Aswath Krishnan

After a four-year hiatus, I finally returned to India on a 5-week trip, spanning 3 southern states and more destinations than ever before. It was great to be back home and spend time with family. Sharing a few observations (both subjective and limited) - 1. Indian cities are vibrant and a feast for the senses. The streets are a symphony of vehicles, people, and shops. The malls are packed, even on a weekday afternoon, and the streets and restaurants are bustling even late at night. You'll find more life in one Indian city than in most American cities combined, except maybe New York and LA.  2. But the constant bombardment of rough and loud sensory inputs - noise, traffic, dust, pollution, smells, crowds, and chaos - can be overwhelming and tiring. Many tourist destinations, like the Abbi waterfall in Coorg and the palace in Mysore, were also too crowded to be savored. Even if you stay home, there seems to be an incessant stream of visitors (helpers and vendors). It made me more app...

We were clearing up our house of unloved and unnecessary possessions before a move and decided to sell around 40 books that we'd never read or likely never reread.   We hauled them to a Half Price Book store. The lady at the counter told me that they have a computer program that calculates the offer price for each book.  That's an interesting programming puzzle.  There are 3 factors I'd take into consideration: (1) the price at which it will sell, (2) the average time to sell (payback period), (3) risk and profit buffer  These are related variables that can influence each other, but we can simplify the problem by treating them as independent varibles. For (1), we can assume it's half the average retail price across Amazon and maybe a couple of retailers. (2) is tricky as it involves predicting the future. We can use the past book sale date to do that. I'd use a weighted average of the recent average time to sell for (a) the very same book, (b) for the author, (c...

The most fundamental question to understand, IMO, is the existential one...What the heck is all this?! Why and how are we here? What are we supposed to do? Elon Musk is an incredibly smart guy - he has a track record of making things happen - both in the physical world (batteries, cars, rockets) and within human society (leading businesses, making money, acquiring a following). He's also a clear, first principles thinker and shares a lot about how he thinks about the world. So I think he can play a part in helping us understand life and the world*. So what is Elon's answer to the foundational question? Elon has two answers - one explicit and another implicit.   Elon recalls that at the age of 11 or 12, he had an existential crisis because he didn't understand why or how we are here. He concluded that we may never know but we may be able to find out if we expand the scope and scale of civilization and consciousness , and that's what he wants to do.  I like Elon's fra...

This is you.  You are the front part of the brain. When you ask yourself "Who am I?", that's the part of the brain that's speaking. When you are feeling lucid, clear-headed, "conscious" or "present", it is this part at work. What you perceive as life, every moment of your reality, is basically the neurons firing in the pre-frontal cortex. Your self-image, memories, personality, emotions, ambitions, and desires are all formed, stored, and derived from the neural circuitry here.  With regular practice, you will have some degree of control over how these neurons fire and shape the circuitry; a concept scientists refer to as neuroplasticity, and self-help coaches refer to as manifestation, positive thinking, or focusing on your locus of control. That's a big deal because if you can shape your perception, you can shape your life and reality. You can as easily be shaped by many other forces around you, but if you are strong, you can be a gatekeeper a...

Why the hell is there a Queen in a democracy? Clearly, a lot of people wonder about that too, even more so than the pain in the back of their body parts. I try to avoid opining on topics I barely know about. But the Oprah, Harry, and Meghan interview is juicy drama and there are a couple of interesting societal and psychological concepts here.  The monarchy has some history to it (duh). I know a bit that I just read on Wikipedia. The very short and probably inaccurate history goes like this. Before the republic, there was a monarchy. The power of monarchy slowly faded, but some king made a deal to keep the titles, palace, and stipend around. A better deal than what the French kings got. It made the entire transition more peaceful and less awkward.  I think the British Monarchy today is like the steak in the movie Matrix.  It is elaborate make-believe and a long-running, high production, global reality show. Who doesn't like to be awed by a royal wedding or fawn over a new...

With the pandemic and growing political nastiness, 2020 really needed Ted Lasso and Soul. I definitely did.  Ted Lasso gave us a role model of a kind, uplifting, ever-positive, ego-less person who lights up the lives of people around him (more on Ted Lasso in this post ).  Soul helps us tackle the deep universal question about the meaning of life and finding joys in every day life.  Soul deconstructs and models spirituality, similar to what Inside Out does with emotions and memories. Strangely enough, despite tackling a seemingly more complex topic, Soul seems simpler, with fewer concepts, than Inside Out. Maybe that's a lesson in itself about how life is simple, but our emotions aren't.  If you haven't watched it yet, stop here and watch it! The rest of the post is full of spoilers. 

I just watched "Formula 1: Drive to survive" on Netflix. I was awed at how contesters push the limits on car technology, driving, repairs, and monitoring. Watching it also made me more interested in cars Racing provides a playground for car companies to really innovate by offering a different set of requirements and constraints than their regular business. The excitement of it all has attracted a massive, engaged audience, which has helped fund the activity. It is a brilliant setup. In any field, competitive events push the limits, exhibit and celebrate top performers, inspire others, and generate excitement. Olympics and marathons push limits of fitness, training, and sports wear technology. Toastmasters competitions push on public speaking abilities. It makes me wonder if we should be extending this model and creating competitions for other professional areas to spur innovation and excitement. Say, a competition for plumbers to see who fixes a leak the quickest, a co...

I spent the last 3 days in Vegas and played a couple of hours of poker every day. Playing poker is quite fun - it combines uncertainty, probability, psychology, reflection, and the thrill of winning (or losing) money. You get to make many decisions with incomplete information, in a compressed timeframe, and get feedback on it. On one of the days, my wife asked me what my winning goal was for the day, and I stoically responded that my goal for the day is to learn more. In situations where the outcomes are highly variable, you can only focus on your effort. I don't wish to be a professional player as I think there other things to do in the world that aren't zero-sum games and don't have the arbitrary constraints on performance or high dependency on luck. But I'll continue playing occasional games for the thrill and learning. At the end of the 3 days, I came out losing $300 but I still claim I learned a bit :). Here are some things I learned and how it can apply in re...

We were at a couple of cafes and restaurants in Seattle this weekend, and remarked how hip they are, and how hip the people are. We concluded the hipness of these cafes had to mainly do with the decor - usually a combination of exposed brick wall, indoor plants, wood, and bold colored walls and furniture. The fashionable baristas and the single source, $8 drip coffee selection contributed as well. Something is hip when it is unique, interesting, and potentially worth emulating. It is the cutting edge of fashion, decor, or culture. Hip-ness is an idea generation and selection mechanism for a society. Hipsters explore and extend the edges of these fields - by being opinionated, bold,  and willing creators and perpetrators of new ideas. There is a constant cycle of what's hip. As a hip thing becomes popular, then the industrial efficiencies kick in. The big brands step in, the products get manufactured and sold at scale. Then the hip thing becomes mainstream, and something ...

Growing up, I loved listening to my grandmother's stories - an eclectic mix of folk tales, mythology, tales about her life and family. She is a gifted story teller and when she enters story mode, her audience of young kids and adults alike are thoroughly drawn into the experience - listening attentively, sharing laughs, astonishment and scares (my grandmother loves the horror genre, much to the chagrin of the parents). For the last fifteen or so years, I moved to a different country and have lived quite far away from my family. My interactions with my grandmother reduced to monthly phone calls and yearly visits. Our phone calls were simple check-ins, with similar patterns - my grandmother advising me to eat more or get married; and me enquiring about my grandmother's health, tv shows or daily routine. Yesterday, I broke that pattern. When we were about to be done with our usual check-in and when my grandma was advising me to have babies soon, I changed course and asked her...