I’ve been more and more inclined to return to the academia recently and as part of this endeavor while I await the edict of the powers that be to make that happen or not, I’ve been encouraging myself to participate in more academic discussions on various topics. So every once in a while I’ll pick up a book which would otherwise be considered esoteric or go attend a lecture at CMU (especially when they have guest speakers).

Recently as I was reading a book by Feynman, he touched on the topic of why academics (80/20 rule applies) always try to make everything sound a lot more complex than it really needs to be. Here is the example he used:



There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read – something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail or it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I had this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until I finally said to myself, “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.

So I stopped – at random – and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The invidivual member of the social community often received his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People Read.”

Now, I remember realizing this at some point when I was at CMU, but I also seem to have lost sight of it along the way. In fact my own blogs were at one point getting convoluted. But having read that again it reminded me of what really matters is the ability to get your point across – in a simple way. Sometimes it’s good to treat it kind of like a game. The academic lingo and jargon and big fancy words are all part of a code and if you can succeed in deciphering that code, you have conquered the secret to actually understanding what you need to know!

One of the talks I attended recently was like this. It was on a subject that I had little to no prior knowledge about. But if I would take the words that were being used and apply first principles to them, it made a little sense. Now, of course, the fact that I had to translate along the way made me a little slower on the uptake, but I probably learnt more from that exercise than a lot of people who didn’t go through that process.

Curious if this works for different subjects, so I’m just going to have to sneak my way into more lectures in different topics at CMU! 😉

I don’t quite recall when it was but somewhere along the way I came to the realization that there is no human being that I can idolize. Or forget human being, I doubt I could idolize anything. That realization was really part of a bigger picture of realizing that you can do anything. And some people do something better than others, but you do somehing better than any of those people. Everyone has flaws. Everyone has their virtues.

So that said, I’m amazed by how people do not think and let their minds succumb to idolizing celebrities and essentially go overboard with their expression of interest in someone or something. The Superbowl is a prime example. After nearly a decade of not understanding American Football at all I finally decided to make the attempt to atleast understand the game. And I think I get the basic idea. But I doubt I could ever be as rabid a fan as you come across for Football because to me Football, like everything else is just another game. Some people play better than others. But that’s not the be all and end all of it. At the end of the day it is entertainment. And I like my entertainment to be just that – entertainment, not a source of anxiety or stress.

Now, “celebrities” is a hole other thing which I don’t get. I can respect someone because of their achievements in their field, but they are all unltimately people like you and me. The great than thou thing just doesn’t work for me. Yes, Russel Crowe, Nicholas Cage and Kevin Spacey are great actors. But that’s all they are to me great actors. And yes, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock and Gweneth Paltrow and the vast aray of other beautiful women that adorn the silver screen are gorgeous, but that’s about it.

I guess my point here is about drawing the subtle line between respecting someone for who they are and what they are done as opposed to idolizing someone to make them something they’re not.