Recently I came across a movie on this theme and a moving story in a book called “The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle” by Matt Cainon, illustrating ‘love’ between two boys, who are presently in their 50s. The protagonists in both the movie and the book set me thinking. The characters in both cases indicate that, one, ‘love’ is a matter of choice, and, two, that is how ‘these’ people seem to be made. Recorded history in terms of ancient texts, pre-historic paintings, temple arts also depict such behavior in humans in the past. There have been recorded instances of animals exhibiting similar behavior in real life. But, that seems to be more of an aberration than a norm. Going through both of these narratives however made me realize that this behaviour is real and not ‘imagined’ i.e. it is not that the characters indulge in such kind of behaviour due to lack of opportunity or any other external compulsion. It is something very basic and primordial, which, I did not use to believe ...
Game Theory, as discussed or taught in the subject of Operations Research, Decision Science, or Management Science has a lot of applications and implications in real life. Here, we discuss one novel application of the same. For example, most of us believe in God, while, we are not even sure whether a God exists in reality or not. We believe in God, because that is the way we are conditioned or taught to think from the very childhood. While we are all rational and educated beings and tend to have an opinion on the veracity of facts regarding other issues communicated to us, this is one aspect we take as gospel truth. We will use the concept of saddle point to illustrate this concept and how our belief system works. An illustration of the payoff table to be used for the same is reproduced below. For learning more about the concept of saddle, point one can refer to the youtube channel link given at the end of the blog. Basically, we have two players in this game, each having access ...
Few years back there was a huge controversy when one of the political scions of India spoke about ‘poverty being a state of mind’. While poverty is very real and tangible for a segment of population which is below the poverty line and do not have access to a reasonable level of nutrition, health care, housing, clothing etc., for others it is just a matter of degree. It is a matter of degree, for example, as in what kind of medical facilities one has access to ranging from just about basic to ‘luxurious hospitalization’ with best facilities in foreign locations. The end point remains the same, to be cured of whatever was ailing us. Whether we talk of food, housing, clothing, transportation, etc. one can identify the extreme ends of this spectrum and beyond, as far our imagination and experiences take us. However, we as individuals always find it very difficult to identify the optimum point for ourselves. We always seem to be aspiring for the higher or a better level. However, is it po...
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