Rest easy Maiya

Fifteen years! How long is fifteen years? It’s very hard to say. I still remember when I was fifteen; I was in ninth grade, full of vigor, full of energy, had my first crush, no thinking about tomorrow, life revolved around the next football match and which song to listen to. That time fifteen years seemed like forever.  Comparing that fifteen years with the last fifteen years the relativeness, futility, and sorrow of life comes into full perspective.  I will never forget that moment fifteen years ago in September of 2004 when I first realized that my mother is no longer able to read and write. The woman who taught me everything, who held two master's degrees, was unable to recognize her own handwriting and could not figure out a single letter.  A few weeks later doctors diagnosed her with early stages of Alzheimer’s. One of the rarest forms of pre-senile dementia. She had just turned forty-nine. My entire world shook in a minute. I didn’t know what was next. All my plans, hopes, and dreams dashed in a single shudder. Life stood still. Doctors just gave us two years to a maximum of three.

I don’t know how the past fifteen years went by. Every day was suffering, pain piled up over pain,  the sisyphean ordeal, a fight against invisible disease without any cure. Slowly she lost her faculties, senses and eventually bedridden.  In those years I got an engineering degree, drew the first salary, published a book, got a tenured job, got married, and had a baby. But my mother was unbeknownst to all of these, all my life’s milestones she never knew. God knows how I longed to hear her voice at least just for once. But despite that I knew every night when I spoke to her before I went to sleep, deep down she understood.   Now after all these years of struggle against unwinnable battle finally she drew her last breath on Tuesday.  

Losing one’s mother is the greatest irreparable loss one can ever experience. Now after consigning her to flames, a huge void, an abysmal emptiness has been left behind in my heart. But I know at least now she is free, emancipated from all the pain, and nothing can harm her anymore. And for me, that is an ultimate solace. All I can think of right now is the poignant line by Yann Martel - “Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?”

Rest well Maiya. Love you. Always.

Insight on philosophical quandary of knowledge

Few days ago I was going through the first part of Robert Pirsig's celebrated book -  Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance .  Though I haven't completed the book yet, the lines mentioning Phaedrus's knife and how everything in the world  can be described through the lenses of  classical or romantic angle, brought me back similar concept in  philosophy of ontology, epistemology, methodology and metaphysics. These terms, that any PhD Scholar or Research student dealing with science in general would have encountered during their scholarship, bring forth several confusion and debates. I have no intention in stoking it further as the argument has been ongoing since time of Plato. If we were to Google the terms , Ontology describes what things are , while epistemology explains the way we know things. On the other hand metaphysics deals with abstract concept of why things are as they are while methodology provides tool to gain the knowledge. Main difficulty in comprehending these terms can be attributed to fact that they are sometimes so closely related and often overlapping one can hardly segregate two. So since I love analogy I try to shed some confusion with an example. Since I am no way a practitioner philosopher correct me if I am wrong.

Exhibit: A leaf in a tree

Ontology:  What is the color of leaf? It is green because empirical (data from observation rather than logic) evidence says so

Epistemology: How do we know the color of leaf is green? A child might answer because my mother says so. If you are botanist then you may say because chlorophyll in leaves make it green.

Methodology: Verify the color of leaf using the spectral analysis and determine that the photons emanating from leaves have corresponding frequency in green part of visible spectrum

Metaphysics: Is  the leaf green in real or does it appear so only to me? Or does color green appear same to me as well as others.

Based on the cited example alone one can see how science and any other philosophical discourse for matter as simple as color of leaf can have such wide and varied interpretation. So if you are vigorously debating any scientific or philosophical point of view be aware that the way you look at the things may not be right answer in actuality. 

Goodbye Rockey

Last time I saw him, I don't know what he was trying to tell me but my gut says it was goodbye. More than ten days have passed since he left and I can still feel his presence. Rockey came to us one  cold evening in December of 2003. I still remember him peering out of the little jute bag in which he was carried by my father. Upon the sight of young pup we were ambivalent whether to keep him or give him away. Who is going to feed him or take care of him? Questions remained. But his cuteness was too strong and we yielded. He became part of family.

For past 12 years he had been my buddy, my counsel and my confidant. He was there during my darkest hours and during my brightest moment. For over the years  he became my rock. I could talk to him about anything and he listened with Zen mysticism. For almost ten years he slept in my bed and my morning always began with his wet muzzle touching my face. Oh how I used to curse at him.

But now as he is gone I look at the empty couch where he curled  and I feel hollowness sip through my veins. I  just wish for once I could gaze into his endearing eyes and hold him close to my heart. But its not going to happen and only god knows how much I miss him. I just pray that he is in heaven now and is frolicking along side Eddie and Mr. Rabbit two of my other beloved pets. All I want to say - see you in another life , brother.

Links to my Research

Readers can follow my research and papers at https://independent.academia.edu/DipeshKarki

Counterfactuals, What If , Turing Machines and Oh My

"If she had said yes things would have certainly been different" - my dear readers I  caught your attention, didn't I? Well what can I say sentence like these really act like a bait to fish in public these days as attention deficit is running wild. Anyway without digressing further  into my personal romantic escaped which I may tell you totally sucks, lets jump into the subject of today's disquisition.  Look at the first question again, i can guarantee that almost everyone of us sometimes or other have pondered a hypothetical world  that differs from reality that we live in. Call it wishful thinking, fantasy , cynicism whatever you may as I welcome you to the world of "Counterfactuals".

Counterfactuals are in general  a hypothetical scenario that would have occurred had certain conditions prevailing at the given time were different. Now why is this important? It is important because it is the main foundation on the basis of which we carry out any debate that can range from policy prescription to economic decision to personal choices.  Determining the counterfactuals is essential as it helps to identify whether the decision we made had actual impact on the outcome or not, especially for assessing the situation that involves the  pre-post scenario. For instance let's say local government has introduced a scheme or awareness program for promoting girl education. Now let's say after the intervention literacy rate among girls ticked up. Now as usual politicians will tout the achievement and general public will also buy into it. But while comparing the scenario before intervention and after intervention we miss-out one crucial counterfactual and that is what would have happened if there were no intervention? Would the literacy rate have remained same or would it have been different? What would be your answer? Take a break have a Kitkat and think again for second. In general people would opine that without intervention the situation would have been same as before. But here is the catch, on doing so we may have overlooked the fact that perhaps the girl's literacy rate was already rising in the first place, that is  even before intervention started. If so then it simply implies that policy intervention had no effect what so ever instead it simply reinforced the eventual outcome.

The best example of not considering counterfactuals comes from Fredric Bastiat under celebrated phenomena that all Austrian School economist love to cite called "Broken Glass Fallacy". According to which once a ruffian kid broke the window of a baker with a brickbat. The crowd gathered and at first wanted to punish the kid. But a wise guy argued, since the kid broke the window now glazier will get the job to repair it. The money he earned will be then spent for cobbler to mend his shoe. The cobbler will then buy meat from the butcher who in turn will buy a bread from baker. So the same money that would have remained idle with baker would now circulate and make every one better off by increased wealth. In surface this appears too good to be true, but if you look at the undercurrent you'll find that had the glass window not been broken in the first place then baker might have put it in bank which would have lent out to others, thus stream rolling all the asserted economic activities. So you see breaking things to create wealth is not a good idea at all. Otherwise we should simply bomb our cities so that there will be more demand for repairs and unemployment goes down. Sounds stupid isn't it.

The question now arise is why counterfactuals invariably appears in worldly affair? Perhaps the answer is in quantum physics according to which world we live in happens because of chance. Out of infinite possibility as a result of particle wave duality there is only one reality in which we live. So there are always several possibilities and only one outcome. One may downplay impact of counterfactual like great Morpheus did in Matrix Reloaded "what happened, happened and couldn't have happened any other way" ( aside: isn't it ironic that the both Matrix sequel sucked big time and couldn't have happened any other way"). But when our decisions are forward looking that notion of ignoring counterfactuals will be a Pollyanna thinking.

Now at this point you must be thinking  if counterfactuals are something that haven't occurred at all then how to determine their effect in first place? How to properly quantify them ? Is there any standard tools to measure it? unfortunately the answer is no. Especially in research methodology there is something called Randomized Control Trial that segregates the control and intervention variable to produce ceteris paribus condition so as to isolate the effect of intervention only . But again choice of control variable itself is presumptuous putting dent to entire argument. Meanwhile perusal of any standard text book on Capital Budgeting provides you with tool such as Decision tree, What If and Scenario Analysis. These are all based on Bayesian Analysis and Prior Probabilities which entails degree of risk under certain apriori conditions. But they again miserably fail to account for counterfactuals as it is  less about risk and more of the domain of uncertainty.  Besides this of course in economics there are some concepts called Opportunity cost and Excess Profit  that do give some hope. but alas, how far do they gauge  in actuality is in itself a counterfactual.

So what else then. Some might say- "Hey let's build Ultracomputers that can crunch Yottabyte of data ( mind you that will make a Big Data a girly number) and sort out all the possible outcomes from all the possible counterfactuals". Tempting as  it may sound but it is not tenable either. The reason is something called Church Turing Thesis which says only those mathematical problem that can be solved by Turing machine is computable. But as counterfactuals generate infinite possibility it cannot be solved by Turing machine and hence is not computable at all. So no matter how fast or how large machine you built still the solutions will elude you. Of course there is possibility of it being solved using Hypercomputers but till this date as Mathematician Martin Davis asserted, it is still a technological  myth akin to elephant graveyard. Therefore with utter disappointment we have to throw towel and say we give up. There is no way we can determine all possible outcome and determine the correct path. So whatever happens, happens for good. Kind of solace isn't it? Reminds me of grape was sour adage.

Anyway to sum up if tomorrow someone asks you why are you still single or why you are so indecisive in your career, job or personal life. Just tell them you are weighing in on Counterfactuals. And if they give you puzzled look just suggest them to read this essay. I will definitely owe you one.

                                                        

Religious Freedom

14 years ago, before I dropped out of Medical school, one thing that really exasperated me during my stay in Bangladesh was being constantly asked by strangers  what my religion was even before they asked me my name. I hated the idea that my entire identity can be wrapped up into my personal faith. Now after nearly one and half decade later  it seems this vile poison of sectarian conflict and xenophobic tendency is raising its ugly head in my own motherland. Having been born into Hindu family, completing kindergarten in Buddhist school ,growing up in Muslim surrounding in Bagbazar and playing cricket with  Christian friends in the playground of Padma Kanya Campus, watching these events unfold is too painful. Who is to blame? Everyone:

a) Secularist: Irony is they don't even know what secularism is. People saying secularism means freedom of religion makes me laugh out loud. Secularism that came from French laïcité means government and legislature cannot draft any laws on the basis of religious teaching. Secularism concept came in Nepal to weaken the Monarchy and all political party gave silent nod to it. And now they are having cold feet. What you sow is so you reap. Touché!

b) Hindu fundamentalist: Hindu fundamentalist say secularism will destroy country because in future Christian missionaries will pour in money to proselytize the mass. My question is why don't you raise voice against cast system, poverty, remove the tradition that binds women. If you do that then believe me nobody is going to be cajoled out from their personal faith for money.

c) Political Correctness: There is vast majority of Nepalese who are as Nixon said Silent Majority, they are afraid to voice their opinion because of fear of political incorrectness. One thing if you don't stand for anything then you'll fall for everything. Political correctness doesn't mean morality. And this political correctness is sowing seed for the future conflict for our children's generation

d)   Politician: Do I even need to explain anything more. All they care is strengthening  their vote bank.

So whether you are secularist, agnostic, atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, fundamentalist, traditionalist, Marxist or believer of any faith or non-faith remember we all are Nepalese first. So live and let live.  Uphold your tradition and don't let outsiders dictate how we should govern. Stoking religious fervor is the worst thing that can happen to any society . Reminds me of line from great Bhupi Serchan-

अभिशप्त घर

जब-जब बाँया र दाँया पट्टिका छिमेकीहरुले 
एक अर्काको छाना माथि ढुङा बर्साउछन,
यस घरको छानामा घाम ताप्न बसेकी बुढीको चश्मा र
कौसीमा रमिता हेरिरहेकी दुलहीका चुराहरु फुट्छन,
आधा रातमा जना छिमेकीहरुले आपसमा 
जहाबाट जे पायो त्यसैले कुटाकुट गर्छन, 
भोलीपल्ट ब्युझेर यस घरको बातको रोगी बुढाले
आफ्नो लौरी भाचिएको पाउंछ। 
यस्तो छ अभिशप्त घर
डढेलोको बीचमा उम्रेको रुख जस्तो छ यो घर।

Political Terms for dummies

As constitution drafting process is coming to close there seems to be lot of misconception among general public regarding the various political terminologies being used in preamble of constitution. This confusion is somehow fueled by  political parties with ulterior motive attempting to misquote everything for their own gain. Which is eventually resulting into a vitriol rather than civilized public debate . So here I try to explain few of these terms from what I have understood so far, please correct it if I am wrong:

i. लोकतन्त्र (Democracy): rule of people. Especially rule of majority. Majority can make law

ii. गणतन्त्र (Republic):  There are certain laws  that cannot be voted away by majority. Safe guards minorities. It protects the rights of the individual and doesn't matter what a majority says. FOr example: Freedom of speech.

iii. जनतन्त्र (People's republic): This is not in our constitutional draft and used in communist state. This implies rule of people has been established and hence it cannot be voted away by majority. It is extreme form of republic.

iv. धर्मनिरिपेक्षता (Secularism): This implies parliament cannot draft laws based on writing , belief or teaching  of any particular religion. In US separation of church and state is based on this. Also India is secular country but Muslim communities insist on Sharia Law. For example in Muslim countries Alcohol and Pork is banned while in Hindu state Beef is banned.

v. बहुलवाद (Pluralism): According to this any group of people, unions or lobby group not necessarily political party can have say in formation of government . For example Engineers Association, Doctors Association etc can directly participate in political process.

vi. बहुदलबाद ( multi party system): Only those political parties registered in election commission can be able to participate in political process. Other groups like association, unions or lobby group can only put  pressure indirectly.

vii. समाजबाद (socialism): Social ownership of means of production. The main agenda of government is to create a welfare state. In Nepal's draft constitution it is mentioned that Mepal will be socialism oriented country.

viii. समानुपातिक बन्द सूची (Close List): Those who will be elected from proportional voting will be decided by party after the election result. Nepal is following close list system, parties do mention all the names of potential proportional candidate but the selection will be ultimately after the election. Personally I feel this as most un-democratic aspect of our current constitution.

ix. समानुपातिक खुल्ला सूची (Open List): Contrary to close list here the parties have to declare in serial order who will be elected into the parliament when proportional threshold is crossed before election.

 x. रास्ट्रियता (Nationalism): Political belief of making nationalistic pride as main agenda. Followed by King Mahendra and Panchayaat system. Any poltical belief that contradicts with national interest will be outlawed.

xi. प्रत्यक्ष निर्बाचित कार्यकारी प्रमुख (Direct election of head of government): In this system head of government is elected by direct popular vote. This is used in France , Ireland etc but contrary to popular notion  even in US it is not practiced, as POTUS is decided by Electoral college ( That was the reason George W. Bush won against Al gore in 2000). In Nepal this was advocated by Maoist ( Direct election of president) and  UML (Direct election of Prime Minister). Both of the parties main line has abandoned this now.

xii. अप्रत्यक्ष निर्बाचित कार्यकारी प्रमुख (Westminister System):  Popular in most commonwealth country including India where Prime Minister forming a government must have majority vote of confidence in Parliament. In Nepal this model has been proposed in new constitution draft.  Nepali Congress adamantly supports this. Critiques says this will result in same old political bickering, buying selling of member of parliament  and will ultimately result in unstable government. Meanwhile proponents of this oppose direct election as it can lead to devaluation of parliament.