A very deep hole

A very deep hole is a place where the US and China have put themselves and everybody else in the world because of the kind of economic interdependence they have to each other. We know that Chinese government has artificially lowered the value of renminbi by 30-40%. Which means that Chinese exports are cheaper while Chinese imports are expensive. Some people might not take it too seriously, but it is a kind of weapon of mass destruction that can outperform any nuke on any given day. Because of the lower renminbi China has become the world's biggest exporter while US has become the world's biggest importer. Due to cheap imports American people have, for quite some time, been spending well beyond their means. The national savings rate is -2% while debt has crossed USD 13 trillion, 84% of GDP. So what does a country which is spending way beyond its means do to buy all those things. It acquires more debt. And who actually gives this money to US? The Chinese, as they are the only ones who are benefiting from the spending of the American people and they are the only ones who have the money to do so. This has been going on for a while. The American people buy beyond their means, the US government acquires more debt by selling bonds, Chinese buy these bonds, giving American more money to buy more. This cycle repeats itself again and again and again. But there is one factor that does not go in cycle along with it; the national debt. The national debt increases with every cycle. Right now it has reached staggering 84%, and it increasing at USD 4 billion daily. And soon enough it will cross the 100% mark. At that point the national debt of US would be more than the sum total of all the assets of US. How will the US government going to pay back this money? Recently, the Greek crisis highlighted the very same issue. The national debt at the time of the crisis was 113%, and the Greece had to be bailed out else Greece would have defaulted on the its sovereign debt. Greece is a small economy by any standards and hence could be bailed out easily. But US is the biggest economy in the world. If it were to default on its sovereign debt, who is going to bail it out and how. By some estimates US would reach this stage in next ten years.

So what is the way forward. There is a loud and growing voice in US and around the world that says that increasing the value of renminbi should be our next step. There has been a lot of influential and powerful people in and out of US congress making emotive and passionate appeals for the same. And as we all know it way too well that most important financial decision are best made with emotions and passion rather than sound thinking. So what is going to happen if Chinese were to increase the value of renminbi. The first impact would be that Chinese exports would become expensive, resulting in sharp decline in demand for Chinese goods. With decline in demand, large number of factories in China would close down or will layoff workers, resulting in large scale unemployment. With the current situation in China, growing rich-poor divide, high frustration and resentment of the people towards government, etc large scale unemployment would be the perfect catalyst for a major revolt/revolution in China, the type which is every government's worst nightmare. A lot of financial pundits have put their money on renminbi to rise. This has led to huge investments in Chinese real estate market. Why? If renminbi were to increase its value by 40%, everything in China will get 40% expensive. So people were to own land or house in China, then its value will increase by 40% when the value of renminbi were to increase. That has led to investors from all over the world investing in Chinese real estate market; which has led to spiraling of real estate prices in major Chinese cities. This real estate bubble will burst as soon as the renminbi appreciates, then everyone will start dumping their assets in China before the bubble is completely burst and the Chinese economy will go in depression like the one US had after its housing bubble burst. Which will cause trouble for all those people who still have jobs left. Long story short there would be big problems in China and would not go away very easily.

Now back to US. With increase in value of renminbi, US imports from China will reduce significantly, but will not affect its national debt in short period. And hence the government has to continue selling bonds to raise money. But this time Chinese would not have the money to buy US bonds (for the fact that their income has reduced as exports have reduced). So the US government will have to raise money from within the country by raising interest rates. We all know how the whole world got affected when sub-prime housing crisis happened in US. Raising of interest rates will create a much bigger crisis as even the prime customers will start defaulting on their mortgages. There is still a huge inventory of over million homes that are up for sale due to foreclosure, the new crisis would bring another set of homes from subprimes customers who were remaining from the previous crisis and many prime customers who now cannot afford their loans.  This will result in a much bigger housing crash in US followed by the crash in the US stock market. With so many people out of homes, buying fancy clothes, gadgets, etc will not be at the top of their minds. US is the biggest importer of the world, also a major trading partner for most countries in the world. Reduction in US's buying power will result in more or less China like affect depending upon their dependence in US exports. This would result in reduction in the value of Dollar, which will further aggravate the problem. The housing crash, stock market crash and lower imports from US will have a major impact in the rest of the world, much worse that what we have seen in the previous crisis. This is not all, China today has the largest reserve of US dollar in the world. So if dollar were to fall, China would have the biggest impact as value of its assets would fall. This will be the third big impact on China after large unemployment and housing crash.

So what is the solution. If value of Chinese currencies is left unchanged, then the US will reach a point when it can no longer pay for its sovereign debt and will lose the ability to borrow further, pay for its imports, etc. Which will in turn cause lots of hardships to Americans as bank interest rates will go up, salaries would be reduced, inflation will hit the roof and dollar will fall; resulting all the problems I listed above falling dollar will cause will happen. If renminbi were to appreciate, then again dollar will fall and almost everything will happen in the same way. So no matter what US and China decides, dooms day is coming. The only question is when. The more we wait to do something, the more harder it would be to do something and the faster we do something, faster everything will go into crisis. The only thing left for us to decide is when we would like to get kicked where it hurts the most.

I know that I have only stated the problem and not given any solution. But if I know the solution this problem, then I would be expecting a call from Sweden rather than writing this blog. So my advice is; enjoy the ride while you can, it is going to be a fairly bumpy ride quite soon.

Why IPL are fixed

This is a sequel to my previous post IPL Matches are Fixed.

The basic that I tried to answer in my previous post was whether or not IPL is fixed. I looked at various patterns in which teams are winning and losing various matches. A lot of people who read my previous post of IPL do seem to agree that IPL matches are fixed. But there are few skeptics. That made me think.


Why IPL matches are fixed ?


Many people believe that IPL are meant to show sporting prowess of various sportsmen, and matches are won and lost based on the merit of the game played. But is that true. As pointed out by various members of the media and even owners of various teams, IPL is just a business for them. And in business what matters most to a businessman is profits. The question one must ask here is does good performance in the field equates to good profit for the teams. I do not think so. There is no co-relation between profits and performance in the fields. Money is made from TV ads, ticket sales, and the works. Winning and losing does not have any affect on a teams fortunes. If you look at first season of IPL (http://www.cricket360.com/indian-premier-league-teams.html) you would notice that only two teams made profit, KKR and RR. While one can argue that RR made profits because it won the season, but same cannot be said for KKR. So why did KKR made the profit, it did not won the season, it did not even qualify for the semis. It started with a big bang and then lost its mojo somewhere in between. Well KKR made profit because more money was made from matches that KKR played. And the reason for more money being made is that there was more unpredictability in KKR matches and more excitement too. KKR was losing matches left right and center, yet they were laughing all their way to bank. Why in earth will they win a match if they are making good money losing them. Even in season two KKR is said to be one of the teams that made the most profit even after being the punching bag of the season. I tried to find the exact revenues made by various teams in season two but could not find any site offering this data If you find it, please do let me know. 


One question could be asked that as same players play for both national teams and IPL, how can we expect that they play fair in international matches and not in IPL matches. To answer this let us first ignore the fact that match fixing in international cricket is not an unknown phenomenon, as assume that all international matches are played fair. When a player plays for his country, he mostly plays for national pride and not money. The money cricketers make for playing matches in very minimal and most of their income comes from advertising. And we have seen quite often how ad money is linked to the player performance in the field. But in the case of IPL that is not the case. No one is playing for national pride, also most players (except tendulkar, ganguly) are not even playing for their home city. So national or city pride does not come into picture. The only thing the players play for is money. And this money does not come to them by doing some ads for various companies, they make money by just playing. Winning is not necessary. As for all the ad money that comes from matches, it goes to the team owners and not the players. So players have no incentive to play better or win matches. They make the same money no matter what and there is also no emotional value attached to winning or losing. 


So the question arises that 
Does winning or losing matches have any impact on anyone what so ever?

And the answer is a big YES. Winning and losing impacts the interest of people watching IPL. Everyone likes to cheer the underdog or boast of loyalties towards the hot favorites. So when things do not pan out as expected by fans, their interest in the game tend to increase. They are more likely to watch the match whole match and even the pre and post match analysis by various so called "experts". But more importantly they watch the ads that come in between. And these ads are the real source of income for the teams. Hence it in all the teams' interest that they make sure that all matches are as interesting as possible. To put icing on the cake team owners also employ foreign cheerleaders, Bollywood celebrities and the works. IPL is more talked for its glam factor then for the result of the matches. The celebrities and the after match parties have made IPL a page three event instead of sporting event. And all this increases the interest of people attracting more eyeballs. 


There a pattern emerging from observing the first three seasons of IPL. In season one, MI, KKR, DC, CSK and DD were considered hot favorites, while RR were considered as the underdogs. But what happened in the end, DC were the punching bags of the season while RR eventually won the season. In season two, odd did not changes much, just that RR too was considered a hot favorite. But what happened was quite dramatic, KKR became the punching bag, DC won the series and RR were nowhere close to the title. If one looks at the track record of DC, they will notice that they had only 56% success rate. Which is quite less as compared to other teams in the season yet they won the season. In season one and two combined, they had only 36% success rate, yet they have a season title under their belt. There are quite a few teams with much better stats, yet they have not won even a single title. If we look at season three, now KXIP has become the punching bag, which by the way was performing quite decent in the first two seasons. RR and DC which won the first two seasons too are most likely to miss the semis and MI are the hot favorites. The same MI which performed well below expectations in the first two seasons.



The next question that comes to my mind is
So what is next and why?

What I have noticed in these three seasons that the team that has performed badly in the previous season tends to win/become favorites in the next. And each team that wins a season tends to perform very badly in subsequent seasons. It looks like a pattern that keeps repeating itself. Before going forward we must look into the role of BCCI in all this. BCCI is the organizing body for the IPL. It has sold the teams for a period of 10 years to various team owners. We also know that people in BCCI has strong business sense and would like to make as much money as possible from the IPL. So how to BCCI make money. It made money by selling the teams of 10 years, it makes money from the ad revenue of the matches, 30% to be exact. And it will make money again by selling the teams seven years from now. To maximize the ad money, it is also in BCCI's interest to keep the matching exciting and make people glued to their TVs. But the bulk of the money would be made seven years from now when they sell the teams again. If after seven years some teams have performed very well while others very badly, BCCI will lose money as losing teams will fetch very little money. So it is in BCCI's interest that it keeps all the teams competitive and equally appealing to the new set of owners who buy the teams. This can only be done if all the teams have performed well in some of the seasons. So I predict that by the time next IPL teams are sold, all the teams would have won atleast one season and been the punching bag in one.

There are three parties who make money in IPL, BCCI, team owners and the players. And the amount of money they make does not depend on how players play in the field or whether or not the games were played fairly. All that matters is how many people watched the matches and how much money is made through advertising, etc. When neither of the three parties have any incentive to play fairly or win matches, I do not think anyone is playing fairly to win matches. IPL is not a game of cricket, it is a game of money where the BCCI, team owners and players are winning and the viewers are losing.

Life is not a shade of gray... Its 24 bit true color

It is often said

"Life is not black or white, it is a shade of gray."

But is it true?

To answer this question we need to find out why it was said in the first place. In the earlier times it was believed that life is black and white, that is I'm right, you are wrong. The white here means right or correct, while the black means wrong or incorrect. Then some great philosopher, riding on his high horse of morality, came up with a new theory that life is a shade of gray. His motive was to reduce the guilt that is caused by the "I'm right" syndrome. So he said that life is a shade of gray, meaning that everyone of us has some good qualities and some bad qualities, nobody is perfect. This theory seems good. No one is claiming to be all good neither blaming others to be all bad. Is it. If we look closely, we will notice that indeed we are not labeling people as good or bad, but still we are labeling qualities as good or bad. Can qualities be labeled as good or bad, or qualities too come in shade of gray. But again qualities do not alone define a person, there are always his choices, actions, circumstances. Can all be quantified in good or bad. Or all of them are a shade of gray. If we color all the qualities, choices, actions, circumstances in black, white or gray and then try to define a person then all we will have is a complicated shade of gray.

Let us assume that someone actually sat down and labeled all the qualities, actions, et. al. as black, white or gray, and we get to see the what degree of gray are each and everyone of us. But again life is not made up of people, it has elements of everything there is from the cars we drive, to the food we eat, to each and every material that was ever made or everything that ever existed, all the animals, plants, every natural event that happened like storms, hurricanes, earthquakes and what not. Our life experience is a combination of all of this taken together. Can we label all of these too in some type of black, white or gray such that we can get the final color of our life in gray.

Even if someone actually labeled everything with the black, white and gray what is the guaranty that everyone else will actually agree to it. It is highly possible that something is good for one but bad for another or something like that. Secondly it is also very much possible that some things are neither good nor bad for someone, either they are not bothered about it or they are not affected by it, or even if they are affected by it they cannot classify it as good or bad or part good-part bad.

So is life a shade of gray? Is could be, but if it is then it wouldn't be fair or just. Then what is the solution. I do not think that having a separate color classification for each and every one of us is a good solution. I believe that instead of using just two colors (ie black and white) and its combinations to define anything or everything is incorrect as the definition of colors cannot be the same for two people. Instead if we use the full spectrum of colors to define something, things could make more sense. Every things can be labeled as different colors like red, magenta, blue, cyan, green, yellow, etc. And people can associate these colors what is good for them and what is bad. For example, for one person, red could be good while cyan could be bad, while for someone else blue could be good and yellow could be bad. Here no one is making judgment on whether someone else is good or bad. Everyone has their own perspective and no one is being imposed by someone's views. I believe that making judgments on others tends to curtail others freedom to be themselves. Because judgment leads to prejudice and prejudice leads to discrimination.

I agree that prejudice and discrimination cannot be removed all together as it is part of human nature, but we can still try to go towards an utopian society even if we can never reach it. Hence instead of seeing things as black, white and gray, we should start start seeing things as red, green and blue where no color is any better or worse than the other.

And hence, Life is not a shade of gray, it is (as geeks call it) 24 bit true color.

A yatra using Yatra

Why do sites like Yatra.com exists?

I would not be wrong if I say to make the hassle of booking flight tickets easy.

But a recent experience made me wonder whether the above statement hold true anymore or not. Recently I had booked a ticket on yatra.com and the site did everything it is supposed to do except the part where it is supposed to book the actual flight ticket. Yes, they made me login to their site, took the money, send me confirmation email, followed by an e-ticket, but in reality it was all useless as they had not booked the ticket with the airline. So when I reached the airport with the printout of the e-ticket they sent me, I found out it the hard way that the ticket is not booked. When I called their customer care center asking for clarification. They told me that there is nothing they can do right away and I have to buy the tickets again, that too at the last minute price. They also promised to me that I would be refunded the whole amount and I need not worry about a thing .

Some would think that my problems had ended by after that, but in reality they had just started. The refund did not came within reasonable amount of time so I started calling up their customer care at regular intervals. This resulted in partial success as I was given a partial refund of what I was promised after more than 20 days.

After this things started becoming worse. Earlier each of my call to their customer care center had taken about 30-45 minutes of explaining and shouting to get my message across. But after getting the partial refund my each of my calls started taking over one hour, if it was picked. I had faced situations when after talking to the agent for an hour, the agent asked me to hold for a while to get more info and after waiting for about 15-20 minutes, simply disconnected the line, and several times it happened that the phone was not picked up even after ringing for over 15-20 minutes.

Eventually, one of the agent finally acknowledged that they do not have the authority to clear such transactions and only a supervisor can do so. And I tried to get in touch with a supervisor on multiple times of multiple days but with no success. Every time either he was not present or busy in meetings or for some other reason, not able to talk to me. After much persuasion and shouting I was finally able to get name and email id of an supervisor, till then I didnt had any name either and I was trying to get any supervisor present in their office that I could find. Now I wrote an email to this particular guy explaining my situation and all I got from him after four days was that they have processed the refund and money had been transferred into my account. By this he meant that partial refund that I got, even though I had clearly explained to him that I did get a partial refund and I am looking for the rest of it.

So after 49 days of being assured of refund and over 80 days of yatra.com's goof up, I am still short by thousands of rupees for no fault of mine.

Meanwhile I had also talked with the concerned airline staff explaining my situation and asked how one can avoid it in future, they told me that we can call up the airline help line and ask them whether our ticket is valid or not. But I think that if every passenger started calling up the airline helpline then they will have a huge problem in their hands.

In this whole incident what hurt me the most was the customer unfriendly nature of yatra.com. I myself am a computer engineer and know that sometimes issues can happen with the program, but in such cases the company could atleast make sure that the customers do not have to pay through their nose because of the faulty code.

An ANT and A GRASSHOPPER

(This is not written by me, but I found it worth posting)
Sharing an old story, and the new version of the same story.
Story of an ANT and A GRASSHOPPER

OLD STORY
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The ANT works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The GRASSHOPPER thinks, the ANT is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Comes winter, the ANT is warm and well fed. The GRASSHOPPER has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

NEW STORY, INDIAN VERSION
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The ANT works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The GRASSHOPPER thinks, the ANT is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Comes winter, the shivering GRASSHOPPER calls up a PRESS CONFERENCE and demands to know why the ANT should be allowed to be warm and well fed, while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering GRASSHOPPER, next to a video of the ANT in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The world is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor GRASSHOPPER is allowed to suffer so!!
ARUNDHATI ROY, stages a demonstration in front of the ANT's house.
MEDHA PATKAR, goes on a fast along with other GRASSHOPPERS demanding that GRASSHOPPERS be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

MAYAWATI states this as 'injustice' done on MINORITIES.
UN & KOFI ANNAN, criticize the Indian government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the GRASSHOPPER.
The INTERNET is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the GRASSHOPPER(many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

'BENGAL BANDH' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a JUDICIAL ENQUIRY.
CPM in immediately passes a law preventing ANTS from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ANTS and GRASSHOPPERS.

LALU PRASAD allocates one free coach to GRASSHOPPERS on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'GRASSHOPPER RATH'

Finally, the JUDICIAL COMMITTEE drafts the 'PREVENTION OF TERRORISM AGAINST GRASHOPPERS ACT' [ POTAGA ], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

ARJUN SINGH makes 'SPECIAL RESERVATION' for GRASSHOPPERS in Education Institutions and in Govt. Services.
The ANT is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taes, its home is confiscated by the GOVT. and handed over to the GRASSHOPPER in a cermony covered by NDTV.

ARUNDHATI ROY calls it 'A TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE'
LALU calls it 'SOCIALISTIC JUSTICE'
CPM calls it the 'REVOLUTIONARY RESURGENCE OF THE DOWNTRODDEN'
KOFFI ANNAN invites the GRASSHOPPER to address the UN General assembly.
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MANY
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YEARS
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LATER
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The ANT has since migrated to the US and set up a muti-billion dollar company in SILICON VALLEY, 100s of GRASSHOPPERS still die of starvation despite of reservation somewhere in India,

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AND
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As a result of loosing lot of hard working ANTS and feeding the GRASSHOPPERS,
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INDIA IS STILL A DEVELOPING NATION

IPL Matches are Fixed

I am writing this blog after watching the Rajasthan Royals batting against Mumbai Indians, when it clicked to me that most if not all matches in IPL are fixed. RR got out for a mere 103 that too against MI. The match has not ended yet but I am sure that MI would easily win this match without losing many wickets. 

So what made me think that the matches are fixed ?

If one look at the results of all the matches of IPL we would notice that teams who are the favorites to win and go to semis suddenly start losing matches while teams that are written off as duds start winning matches. 

Lets start from start...

Kolkatta Knight Riders were hot favorites and they started with a bang too, but as soon as they made their mark in the IPL they started losing matches. 

Initially most people have thought that RR would be a dud team and it started predictably too losing their first match, but after that it stunned everyone by winning 5 matches in a row. Now it has made a mark in the IPL and has started looking like a semis material with 5 wins under their belt. We know that any team winning 7 or 8 matches can easily go into the semis. Then we saw the total surrender of RR against MI. If one look at how most batsmen have got out then one would realize that they had thrown their wicket in a premeditated action. Look at Smith's wicket. He did not even care to look back and simply walked away. The keeper was up even when Pollock was bowling. Even other wickets too look more like thrown away rather than taken by good bowling. Look at the wicket of Warn or Trivedi who could not bring the bat in front of ball even when the bowl was considerably slow. It looked more like he was waiting for the ball to hit wicket before he could swing the bat. 

Now look at other teams. 

MI - They were total duds with losing all of their matches. But as soon as they reached a point where any more losses would mean being out of race of semis. All of a sudden they started wining matches. Both CSK and RR batted very badly and gave a very easy win to MI keeping their semi hopes alive.

CSK - They too started with a bang. They were too hot favorites for the semis. When everyone thought that they would cruise all their matches even winning all 14 of their matches, then they started losing matches even against MI and DC who have been losing very badly till then. And now they have lost 3 matches in a row giving people doubts whether they can make it to the semis or not.

DC - They too started with a bust. Losing all of their starting matches. Now when their obituaries were almost written they beat CSK and kept their semis hope alive. They had pretty good lineup initially with the likes of Symonds but they still could not find any wins. When he left and the team was looking more orphaned they pulled out a rabbit out of their hat and defeated CSK. Now they too are semis hopefuls.

Looking at other teams we would notice that other teams too are following the same pattern- wining teams start losing while losing teams start winning.

So why are the matches being fixed ?

Their is a simple logic to this. If all teams played according to their initial predictions then by the mid of the round robin matches we would have 4 clear winner and 4 clear loser ie we would know which teams are going to the semis and which are not. This would make the remaining of the match uninteresting and the teams would lose the valuable ad revenue as people would stop watching subsequent matches. All teams know that their is more money in playing high TRP matches then winning the IPL. So it is in their interest that matching remain interesting to the people and they have high TRP. Winning and losing does not help or hurt teams much apart from a little loss of face which I think any able manager would know. 

So it is quite clear that all teams want the matches to be interesting as only interesting matches bring good money to their managers. And the only way to keep the match interesting is by making it critical in the quest of the semis. If a team has won so many matches that its place in the semis is fixed, then its matches would not be interesting as most people would believe that they would win their next match and secondly even if they lose then too it wont hurt them. Similarly if a team has lost so many matches that they cannot make it to the semis again its matches would become uninteresting. So it is quite clear that, if any team manager wants to make the most money in its matches then it has to make its matches interesting even at the cost of losing the matches. And I am pretty sure that the last league match too would have a major affect in deciding which teams finally go into the semis.

So what will happen next ?

Now it is time for BRC, DC and KKR to start winning matches else they would be out of the semis race. So they will win some more matches to keep their future matches interesting. By time DD and CSK would be under fire for not performing well and would face prospects of being out of the semis race. Then they would start winning again. Following which KXP and RR would reverse their losing streak. And this cycle would continue till the last league match.

After formulating this theory I realized that other dramas that is being played on and off the field like the Harbhajan slapgate or the firing of Charu Shrma by Mallya, both are efforts to attract eyeballs to the matches and nothing else. It seems that IPL has become one of those reality shows in which their is less singing and more roothna and manana drama. 

So it is quite clear that IPL is nothing but money making machine where teams win and lose matches just to keep the TRP high. I do not think their is much interest in actually winning the IPL as teams are happy if they are making good ad money.

When Time Halts

Can time halt or become irrelevant and meaningless?

Is it possible that the whole concept of time breaks down?

Can we see future?

The answers to all of these questions are considered to be No. if you any layman these question, he will directly say that these are ridicules question and it is impossible to do so. If you ask these questions to the likes of Steven Hawkins and Albert Einstein, they may give you some very complicated theory and you will find yourself more confused than you were before asking the questions. Either way people will say that the answer of these questions will lie in some complicated physics equations and theories.

But I beg to differ. I think that answers to these questions could very well lie in completely field; our ability to collect and process information, things we already know.

Confused…?

Let’s start with basics. We know that if we drop a ball, it will hit the ground. How can we say that? Were we able to see the future? Were we able to travel through time? Even though the answer to all these three questions is no, still we were able to claim with certainty that ball will hit the ground. One can even argue the event of ball hitting is so certain that it is as good as already happened. The reason for the argument seems trivial, the universal laws of gravity. Everyone knows them, and we know they never fail. So what has happened here, we know the information of ball being dropped and we also know how to process this information and hence we came to the conclusion that the ball will hit the ground even before it actually did. So were we able to see the future? One can argue that in a particular sense, YES.

Let’s take another example. We all know about the weather forecast that various meteorological departments across the world do. Are they more accurate today or were they more accurate 20 years ago. Anyone would claim that indeed they are much better and accurate today with respect to 20 years ago. But if we compare their accuracy from today to (say) 20 years from now, even in this case we would argue that we will certainly be much better 20 years from now than we are today. How can we say so? This is because in 20 yrs time we will undoubtedly have more ways of gathering weather information and thus will have more information and also will have better ways of processing the information.

We can clearly see that with more and more information and better and better ways of processing that information we tend to know more and more about the things that are going to happen in future that too more preciously.

Now think of a scenario, what if there is some one or something (say a computer) that has all the information there is in the world. And it also has all the ways of processing that information. I know that such thing in not possible today as we do not know many things that happen in this world. But slowly and slowly we are learning new and new things about the world. So it would not be wrong to presume that in the near future we will be able to understand the world completely; Whether it is our DNA encoding or whether it is different antics of monsoon. With more understanding and knowledge we can predict the future more accurately.

So with all the information in the world, can’t we predict the future with a certainty which was reserved for past events only. I think we can.

Now if we know what is going to happen tomorrow, who will be born, who will die, how much rain would fall, what would be the temperature. Will time have any significance left? We already know what will happen, so how does it matter that the particular event has taken place or not.

Then time would be reduced to just one of the variables in our life. Time has been often called the fourth dimension, but it rarely shows any similarity with the other three. But after this event, time would be like the other three dimensions, very much predictable. In true sense the time will halt as the meanings of present, past and future will no longer be the same as they are today. They will merge together to form one entity. The fact that a particular event is happening, already happened, or going to happen will have no meaning at all as we will be looking at the big picture and consider things as a whole and not in terms of present, past and future.

This is something to ponder over. As we do not have much time left before this imaginary scenario becomes a reality.