation of symbols for a later date. So what are symbols, you may ask. Well, the first answer is that they are abstractions. What is an abstraction? One way would be to call them “representations in the brain.” Another word for “abstractions represented within the brain” is “word.” See I have used the word “word” twice in this and the previous sentence. When you use words to discuss words, self-reference is unavoidable.
The word is primary. And all that the thinker does is to manipulate symbols — words. We are symbol manipulating entities. Through our senses we get impressions of the world outside our brains. These are stored as memory. Some of these inputs are mapped on to words and the higher functions of the brain manipulate these symbols. Without the words we will continue to sense the universe but we will not be able to do the symbolic manipulation which is thinking.
Here is my claim: that unless you know the word, you cannot think. Conversely, to think effectively, you have to have a very large collection of words. The collection of words that you “own” is your vocabulary. That last sentence illustrates an amazing concept — that of hierarchy. Words exist in an hierarchical structure and that is what gives them power.
Words, as we keep saying, are abstractions. They represent something but they themselves are not the thing. The word “cow” is not the thing that exists out there with four legs, gives us milk, and goes moo. Distinguishing the symbol and the thing is very important. When people fail to make that distinction, they confuse the symbol for the thing, and work themselves up into a rage and all sorts of nasty things happen. But I digress.
OK, so things exist out there in the world. Those things are what I call “atomic” things. A cow is an atomic object or thing that exists out there in the world outside our brain and we use the symbol “cow” in English to correspond to that. Atomic objects are not limited to material things. Without getting too academic about it, let’s recognize that the number “1” is also a thing and we label it and call the label the word “one.” Given our collection of atomic objects for which we have words, we then construct higher level abstractions of things that are not atomic but are what I call “compound”. So the word “cattle” stands for the abstract entity which is “the class to which cows belong”. In actuality, cows exist in the real world but cattle don’t. We just refer to the abstraction “collection of cows” as “cattle.” The word “cow” is an atomic word, and the word “cattle” is a compound word by my definition.
Now you see what I mean that words exist in a hierarchical structure? The words you own is represented by another word we call “vocabulary.” That is, “vocabulary” stands in for “the words that you own.” In a sense, the higher level word is more economical, or compact. The magical thing about words is that we can build higher and higher level words based on how we manipulate the words at the next lower level.
It is easy to see that even if the world out there has a limited number of atomic objects — which implies a limited number of atomic words — the compound words that we can form is unlimited. And as time has gone on, our collection of words have increased. Or we can say that our vocabulary has increased. The consequence of this increase? We can think more effectively. And after all this, I want to come to the advice that I would like to give you today. To learn how to think, you have to learn vocabulary. By that I don’t mean that you open up the dictionary and memorize it.
Learning vocabulary means to understand what the word means, not just its dictionary definition. When you understand a word, it means you know the connection between the word and what it represents and all that it implies and how it is connected with other words at the lower levels. All education is ultimately an attempt to acquire a vocabulary and the skill to manipulate the vocabulary to build higher level words. Think about that for a bit.
You may object and say that perhaps learning languages is about vocabulary but surely engineering or physics is not about vocabulary. But it is indeed all about vocabulary. A physicist knows physics vocabulary which he has patiently learnt over years. When he finally adds “quantum mechanics” to his vocabulary after years of studying all the component words that make up the compound word “quantum mechanics”, he can then use that word without having to think about all the bits that go into making that word. Note that he did not actually add the word “quantum mechanics” to his vocabulary the first time he heard it or read the word on the page. It became part of the vocabulary after a long time was spent in manipulating the lower level words which ultimately define quantum mechanics.
Here is one analogy that you may find useful. A compound word is like a theorem in mathematics. A theorem is a true statement in the system under study. Once a theorem is proved, then you can use the theorem to create more theorem. So also, when you collect (under certain rules) a number of words to create a higher level word, you then have the luxury of using the higher level words and it helps you to think more effectively.
So where am I going with all this? A large vocabulary is important if you want to be able to think effectively and clearly. As I noted before, education is about vocabulary (symbols) and thinking (manipulation of symbols.) The fact is that while thinking requires words as the objects upon which it operates, thinking itself creates more words. As more people think in the world, the collective vocabulary of the world goes up and this is what increases our ability to think more clearly.
So what is the point of all this thinking clearly, you may ask. I leave you with a thought that Blaise Pascal recorded: “Working hard to think clearly is the beginning of moral conduct.”
All evil in the world arises from faulty thinking. To become a truly moral person, we have to learn how to think correctly. To the ancients in India, ignorance was the root cause of misery and sorrow. We will go into that one of these days.
With a deep bow to the wordless wisdom in all sentient beings,
Atanu
Trading Freedom for Security
In connection with the London bombings, came across this at Phoenix Muses:
Jihad al-Khazen, an op-ed columnist for the London-based pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper, wrote: “Such criminal terror acts prove that no measure is enough to fight terrorism.
“Actions that governments take to fight terrorism are totally justified because protecting life is a lot more important than protecting civil liberties.”
Brings to mind what Benjamin Franklin said about trading civil liberties for security. “Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
Of course it is unfair to juxtapose Franklin’s viewpoint with Jihad al-Khazen’s.
All the taste but less filling
Some apparently wise statements reminds me of lite beer: all the taste and less filling. These statements sound nice but are not reality based. Consider this for a moment this:
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. — Native American Proverb
It is supposed to appeal to our sense of conservation, of course. Since it is our children’s possession, we have to take care of it. Rather flimsy reasoning. It is not our property, says the proverb, and implies that this realization would compell us to conserve and not trash the place.
Let’s look at the evidence. Which car do people drive more carefully: rental cars or their own cars? Tell the average human that he owns the stuff, and he will be more concerned about conservation than if he were told that it belongs to someone else.
Want to know why public monies are wasted? Because the money the public official is spending does not belong to him. You are on an expense account? Well, don’t bother checking the right hand side of the menu. Want a forest to be destroyed? Make it nobody’s forest. The tragedy of the commons will trash it soon enough. Earth does not belong to you? Well, let’s have a party and who cares if we trash the place — it’s not mine in any case.
Want people to really care about something? Make them own the thing and see how they care.
The Reign of Terror
Just a quick note prompted by the bombings in London.
A moment of silence for the dead.
Brought to mind the poem “Before I start this peom” by Emmanuel Ortiz which I had first come across in Suhail Kassim’s blog post. Here are the last lines of that poem, for the record.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the
second hand
In the space
between bodies in embrace,Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all
Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin
at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.
The whole poem is worth deep consideration.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 