Self Appraisal and Intellectual Arrogance

In my mind, I maintain a dynamic list of things I don’t want to be in my life. After stepping into academia, one recent addition has been ‘intellectual arrogance’. When one is in a seat of power, there is a natural urge to flex one’s muscles every once in a while. I bet Spiderman derives some evil pleasure in watching fellow human beings feverishly drag along roads below him when he is weaving his way up the tallest buildings. Superman’s ego must soar hand in hand with his flight, as the objects below him shrink to the size of dots. Similarly, when one is in the academia for some time, there is a predisposition to fall prey to what is called ‘intellectual arrogance’ (IA)–thinking low of others because of one’s superior mental/intellectual capabilities, or the reverse; thinking high of oneself because of others’ lack of mental/intellectual capabilities.

I came across an interesting/related proverb a while back:
“He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool – shun him. He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple – teach him. He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep – wake him. He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise – follow him.”

To summarize:
State————–Aware of state?———Verdict/Action
====================================================
Knows not———-Unaware—————Fool/Shun him
Knows not———-Aware—————–Simple/Teach him
Knows————–Unaware—————Asleep/Wake him
Knows————–Aware—————–Wise/Follow him

This is closesly related to the concept of self appraisal; the ability to correctly and fairly assess one’s own capabilities. It is through the process of self appraisal that one identifies his weaknesses (with a view to improve them) and strengths (to channelize them judiciously). However, this last case of realization of one’s strengths can transform into IA if not handled carefully. Intellectual development should be a proactive process that reinforces itself by achieving targets and overcoming challenges. IA manifests itself when belittlement of others’ work begins to feed one’s self-esteem/ego. IA is when someone asks you a ridiculously simple question and you find it amusing to reiterate the question in your head, or make it the butt of your jokes among friends/colleagues.

To wind up, one’s spirit should be like Ghalib:
“Rutbe me mehr-o-mah se kamtar nahii hoon ma”
(I am no less significant than the moon and the sun)
and mindset like Socrates:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

How healthy is your Internet?

Three Easy Steps:

1) Visit this website  and Click ‘Start Analysis’ (in red)

2) Now a window will prompt you if you want to allow it to run. Please click RUN.

Note: If you see a java problem, you might need to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from here.

3)   Let the program do its analysis stuff. In the end, you’ll see the results. Please copy the link in the address bar and fill the form below with the following information in your ‘Message’ .  Remember, you can always use dummy name and email. (If you still don’t get it, please take a look at the extended version of this post below with screenshots)

————————————————————-

Location: <sublocality> <city> <country> e.g. Pishtakhara, Peshawar, Pakistan

Link: <link to your test results>

—————————————————————-

We are done. Thanks for your time. Below is the original/extended version of this post, and completely optional!

I am doing some research work for which i need your help. If you can share this with your friends, that’s super awesome. In particular, folks from Peshawar University, Islamic University, FAST and NUST, it’s your moral obligation to pass this on to as many people as you can. If you choose to ignore this post, I will do this to you (except that the saw will be in my hands )

So what’s the test about? We want to test the basic health of different networks by doing some basic tests. Rest assured that any private information will not be stolen from you (come on ). The information that we will get from this experiment is already in public domain. It’s just scattered and we are trying to capture it and impose some order on it. The test itself is very simple and should not take more than 5 minutes.

1) Visit this website  and Click ‘Start Analysis’ (in red)

2) Now a window will prompt you if you want to allow it to run. Please click RUN.

Note: If you see a java problem, you might need to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from here.

3)   Let the program do its analysis stuff. In the end, you’ll see results. Please copy the link in the address bar and send it to me by filling the form below with the following information in your ‘Message’.

————————————————————-

Name: <optional if you want to be anonymous>

Age: <your age>

Location: <sublocality> <city> <country> e.g. Pishtakhara, Peshawar, Pakistan

Link: <link to your test results>

—————————————————————-

Congratulations! You just did your bit in our *modest effort* to make the Internet a better place. Don’t we all just love the Internet?

The Comeback

My last post was written on 29th April and it’s 31st of July today. So it has been about three months since i last wrote for the blog. It’s not like i didn’t have anything to say. I have a folder named ‘blog’ on my desktop and it has a number of unfinished manuscripts in it. I just didn’t feel like completing any of them. After a long lapse such as the recent one, i feel like i owe my readers an explanation for why i disappeared.

It’s a long story. In a nutshell, I don’t like uncertainty and that was the second name of my life the last couple of months. Things have settled down now, so i have a clearer vision of what things are going to be like for the next few months. I like being informed. No surprises for me, thank you.

Talking of the long lapse, i feel a little uncomfortable about the words i choose to cut the ice. It’s just like riding a bicycle after you’ve been out of practice for a while. In such situations, the best strategy is to talk about the weather or how you spent your day. For warm up, I prefer the latter ( in case you are intrigued by the former, Yahoo Weather is your friend ).

I arrived in California a day before yesterday on the 29th of July. My first impression was: everything is so bright and sunny. My second impression was: contrary to the popular belief, this place is not so warm after all. My adviser during MS, Dr Ali Khayam and two ex-students of NUST, Usman and Mobin, came to receive me. Dr Ali was kind enough to show us around San Francisco. I was particularly smitten by the Golden Gate bridge. Grand is the word for it. We also took some pictures there. I was much inclined to delete them but spared them for their historical significance. I don’t know whether it was exhaustion, (fresh) home-sickness, the cruel and cold bay wind, the fact that i had lost my hair clip on the plane, the fact that i decided to wear glasses instead of lens or any combination of these, but i ended up looking downright ugly in every single picture.

I spent Monday settling down and trying to understand the alien world around me. I opened Google Maps and used it to highlight important places on a paper map. It was fairly easy. To put theory into practice, i took a stroll and got a general idea of the basic geography.

Today, I went to ICSI, my workplace for the first time. ICSI is home to some of the brightest and most accomplished security researchers. I have read their papers and watched their presentations with great admiration in the past. I was super excited about meeting them in person. I was pleasantly surprised that they were all so down to earth, cheerful and helpful. They have hi-tea sort of thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was nice to see people from America, India, Pakistan, Germany and God knows which other countries socialize with each other in perfect harmony. I didn’t have much work to do today. Before starting a new project, i meticulously organize my files; so i headed on operation computer-cleanup. As the clean-up is complete, i am officially ready to start working on my new project.

On the fifteen minutes walk back home, i was thinking whether i will be able to meet the expectations of such accomplished colleagues. Especially at this time when i am barely starting, it’s fair to say that the prospect is a little intimidating. With the heavy backpack hanging down my tired shoulders, i kept walking, counting my disadvantages at each block that i crossed. Center Street: I know C++ but i have never done a full-fledged project in C/C++. Addison Street: The guy in the office had some very impressive books on his shelf, i should have at least skimmed through Knuths programming books. University Avenue: But the ‘guy in the office’ is close to finishing his PhD, i am a grad fresh out of school, you have to give me that. Berkeley Way: With the kind of routine research students have, there is no chance in hell that i will finish Knuth’s books in the next 5 years. Hearst Avenue: Why did Knuth write three volumes of the book? One was ok, but three? Why, Why, Why? Delaware Street: I type with two fingers, typing speed is slow and slowness increases exponentially if someone happens to be looking while i am typing. Picasso Street: This isn’t a typing contest, silly.

Home is almost here. I stop on the footsteps and look back. It was a rather long way back home, particularly with the 10 kg bag on my back. Yesterday, i had severe back ache, thanks to my backpack. Today, it doesn’t seem like a great deal. Tomorrow, it will become a habit. I didn’t like Berkeley the first day i came here. I felt like everyone on the street is out to kidnap me the first chance they get. At night, i couldn’t sleep as my mind was lit by disgusting scenes from movies about serial-killers i watched years ago. But last night i slept well, though i kept the light on. Tonight, there is a good chance that i will turn off the light. I don’t give up — ever. And i know as long as i don’t, i’ll get there ( even though i type with two fingers ! ).

Na shawad nasib-e-dushman ke shawad halaak-e-teghad
Sar-e-dostaan salamat, ke tu khanjar azmayii

(
May the rival never get a chance to be your victim;
I am alive and willing,
So spin your sabres and sharpen your daggers, O Killer.
)   

Bursting the bubble

When human beings are young, they can barely fathom what’s happening around them. Children often have imaginary playmates. They talk with them and share toys with them. Similarly, it’s not unheard of a child to wake up in the middle of the night crying after experiencing a nightmare. Parents try to alleviate the child’s fear by explaining the difference between dreams and reality; fake and real. As the brain matures, it learns to partition the world into three basic zones; Reality, Imagination/Thoughts and Dreams.

The ability of a person to achieve this partitioning is strongly linked with his mental soundness. Take the example of a fiction writer.  Tolkien’s high fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings” continues to enthrall readers over several decades. Had Tolkien indicated believing in any part of his fantasy world, society would have been quick to label him as delusional. The thoughts of a normal person are not half as vivid as reality. One cannot feel pain just by imagining being run over by a truck. On the contrary, all the five vital senses of vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste come alive in dreams. How is it then that we manage to draw a clear line between dreams and reality?

There can be two possible explanations for how we make this distinction. Our sense of judgment is greatly affected by input from other human beings. For example, if Mr.X is going for an interview and a friend tells him that his tie looks odd, he might decide to change it. If the same comment is given by five different friends, Mr.X will certainly change it. Moreover, our faith in an idea strengthens if it is presented to us repeatedly, in an organized fashion. In the context of our argument, we can say an event is reality if:

• Overlap: People other than oneself can relate to it.
• Continuity: The actors (places, objects, people) in these events exist across subsequent and/or previous events.

Additionally, we associate certain conditions with dreams. The most dominant one is being in bed and feeling post-sleep symptoms.

What we perceive as ‘reality’ is deemed as such because that is the portion where majority of human minds overlap. Effectively, our ‘reality’ is one giant circle comprising of overlapping regions. For example, consider the following situation. I believe I work at FAST. FAST might just be my imagination. But the odds of that are very low because everybody in my family believes there is a university called FAST where I work. Thousands of people inside and outside Pakistan agree that there is indeed a university by the name of FAST. That’s a fairly large overlap area. Moreover, I go there five days a week. I go through the same routine every single day. That satisfies the condition of continuity too. So my brain reaches the conclusion that ‘I work at FAST’ is authentic information.

That said, lets zoom out a bit now. What we consider ‘reality’ might just be a figment of the imagination of an alien on another planet. Alternately, it might just be a bubble in the head of a so-called lunatic, whom we have confined to the mental asylum for digressing from our established rules of ‘reality’. Who knows?

Between Black and White

Unless you’ve been living in a cave or are not related to Pakistan in any way, you would have probably heard about Maya Khan. Just to get the cave-dwellers on the same page, I would quickly summarize the drama that took place over the last couple of weeks.  Maya Khan hosted one of the plethora of morning shows that jumpstart a typical Pakistani day. One fine day, the lady in question decided to go on a date-catching spree. Yup, you heard it right. Along with a group of bored house wives, off she went to a park in Karachi to catch unsuspecting couples, who retreated into the park for candlelight breakfast. The episode involves an adrenaline pumping chase of an unwilling couple, reminders about the intricacies of parent-child trust and poignant inquiries into the nature of relationship between couples who inhabited the park’s benches. The highlight of the proceedings, however, was the clever manipulation of a couple to believe that the mic and camera were off as per their request, while actually that wasn’t the case.

The incident set several tongues wagging and many eyes rolling. Some raised concerns over the ethics of journalism and privacy violation. Others questioned slingshotting the relatively submissive middle class love birds while the more privileged lot continues to rendezvous in the Gloria Jeans and Hot Spots of Pakistan with relative impunity.

I believe that the incident scratches the surface of a phenomenon deeply rooted in our national psyche. We, as a nation, love to judge. It could very well qualify as our national sport. To emphasize our ‘rightfulness’, we belittle any behavior that contradicts our notions of piety. In fact, we consider it an obligation to enlighten others about the principles of morality. I attribute this behavior to the desire to simplify the job of our ‘moral vision’. Instead of accepting and coexisting with a variety of ideas, we have programmed our systems to see the world in black and white only. A thing is either right or wrong; nothing more, nothing less. In doing so, we deny other human beings their right to commit mistakes and overlook our potential for being mistaken in defining what constitutes a mistake.

It’s time we stopped getting defensive–and subsequently offensive–because of our propensity to consider any opposing view as a direct threat to our own beliefs. If we rise above our preconceived, rigid notions of morality, then and only then, can we learn to love other people. It is the courage to face and accept incongruent opinions that can open our eyes to thousands of of colors that occupy the space between black and white.

(For reference, here is the video i mentioned in my blog)

Of Bias and Discrimnation

The other day I had the chance to look at a friend’s CV. By the time I was done with the first page, I was so turned off that I refused to read more. To my absolute surprise, the CV mentioned religion, domicile and—-wait for it—-marital status. I think she did not mention gender presuming that her name will reveal it any way. Excerpt from the conversation:

Me:  “Why should a prospective employer be interested in that kind of information?”

Friend:“This is vital information, you see, says a lot about a person.”

Me: “I suppose that’s right, says a lot about the employer. Asking about religion implies that he/she is a religious fanatic, domicile implies racism, gender and marital status fall under sexism .”

Friend: “There. Marital Status. Nobody wants to hire married women with families for serious business.”

Me: “@#%^^&*( ^&*(((((    @@@@@@.”

Being married with a three year old, it shouldn’t come as a surprise for this conversation to end like this.

We are all guilty of harboring some level of racism or sexism, consciously or subconsciously.  Perhaps, it might sound a little crazy, but requiring people to mention religion in CV’s is the modern equivalent of the ‘yellow badge’. Also referred to as the Jewish badge, the yellow badge was a patch of cloth that Jews were required to sew on their outer garments to identify them in public. As per recorded history, this was practiced in both Christian as well as Muslim countries. In more recent past, it was revived by the German Nazis who forced Jews to wear an armband with a blue Star of David on it saying the word ‘Jude’ (the German word for Jew).

If our opinion of a person is influenced to any extent by his religion, race or sex, perhaps we should question our impartiality and sense of equality. Talking of bias, have you watched the 2004 movie ‘Crash’? If you haven’t, you must. I’ll leave you with a clip from the same movie.

Heartbreak!

Welcome back guys. I am trying to recover from the heartbreak I got at the hands of anonymous hackers from Iran. While my blog was still a fledgling fresh out of the egg of negative-infinity (remember the number scale you studied in class 3… Suffering from a case of poor imagination? Look at the image below!) …

So where were we? Yes, the baby-blog! So I got complaints from several friends that they could not access the website, eventually, it just disappeared and I could no longer access my administrative account. All this while I was literally day-dreaming about what to put on my blog (yes, I am a little crazy- ‘little’ being negotiable). I thought maybe in my excitement, I caused my website irreversible damage. In sheer desperation, I called a more knowledgeable friend who broke the sorry news to me: The hosting server(s) had been hacked! Apparently, my blog proved to be a bad omen for SmartBiz (my hosting service provider). I’d like to believe that my maiden blog-post caught the attention of hackers from Iran and they were completely knocked out, and in retaliation, they decided to teach SmartBiz a lesson. The wonders it does for my self-esteem  !!!

The next few days, I kept checking my blog at the rate of 60 checks per hour, hoping against hope that I will see my blog again-standing on its own two feet, flashing a warm, sunny smile. What I got was a CGI error-page. Called SmartBiz again only to hear a lame apology about their failure to backup my blog, implying that I’ll have to go through the entire effort again. As if that was not enough, the very next day, I walked into the lab (my workplace) and a colleague commented on my non-existent photography skills. As a proof, he opened my blog and there they were: a pair of animated, fire-spitting eyes, and a spooky face to go along with it. As it turned out, my blog was pointing to a Russian photographer’s page. Enraged, I called SmartBiz again and went through the routine rant about the vandalism of Iranian Hackers. Despite promises of prompt action, the fiery eyes kept staring back at me for more than 24 hours every time I tried to access my blog.

Anyway, things are back on track now. A few lessons I learnt from the heartbreak:

1. Never trust third-party hosting resellers. Go straight to GoDaddy, BlueHost, InMotion, JustHost etc.
2. Don’t rely on others. Manage your own backups.
3. SmartBiz is not so smart after all.
4. Iranian hackers are ruthless.
5. Eyes can double as pistols.

P.S. Attention Iranian hackers! I am not well-versed in spoken Persian but know some Persian poetry. If you are itching to flex your muscles, let’s have a war of verse in the same vein as war of nerves. I’ll go first:  Bibi sanem janem…

Double Standards

You are sitting in your work place that you share with a couple of other employees. You are writing a report for your company. You get tired and decide to give your overtired nervous system a visual break in the form of a YouTube video. Side by side, you open Facebook and to your absolute delight, find out that a friend has uploaded pictures of his/her latest vacation in Hawaii. Pop opens a mini-window and your friend “Clingy” wants to say Hi. You engage in small talk with Clingy. Suddenly, you become aware of an overarching human figure trying to peep into your monitor. What’s more embarrassing, you suddenly realize that the person had been standing there all this while, even when you were enjoying a not-so-nice conversation with Clingy. So what’s your response? Naturally, you’d want to bang the heaviest object in your immediate access on the eavesdropper’s head.

If I tell you that a virus in your computer can record all your activities and communicate them to a remote person, what’s your reaction going to be like? Nothing. That’s the point. Why is our attitude different towards ‘crime’ carried out in person and its digital counterpart. I have been contemplating this for a while and in my sweet opinion, it ultimately boils down to proximity. More on proximity later! (No, it’s not my idea of keeping the audience in suspense so they keep checking back in. Blame it on my busy schedule; things are going to be a wee bit sporadic for a while. Please, bear with me!)