Is 200 years long enough?

Thanks to my roommates' TV I watch news these days more regularly and also today started to use the "TeVo" feature to record British Prime Minister, Gordon Browns' address to the joint congress session in Washington. I saw the first few minutes and he was all praising US for it's leadership for the past 200 years and all. I hope to watch the rest later (if my TeVo recording trial works).

When people praise America for its greatness and leadership that it has shown so far, the nay sayers tell that 200 years is not that of a long time. My argument is that 200 years is really a long time given the strides of changes we have seen in the past two centuries. In my opinion a lot more recordable and impacting things happened recently. Science has seen tremendous progress mainly because of its impact on our survival abilities. We are more globally connected than ever before. And besides that all these things happened very fast. When the Great Depression that happened in 30s the world was a different place than what it is now. If the economy goes down in one major country then the rest of the world kind of goes down with it and vice versa. Word Wars brought a lot of changes in the world but at a cost of lot of lives. This economic crisis is better than those wars because atleast we are not paying lives. I have strong faith in resilience of the human civilization.

Infact you know I see this crisis as a kind of progress in our civilization because instead of needing "deadly-life-threatening" crisis to become better at survival we just need a "deadly-economy-threatening" crisis to make a new stride in terms of improved survival like becoming more aware of the climate in terms of reusing, recyling and optimizing energy usage etc., becoming more aware that peace and security are more feasible by better means (like giving hope and opportunities) than just killing etc.

It's not the absolute number of years that matters it how much we got done during those years that matters if those years are long enough. So yeah I think the leadership shown by US in the past 200 years is not just beginners luck or random chance but an outcome of a strife towards achieving a principled approach in dealing with human civilization.

Congratulations to America

Last night was an amazing night! It was much much more exciting than any event I ever followed. I feel fortunate to be right here in the US and be part of this historic election in someway.

The outcome of this election process clearly presents us many many aspects of true America or the concept of America:

For a country to be a true beacon for democracy we need good people who can make the actual definition of democracy (Govt. of the people, by the people and for the people) work.

People should be smart, open and stand for their beliefs, looking beyond their prejudices, to actually tap the full potential of democracy.

The freedom and power that the US has in this world gives room for lot of possibilities and it has been making better choices than almost all powers in the past, this being their latest accomplishment.

The true meaning of the opportunity is best demonstrated with this election.

It's resilience is a true demonstration of the saying: "Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Counting days to 4th

There is space-time continuum in this world but we know that there's no absolute measure of time. Sometimes days feel like seconds and sometimes seconds feel like days. With only two days left for the defining moment in 2008, the days feel like too long! Americans, PLEASE VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA on November 4th (Tuesday)! Polls sure boost our confidence but please do not let them increase your complacence.

Summarized view of his campaign is below:

Polls and Powell

I wanted to add this video with some meta analysis of Obama's campaign style. But I wasn't very sure about it. Looking at Terence Tao's post on the same topic I got motivated again.



See I mentioned before we can learn a lot from Obama's campaign style for better. Obama's self-criticality, empathy, uncertainty actually add to his focusing ability and thus lead to confidence and success at least as measured by polls and lately by Powell's endorsement. Of course there are 15 more days left and nobody can become complacent now.

Like millions I love (because I feel I can learn from him) the eloquence of Obama for e.g. when asked by someone something like what are you mainly worried about regarding election he said "What keeps me awake at night are not prospects of losing but prospects of winning because there is so much work to be done by the next president."! This again shows his focus! Running an exceptional campaign is only part of the game and he is really targeting to be an exceptional president which America desperately needs one now.

Streaks of thought: Streak 22

I just wanted to share the thrill of seeing the next president of the United States in person just four blocks away from where I live :)

This coupled with other incidents made my day today. It's amazing how resonating with someone can give that extra energy to make more out of life. Being able to resonate is important to have real life!!! As always I say this again: America is not just about money. It's a wonderful concept that we humans can look up to and protect it with all we got. I cannot imagine a world with any country (actually concept) except America leading the world.

Procrastinate on politics

A few months ago I had post on ways of procrastination. Since it's almost inevitable I urge everyone to involve in politics in some way. Talk to people to register to vote. Display political messages in your online profiles. People spend a lot of time online so create events, groups, threads etc. It's already being done and I am doing my part by posting this.

Obamagain

A year ago these youngsters and many others wouldn't care to talk about politics....I mean what happened...It's simple....Here's my pick...

I wanted to write this post right after watching Obama's speech at DNC but because of an extended deadline, a labor day weekend at six-flags and an informal talk at Penn, I am writing it now.

A few months ago, when some of my friends asked my opinion about presidential candidates and whom I would support, I said I don't follow politics. If I have to answer I would depend on opinions of those who I look up to since at least I know who I choose to look up to. And the answer was Obama as his name was resonating in academia.

But see Obama's exceptional performance is drawing so many's attention to politics and making many others to actually recheck their stand in politics: excellence by definition attracts interest of many people. I have a strong liking to the foundational concepts of this country and his speeches and especially his speech at DNC 2008 renewed my beliefs in the concept of America. He is really self-critical and is basing his entire campaign on the bedrock principles and ideals of this country. As I mentioned about year and half ago self-criticality is a necessary (but not sufficient) quality that any leader should have. Scott also rightly mentions here that "Any worldview that isn’t wracked by self-doubt and confusion over its own identity is not a worldview for me."

People who are undecided or think McCain is not bad and Obama cannot be as good as he sounds should keep the following in mind. See it's easy to argue that McCain is not totally bad because generally no republican is completely bad, of course they love this country very much. The resistance to choose Obama has an analogue to that faced by "reason" in struggle between Church and Science. And further more why is it that talking big should prohibit him from doing big things. He is talking big not because he is not aware of "realities" but rather he actually understands the current realities and realizes they have to change to keep the true American concept alive. Of course he is not all powerful and has limitations but that's no reason to risk not choosing him. The question to be asked is not whether he can solve all the problems but whether he can renew the politics so that it is back on track to be able to solve real problems in a responsible, accountable and democratic way. He certainly seems to have a great potential to do such things. The very fact that he became a presidential nominee of a big party proves it. "Inexperience" is only an excuse that is so unamerican because when America was formed wasn't it the wildest experiment to declare a real independent country against the will of the greatest empire with a strong hope in democracy? The founding fathers did not have "experience" in declaring independent countries, right?

Usually I would like to identify and associate myself with those who have similar values which happen to be being self-critical, open-minded, challenging perceptions from time to time, thinking for greater good etc. etc. Hence even though I am technically not American caring for this country is a high-level goal in my life. Prayer can have "positive entanglement effects" and hence I urge everyone to pray and urge everyone you know to pray for his victory. Of course those who have right to vote must and should vote for Obama. Furthermore who can do even more sophisticated game-theoretic practices please checkout this for Nadertrading etc.

Gain from Obama campaign

Lately, I have been increasingly gravitating towards following Obama's talks in his presidential campaign. Needless to say his speeches are very enticing. His audacious "walk-through reasoning" approach is quite refreshing and rigorous and can stimulate lot of ordinary people to improve their efficiency in dealing with their day-to-day issues. He clearly stresses on a contest based on relevant observables and merit based on policies instead of fighting on something personal and irrelevant. Sounds like a computational guy to me. Alan Turing (a Computer Science hero) argued something like this on defining artificial intelligence and you can see a nice post on it by Scott here.

Now this is very refreshing to see a politician with such perspectives. A lot must be learnt from him by politicians in India and probably all around the world. To contest based on reason with rigor avoiding "easy" and "nasty" tricks is no simple task. In his interview at Google last year one of the audience asked him what he had learnt from past democrat candidates who lost the elections, he said the main mistakes were that they were not clear of what they stood for and hence became defensive when they were attacked and actually sounded like their opponents. Being clear and honest and courageous and rational all go together. It's takes a holistic approach to be rigorous and effective in getting things done.

He admits he may not be perfect and may make mistakes but will make his government very transparent that can actually unleash the true power of democracy. His repeated indications that a democratic government's success is measured by the standard of living (including freedom) of majority of the population show his strong understanding of the fundamentals. There will always be ordinary and extraordinary people in the world at any given point of time. It's the self-justified goal of humanity that the quality of life of all humans should increase. Simply speaking it should be ordinary that ordinary people should be able to dream, strive and hope to be extraordinary while pushing the bar being of extraordinary to next level. He is a great example to show subtle differences between idealism and extremism, between fundamentalism and being strong in fundamentals, between having true high-level knowledge and hand-waving.

For me Scott:Computer Science :: Barack::Politics. Scott's core love for science, his results and his talent in presenting the results and Barack's core love for democracy and his talent in pooling people together are truly truly awesome. I truly wish (unfortunately I cannot vote this time, not being a citizen) that he wins but we surely can gain a lot just from his campaign.

Democrats and republicans

I have not been following the US presidential campaigns closely but lately I have been listening to some speeches by Barack Obama (thanks to my brother, Ganesh's enthusiasm in his speeches).

Just yesterday I listened to his (only part1) and John McCain's interviews with Rick Warren on CNN videos. Both speeches were good and clearly represented their parties' ideals. McCain's answers were short and clear while Obama's were long and complex. This was apparent starting with response to simplest questions like "State three wise men you would seek advice from" to complex issues like "Abortion". McCain's answers reflected gradient descent type approaches while those of Obama did MCMC type. No doubt both parties are dedicated to USA's growth and its benefit to the world. Both greedy deterministic approaches and probabilistic approaches have advantages and disadvantages depending on problem space: distribution of the problem instances. The main challenge in deciding whom to vote is what is to clearly understand the current problem instance and intelligently choose the better strategy. As is evident from the history republican strategy works most of the times. This is true in many optimization problems: gradient descent, though a local optimizer works in many many practical cases. But in hard cases when we need real "landscape shifts" in searching for the solutions we stand a better chance with probabilistic and "holistic/global" approaches. Such approaches tend to be computationally hard and require cleverer design of algorithms for feasibility.

Citizens of USA have been smart enough to choose Democrats a few times but I hope they realize this is one of those times again.