I have been thinking about this blogging thing the whole of past week. I don't know why. Just some random thoughts around why I have taken this strange liking to it, trying to articulate what exactly is it about this as a medium of expression, that I really enjoy. I have certainly resisted the temptation to google up a few theories on this one so that I could figure out for myself, the answer to this question.
While I have certainly not found the answer, I certainly have one thought about google and the impact of google on our times. I think google is for sure going to impact the number of new things / concepts / or any other new stuff of any kind that we create and it would certainly have an impact on our creativity. I mean imagine that maverick scientist who invented that bouyancy concept I think it was, in his bath tub and then ran naked on the streets shouting "Eureka Eureka". He certainly had been thinking of and struggling with some important questions at that time, of whom he had no clue. Imagine if he had google in those times to help out and what would his reaction be at that time in the bath tub - "Wtf! I am sure someone must have done some research on these questions sometime. Afterall, there are so many smart asses on this planet. I think i'll google the answers when I get out of the bath. I guess I must relax and enjoy my bath a bit now". Yeah exactly...wtf google!!! But this is just a silly strange thought that I don't agree with totally since there are some loose ends to the argument that I just made but its an interesting thought anyhow...atleast I think its interesting. And it could be proved to be true even if there was even one guy who had, at some time in his life been thinking of a novel thought but didnt believe it to be novel enough and thought of googling for it. And after googling for it, couldn't really be sure if he couldn't find anything on it because there is nothing available about it or if there is nothing available on google about it or if its just his search string that is the problem. You know, even if he were to rule out any possibility of making a type I error, he wouldn't still be sure if he made a type II error. Oversimplified but interesting thought...at least I think its interesting. In case even you do, leave a comment.
While writing this post, I can certainly say one thing that I like about blogging and that is that since I am speaking to only myself while writing, I can take the liberty of totally ignoring what I had planned to write (or speak) about and start writing (or speak) about something totally random. For example, for this post I had planned to write about what I am going to write about next but ended up writing about some random thought on the impact of google. This probably explains the title of my blog as well.
Anyhow, coming to what I had originially planned to write about. So, this was last week I think when I was in Mumbai for work. After office, I was going to Mahim to meet up with my friends and took an auto from Vikhroli. I don't know much about the routes in Mumbai but like to pretend in front of the Autowalas that I do. Of course, the objective of this to save myself from being duped even though most of the guys there are pretty honest in my experience. So, when I got into the auto I told the guy that "Mujhe Mahim jaana hai, but aap to bas Bandra tak hi jayenge na to mujhe waheen tak le jaiye aur main taxi kar lunga aagey se". He had a smile on his face when I said this. A little ahead, he told me "Sir, main aapko Sion tak le jaunga. Aap wahaan se taxi kar lena...Bandra tak jaane ka fayda nahin hai...yahaan andar se raasta hoga". I thanked him and told him that he was part of the reason that I like Mumbai a lot, that the people here are very nice. I know some of you would like to argue against it but I would stick with my opinion on Mumbai even though its not even the point that I am making here. This incident made me think a bit about the way we are. That guy was good to me because he wasn't bad to me. Simple. Only becase he was a stranger. Net net, its so easy for a stranger to be good to us. They just don't have to be bad to us. It could be any other gesture from anyone else like letting my car pass them on the toll gate in Gurgaon where invariably two parallel lines need to merge at the barricade to get to the toll booth. Or for that matter it could be anything else where someone you don't know was not bad to you or was not indifferent to you. By simply ruling out those two possibilities, they were so good to you that they earned good wishes and a smile (those, mind you are rare commodities in Delhi for sure it seems) from a total stranger. Now, contrast this with the situation with people that we know. They can only be good to us when they are good to us! They must pay attention to us, care about us, do us favors, not get in our ways any which way, love us back or at times may be even go out of their way to help us. If they don't or fail even once out of a number of times, they would have been bad to us. We would react in several differnt ways - crib, complain, bad mouth, be disappointed, lower our expectations from them or even if we don't express it in any such way, then by at least feeling bad about this somewhere deep inside our heart. I am sure none of us could help this last bit. The real question is why are we so demanding by nature? Why are we like this? If you compare the two situations "A stranger can be good to you by not being bad to you but a known person can be good to you only by being good to you". Maybe, this thought doesn't hit you the way it hits me (in which case why are you still reading this dude!) but I find this funny.
Interestingly, even this thought can be looked in context of the two types of errors. A stranger just needs to avoid a type I error in order to be good to you, but anyone you know (as in know well) must avoid making type II errors to be good to you! Of course, I have provided a link that explains the type I and type II errors at the end of this post but this has also led me to the third thought for this post.
Can every situation in our lives be seen as a tradeoff between type I errors or type II errors? It would be interesting to think about this. I am certainly not writing about it in this post so relax, this one is ending soon. Maybe, I could think about this for the next post. But I certainly wouldn't google for answers!
PS: for details of type I and type II errors visit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
