One of my friend’s gtalk tagline read “when you do NPV of life…u should use a discount rate of approx. zero”. Now given my interest in DCF (Discounted Cash Flow analysis for non-MBAs), it was quiet natural for me to get intrigued by this statement.
After all, if you use zero as discount rate than effectively you don’t discount future at all. So implications are:
(a) NPV (Net Present Value for non-MBAs) of your life gets artificially high,
(b) You come up with a seemingly tough to digest logic that say if you hungry today still you are indifferent to getting a meal now or a week later and
(c) Since you have made discount rate zero so it also means that any return on effort in life is equivalent to nil…so either you having a really wretched life or you just don’t have anything left to achieve or attain.
Therefore, I was a little confounded and I just assumed that what she might have meant is to actually live in present and not worry about the future in which case she should have ideally used a discount rate of infinity ;-)
It was upon broaching this with her when I figured that she came up with this line while reading a book called Secret by Rhonda Byrne and the philosophy inherent in that. So I picked up the trail to chance upon what is known as Law of Attraction. Now, I have a very strong opinion on this “law” but before I prejudice you with my perception, let me just state what it actually stands for, so I would borrow the definition from the link above ( while strongly recommending that you go through that link once):
“It states that people experience physical and mental manifestations that correspond to their predominant thoughts, feelings, words, and actions and that people therefore have direct control over reality and their lives through thought alone.”
Interesting right, let me put it a little simply …it says that “for something to happen, all you need to do is to believe/hope that it would happen” So how life will pan out is suddenly not a function of your actions but simply a function of your thoughts. Now, critics would argue that’s not what it means - one obviously needs to act on his thoughts. So even if I allow lee way for a one to one mapping between functions of thoughts and action i.e. we use a prototype subject who puts all his thoughts into action, then for him things should just pan out the way he wants them to. So suddenly life would become fixed and definite because now there’s no uncertainty. But wait, there is a contradiction, what if two equally deserving and earnest individuals decide to want the same thing with equal fervour and dedication. Now if both of them think that they should have that thing then who would eventually get it. When thoughts of different individuals are contradictory what course would nature take, how would the universe react?
It goes on to say that if you really want something just assume you have it. Now that’s an interesting treatise with long term disastrous results guaranteed. So if you hungry just assume you just getting back from the grandest buffet you ever had and try surviving on this assumption for a week, or if its raining just assume you carrying that black umbrella you lost last week (and hope not to get drenched) and so on… I know am pushing it to logical extreme but then this “law” kinda asked for it.
So now since you have assumed you have everything which you could have ever hoped for, life has suddenly nothing more to achieve. Rather life just becomes a constant wait for your thoughts to turn into reality. And then I see another logical contradiction here. If you assume that you have all you ever needed, would that satisfy you, give you delights of owning what you wanted to own – coz if it does, then there is no need for your thoughts to ever change into reality because you are pretty happy with the virtual reality of your own but if this assumption doesn’t give you any satisfaction or benefit then won’t it leave you disgruntled and dissatisfied - in which case you are back to where you had begun…
This philosophy did have some echo in another popular book – Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Another popular book that I couldn’t bring myself to like) – “when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it'”. But here it’s far more subdued because it doesn’t guarantee achievement; it just talks about a conducive atmosphere where final result is still a function of your actions.
Nevertheless, my logical & sensible self completely revolted against the entire premise of this theory. But remember, few days back I wrote about little rules of faith and how each one of us need to have some illogical friends like that. Well, I would have let this one pass as one such rule of faith but then what made me write something this long about it is the pretense of this ‘law’ that there is more to it than faith, that you should believe it because it has its roots in quantum physics or its effort to gaining credibility through blatant misinterpretation of Hinduism or Buddhism.
Faith and physics - they make strange bedfellows. I have always believed that faith is as much an ally of a man as logic is. Just that when you base your actions on faith don’t look for support in science and when you act on science just don’t hope that it would turn out any different from how it always does…
After all, if you use zero as discount rate than effectively you don’t discount future at all. So implications are:
(a) NPV (Net Present Value for non-MBAs) of your life gets artificially high,
(b) You come up with a seemingly tough to digest logic that say if you hungry today still you are indifferent to getting a meal now or a week later and
(c) Since you have made discount rate zero so it also means that any return on effort in life is equivalent to nil…so either you having a really wretched life or you just don’t have anything left to achieve or attain.
Therefore, I was a little confounded and I just assumed that what she might have meant is to actually live in present and not worry about the future in which case she should have ideally used a discount rate of infinity ;-)
It was upon broaching this with her when I figured that she came up with this line while reading a book called Secret by Rhonda Byrne and the philosophy inherent in that. So I picked up the trail to chance upon what is known as Law of Attraction. Now, I have a very strong opinion on this “law” but before I prejudice you with my perception, let me just state what it actually stands for, so I would borrow the definition from the link above ( while strongly recommending that you go through that link once):
“It states that people experience physical and mental manifestations that correspond to their predominant thoughts, feelings, words, and actions and that people therefore have direct control over reality and their lives through thought alone.”
Interesting right, let me put it a little simply …it says that “for something to happen, all you need to do is to believe/hope that it would happen” So how life will pan out is suddenly not a function of your actions but simply a function of your thoughts. Now, critics would argue that’s not what it means - one obviously needs to act on his thoughts. So even if I allow lee way for a one to one mapping between functions of thoughts and action i.e. we use a prototype subject who puts all his thoughts into action, then for him things should just pan out the way he wants them to. So suddenly life would become fixed and definite because now there’s no uncertainty. But wait, there is a contradiction, what if two equally deserving and earnest individuals decide to want the same thing with equal fervour and dedication. Now if both of them think that they should have that thing then who would eventually get it. When thoughts of different individuals are contradictory what course would nature take, how would the universe react?
It goes on to say that if you really want something just assume you have it. Now that’s an interesting treatise with long term disastrous results guaranteed. So if you hungry just assume you just getting back from the grandest buffet you ever had and try surviving on this assumption for a week, or if its raining just assume you carrying that black umbrella you lost last week (and hope not to get drenched) and so on… I know am pushing it to logical extreme but then this “law” kinda asked for it.
So now since you have assumed you have everything which you could have ever hoped for, life has suddenly nothing more to achieve. Rather life just becomes a constant wait for your thoughts to turn into reality. And then I see another logical contradiction here. If you assume that you have all you ever needed, would that satisfy you, give you delights of owning what you wanted to own – coz if it does, then there is no need for your thoughts to ever change into reality because you are pretty happy with the virtual reality of your own but if this assumption doesn’t give you any satisfaction or benefit then won’t it leave you disgruntled and dissatisfied - in which case you are back to where you had begun…
This philosophy did have some echo in another popular book – Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Another popular book that I couldn’t bring myself to like) – “when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it'”. But here it’s far more subdued because it doesn’t guarantee achievement; it just talks about a conducive atmosphere where final result is still a function of your actions.
Nevertheless, my logical & sensible self completely revolted against the entire premise of this theory. But remember, few days back I wrote about little rules of faith and how each one of us need to have some illogical friends like that. Well, I would have let this one pass as one such rule of faith but then what made me write something this long about it is the pretense of this ‘law’ that there is more to it than faith, that you should believe it because it has its roots in quantum physics or its effort to gaining credibility through blatant misinterpretation of Hinduism or Buddhism.
Faith and physics - they make strange bedfellows. I have always believed that faith is as much an ally of a man as logic is. Just that when you base your actions on faith don’t look for support in science and when you act on science just don’t hope that it would turn out any different from how it always does…
No comments:
Post a Comment