Thursday, June 28, 2012

An analysis of Polygamy

Polygamy has often been pointed to as a sign of male domination over women in past times. However after careful analysis, I personally feel that polygamy is actually more disadvantageous for men than for women.

Say we have a population where the numbers of men and women are roughly equal, which is usually the case.

If one man has four wives, the logical result is that three other guys are left without a wife, as three extra women have been removed from the dating market. In my opinion, the marginal benefit that the first guy receives from gaining three extra wives is less than the marginal benefit the other three fellows lose from going from one wife to zero.

From this example, we can see that in a polygamous society, the distribution of "wive share" among men is more uneven than the distribution of "husband share" among women.

E.g. a society of 10 men and 10 women. 1 guy has 4 wives, another 2 have 2 wives each, and there are two more couples of 1 to 1.

So the first guy has 4 points, another 2 have 2 points each, another 2 have 1 point each, another 5 have 0.

The 4 women have 1/4 points, another 4 have 1/2 points each, another 2 have 1 point each.

So we can see that the distribution for women is more even. This leads to greater happiness for women compared to men. To draw an analogy from economics, the higher the Gini coefficient of a nation is, the worse off it is supposed to be as opposed to be a country which has similar income levels but a lower Gini coefficient.

*A higher Gini coefficient shows that the inequality in income is higher.

Therefore, I conclude that polygamy hurts men more than it hurts women. It is actually a system where men oppress other men.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Mcdonalds

Many people have the false impression that I am inordinately fond of Mcdonalds. This is a patent untruth. I like Chinese food much more than Mcdonalds.

The reason people feel I like Mcdonalds more than other types of food is that I eat it once or twice a week. I also talk about it to some extent. The question to ask is then:

How come other people eat Chinese food (or Malay or Indian or whatever) 7 days a week and discuss its fine points constantly yet nobody says "wow you really like Chinese food (or Malay or Indian or whatever)?"

I think the answer is that we expect people to predominantly eat food from their own culture, or food that is somehow identified with local culture. Since their liking for such food compared with their liking for say, McDonalds is on the order of 9:1, while mine may be on the order of 8:2, it appears that I am very fond of McDonalds, when in fact I am not. I am just a little more fond than you.

I like Chinese food way more than I like Mcdonalds. If you were to dump me on a desert island and present me with the choice of eating Chinese food for the rest of my life or Mcdonalds for the rest of my life, I would definitely choose Chinese food. However considering I eat Chinese food for probably 10 of my 14 meals a week (lunch + dinner 7 days), and Mcdonalds for probably just one, it seems rather peculiar to say that I am very fond of McD.

So before telling me how much I love burgers, please consider how often you eat rice. As we are all citizens of the world now, all food should be equal to us. For as we are all children of God, is not all food too equal before His eyes?

Equality!

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Reincarnation

I once read this Buddhist pamphlet saying that if we eat chickens, in the next life we will be reincarnated as a chicken, while if we eat pork or beef, we will be reincarnated as pigs or cows.

In that case, it really doesn't make much sense to eat vegetables right... the only sensible thing to do would be to eat humans. But I'm sure Buddha's followers didn't mean it that way - they probably mean that if we cause suffering we will be reborn into that object to experience the same suffering.

Judging by the number of documents I print out, I think I will be reborn as a tree.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Prometheus - from the viewpoint of Greek mythology


Please do not continue reading unless you have watched the movie. Spoilers ahead!

 After watching the much-hyped prequel to the Alien series, Prometheus, I will attempt to explain its storyline by drawing parallels to the original Greek myth of Prometheus.

(Elementary Greek mythology - please skip if you know it)

In the original Greek myth, humans once lived in a time where there was no fire, so were forced to eat cold food and shiver in darkness. The demigod Prometheus took pity on them, so he stole fire from the flame of Olympus and gave it to mankind, improving our lives greatly.

When Zeus found out about this he was infuriated. To punish Prometheus he chained him to a rock and had an eagle tear his liver out every day, being immortal, Prometheus' liver would regenerate at night, thus he would suffer eternally. In the end he was freed by Hercules (or killed by Kratos in God of War 2).

To punish mankind for receiving fire, Zeus sent the first woman to mankind, Pandora. Together with her was the famous Pandora's box, which contained all kinds of evil and pestilence. One day she opened it out of curiosity and all these calamities were unleashed on humanity, which has been suffering ever since. Only hope was left in the box in the end, which has provided the strength for mankind to live on.

(end of Elementary Greek mythology)

 In the movie, the gods were the Engineers, who started the evolution process on Earth culminating in humanity. Initially they guided us, as can be seen from the cave murals around the world showing us worshiping them.

Perhaps along the way a rogue Engineer gave us something we were not supposed to have, perhaps the spark of intellect necessary to proceed on our current path of development. This displeased the other Engineers, who then got ready to give us a gift of death - the vases containing the black liquid of doom.

Incidentally, the original shape of Pandora's box was actually not a box, but an urn as shown below:


Doesn't it look like the vases which contained the black liquid?

The vases never reached Earth for the Engineers themselves were overrun by some kind of outbreak, possibly some of them got infected and Aliens emerged. So when the last Engineer was awakened and he saw humans standing around him, he must have realized that we were not destroyed as per their plans, thus he instantly reacted to complete the original plan and wipe us out.

The question remaining is: what was the trigger for them to decide to extinguish humanity? My personal theory is that an Engineer came alone to uplift us from an ape-like state; the figure shown in the cave murals is a single Engineer, our teacher. The gift of fire is actually an intellectual spark which we were not supposed to get, hence the preparation to wipe us out once our progress was discovered by the other Engineers around 2000 years ago.

Another theory I have seen online is that around 2000 years ago, during the time of the Roman Empire, an Engineer patrol came by and observed us fighting among ourselves fiercely, so they decided to send down another teacher to guide us back to peace.

Unfortunately, we crucified him...



Friday, June 8, 2012

How to set up a system (1)

No I'm not going to talk about my job here, neither am I going to discuss information technology in general.

The system I refer to is the rules of society itself, written and unwritten, forming a system which encourages certain behavior.

Many people say that city people are worse than those from the village - less friendly, less helpful, and less polite. Yes this is true. But what is the reason for that? Is it because people who move from the village to the city magically get a reduction in moral values? Of course not; the reason is that in a small village, everyone knows each other, so good and bad deeds have direct repercussions. In a small village, help someone lift a heavy load back to his home, the next day when you need help that guy may appear and give you a hand. In the big city, you help someone and most likely you will never meet that person again. In a small village, you never give way for others to cross that narrow bridge and people will pin you down as an inconsiderate person, while in the big city you cut someone off on the road and most likely you will never meet that person again.

So we can see that in an anonymous setting where reputation does not matter, people tend to be more selfish. This effect is even more pronounced on the Internet.

Looking at the corporate world today, we can see that a huge amount of speculation and other such risky acts are going on. Why this shift towards instability? The answer is that in the past most businesses were family-controlled, so leaders would look at the long run, while now corporations on the stock market hire CEOs who do not have a stake in the long-term performance. So the logical choice for these CEOs is to take huge risks, since if these gambles pay off they get huge bonuses, while if they fail and the company goes bankrupt, they can always move on to another job.

In the same vein, if within a company the boss proclaims that the salesman who gets the most sales will get a holiday to Hawaii, I wouldn't be surprised if salespeople are not very keen on helping each other. On the other hand if he says that if the sales team hits target everyone will get a holiday trip, the level of cooperation would probably rise instantly.

And it is no surprise that in Communist countries productivity is low, for if everyone is paid the same no matter what the result of their work is, human nature causes everyone to slack. Communism would be perfect if we were angels; unfortunately we are not.

If life is a game, the rules under which we play it determine our playstyle. In my next post, I will discuss how to tweak rules to achieve certain effects in how people play the game of life.


Monday, June 4, 2012

Equilibrium and competition

Equilibrium, by definition is a state of affairs in which things are balanced. However, things can be balanced in a state which is nice for everyone or bad for everyone.

Unfortunately, in life the state which we all end up balanced in is often an unfavorable one. And we settle in that state via competition. For example, it would be good for everyone if there were no nuclear missiles in the world. But it would be even better for a specific nation if they had nuclear missiles but no one else had - everyone would have to kow-tow to that country. So one country starts building nukes and everyone else must follow suit or bow down.

Another example closer to home is high heels. Girls tell me that wearing high heels are pretty tiring and require more care when walking, and I can see that for myself. So if no girl in the world wore high heels, the net effect would be fresher feet and more carefree walking for women, obviously a good thing. But the first girl to wear high heels would enjoy a halo effect "wow her legs are so long and sexy!". So everyone has to follow suit.

The common effect we observe here is that there is a state in which things are better for everyone, but the first person/entity (or first few) to break that state will enjoy a significant benefit over others, leading everyone else to have to imitate or lose in the competition. Once everyone is doing it then there is no net benefit anymore, only burden.

In my humble opinion the only way to stop this terrible scenario is for all humanity to merge into a single entity mentally... but that is a topic for another day.