Now we flub reopening

No one except Trump and his closest supporters doubt that we, as a country, failed to act fast enough as Covid Crisis was taking hold. We waited, dilly-dallied and acted only when things became grim. Our President called it a hoax, a plot by Democrats, and a minor problem before grudgingly accepting the gravity of the situation.

Now, as the country reopens, we are making a mess of it once again.  The cases are again on the rise and we are breaking records. Some states have partially opened while some are actually shutting down again. When I talk to friends in Europe it makes me realize how badly we are flubbing the task of reopening.

There are likely to be many reasons for why we are looking more like a “shi*-hole country” --- to paraphrase you know who---instead of being an advanced one.  In my opinion, the two most important ones are : (1) The belief among many people that their rights are being infringed if the authorities require them to do even a simple thing like wearing a mask, and (2) The actions by the deplorable human being we have given the responsibility of being our country’s leader.

When I see protests against wearing a mask I cringe. This tells me that the protester has assumed that he knows more about the spread of the virus than the epidemiologists and those in the authority. He believes that his rights are being infringed even though it is just a simple request.  While I would have issues with this stance if the person in danger is just the refusenik, I have a serious problem because in doing so, he is endangering my life. Further, if he contracts the disease in the future by his refusal, others will be endangered and we as the society will be asked to foot his medical bills. All that because he believes that his constitutional rights are being trampled on if he is forced to wear a frigging mask.

I am told that a better option than making masks mandatory is to suggest that they wear them, and leave the final decision up to them depending on what their opinion is of risk vs. “inconvenience”. I wonder what would have happened if the society had done the same for the regulations requiring people to wear seatbelts. “You can wear them only if you feel they will help you. Yes, the engineers and medical doctors have proven beyond doubt that seatbelts save lives, but what do they know? You have the right to refuse such intrusion by the government.”  Even that is not an adequate comparison…a person not wearing a seatbelt is going to harm just himself, not the others. A better comparison would be driving under influence. “Officer, my rights to drive under any condition are being trampled…”

This uniquely American attitude of believing that their rights are infringed even by the slightest request by the authority is a big contributor in us flubbing the reopening phase, but it pales in comparison to what the commander in chief is doing.

He has, for example, shown an utter disdain for science. Initially, the whole thing was a hoax, then it was a minor problem, then his assertions that it can be cured by some unproven and bizarre remedies, and then creating a make-believe narrative that the pandemic is over and life can return to normal.

Some of his lines are classics that would go down in history when the story of the pandemic is written. “A bleach that is injected should provide cure”, “If we slow down testing the rise in the cases will slow down too”, “We can’t let the ship carrying infected passengers dock because that will increase the number of cases in the US.”

His refusal to wear a mask is another classic disregard to what a leader should be doing. What type of example is he setting? I was told that people have to make their own decision and not follow the leader. Isn’t there something wrong with the definition of a “leader” in that argument?

Now, of course, he has started his campaign rallies that involve packing people inside indoor places, precisely the situations that the scientific community is asking us to avoid. The participants are offered masks, but most don’t wear them. Why should they be expected to do so if their cult leader is not doing so? The rallies consist of nothing but self-congratulations on mission accomplished and name-calling the sacrificial lambs, the Chinese in this instance.  All that while the disease is raging outside. For example, Arizona, where he held the rally in late June recorded its highest number of cases, almost to the day. 

I suppose we will eventually muddle out of the predicament we are in. Our reputation in the world is already damaged, so this can’t make it worse. Maybe it will. The day of reckoning for the commander in chief will come in November when we hope he will be booted out ingloriously and go down the history as the worst US President ever.

Telecommunications substituting transportation

In 1991, while working at Arthur D. Little, a consulting firm, I wrote a report titled “Can Telecommunications Help Solve America’s Transportation Problems?” It was a multi-client study performed for a bunch of telecommunications companies---remember when we used to have companies like Nynex, Ameritel, BellSouth?

My point then was that the transportation infrastructure was facing a crisis because demand exceeded supply. Most solutions at that time were directed towards increasing supply. My research looked into what could be done to reduce demand on the transportation systems, specifically by having telecommunications substitute transportation. My co-authors and I envisioned a world where people can telecommute, teleshop (what a quaint word?) and do teleconferencing instead to going physically to a location. These were not entirely new concepts but progress in adapting them were stymied because of lack of telecommunications infrastructure capacity and attitude of people. “How can we let people work from home? How would we know if they are really working?”

I assumed that 10% of commuting and a similar level of shopping and conferencing will be performed through services provided by telecommunications companies if their capacities were upgraded using fiber optics.

I estimated that these substitutions would lead to an annual reduction of 1.8 million tons of regulated pollutants and 3.5 billion gallons of gasoline, while freeing up 3.1 billion hours of personal time due to reduced highway congestion and elimination of trips. Finally, the move will save some half a billion dollars in the maintenance cost of existing infrastructure annually. When converted to dollar figures, these savings would amount to $23 billion in annual societal benefits (in 1988 dollars), and this was just for US. 

My report got quite a bit of publicity. I was quoted in several well-known newspapers, and the telecommunications companies used this work in making their case for investment in a high-capacity network. 

Fast forward to the current day. 

Covid-19 has forced us into substituting transportation by telecommunications in a way that was unimaginable just a few months ago. Almost nobody commutes to work, shopping is all on-line and there are no physical conferences. This is not just in US but around the world. Look at how many gallons of fuel are saved, how pollution has drastically reduced and time wasted travelling in the car is all but gone. What kinds of societal benefits are we accumulating?

Now, of course, all this comes at a horrible price. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and the cost of developing this artificial new world has been incalculable. Still, there may be something positive that comes out of this crisis.

Companies would have discovered that almost all jobs could be done remotely. Not only do workers produce results while nobody is looking over their shoulders, but they probably put in more time because of they don’t need to commute. These lessons will have a lasting effect. 

How much of telecommuting will remain in place after the Coronavirus lockdown is over is anybody’s guess but I can imagine that to be substantial. The number of telecommuters was probably about 10% before the crisis (it was 7.9% in 2017) so if we assume 20% of workers telecommuting after the crisis, that will be an additional of 10% not driving to work. 

What kind of societal benefits are we talking about? Remember that for 10% of workforce telecommuting I had estimated the benefits to be about $23 billion. Given the fact that (i) the dollar figures in my research were in 1988 dollars, (ii) the actual number of people working has gone up by 40% since then and (iii) inflation has been 123% during that period, we get close to $70 billion in societal benefits annually due to the new work habits. This is of course a very crude estimate; I have no desire to repeat the work I had done almost 30 years ago to get a more accurate figure. However, the conclusion that there will be substantial societal benefits stands.

In 1991, no one had heard of Climate Change. Now it is here and real. The billions of tons of pollutants not emitted because of a substantial boost in telecommuting will help a lot in addressing that currently forgotten crisis, one which won’t be solved with an vaccine. 

Imagine if the fear of flying induced by Covid reduces desire to travel, and the future wanderlust will be satisfied through virtual reality. Then the number of tourists will reduce, making a big impact on pollution created by airlines and saving the desirable destinations from the trampling hoards. 

Covid a horrible curse that has fallen on mankind. However, if the new habits forced upon us by that curse stick, we will generate substantial benefits. 

Shedding new light

The stories of human evolution and migration have always fascinated me. I wrote a Blog post about the book “Early Indians” that described where my ancestors in India came from. Now I just finished reading a book that provided a lot of material for “Early Indians.” This one, titled “Who we are and how we got here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past,” written by David Reich, is a more scholarly work, difficult to digest sometimes, but it is full of surprises and mysteries. 

The two breakthroughs applied to human history are the ability to sequence human genome effectively and efficiently, and doing it from bone fragments found in different parts of the world. Combining it with the traditional techniques; such as ability to date a specific archeological site (using Carbon dating), a vast database of anatomical measurements of parts of humans (such as skull), and advances in linguistics; allows us now to look back in an unprecedented way. 

Here are some of the highlights of what the study of ancient DNAs have revealed thus far. 

Encounters with ancient humans: An amazing fact is that we, modern humans, interbred with Neanderthals. We have plenty of jokes about Neanderthals, those cousins of modern humans, who had large heads but not very smart. They lived in Europe (Neanderthal is the location in Germany---Neander Lake—where they first bone fragments were found), and went extinct. However to discover that almost all of us (all except the Africans), have some Neanderthal DNA was a new discovery. There is not much of their DNA in us---the maximum is only 2%---but it is there.

Another branch of ancient humans, whose DNA we carry are Denisovans, named after Denisova Caves in Siberia, where a pinky bone belonging to one of them was found. They are cousins of Neanderthals, but some of us carry as much as 5% of their DNA. The funny part is that those with the highest concentration live in New Guinea and Australia, nowhere close to Siberia. This startling discovery led to figuring out that there were actually two types of Denisovans, Siberian type and Australian type. So, seventy thousand years back, world had four types of populations: modern humans, Neanderthals, Siberian-Denisovans, and Australo-Denisovans. (There actually is a fifth, small humans, nicknamed “hobbit,” which lived in Indonesia as long ago as seven hundred thousand years.)

What is interesting about such interbreeding is that the evolution of humans did not follow a tree like structure, starting from a trunk and branching out. It is more like a trellis, branching and remixing. 

Humanity’s Ghosts: A prevailing theory until this new technology came about was that the ancestors of Native Americans were East Asians. They are the ones that crossed Bearing Sea when the sea levels were down due to an ice age. The new findings reveal that one third of the ancestry of Native Americans is North Eurasians, and the remaining East Asians. Interestingly, the same North Eurasian group mixed with ancestral Europeans to create North Europeans. So, the Native Americans and the Europeans share a common ancestry. How bizarre! Even more bizarre is that there was no such group identified before. So, it was a ghost group.

The mystery was solved when bones of a boy were found in south-central Siberia at a place called Mal’ta. This twenty four thousand year old genome was what one would expect that of the ghost population to be like. Mystery solved. However, there are additional ghost groups identified using the new technologies and they are yet to find their own Mal’ta boys. 

Europeans: Europe of ancient times lived in many population centers during the hunter-gatherer phase and moved around. That much has been discerned by analyzing ancient DNAs. “We should not expect the people who lived in any one place in the past to be direct ancestors of those who live there today.” Driving their movements were natural phenomena such as a super volcano near the present day Naples in Italy (much before Vesuvius) and the glaciers created by an ice age that divided west and east of Europe. Relative homogeneity in the European population was brought about by domestication of plants and animals, which began between twelve and eleven thousand years ago in southern Turkey and northern Syria. 

A major change in European people took place some five thousand years ago when people from steppes (a grass land that stretches eight thousand kilometers from central Europe to China) migrated west. These people belonged to Yamnaya culture that herded sheep and cattle. Such mass migration possible was made possible by a major innovation---that of wheel. Another innovation---horse---made cattle herding more efficient. Combining a wheeled wagon with an animal allowed the Yamnaya folks to travel. 

This expansion also spread a major group of languages---the Indo-European Languages--- throughout Europe. One clue for the common root shared by most (not all) European languages is the words used for describing a wagon and its parts. Well, if these folks used wheels and wagons to move about, they had to have common words describing them.

Even Indian languages are a part of the family, as was discovered by judge serving in British India. A scholar of Greek and Latin, he learned Sanskrit, and as they say, the rest is history. So, the steppe pastoralists had broken through to India too! This is a great example of how linguistics works hand-in-hand with archeology and genetics to create accurate maps of human migration. 

Even though a single genetically coherent group was responsible for spreading many of the Indo-European languages, this fact does not support the concept of “Aryan purity” promoted by Hitler. The Europeans, including the blue-eyed blond Germans are the result of mixture of many groups.

Indians: India is another place where the DNA based research confronted local views on why people in North India speak languages that are members of the Indo-European family. “It is simple,” they say. “India was the cradle of civilization and people speaking those languages migrated out of it to go to Europe.” This view, espoused primarily by folks in India who are promoting Hindu supremacy, is not consistent with the findings of research done by David Reich and his fellow researchers, as mentioned above. As it stands, the findings prove that one part of Indian population resulted from mixing of people from Central Asia, Europe, and Near East, while the other part, from East Asians (Chinese). The only place with pure ancient Indian blood is in the tiny island of Andaman. 

Another set of interesting discoveries relate to the cast system in India. Organized in two levels, the cast system is composed of four major Varnas and at least forty six hundred Jatis. People tend to marry within their subgroups, creating the degree of genetic differentiations among Indians many times larger than in Europe. India is composed of a large number of small populations, according to Reich.

Marriages within the same Jati provide a fertile ground for rare diseases. This is tragic but also a goldmine. According to Reich, “The history of India presents an important opportunity for biological discovery. As finding genes for rare recessive diseases is cheap with modern genetic technology. All it takes is access to a small number of people in a jai group with the disease whose genome can then be sequenced.”

When all is said and done, the genetic research show that Europe and South Asia are similar in many ways. “They both were affected by two successive migrations. The first migration was from the Near East around nine thousand years ago, which brought farmers who mixed with local hunter gathers. The second was from the steppe after about five thousand years ago, which brought pastoralists, who probably spoke Indo-European languages, who mixed with the local farmers they encountered along the way.” 

Native American ancestors: Moving on to America, the genetic research has shown that vast majority of Native Americans descended from groups of people that crossed over from Siberia during the ice age when the ocean levels were low. They came across Bering Strait via an ice-free corridor some thirteen thousand years ago but also along a second route, a coastal one, some sixteen thousand years ago. No archeological remains have been found of the coastal route because it is all covered by one hundred meters of water at this time. 

A big surprise was the discovery of Native American population in the Amazon area that share ancestry with Australians, New Guineans, and people of Andaman Islands, mentioned above as the place where original Indians can be found. This indicates that there was another “ghost” population, called “Population Y” that most likely came from the Bering Strait route, however the timing of that event is unknown. This group perhaps was more widely distributed in the Americas but was then marginalized by the expansion of other groups. 

Reich postulates that there were two more waves of people who crossed Bering Strait. One group, five thousand years ago formed Paleo-Eskimo lineage, the other, just a thousand years go, created a Neo-Eskimo group that displaced Paleo-Eskimos. As the names suggest, these are the ancestors of the current folks who live in the northern part of the continent. What is interesting is that there is evidence of reverse migration. Some folks went back to Asia along Bering Strait. 

Reich mentions opposition he and other researchers encountered while studying genetics of Native Americans in the Continental United States. There is general mistrust of Western science among the Native population stemming from the way some early samples were collected. Also, in 1990 US Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) that requires institutions to return artifacts including bones, to Native American tribes. This reduces the opportunity to study ancient DNA analysis. 

East Asians: Moving on the East Asia and Australia, the ancient DNA reveals that interbreeding of modern humans with Neanderthals created two groups, the European hunter-gatherers and the East Asians. This happened some 49,000-54,000 years ago. The East Asian group than interbred with the Denisovans to produce Papuans and Australians. All this happened quickly within a 5,000-year interval.

From 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer East Asian group that moved east, diversified and spread south toward India, north east toward the Americas, and south east toward Australia. Two very divergent populations from this initial dispersion developed agriculture, about 9,000 years ago, independent of those in Turkey and north Syria mentioned earlier.

One of these two groups farmed along the Yangtze River, the other along the Yellow River. Analyzing DNA of population from Southeast Asia and Taiwan, it has been discovered that their ancestry can be traced back to a homogenous ancestral population that lived along Yangtze River. Since no ancient DNA from Yangtze River has been found, it is a “Yangtze River Ghost Population.” Similarly, the ancestry of Han Chinese---the world’s largest group of more than 1.2 billion people---can be traced back to a “Yellow River Ghost Population.” The Tibetan speakers also emerged from this second ghost population it is believed. 

The East Asian group moving toward Australia, mentioned above, populated Indonesia, Australia and New Guinea. This first wave, 47,000 years ago, was followed by two other waves, one from Taiwan that populated the Southwest Pacific Islands (5,000-3,000 years ago), and the last one, originating from Papua New Guinea about 2,400 years ago that went to the same islands and beyond.  

Africa: The story of human evolution in Africa is very complex, as might be expected from the continent’s huge size, its varied landscape, and the antiquity of our species there. As a lot of focus of research thus far has been for people who came out of Africa 50,000 years go to populate the rest of the world, what happened to them before or after that fateful event has not received as much attention.  A lot of work henceforth has been based on linguistics, identifying similarities and differences in languages spoken in the continent to develop hypotheses on human development and migrations. The study of ancient (and current) DNA is still in its infancy and that is proving some of the hypotheses while bringing up new possibilities.

Broadly speaking, at some unknown time hundreds of years ago, a West African lineage split from the rest, and then some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago two other groups emerged, the East African foragers and the South African foragers. The former group is of specific interest to us, the non-Africans, as they had a pivotal role in our history. Subsequently, agriculturalists from the West Central Africa spread out and went south as well as east. This movement of people is called Bantu Expansion and it was discovered based on linguistics. This, and three other expansions occurred in the past few thousand years ago. As Reich says, the story is till being written as more research is done. 

Disruptive Genome: Reich concludes the book talking about several areas where genome research has caused disruptions in current thinking of equality and race.  For example, the genetic data confirms that powerful men have the potential to have a far greater impact than powerful women. One study points that a small number of powerful males living during the Mongol period succeeded in having an impact on billions of people living in East Eurasia today. One single person left many millions of direct male descendants across the territory that Mongol occupied. That male could be Genghis Khan based on the estimated rate of accumulation of mutations on the Y chromosome. How about that for the dominance of male?

One area where the genomic revolution is playing an important role is identifying genetic differences among different groups of people. Reich and his colleagues applied this method to find that African American men had genetic profile that led to a higher incidence of prostate cancer than the rest of the population. When these findings were presented, there was a strong opposition from the audience, including accusation of racism against him. Thus the well -meaning effort that can potentially improve health ran into a buzz saw. 

Reich now admits that, “There are nontrivial average genetic differences across populations in multiple traits and the race vocabulary is too ill defined and too loaded with historical baggage to be helpful.” He says, “We need to come up with a new way of thinking that can accommodate differences caused by genetic traits, rather than deny that differences can exist and so find ourselves caught without a strategy once they are found in the future.” He categorically denies the clams made by people like Hitler that were based on racial superiority, but cautions against the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction, denying that there can be differences among genes of different groups of people.

As the revolution in understanding our past using ancient DNA continues, Reich expects that during the next decade much will be revealed about the past of people in Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Africa. This will supplement what has already been learned about West Eurasia, Americas and Pacific Islands. This technology will also help estimate human population sizes at different times in the past. Yet another application is in the area of human biology and pace of human adaptation. The impact of natural selection during different times of human evolution can then be studied. medical advances that allow people with genetic conditions that in the past would have prevented them from surviving or having families would affect the natural selection. 

Reich concludes by saying that, “In this field, the pursuit of truth for its own sake has had the effect of exploding stereotypes, undercutting prejudices, and highlighting the connections among people not previously known to be related.”

Indeed. 

Corona virus and risk

Corona virus is taking a toll on us. The stock markets are tumbling, a large part of global population is in a lock-down, travelling has ceased to exist, and people are in a panic mode. There is no telling what tomorrow will bring, but today looks scary enough.

Yet, when we look at just numbers, it is whole another story. So far “only” a few thousand people have died in US (as of end of March). Compare that to gun violence or car accidents. 40,000 people die of the former in our country, and 38,000 of the latter. Even within the category of deaths caused by diseases, 400,000 die annually of malaria worldwide and 56,000 of influenza. Why doesn’t stock market go in a free fall when any of those causes result in deaths? What is going on?

Clearly, there is a lot behind these numbers that has caused the global reaction.

To begin with, there is the mystery surrounding coronavirus. As Don Rumsfeld (remember him?) had said that there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Coronavirus is unknown unknown. No one knows for sure how it is making people sick; there have been cases where the patient had not travelled to the affected countries or came into contact with those who had. Unlike influenza (the known unknown), it is not clear how much precaution is enough to prevent coronavirus from spreading. The outcome of this is clear and frightening. The number of people affected, and resulting deaths can and have risen exponentially, not linearly. That means the sky is the limit if precautionary measure do not work. 

Much has been said and written on the subject already, and I don’t think I can add anything more. However, I would like to make two sets of observations based on my experience with quantification and acceptance of risk (something I did in my consulting career), and risk perception vs. reality. 

As a society, we seem to accept gun deaths but not those caused by coronavirus, because the deaths from the virus cannot be hidden behind a smoke screen, as is the case with gun violence. Unlike the gun lobby, there is no coronavirus lobby claiming that you should be blaming people for all these deaths, not the poor virus. You don’t see madmen running around claiming that the constitutional rights of a patient are violated because you are preventing him from getting in touch with whomever he wants. 

Similarly, we accept deaths caused by car crashes because the only way to eliminate them would be to prevent people from driving. That will not be possible. On the other hand, it should be possible to eliminate deaths caused by coronavirus without preventing us from engaging in essential activities. So the virus deaths are not acceptable, whereas car deaths are. 

In addition to accepting deaths caused by certain activities, and not by others, people perceive risk differently from what the statistics show. Just like some very dangerous activities are deemed safe, some very safe activities are deemed unsafe. It is the perception that drives behavior. 

Risk is defined as multiplication of two factors: Likelihood of an event happening and its consequences. Thus a high likelihood, low consequence event poses the same risk as low likelihood, high consequence event. However, people perceive the high consequence event as more dangerous even if it has very small likelihood of happening. 

Think of nuclear power, which is perceived by people to be more dangerous than a coal power one. Statistically it is the safest way to produce electricity. Doing so using coal is not only dangerous for miners, but also kills us slowly due to pollution that is creates. Nuclear power creates no pollution. However, a nuclear accident is associated in minds of most people as a nuclear explosion. It would cause lots of deaths, even if it is unlikely to happen. Some examples, such as Chernobyl, do not help assuage that concern. 

Similar logic applies to flying. How many people have died recently in US due to a major airliner crashing? Zero. How may people perceive flying to be dangerous? Lots. Why? One main reason is the consequences of a crash. You would almost certainly die if there were one.

That is generally not the case with Coronavirus, because not every one who contracts it dies. However, if you belong to a category of people (advanced age, underlying conditions), you would be afraid and it is understandable.

These are some of the reasons why the reaction to coronavirus is so strong even though it has so far killed fewer people than many other causes. People accept consequences of some activities more than those from others, they perceive risks differently from what truly exist, and they are justifiably more concerned if the consequences are dire, even if the likelihood is very low. Besides, we still don’t know enough about it.

One final point I want to make it is that all these statistics are meaningless if you or a loved one contracts the disease and becomes seriously ill. Telling that person that the likelihood of getting it was lower than that being hit by a lightening is cruel and insensitive.

What lies ahead for humans?

I just finished reading Yuval Harrari’s “Homo Deus.” It is an intriguing book although Harari does meander a bit in articulating his speculations for the next thousand years for human beings. 

He starts by laying the groundwork on how the past chapters of our existence will lead to the future. He says, “Three problems preoccupied us right from the beginning: Famine, plague and war. They all are under control. However, humans are rarely satisfied with what they have. Humanity’s next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness, and divinity. We are aiming to upgrade humans into gods, hence Homo Deus.”

In his opinion, of the three targets, death is a technical problem that we can and should solve. “In a world without death, there is no need for heaven, hell or reincarnation, the mainstay of most religions.”

He rightly points out that being happy does not come easy. “Reality matches our expectation, we are happy, but expectations keep going up. Our biochemical systems are designed to survival and reproduction, not happiness. A change in our biochemistry is required.”

Then, he comes to the main point of the book, which is that Homo Sapiens has run its course and will no longer be relevant in the future. “A superior model, Homo Deus will have upgraded physical and mental abilities that will enable it to hold its own even against the most sophisticated algorithms.” 

“Upgrading humans into gods will require biological engineering, cyborg engineering, and engineering of non-organic beings. Bioengineering will involve rewriting genetic code, rewiring brain circuit, and altering biochemical balance. Cyborg Engineering will deal with merging organic bodies with non-organic devices, such as bionic hands and artificial eyes. Finally, neural networks will be replaced by intelligent software, able to surf virtual and non-virtual worlds.”

You may ask what happens to soul in this transformation.

Harari does not believe in the existence of soul. “Theory of evolution cannot accept the idea of souls, if by ‘soul’ we mean some thing indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal. Evolution means change and it is incapable of producing everlasting entities”.

Then he goes on to describe the concept of free will and meaning of life, and slays both of them.

“Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning; modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. Both are equally delusional,”

He makes a persuasive argument against free will. “Decisions are reached through a chain reaction of biochemistry events, each determined by previous events, are certainly not free. If humans are free, how could natural selection have shaped them? Neural events in the brain indicates the person’s decision begin from a few hundred milliseconds to a few seconds before the person is aware of the choice. If I am indeed the master of my thoughts and decisions, can I decide not to think about anything at all for the next sixty seconds? Try that, and see what happens.”

According to Harari, even Homo Deus may not be the end point of our existence. That would arrive in a way a new “religion” Dataism predicts.  

“Dataism declares that the universe consists of data flows, and the value of any entity is determined by its contribution to data processing. Exactly the same mathematical laws apply to both biochemical and electronic algorithms. According to Dataists, Homo Sapiens are not a precursor to some Homo Deus, but are merely tools for creating the Internet-of-all-things, which may eventually spread out from earth to pervade the whole galaxy and even universe. This cosmic data processing system would be the God, and humans are destined to merge into it.”

We are created by nature to create a network. That may provide meaning to our lives.

To me this is a bold and homocentric view. Many, if not most, scientists believe that we are not unique in this universe. There are trillions of planets and it is hard to imagine that life exists on only one of them. For sure, the creatures in other planets may be way backward, may be just single cell organisms. Many of them, however, may be way advanced. If they are, it is not hard to imagine that they may have gone on the same path and their living beings are also subsumed into a cosmic data processing system. 

In that case, we would be providing just the latest connection to this universal system already in existence. Once connected, we (or our data version) will be able to post stories on the intergalactic FaceBook, and send those aliens pictures using Instagram.

Oh well…who know what lies ahead for us. 

Who are we?

While growing up in India, we were taught that we in the northern part of the country are Aryans and those in the southern part, Dravidians. They speak languages that were very different from our Sanskrit based languages. Sanskrit is a member of a vast family of languages---the Indo European languages---which include German, Latin, Persian, as well as Slavic and Celtic languages. That means, we of the Northern part of India are members of a vast group of people who populate Europe and Middle East. 

A book I read recently, “Early Indians” by Tony Joseph, confirmed these beliefs but added layers of nuances that I was not entirely aware of.  Here is a brief summary.

A group of Homo Sapiens, or modern humans, emerged in Africa and ventured outside that continent some 70,000 years ago. Modern DNA analysis shows that all people outside Africa are descendants of that group. Not only that, the ancestry of all of us non-Africans can be traced to a single African woman and man from that group…the original Adam and Eve!

Travelling along the coast, the first group of modern humans arrived in India 65,000 years ago, becoming the First Indians. These folks took two routes, a sub-Himalayan one and the other coastal one. This way they avoided the archaic humans (cousins of Homo Sapiens who are now extinct) in the region. 

About 35,000 years ago, climate deteriorated. However, the First Indians had developed technology to hunt down their prey and beat the rivals, the archaic humans. They expanded their range and moved deeper into the Indian Peninsula, thereby becoming the first South Indians. 

These folks were hunter-gatherers, who could sustain themselves but could not develop what we would call a civilization. For that, they had to learn farming. Only then, they could settle in one place, and have a larger percentage of population do other things besides gathering food---such as make potteries, develop written language, and create art. 

For Indians, that came about in the form of Harappan Civilization. To get that going, the First Indians got help from people living around Zagros region in what is modern day Iran. These Iranian agriculturalists helped Indians create one of the greatest civilizations of all time starting about 9000 years ago in Balochistan (now in Pakistan). 

At its peak, the Harappan Civilization (also called the “Indus Valley” Civilization) covered much of Pakistan, northeastern Afghanistan and Western India (Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and, my state, Gujarat)…a million square kilometers in all. Mohenjo-Daro, in Pakistan is one of the finest examples of archeological sites of this civilization, but there are plenty others. These cities were well planned, with excellent water management systems. 

The Zagrosians also brought their language, Proto-Elamite, which is found to be closely related to the Dravidian languages. So, the Indus Civilization was Dravidian, even though the speakers of these languages now reside in South India, far from Indus Valley. Unfortunately, the Harappan writing has not been deciphered, so some of the details are still in dispute. 

The Harappan Civilization eventually declined around 4000 years ago and about the same time new migrants arrived in northwestern India. These migrants from the Eurasian Steppe region (present day Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) called themselves Aryans and spoke Indo-European languages. They mixed with the Harappans to create a new genetic cluster called Ancestral North Indians (ANI). Pushed to the south by the new arrivals, the Harappans mixed with the descendents of the First Indians to create a new genetic cluster Ancestral South Indians (ASI). This was the bedrock of Indian population.

There were many others who came to India subsequently. The Greeks (Alexander the Great), the Jews, the Huns, the Parsis (Zoroastrians from Iran escaping persecution), the Mughals, the Portuguese, and the British, all of whom have contributed to our ancestry, although not to the same extent as the First Indians, the Zagrosians or the Aryans. 

So, that in a nutshell is what I gathered from the book “Early Indians”.  It is a very well written book that is highly recommended. 

PS: The term Aryans may sound strange and even offensive. Attribute that to Hitler, who stole the term to refer to his image of perfect humans, the blond blue eyed Germans. He also stole Swastika, which was, and still is, a religious symbol of the Aryans who came to India. 

Staying with FaceBook

Many of my friends and family are cutting cords with FaceBook (FB). Some of them have done it our of concerns with privacy, the others because they are opposed to FB (and other social media) contributing to the weakening of our democracy. It is a well-established fact that FB is a preferred platform for spreading disinformation and without facts at hand; people’s opinions are based on falsehood and lies. FB says that they can’t do much about it, which on the face of it sounds like self-serving baloney. 

I respect the opinions of my friends and wonder about my own allegiance to FB. Why am I sticking with FB?

 First the facts. I am a heavy user of FB, deriving all types of benefits. To begin with, FB serves as a showcase for my photographs. I am a serious amateur and have won some awards and accolades. Many of my FB friends enjoy seeing my work (or so they say) and I feel they will be disappointed if I stop posting. This factor was particularly important during the past year of being nomads and travelling. My FB friends appreciated the ongoing travelogue, and their compliments have boosted my ego (I admit). 

The other reason is that FB allows me to keep in touch with far-flung friends and relatives. Many are my family members and friends in India, some are new folks I have met in my travels, and others are my fellow classmates/officemates. I enjoy reading about them, seeing their photographs, and discussing various topics. Further, FB has allowed me to find friends who I had lost touch with, sometimes for decades. It is so nice to reestablish our friendships.  Finally, FB allows me to rant about whatever topic I feel like ranting about. It serves as a relief valve and allows me to connect with likeminded people. 

So, departing from FB will cause a major disruption in my lifestyle. It is an addiction that will be hard to kick. 

When I think about the privacy risks associated with my continued participation, I feel that the horse is already out of the barn. Even if I cutoff from my social media participation today, there is enough about me out there for someone intent on causing harm to do so. Besides, my Google searches and cookies I leave at all kinds of websites provide on-going fodder to those looking for details about who I am and what I like. 

The other point, supporting an evil empire, is more difficult to argue with. I am reminded of one of my relatives who tells me that using air-conditioners is harmful to environment and I should stop using it. Another relative has curtailed flying because of Carbon footprint issues. I cannot disagree but have difficulty in meeting either one of them. I am very uncomfortable in hot rooms and travelling is one of my passions. So, I respond by saying that I am doing my best in other places to reduce harm I cause. For example by reducing the size of the place we call home. 

So…to my friends who are abandoning FB due to moral issues, please allow me to indulge. I am doing good things for our society in other ways. For example, a couple of non-profits I have helped in recent years deal with education of inner city kids and immigrants. Perhaps they will learn to differentiate fact from fiction, even on FB. This will make a miniscule difference, if any, you say. But so will one person quitting FB out of two billion.