Questions this week

One for the techies: Is Cuil the next big thing in search, competing with Google, with thrice as many web pages and former Google brains behind it? It doesn't impress a LOT yet though, even if it's slicker, because of a greater upload time and an apparently special aversion to "google" pages, e.g. Blogspot, which almost do not show up in results at all...Interestingly, it openly criticizes Google's "personal" information collection snooping policies by claiming "We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach". Also, what do you think, will Google's Knol manage to be bigger, better than wikipedia, eventually??

On stuff considering lesser mortals next, are we really that stupid, that naive a country that while thousands die in terror attacks every year, we spend the days after 23 blasts spanning two major cities blaming Govt and opposition parties and claiming political conspiracies to unsettle state govts. (do they have a sane head on their head? any of them?) instead of reassuring people, preventing fear and rumor and taking strict action. Seriously, every time something so tragic happens, it makes me think about the heartlessness and the mindlessness with which some people do these things. And about the inefficacy of the politicos, though seeing PM walking with the Gujarat CM to the victims was a reassuring glimpse of sanity. But frankly, what doI expect from a country where someone like Mayawati actually has a real chance today to become Prime Minister of India on some frail stitched regional support. How tragic will that be!!! Scares me to death. For good or for worse, the rgional parties in India have gained a lot of muscle at a national stage in the past couple of decades and one of the worst things that has done is creation of divisive ideologies in India, Hindu vs Muslim, Gujjar vs Meena, General vs OBC, Dalit vs Manuwadi, and endless such crap. Shameful.

On another note, this Sunday I was in CP with an hour to kill, so ended up at Oxford bookstore and chanced upon this small but interesting book "Games Indians Play" by V. Ragunathan that basically uses Game theory to find an insight into why are we, the Indians, the way we are? Quite simply, adding a why to "hum aise hi hain". It says a lot of interesting things, including that Indians suffer from a lack of regulation as well as self-regulations, are privately smart and publicly dumb, and are extremely akin to the situation in the Prisoner's Dilemma where everyone rationally chooses a non-cooperation strategy for personal gain and community loss, except without realizing it is a dilemma at all. It attempts to explain why we tend to jump queues or red lights, have poor public hygiene, take short cuts and tend not to keep our part of the bargain fairly in one-off deals. It also hints on half a solution, or half a strategy that makes a lot of sense to me, hence here it goes: The strategy is called Tit for Tat. It says, never defect, that is never not-cooperate, or be unfair to someone, or cheat a rule etc, until the other party cheats on you, and defects first. Then at the next time, you defect, but see if it co-operates. If it does, co-operate again the next time. In short, remember only the previous behavior of the system you interact with and act accordingly, but never defect first. So, each time someone you say hello to someone who ignores you, do not go into the "never again" revenge modes...just avoid until other person decisively greets or and act on this reaction from the next time.

But all this theory apart, you tell me, what do you think, why are we the way we are?