When the herd thinks its smart
In my endless drive to observe things, i got to tweak on this incident.I usually take an auto to my office after the autowalla and me unconsciously play game theory, arrive at the intended mid thirties although we start at extreme ends of tweens and bi-tweens.
Primarily, the autowallas take two routes to my office with minor modifications at the end.The routes are almost such that we can either take the sides of the right triangle or travel along the hypotenuse.For people who are trained to pythagoras theorem, would obviously choose the hypotenuse as we save distance as its logically the shortest distance.
Today my autowalla took the path along the sides, thats when i suggested that we could have taken the hypotenuse route.He gave me very an astounding answer without any sense of pride, but it revealed immense insight.He said its true that the distance is short, but the time taken would be longer.He didn't stop there, he followed it with his logic for it as well.
Most of the people think that it is the shortest route and the road ends up in heavy traffic and we loose time.Giving wings to my green thinking, I thought we would atleast save on petrol as we travel shorter distance.He clipped that even before i had thoughts of flying.He said that we have three signals in the hypotenuse road and the amount of petrol burnt waiting for the signals is far exceeding the amount spent by taking the sides of the right angle.I wanted to revoke my B.Tech degree in utter shame.
The herd thinks its smart and ends up only creating an illusionary perception that we can reach our goals faster.We fail to recognise that everybody is as smart as we are.I started to recollect some of the herd phenomenons which i got to observe in the past .Everybody wanted to do engineering when i came out of my higher secondary education and the craze has eased out now .Everybody wanted to be in IT & Software industry as the fad gained momentum, later only to find that, they don't find commensurate jobs due to extreme competition and inadequate competence.
Now i kept thinking, what do really smart people do, they don't take the popular route.They deny the mass-thinking.I could recollect of a popular Wall street analyst who would not track a stock which is tracked by more than 10 analyst, his logic was that there is no fun tracking them as the market would be overloaded with piles of information , which gives least thrill in tracking a stock.There is friend of mine who is serious biblomanic, he had a strange rule, he would not read a popular book, he would say "if its for the commom masses, its not for me".
I thought, i was coming to some premature conclusions.May be what i say is right in the short term, but in the long run every system try to reach a equilibrium when all routes take similar time periods and petrol consumption.Now the tricky situation is that we all live only for short periods and its not easy to determine the period as well.
"To succeed, one should be the first or the best or different"
I am reminded of this poem by Robert Frost. Thought i will share it with you:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-----hope u find that interesting.
Posted by
Sudarshan |
3:39 am
Sudhashan,I really enjoyed it and it has given me more reasons to take the less taken path
Posted by
Sara |
8:39 am
Sara,
Most pioneers start out in the herd,but yes you are right after sometime, they just walk faster and get ahead of the pack, consequently directing the herd. Good post !
Suresh
Posted by
Anonymous |
11:46 am
People have different reasons for the approaches they take and it would be a folly to see them as a herd...
I have always found ingenuity among every person i have observed - or should we call it street smartness - and people do not survive without it...
I am sure i have one of my posts on a related topic - It was about the the routine i followed adn its inevitability. (http://adayavalanjanstreet.blogspot.com/2005/12/9-10-16-day.html)
There is however something that we should appreciate - It is no use reinventing the wheel, there are things that Herd are good at and it does no harm if we do the same. The only problem arises if we lose track of the purpose and the purpose ends up like the corporate policies that we so often ridicule....
Posted by
Prashanth Madhavan Narasimhan |
12:07 am
I totally acknowledge that people have diff approaches in life and the herd is good about doing something which suits them.
my whole contention was as to how the herd sometimes lives in an illusion that it is travelling a superior path
Posted by
Sara |
12:15 am
Sara,
Some well thought replies....
Now let us come to your contention that The Herd thinks that they are superior....
The question is "Is there a Herd....."
What we tend to call a herd is often a collection of people who have similar practices for a period of time. often the HERD disperses to carry on with what they have done - each in a different way.
It is like travelling in a train - Every one travels in a train but the ends are different.. they are a herd for people who travel through other means....
Though it may seem so, often the herd mentality is to ephemereal...If you insist to stick with what is left of the herd, you will be left alone.....
Now to another issue - Do a group of people (This could be the herd you refer to) think that thier way of doing things is superior to the way others do things.... this is a classical yes-No-May be question.. the probelm with this question is we cannot get a definite answer...
The answer to this lies in the analysis of the human nature..... Some times human beings tend to think that Pride is better than Survival... and the same fate meets this group as the person who tends to stick to the ephemereal herd....
Posted by
Prashanth Madhavan Narasimhan |
12:50 am
sara,
Somehow one of those psychopath killers in Vettaiyadu ... reminded me of you....dont know why ....
Posted by
Parthasarathy S |
3:56 am