Month: October 2015

The mathematical equation of Karma

Karma.

(Sanskrit: कर्म; IPA: [ˈkərmə] ; Pali: kamma)

Karma that Indian word, is as global now as the other word Yoga. Some say Karma is a bitch, some say Karma is a cliche.Some say Karma is a lama who sells T-Shirts in China. I demur against these Eastern winds. In the West, Some say Grace shall alone save you. Grace has not replied to my voice messages lately.

To my mind the closest thing to Karma is – Newton’s Third Law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Every good thing you do will lead to some good thing to happen to you in future. That’s Karma. Every bad shit that happened to you was payback for something bad you did, thought or planned earlier.  The mathematics on Karma has a long period. So shit that you did in your previous birth ( or Life- 1) can lead to shit to happen to you in next birth. That’s reincarnated Karma.

M1  V1  == M 2 V2

That’s momentum. Momentum is mass into velocity.  How big your startup is it’s momentum. How fast is it growing? That’s velocity. The 1 is for the body that starts the initial chain reaction. The 2 is for the body that reacts. Ecosystems react to disruptions in multiple ways. Ecosystems protest at innovations in multiple ways. Unless the right players have been paid and the right influencers have been fed.

M1V1 == M2 V2 + M3 V 3

Momentum never dies. If it is transferred to more than one body, the sum of the total momentum remains the same. Don’t confuse the ecosystem’s reaction to momentum with energy dissipated due to friction.

Newton who made Newtons law had a personal experience of Karma. His brilliant career was filled with occasional Politicking as he denied Leibnitz his due in Calculus. But you cant keep a good German Philosopher down without staying down with him. Wikipedia says, In philosophy, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, i.e., his conclusion that our Universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one that God could have created. That’s a four links in one sentence. talk about Wikipedia and Link Bait. Leibnitz’s   grave went unmarked for more than 50 years

Who created calculus? Wikipedia doesn’t care!  Calculus will help you measure your karma. presque tout de ce calcu!

As for Isaac,

Newton wrote a number of religious tracts having emptied his intellectual batteries in Physics. You can accuse Newton of almost being a Republican. He hanged several people as Britain moved to paper money. I wished we had a Newton to manage the move to digital money. Newton lost huge money in slave trade. The man who monetized Apple Trees 400 years before Steve Jobs, well, Isaac died  a virgin. Time spent fucking Leibnitz did not count.

Curious minds often converge on the same idea.

What do you do when you discover that your idea is not your idea but just something that the universe spawned in multiple heads in the same epoch. How you deal with the karma of your basic idea, is how you will find the universe pay you back for what you owe or what you sow in the ether.

Karma is both a  bitch and a cliche. Momentum won’t die. Entropy will only increase. Physics is just a TV show.The universe will find a way to pay you back for the beauty and the shit you left in it. We shit once a day, and bullshit many times in the same day. Karma is a not bull shit. Its an ancient concept. Think of Karma as dinosaur shit.

Think of Karma when you negotiate salaries and stock options. The world will be a much better place for it. Focus on creating the good stuff and wait for the universe to react.

keep-calm-and-let-karma-finish-it-32

Data Science is the new kung fu and everybody was

I get dragged, cajoled and manipulated into meetings galore.Those meetings can be summed up into- Hey, I have huge data, and I spent my life with Microsoft certifications and SQL.How do I deal with this data oil, data deluge, etc etc. These remind me of Bruce Lee and the way he started before he started swinging his wooden nonchuck.

Hire us, I say, laconically, to the people expecting us to solve Big Data problem on a whiteboard and a ppt.

On the other side I train people to be data scientists because the oil rush is on and everyone wants to learn how to use a shovel or spade. Some people need a certificate to get a shortlisted  In a interview, some need the minimum knowledge to clear an interview, and everyone wants to know what will happen to their career after 10 years of being a data scientist. These things are like the 36 chambers of Shaolin except the teacher is doing all the tasks on a web conference

I don’t know, I say, apologetically, to the wanna be most sexy profession, data scientists to be.

I also do data science unicorn startups on the side. These things are like Jackie Chan movies, where a challenge is offered to the doju master and a few jokes later everything is getting pummeled or broken. Sometimes there is a pretty girl but this is rarely done. In the technology start up world in India, we dont read Sheryl Sandberg enough.

Pay me, I say, with a greedy glint in my eye to wannabe unicorns.

 

 

Slacks Lies and Stock Options

So I was swapping war stories with someone who really made some money on a unicorn. The only thing we could learn from the stories was – the sheer unpredictability in which people will lie to you and the sheer unpredictability by which people will be nice to you.

I mean forget all the data science prediction problems out there. Isnt this the only data science problem to solve- Whom to trust? When? For how much

What is surprising is the parallels in the intelligence spy business and the technology startup business.

  1. Intel and Tech Startups are less glamorous than the look in books
  2. They both involve long periods of boring inactivity and sudden periods of frenzied action
  3. Relationships matter in the first and second oldest profession of the world but only for the moment. Relationships matter a lot more in the newest profession on the world- unicorn tech worker.
  4. The stock options will never come on what you did in the past but just to hold you for the future.
  5. Karma is the oldest Android App and it is really sweet piece of coding
  6. Coffee and tea are good stimulants. Other stimulants get you in trouble as the founder President of Facebook found out.
  7. Comfortable clothing is the norm in technology startups. Cool clothing is NOT the norm in the guys who will fund the technology startups atleast in many areas I have seen. Wear Slacks to meetings but not to the investor meetings.
  8. Data never lies. People do.
  9. People can manipulate truth and data to lies using ppts and statistics. You decide you wanna be a unicorn or a scientist
  10. Nobody lost his job for being the hardest worker in the room. Nobody lost their stock options for being the nicest person in the company. Except for Woz. But  we all love Woz