Faraaz

A month ago, I was roaming in the streets of America. There is something in the States which Europe never makes you feel. You can feel the economic machine thriving in there. Truck after truck moving goods, the largest servings in every restaurant. Airbnbs overflowing with stuff.

It does feel like they are living in an age of abundance. It really made me think about why India can’t achieve this. Why can’t we be rich as well?

This brought me to think about what made America rich. That got me thinking about why, in the entire continent, only America (and Canada) thrived. What went wrong with all of South America and others?

Is it geography? Culture? A twist of fate? People will say it might be the governments, their policies. But I wanted to go deep. If it is governments, then why did such a government exist there in the first place?

Moving deeper… the best way to think lay in tracing both their histories. How did modern America and modern South America really come into being?

Well, we know that in 1492 Christopher Columbus, sponsored by the Spanish queen, reached the Americas. We know then that the Spanish and Portuguese spread out across South America, defeated the Incas and ruled over all the lands there.

The stories of Cortes burning the ships and Pizarro conquering a Mn+ civilization with fewer than 200 men are enthralling; their abject tortures and war crimes are deplorable. Yet they conquered, and they ruled. And they profited. The feudal systems set up in the Americas were based on pure exploitation and extraction.

Those lands were rich in silver and gold. The Spaniards enslaved the population, forced extraction of the resources and shipped them off to Spain and Portugal. In short, they did oppression.

But the question is, why is oppression bad? Why was what they were doing bad? If you remove morality, you will have to think deeper.

Let’s do it then. The exploitation of South America continued for years and years. Spaniards never bothered moving up to North America; there was no silver, no gold, no vast untapped resources to exploit, and only sparse indigenous populations.

The lands were left untouched until the 17th century, when three ships reached those coasts and Jamestown was founded. The Britishers had arrived.

The Britishers reached the Americas, enchanted by the tales of untapped resources, which could enrich them beyond measure. But there was none. There were beautiful rivers, untapped fertile land, but no gold, no silver.

Credit where credit is due, those Britishers did try to oppress, but the natives were not as centralized as those in South America. Even if enslaved, they just ran away and went off to live in a far-off untapped land. The situation had become so dire that the conquerors, the explorers, started to starve. They realized: there is nothing to exploit, they have to work, and they have to farm.

In the next series of ships, no soldiers were brought in; carpenters, farmers, painters, artisans were brought in. Britishers started to set up their settlements. With no large pool of natives to enslave, they had to work. With abundant lands available all around, deep-seated feudal systems never emerged; the European workers had to be incentivized to work in those lands. An economy started to build up.

All was not the same, though. While the stories I told relate more to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were in a different state. While the northern colonies, owing to the state of their land, predominantly grew wheat, the southern grew cotton.

You see, the southern states had more fertile lands; they could have large-scale plantations of indigo, cotton, tobacco. Those large-scale plantations had owners, and owners brought in the slaves. The Transatlantic Slave Trade, a blot on human history, emerged. Hordes of Africans were loaded up and sent off to work till death in the southern plantations. Owners profited, slaves suffered.

But again, why is oppression bad? Why was what happened in the southern states bad? And similarly, why was what was happening in the northern states (smaller plantations of wheat, filled with mostly non-slave workers) better?

And more precisely, why did America become rich? And why did the North win the Civil War?

Well, the oppression continued. But one thing emerged in the 18th century: scientific advances of Europe started to become popular in America. There was the invention of the steam engine; there was the invention of the cotton mill. Work done by hundreds of manual hands could now be done by a machine. And this machine travelled out to the Americas, and more precisely to Massachusetts, i.e. the northern colonies.

A cotton factory was set up. The production of cotton clothes boomed; the profits led the banks to invest in more factories, and more factories boomed. Workers got paid, workers got rich, richer workers bought more clothes, more factories got set up. The flywheel of progress began.

This compounded, and compounded.

But why did this never happen in the southern states? Not because they were poorer, but actually because they were richer, and more oppressive. With wealth accumulated in just a few owners, and slaves having nothing, there was legit no consumption of goods. With no consumption, there was no demand; no demand led to no factories; no factories, no workers; no workers, no consumption. The flywheel of progress was stopped.

The series of industrialization which propelled the northern states of America to riches never took off in the southern states, and further on in South America, because of the oppression and enslavement of the populations.

With entire populations enslaved, there was no demand. Furthermore, there were more profitable opportunities to just enslave more rather than industrialize, leading to progress being delayed.

The flywheels of progress which began in Massachusetts never really stopped. Powered by liberal policies, easy financing and abundant lands, the production of American goods never slowed. They grew month-over-month, year-over-year, becoming a superpower.

By the time WW2 had occurred, with America barely starting off as a non-existent military power, they were able to just turn around their factories and become an Arsenal of Democracy. Soon Americans were producing more than the entire rest of the world combined.

This production never stopped and brought prosperity beyond all measure, making them truly the richest nation mankind has ever seen.

As we look now at India, we see a similar history: we lost industrialization, yes, owing to the occupation of foreign powers, but more so because with abundant labour and excessive poverty, there was no need to industrialize. But with no industrial revolution, no progress can emerge.

India needs to have its factories, of everything. We need to build, and we need to build fast.

Astrology has been historically regarded as fake science

Quite rightly so, astrology breaks the fundamental pillar of logic:- Correlation doesn’t imply causation. Just because mars was in retrograde motion when your flight was delayed; Doesn’t imply mars causes flight delay.

But you need to understand what astrology truly started with….rather than trying to see it with a scientific lens. Astro (western one atleast) started in Mesopotamia arguing that “sky mirrors the earth and earth mirrors the sky”

They didn’t talk about causations or distinguished b/w astrology and astronomy. Hoards of star-gazers just looked up at the stars and recorded its movements matching it with happenings on Earth.

And they saw correlations:- Mars shining brighter in sky before wars; Eclipses showing crush of the previous regimes and start of new (Battle of Gaugamela, 331 BCE)

Generations recorded the correlations. Slowly it became more formalised, concept of 12 houses was made, first birth charts were made in ~400 BC. Mesopotamia’s Egyptians, Persians, Greek, Islamic astrologies combined. Far away Vedic astrology flourished.

Astrologers even strived to legitimise astrology:- Al-Kindi a polymath from Abbasid dynasty argued about the existence of stellar rays, what will eventually be called ‘energies’.

He argued that heavenly bodies, human actions emit rays and its by interaction of these rays that make “stars mirror the earth, and earth mirror the sky”

What I posit is NOT that Al-Kindi was right with his stellar rays (or energies) theory. I agree astrology isn’t science. BUT only with science’s current definition. Bear with me an example:-

Lets say, you are a scientist who has never seen English, and you have been given a large amount of English text, your task is simple:-

Discover a way to predict the next character….given a set of english text.

Now you can go about in a Million ways, trying to make up laws in predicting the next character, completing an english sentence but you won’t be able to do it. But as any Computer Science Engineer will tell you, there is a way.

Just build a ChatGPT over it. And now any sentence you type, it can complete. i.e give it millions of input-output pairs. And then train it, +ve reward for correct output predictions, -ve reward for wrong predictions.

Ultimately AI learns on predicting the next character. And thus by just seeing input-output pairs (or correlations) it is able to predict the next character and create actual meaningful text. Thus completing your original task as a scientist:- Predict the next character.

But were you a scientist?! In the name of science, I’ll ask, why was “e” chosen after “abcd”, you won’t know the answer. You will tell me, you just saw a lot of correlating data (input-output pairs) and learnt “e” comes after it.

I’ll say “Correlation doesn’t imply causation”

This is what has happened with science. In the spirit of logic, we have reduced science to if-else statements but it truly is an AI model.

Thousands of years ago, our Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greek, Vedic astrologers while correlating star movements and human activities….and then using it to predict next event. May not be doing science, but were practising AI.

In the past 200 years, humanity has made more progress than all of its millions of years history combined.

We have risen per capita incomes, set-up cities, invented planes, rockets, satellites, built computers.

This has propelled our human race forward to prosperity and happiness. Wars have virtually finished, NASA is going to Moon (again!), India has reached Mars, China has built their own Space Station.

Covid has hit us but Pfizer brought in a vaccine and the world’s governments zoomed in and vaccinated the world.

With these amazing developments, you might assume that the world will be brimming with optimism, investing deeply into math, science and technology. And dreaming of a future where more capabilities of mankind will be unleashed.

However, that’s hardly true. The world seems to get more and more pessimistic by day. We seem to solve every problem that comes our way. Yet people believe the world can’t really get better.

Its as if everyone believes we have reached the peaks of human civilization and can now just optimize and distribute fairly the resources we have collected.

But, this is deeply incorrect. We are just getting started, our greatest accomplishments are not behind us. JWST pics are showing us of an entire universe whose unknowns far outpace our collective knowledge.

Infinite discoveries and inventions are just waiting on the cusp of being discovered and unleashed.

Helion a barely-decade old startup, can build a star on Earth. They’ll take Deuterium present in sea-water fuse it with Helium-3 and generate more energy from a glass of water than 11 barrels of oil

With infinite energy we can decarbonize the atmosphere, desalinate the oceans and create prosperity unseen before!

Soon, we can bring in Hyperloop which will remove the idea of living and travelling in 1 city, you can just beam from NY to SFC in few hour commute.

All these might look-like fairy tales. But think back to the e^x graph of human progress. A little more than hundred years ago, air-travel was impossible, now we are going to the moon, medicines were non-existent now we built a vaccine which saved the world from Covid.

And now ask yourself, what world will you like to see 100 years from now:- Where we all are stuck in Earth, and rationing energy and resources OR a world where humanity has grown there are a trillion humans living all-across the Solar System harnessing and utilizing energy unlike ever seen before.

I doubt anyone will like to choose the first option…But then why are we choosing it everyday?!

At Kalam Labs we want to ready the kids for the first option. Kalam Labs will inspire and educate kids the creative math&science skills needed for building a prosperous humanity’s future.

Why do we Do, What we Do?! is a provactive question which has always bugged me….

Why do we humans behave the way we do?!

What motivates us? What inspires us?

I think a answer to this question will lead to everything:-

Think about it, if you know why we do what we do:- You have the frameworks to create habit-forming products…that can lead to infinite wealth (Case in point:- Zuckerberg)

So for this question I’ll cover a sub-section:-

Hope!

Why and when do we inculcate Hope!

Or a better question how do you inculcate aspiration and hope in a person…

You see this is a very important question:- Especially for people like me who are in the hope-tech i mean ed-tech business. So is it for all the products selling hope, status to the consumers.

But it doesn’t stop there, as I have recently realized that hope is also sold in relationships.

Now, you might completely ignore this:- Say that hope, aspirations are intangible things hence there’s no use optimizing or discussing it.

But, you see hope is such an essential ingredient that if you don’t keep it, people won’t renew your product and your girlfriend will break-up.

So how to get it?

I assert this:-

Aspirations are made out of this pyramid

You HAVE to set a visionary outcome:- Your child will become a creator (WHJ); We will get married and live happily ever after (to ur GF).

So this is how it flows:- You have to define a visionary outcome as a motivator. Now to achieve the visionary outcome everything is done.

Now you need to start from bottom:- First do the basics right:- Sending the schedule of classes; Replying back to texts; Good Customer Service, Not being rude.

Then with basics right you need to move to tangible outcomes:- Weekly Reports of Child, A gift which is kept at her table

Extraordinary Benefits:- Something amazing which the customer/gf never expected. Child making an app who everyone is praising him for; surprise gift to gf in front of her friends which increases her social status.

Then when this ALL is set your visionary outcomes become a reality.

What many people (including Me) miss is that they provide just 1 service to solve a problem, and don’t realize this entire pyramid. Let’s say WHJ just offering coding classes where kids learn coding. Boom noone is impressed. You talking to your girlfriend every night and just sharing what happened in the day.

Boom no one is impressed, break-up!

So remember the pyramid whenever you are selling an aspiration.

You don’t need to be a historian to know, 18th Century was pretty shitty. Engligh, Dutch, French were pillaging lands after lands taking away their wealth and storing it in their European Capitals.

This practice was called mercantilism.

Fastforward to today:- We are pretty fine:- The territories they once pillaged are now happily trading with them, India, SouthEast Asia and Singapore has become a hub, everyone knows the meteoric rise of China.

If you think deeply English, French, Dutch are also more well-off now.

What changed?

A guy named Adam Smith came.

You see, for a series of centuries humans have fought over land,money, status etc.

The results have been horrific. Incessant battles, famines, constant rivalry.

Mahatma Gandhi undestanding this said out aloud “There is enough for man’s need, but not enough for man’s greed”

For the greedy Britishers would not stop at India they want to sell opium to China too.

The only true way to create a world without this incessant battles was to kill the greed in humans.

For, if Britishers had no greed they wouldn’t have attacked.

But, what if this quote by Gandhi is wrong.

What if we create a world where there is enough for man’s greed.

You wonder how?

Okay lets understand this.

What is greed:- Wikipedia defines greed as “Greed is an uncontrolled longing for increase in the acquisition or use of material gain; or social value, such as status, or power.”

Longing for “increase” in acquisition of wealth, status, land

So by definition even if you have annexed India the greedy britishers would like to increase their power and get China too.

No matter how much you have you need more.

Now how to solve this?

Simple Stop thinking that there are finite resources think infinite resources.

Before you think what are infinite resources, lets go to definition of Infinite.

Infinity in maths is defined simply as Take the largest number possible; Add 1 to it. That is infinity.

Now combine this:- The only way you could have greedy people is by having infinite resources. No matter how much you have, you want more. Take the largest number add 1 to it.

Hmmm….now but how to create this mystical Infinite Resources?!

This is where our Adam comes in.

The answer is Capitalism.

Now, I know you must have heard a lot of bad things about my friend but hear me out.

Infinite Resources:- Now we all know land is finite, natural resources are finite hell even printed money is finite, the only thing which is infinite is human thoughts.

Hmm but how can you make human thoughts a resource?

Sounds tough but has been done…think about religion…what is it but a whole lotta people saying my God exists…..The only truth of that remains as long as all these people’s thoughts are focused that way. If we stop believing the game’s over.

Okay let’s dig deeper:- Through observing religion we have realized that if a lot of people assign something a value that starts to have great deal of value.

Now, so what if we enable people to put in value to things:- The values could be totally in their heads:- Apple Stocks are worth $2 Tn USD, Coinbase is worth $100 Bn USD, Kalam Labs is worth $50 Mn USD.

Now…now this must be sounding a bit bollocks how could people just keep assigning value to something.

No, they can’t:- The only way to get that value is if you could create something which someone wants. And if that someone believes they have got value from it, they’ll give you money. Using a bunch of that money you can make people believe that here is your value of thousand billion dollars.

Lets look at it from an Infinite Lens:- Make something which someone “wants”

And as our fellow Gandhiji said there is never enough for someone’s wants (pssst its infinite) so you could theoretically create infinite things and get infinite value for yourself.

Further, further there is another catch you want that other person to give you money for it. So if the person has a lot of money you would be happy! You would give the product (which makes him happy) and get the money which make you happy!

Now, this might be sounding a bit basic but lets go to our first thought the prosperous Europe and India.

How did this happen?

Because now for the first time:- Europeans don’t have to take away India’s wealth so as to be rich BECAUSE if they take away India’s wealth they might just get $1000 USD but if they create a world order where they could trade with $100 USD profit they could potentially create value in people’s heads of $1Mn USD.

You might be thinking I am reaching for the stars with my conclusions.

But, read once about Marshall Plan and you’ll find out.

So as to end wars a new economic system was introduced which ensures that one country trades so much with another country that its always better to trade rather than go to war.

You might think I could have just written the above two lines and ended the essay. But, remember that we are talking about greedy people here, and if you can’t give them infinite benefits to trade with each other they’ll just go to war as they had done so for tens of centuries.

Power of Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world

I have been thoroughly fascinated by the power of compounding, how universal it is and how it can be harnessed.

There are clear evidences for this power at every sector; Just plot the following on a time-scale and you’ll always see an exponential graph:-
1) FB’s valuation (Startup Growths)
2) Modi’s popularity in India (Politics)
3) World’s GDP (Global Economy)
4) Moore’s Law (Technology)

Some people harness this power and grow exponentially, others are stuck at the linear graph and live boringly.

The question is how to harness this power of compounding?!