Deadly “pressure-to-perform” claims another life

A 25 year old with technical and business degrees from IIT and IIM, the top Indian colleges and working for McKinsey, the world’s best consulting company. Everyone would say what an amazing guy. The mental pressure around the two statements is in itself unimaginable.

It is generally accepted that at least 3 years of work experience is required to take up an advanced or Master’s degree and in the case of an advanced business degree more experience is preferred. Academic institutions should assess the work experience and the candidate’s exposure and knowledge of the business side of things before granting admission for business degrees. The guy came straight out of IIT at 22 years and landed at IIM. What exposure does someone at 22 have of business and the ones who have will definitely not take up a business degree, not at 22 for sure. Out of IIM and straight into McKinsey. It is nothing less than maniacal.

It is clearly not just the work pressure that drove him to take his life. The deadly “pressure-to-perform” comes from downstream a long way back. Suicides among students preparing for entrance exam to get into the IITs and among students studying at IITs have been rising alarmingly over the years. That is 5 years of academic mental stress with the added stress of cracking the CAT exam to get into the IIMs and then 2 years of even more academic stress during the MBA program. When he joined for work, he had already spent 7 years of his life in the pressure cooker of intense academic stress.

Work pressure and micromanagement are common in most companies now but would depend largely on the ones managing the projects. Companies like McKinsey hire the best graduates from the top colleges and then the pressure to perform and the toxicity in the work culture is thrust upon them. Now the question everyone would have asked is, why didn’t he just quit and move on rather than drown himself in the mire? Because of social and peer pressure. Can’t someone who has gone through the grind of JEE, IIT, CAT and IIM absorb work pressure and continue performing at his peak? No one would have understood, not even his family. The problem with peak performance is, no one can stay at the peak forever and down the peak could become a free fall very easily and quickly. He was way too young to manage work pressure, push back micromanagement and survive office politics and toxicity.

It took me 10 years and enough exposure of working with international clients to understand how a MBA can add value to my profile and MBA from an international college would be the best to prop up my international work experience. With age and experience comes maturity and the ability to work smarter and manage all kinds of stress. Consulting is no easy job and consulting with McKinsey means working with the top companies in the world. It is impossible for anyone to live in sustained mental stress for a long time and the younger one is the more vulnerable they are to capitulating sooner.

From the time I heard the Dire Straits classic “Private Investigations”, a narrative of the daily life of the not so scrupulous private investigators, two lines have stuck with me.

“What have you got, at the end of the day

What have you got, to take away”

What we will all eventually take with us is knowledge and experiences and not the names of academic institutions where we studied, the names of companies where we worked and the expectations of people around us. Our well being is something only we understand the best. The stress and suicides created by pressure to perform will stop when we realize these simple facts.

The woes of Byju’s

Just as everyone thought the layoffs winter can’t get any more frigid and worse, looks like Byju is going to be laid off from Byju’s.

Every Edtech company has three components 1) Education 2) Technology 3) Business and management. That Byju Raveenran is an accomplished tutor is a well known fact. That his classes and method of teaching had immense potential to go online was also there which was why Byju’s grew exponentially in a short span of time and attracted the attention of global investors. So problem areas are not education and technology. Byju’s current woes are all on the business and management side.

There are several well known cases of VCs asking founders to focus on product development and appointing CEOs and hiring executives to run the business. Now that VCs are seeking to oust Byju Raveendran, it is puzzling as he had no prior experience in running a company then why did the VCs allow him to be the CEO and bring in his wife and brother to run the business. Byju’s situation was not at all complicated. Raveendran had to focus on education and the company needed a technology head with the potential to grow into CTO who could build a technical team from scratch. The VCs could have had easily set up the executive and management teams. Raveendran and his family members are not just the problem, the entire executive and management teams need to be dismantled and built from scratch.

I have heard several instances of Byju’s sales team being aggressively persuasive with the parents of children and making the parents feel like they are doing a crime by not giving their children Byju’s online classes. Raveendran seems to have clearly forgotten his own USP that made Byju’s touch the skies. It was the quality of his classes and word of mouth. Companies like Apple and Bose rely on the quality of their products to attract and retain their customers. Raveendran simply had to follow the golden rule. So what changed him?

Market valuation of a company is usually done based on the numbers on its financial statements and its business potential in the market segment it is catering to. Investors would ideally look at the past 3 years of financial performance for assessment. What they look at is profit margins, but with a catch. Ideally they would want to see increasing revenue and decreasing cost or expenses but even if the revenue remains flat for a couple of years they want to see decreasing cost because it shows efficient money management. This does not seem to be the case with investors and investments anymore. Market valuation can be conservative or inflated based on many factors. In the case of Byju’s it had huge potential with its online app, then covid struck and we literally started living on the internet. Byju’s valuation became like an endless pit because its business potential exploded into touching the entire population of the country. When investments started flowing in like water Raveendran spent millions on acquiring other edtech companies and running promotion ads with Lionel Messie and Shahrukh Khan and sponsoring events, notably sports events. The beleagured company’s valuation is now down by 95% from its heydays in 2022 which goes to show how inflated valuation can end up destroying companies (https://m.economictimes.com/tech/startups/macquarie-slashes-byjus-valuation-by-98-after-julius-baer-protest/articleshow/108165302.cms).

Terming startups that are loss churning machines year after year as unicorns is I believe the biggest crime investors and VCs are doing. Budding entrepreneurs all want their startups to get investments and become unicorns regardless of how poor their financial performance is because they know they can have swanky lifestyle, hire and fire employees when their business strategies fail miserably and can get away with everything even if their companies go bust.

Raveendran’s knowledge and teaching acumen were his heart and soul and investments pouring in acted as injecting venom into both. This is what happens in every case where we get more money than we really need. Education is more like the traditional barter system, we give money in exchange for knowledge. When we make education into a business, everything related to business takes hold, such as competition in the market, having to invest first to get returns, invest more for higher returns, commercialization and giving up on the core values of education.

Raveendran is accusing the investors of trying to oust him as the CEO of Byju’s and from the board of directors along with his wife and brother. He is also peeved now that investors have blocked access to money he has raised to pay salaries to his staff (https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-byjus-cant-access-rights-issue-funds-pay-staff-2024-03-02/). He needs to understand that investors are only looking to recoup their investments for which he has to either pay off all their money or step down and let them run the company. He doesn’t have a third option no matter whatever he tries.

VCs can do well by not being confrontational and convincing Raveendran to give up the executive positions and shift his focus back to education for the sake of his company and his future. If he gets ousted, the reality will hit home hard when he starts a new life without Byju’s especially if the investors decide to retain the name of the company.

Facing life problems from nature’s perspective

I came across this interesting image on a social media post.

In the image, escaping from such a situation is impossible. Now look closely.

1) Snakes do not prey on humans so no snake will lie waiting for the dangling guy.
2) Male lions do not participate in hunting unless the lion pride is hunting a large prey such as a buffalo. A male lion would rather spend its time eating, sleeping or mating rather than wait for the dangling guy who is hardly a prey for it.
3) No woodcutter in the right frame of mind will cut a tree standing at the edge of a river infested with crocodiles and cut in such a way that the tree will fall into the river.

The point here is,
1) When problems come in life, we will feel overwhelmed thinking of all the problems when in reality some problems may not exist at all if we can evaluate the problems with a rational mind.
2) We think some problems in life are like the snake and the lion but they may not be big problems. Problems in life are only as big as we think they are.
3) When there are many problems we do not need to evaluate every problem with the aim of finding a solution for it. Many of the problems could simply go away when some of the problems are solved.

Understanding our evolution through the lens of diet and nutrition

The Community Nutrition Forum (CNF) in my home state of Kerala in India organized a “Webinarathon” in celebration of National Nutrition Month in September. 15 days of 1 hour sessions conducted by expert dieticians and nutritionists about a range of topics such as basics of good nutrition, diet for different diseases and diet for different age groups. I missed the first few sessions but since then have been listening to topics such as diet and nutrition for Alzheimer’s disease, women suffering from PCOS, lactating mothers and adolescent kids. One common factor has stood out in all the sessions. From children to elder people, every category of people has one basic requirement the lack of which is creating a host of health issues in them.

Vitamin D.

Where do we get Vitamin D from? Simply go stand in the sun. But there is a catch. Our body creates maximum Vitamin D when exposed to early morning sun, between 7-9 am. This is why most Indian temples are open till 9:30 am. What happens after 9:30? Sun’s radiation becomes stronger as it gets hotter and we get exposed to more UV rays which in the long run can cause cancer. But simply standing in the sun is not enough. With brisk walking we inhale more oxygen and the increased pumping of the heart sends oxygenated blood to all parts of the body triggering cell regeneration. More oxygenated blood flow rejuvenates the brain which in turn helps improve focus and concentration. Many schools are adopting 10-15 minutes of workouts or yoga before beginning of classes every morning. Circumambulation of banyan trees is common in Indian temples because banyan trees produce the best oxygen in the morning. Most traditions are rooted in science but people would ignore if they are asked to walk for the sake of health but would walk readily in the name of Gods, so Gods have been used to build healthy communities for thousands of years.

The dominant genes in all of us contain genetic information from our ancestors who were active and predominantly outdoor people. Our present lifestyles are in direct contradiction with the information contained in our genetic makeup. Moreover, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, sodium, potassium, magnesium, iron, etc all exist in a certain balance in our body. Imbalance in one of them can have ripple effect on the others. Such imbalances result in the release of hormones that can do the exact opposite of the so called happy hormones, making people moody and pushing them into spirals of negative thoughts. This in turn reduces our body energy known as prana and when that battery dies we die.

Vitamin D manages a host of body functions and is even said to protect us from cancer. But we are too busy for morning walks. Many people take Vitamin D capsules, unknown to the fact that absorption of Vitamin D through the gut is very less compared to creation of Vitamin D from sunlight through our skin. Then there are people deriding others for walking in the sun because it will make their complexion dark. Pitting staying healthy against looking white and (supposedly) good is not smart and it is born out of ignorance of our own anatomy.

I have observed dietitians advising people to shun junk food completely and eat only healthy food. We resist just like animals when we are forced to change something we like or adopt something we don’t want to. People who like eating junk food, especially the ones in the adolescent age group are going to laugh off such advices. The question here is how did we reach the point of addiction to junk food?

Animals eat food for nutrition and not based on taste. When we see a pride of lions hunting and devouring a wild buffalo, there are two aspects to note. Herbivores extract proteins from the vegetation they eat but protein content is low in vegetation which is why they need to eat a lot to satisfy their protein needs and consequently developed large appetite and large physique. Carnivores eat herbivores to get the proteins from them. Also, lions hunting a large animal means every member of the pride can eat to their full and they don’t need to eat again for some days. Hunting is an exhaustive and risky affair, zebra’s hind leg kicks have broken jaw bones of lions and starved them to death.

Our taste buds are far more in numbers and far more evolved than that of animals. Our preference for taste grew with time and this is how we started using spices. There were times when food was made with the balance of nutrition and taste, like the biryani. What changed those dynamics was the industrial revolution, concept of money and office jobs. Working for long hours became the norm and there was no time for sumptuous meals. This heralded the emergence of a new food industry, the fast food industry. Food items that can be prepared quickly, are tasty and can be eaten fast or on the go became the need and the fast food industry catered perfectly to the new dietary requirements. A large proportion of fast food items are fried and deep fried, have milk products such as cheese and butter and adding a sedentary lifestyle with little to no exercise has become the recipe for health disasters.

Dietitians have to understand the short and long term adverse impact of eating junk food and prepare totally new diet charts with healthy food items that can reduce the adverse effects of junk food. Fast food has become an integral part of the global food industry and junk food an integral part of our diet. Restaurants in India heat oil for deep frying a variety of vegetarian and non vegetarian food items in the same oil, reuse the same oil the next day and add fresh oil to it. Every food item fried in such oil is junk food for me. Dietitians have to accept this reality and evolve with their diet plans accordingly.

I have had problems digesting meat from my childhood so I never liked eating meat. My great grandfather was a Brahmin so I used to think my dislike to meat was genetic till my mom told me that she ate very less meat during her pregnancy. This is when I realized being not used to meat from my mother’s womb could be the primary reason. My friends keep telling me the need to eat meat for meeting my protein requirements but I believe everybody’s nutrient requirements are different based on many factors and my body may not have similar protein requirements like others.

Precision nutrition is an evolving and exciting area of study where one’s DNA, microbiome, and metabolic response to specific foods or dietary patterns are analyzed and evaluated to determine the most effective eating plan to prevent or treat disease. According to many religions, each human being is made up of genes from 7 generations. Considering 7 generations of genes on both father’s and mother’s side of each one of us, we are all made up of genetic soup and our genetic structure must be as unique as our fingerprints.

They say the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. Healthy hearts are the key to our overall health and dieticians are best positioned to ensure this. The need for healthy diets are on the rise in every aspect of our lives so dietetics is an emerging field with immense potential. Looks like dietitians have a major role to play we move towards our next stage of evolution.

Why are we scared of animals?

This rat snake scaled the neighbor’s wall and lay there long enough for me to do its photoshoot.

When I sent these photos to my contacts on Whatsapp, majority of them sent me gawking emojis in fear. So why do we fear snakes?

Animals attack other animals primarily for food, protecting their offspring, self protection and in rare cases rescuing a fellow animal from its attacker(s). Snakes do not prey on humans so they will never attack us unless for self protection and protecting their eggs. Snakes live in human settlements for two reasons – to prey on mice and for dark and cold areas inside and around our houses to lower their body heat and digest their food. We should be more wary of urban cats and dogs than snakes because they can chase and bite us. Wild cats like tigers and leopards prey on us but attack us only if they are able to drag our body away from the spot because the smell of fresh blood and meat attract other carnivores. Lions hunt as pride which is why they do not show this behavior.

But there is an oddity in us that is not in animals – fear. In nature there is no emotion called fear. Animals running away from their predators is not in fear as we commonly believe. They run to save themselves and their only purpose is reproduction. Nature imposes population control so to stay as dominant species animals need to reproduce as many as they can. We are the only beings on the planet that live in fear of its own kind. We have created the emotion of fear in animals by encroaching and destroying their habitat and hunting them for the purpose of hurting them. Cows graze on wetlands which are snake infested but snakes rarely bite them and move away from them. Snakes bite us in self protection because we tend to kill them at every possible opportunity. Snakes have poor eyesight so they rely on smell and instincts to determine what is prey and what is a threat. Similar is the case with urban street dogs. Through smell and instincts they understand the ones among us who are hurtful to animals.

I was afraid of snakes for a long time because I was taught to be scared of them. Many snakes simply crawl away or warn us in different ways when we get close to them. Some don’t but they stay far away from human areas. We get into conflict with animals when we think we are entitled to walk anywhere and do anything we want. The planet belongs to all living beings and are entitled to live out their lifetimes if they survive in nature.

Life lesson from my dad’s passing

Its been a month since my dad’s passing and as mom and I continue to reminisce about his life and reconcile with his loss, I am realizing that life has taught me an important lesson.

Both Dad and his younger brother were tall and heavy and both had acid reflux issues (thanks to their maternal genes). But how their health unraveled took two contrasting roads.

1. Extreme acid reflux can simulate cardiac issues and this happened for both. Cardiologists did angioplasty on uncle but treating arterial blocks do not stop acid reflux. Uncle lost faith in treatment. Bypass surgery was recommended for dad after 20 days so I figured if he can survive for 20 days, his health can be managed without surgery.

2. Both developed swelling on their hands and feet. Uncle’s condition was apparently not treated. Dad’s cardiologist kept asking about his bypass surgery and ignoring the swelling. So I googled to find out why the swelling was happening. Any issue that affects the working of the heart reduces blood flow to other parts of the body. When kidneys receive lesser amount of blood the body assumes there is not enough water so kidneys start accumulating water, first on the feet and then on the hands. The condition is called edema. Finally when water enters the lungs it becomes pulmonary edema. Then the only treatment left is bypass surgery. Dad’s cardiologist was trying to force bypass surgery on him by leaving the swelling untreated. I immediately changed the cardiologist and consulted a nephrologist who prescribed a diuretic which forces water in the swelled up areas to be released from the body through urination. Uncle refused bypass surgery, water had to be pulled out of his lungs, he developed paralytic stroke and eventually passed away.

3. Dad reduced salt intake drastically after misunderstanding cardiologist’s instruction. I was unfamiliar with the ensuing condition but realized something was wrong with him. Took him to hospital for checkup and found his sodium level freefalling. In another two days he would have had ended up in coma.

4. Dad’s new cardiologist advised me to treat acid reflux at home and not to take him to hospital as acid reflux bouts can seem like cardiac issue and he would end up in the hands of cardiologists.

For the past 10 years, I have been mostly at home and especially in the last 6 years, largely due to market conditions. This gave me the opportunity to try doing different things which led to starting a home based cloud kitchen and in a way fulfill dad’s lifelong ambition to start a restaurant. I forced dad to go to the gym which improved his health drastically. When he suffered stroke like symptoms I chose to take him to a physician nearby who checked him and told me his nerve functions were fine and he was suffering from weakness due to muscle loss caused by protein deficiency. Though he fell a couple of times nothing happened to him and mom and I ensured he never fell down again especially in the bathroom. Broken bones never heal completely in old age, restrict movements which reduces immunity and makes body vulnerable to other diseases. Dad had normal blood sugar and I ensured all his body organs were working well and his blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium and magnesium and vitamin levels were normal. Circumstances prevented me from pursuing a career in medicine but my fundamentals in biology and human anatomy are strong and I read a lot on both.

I did not earn a lot of money in the past 10 years but I was able to save a lot of money on dad’s treatment. If I hadn’t been at home. he may have underwent bypass surgery which could have ruined his health. Most importantly, he was able to live a disease free life, eat and do everything he wanted to and go peacefully. I could not have bought him this with all the money in the world. Is it possible to become successful without having a lot of money and everything that comes with it? I guess it is.

Obituary of my dad

It has been a week since the sudden demise of my dad (at 72 years) and through our bereavement mom and I have had a lot to contemplate about his life. As a person, he was outright, outspoken and honest, a little too much for his own good. As a caring son and loving husband he was peerless and as a father he was borderline maniac. Nothing I did ever impressed him. He always believed I could do better. Grow more than his 6 foot 90 kg frame for starters. I have been literally hounded and abused for being a poor eater. Other than a chronic acid reflux issue and vitamin deficiencies, he was disease free. All organs, blood sugar, blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium were stable and in good condition. In 2021 he started going to the gym but loss of protein made him quit. This post is not to eulogize his life though.

Dad and his mom were endowed with extremely good genes. Grandma was also completely disease free. Both were addicted to sweets and drinking sugary water of Indian sweets and still their blood sugar never went up. Grandma went silently in her sleep in 2010. After a bout of acid reflux, dad developed slight respiratory problem and I took him to hospital. ECG, brain CT scan, chest x-ray all came out normal. He was given sedation to sleep and was sleeping soundly when silent cardiac arrest took him, just like his mom.

What I have learned from their lives is, as they grew older they found happiness in two things. They were able to eat and do mostly anything they wanted (dad had to take medication for acid reflux). Both dad and grandma loved animals and both kept in touch with the people they loved. Dad was a jovial man and loved cracking jokes all the time inside the house and with his friends, even the ones from his childhood days in Calcutta. Many of dad’s friends are far younger than him but all crazy like him.

People I talk to are surprised that disease free people can die. Prana or the life force that runs through our body is the cornerstone of all ancient healing methods like yoga and acupuncture. More prana means better health and less prana means weaker pulse and weaker immune system making us vulnerable to diseases. No matter how healthy we are when there is no more prana left in our body we die.

Many cultures believe in rebirth after death and rebirth depends on karma of our past lives and the state of our mind when we die. Dad had his share of regrets but I hope a good death in this life will give him a much better next life.

The risk and reward of using AI in stock market

Got invited to a talk on “A.I. for wealth creation in the stock market” at an investor’s meet in my hometown and came away completely bamboozled. The speaker, the CEO of a brokerage firm, seemingly an expert on stock markets had zero knowledge about how AI works. He threw up a few slides on AI that were incomprehensible to the largely local non-tech savvy attendees and then started demonstrating ChatGPT as the way of using AI in the stock market to make better returns. But when he was asked to query ChatGPT to predict the next day’s stock market outcomes it couldn’t.

AI is mostly being used in automation and prediction now. Fundamental to AI is data and data analytics which leads to predictive analytics. The core aspect of AI is machine learning (ML) and there are two basic types of learning – supervised and unsupervised learning. All predictions from continuously changing data such as forecasting stock or trading outcomes and market fluctuations is through supervised learning. Pattern recognition is how AI systems identify patterns in data and then use those patterns to make decisions or predictions. One of the prevalent algorithms used for more accurate predictions is the backpropagation algorithm.

Now, an ideal investment portfolio would be a combination of high risk high reward investments (stocks, mutual funds) and low risk low reward investments (government bonds), the low risk ones to offset potential losses from high risk ones. Better AI prediction models can increase investment in high risk stocks leading to higher gains. But human sentiments and emotions play a major role in stock values and we are prone to mass hysteria. AI has no emotional intelligence so AI prediction models cannot factor in data on human emotions and can consequently lead to huge stock market losses.

Heat pollution and Earthquakes – Why the world needs to have broader conversations about climate change

According to NASA website, “Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.”

NASA’s definition of global warming is misleading for a very specific reason. It is placing the primary responsibility of global warming on fossil fuel burning. While it is true that releasing trapped carbon in fossils back into the atmosphere has led to the greenhouse effect and increase in Earth’s surface temperature, global warming has to be understood from a much larger perspective.

From the smallest microorganisms to the blue whales, every living being generates and emits heat from its body. We consume food, break it down for providing us energy and release that energy as heat into our surroundings when we do our activities. In order to understand Earth’s surface temperature, we have to first select areas in all geographic locations, measure heat generated by every organism except humans in those areas and extrapolate the results to find out the total heat generated by all animals except humans over a specific period of time. There is a good reason to exclude humans from this exercise.

Except the animals that live in packs, all other animals try to keep distance from their own kind and from other animals except during breeding time. Being territorial about food is one reason and the other reason is, as population density increases, heat released from their bodies become amplified. Understanding body heat is easy. In a room cooled by A/c, the room will be moderately cold when there are more number of people and as more people leave the room the remaining people will start feeling colder. Also, greater population density results in faster spreading of diseases. Predator-prey relationships and diseases are two major ways how nature enforces population control on animals. So measuring the population of each animal and the amount of heat released from the body of each animal would give a good account of how much heat animals contribute towards Earth’s surface temperature. This is another reason why population control in nature is important because population control will ensure heat released from the body of animals will not significantly add to Earth’s surface temperature.

We have not only broken all laws of nature we have done lot more things that are mind boggling and incomprehensible. Earth is 70% water and 30% land of which 10-15% land is habitable. 8 billion and growing human population is jostling to live in this small percentage of land. Our perpetually increasing population density is amplifying all our body heat and to add to this, any disease could manifest into an epidemic and pandemic in no time. But it is not just our body heat that is contributing to Earth’s surface temperature. Every single creation of ours, from the smallest light bulbs to mobile phones to the largest aircrafts and rockets are burning fuel and generating heat. We are not just polluting Earth with heat generated from carbon emission, we are also creating heat from sound, light, breeding different types of cattle and poultry for our dietary needs and many more types of pollution and every type of pollution is generating copious amounts of heat all of which adds to Earth’s surface temperature. Simply put, the most significant and largest pollutant we are creating is heat.

To add to all of this, we are cutting down trees and destroying forests. Trees absorb harmful rays from the Sun and when they are gone, those harmful rays also end up heating Earth. So there are two ways in which Earth is getting heated now. Earth is getting bombarded by more harmful rays from the Sun and by the increase in Earth’s surface temperature and we are contributing significantly in both.

When we speak about climate change we have to take all of these into account. In our rich history, there is a great example of climate change if our population decreased suddenly and consequently, forest grows back. The Spanish Inquisition in the Americas in the 16th century eradicated 90% of the local population due to wars, famines and epidemics and forests grew back in the millions of hectares of human settlement areas. Research points to a global temperature drop in the 17th century which adversely affected Europe resulting in famine and epidemics and this is being correlated with what had happened in the Americas a century earlier.

All conversations about climate change largely revolve around carbon emission and the need for carbon neutrality. This is not just a very narrow way of looking at global warming but also a misleading one as well. Our exploding population and everything we are creating are all adding to global warming. Population control is no longer the solution. If human species has to survive, human depopulation is the only way. Most of us will have to die for some of us to survive. Otherwise, receding forests and increasing human population will increase Earth’s temperature to a point where Earth will become uninhabitable. But, long before it goes that bad, something else will happen. There is a natural disaster that will happen if Earth gets heated up like it is getting now – Earthquakes. Oceans when heated up will cause underwater earthquakes resulting in tsunami. There are ancient tribes that believe the world has been destroyed completely 3 times in the past and the 4th one is imminent which will be caused by cataclysmic earthquakes.

We need broader conversations about climate change caused by all the heat created by us and the consequences leading to global awareness programs with the clear message that Earth is already overloaded with us and can take no more of us. Without this, all conversations are useless.

Why we need to understand our origins and history before building artificial intelligence

According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:

1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us

2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.

Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.

Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.

When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past.