Ideas are Bulletproof

Let me begin with profusely apologizing for the hugely clichéd  article title, but nothing could be more apt for this piece, and I am a  die hard fan of V for Vendetta anyway.
So I’ll begin with the premise that the way humans think, or act, or pretty much do anything, can be divided into two basic things – Ideas and decisions. The whole course of humankind’s history has been charted by ideas and  decisions. Now do not believe it because I am saying so, but try to  analyze it. One way of looking at it is that every action or thought has  two things. Firstly a cause, that is the precursory thought or action that led to this, and an effect, that is what the current action or thought will lead to. But time, being the unidirectional arrow that it is, forces us to  conclude that there has to be that one thought or action that started  the whole chain, which itself had no cause, but only had an effect. And  this precisely is my definition of an “idea”. The Big Bang of a whole  system of events and thoughts and actions.
I’ll come back soon to “ideas”, and why I feel they are so important.  But before that let’s talk a little about history. History of  occupation. If you have had paid even a little attention in your 10th  grade social science classes, you’ll remember production sectors of  being three types, primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary production  concerns with direct procurement of materials from nature, like farming,  mining et al. Secondary production concerns processing the raw  materials, like processing of food, turning mined metals into tools and  other sundry tasks. And finally tertiary production deals with services,  like banking, finance, automation.
Once again, pardon my non-linearity, but before we continue talking  more about the three types of occupation, let’s take a step back, and  try to understand our needs as human beings. As basic animals, as basic  living organisms, what exactly do we need to survive ? In broad terms,  we can say,
a) we need food,
b) we need to protect our bodies,
c) we need to reproduce.
It is pretty easy to see from here that to satisfy the basic needs, we  really do not need any products from the secondary or tertiary  production lines. Food need not be processed, and shelters can be made  out of caves or leaves or whatever easily available. And to reproduce we  just need each other.
Now with this clarity of thought, let is try to trace our path  through history, and try to find the answer to why really did we end up  here then, where almost everyone we know is busy producing something  (like software, or money, or cars) that we really do not need to  survive. The answer lies in ideas. Ideas are something that sets us  apart from a variety of other living beings on earth. Ideas make us  queer. Ideas make us do strange things, inexplicable in nature, and  totally illogical. Like for example an app that sends a “Yo!” to all  your friends. While it is as illogical and weird as it gets, it raised 1  million USD in funding, and millions are using the app. But before  digressing into discussions of stupid apps, let me get back to my  initial talk about ideas and decisions.
Let’s talk of decisions first. Decisions are often hard to take. Some  end up right and some wrong. But then again are they hard to take ? Can  they be right and wrong, and do always have a fair chance. I believe  no. I believe decisions are not at all as complex as we tend to think  they are. I believe decisions are very simple. As simple as computer  logic. I believe decisions, if broken down into the smallest indivisible  unit, is composed of binary choices. There exists either an yes or a  no. Absence or presence. While you may argue that there exists the  “maybe”, or that sometimes we have to chose between 3 or more things,  but that isn’t true. If there are more than 2 options, then you haven’t  yet come down to the smallest indivisible unit. Say someone asks you if  you’ll take Coke, Pepsi or Milkshake. That sounds like a 3-optioned  question, but is it ? It basically consists of three 2-optioned  questions.
Pepsi ? Yes or No
Coke? Yes or No
Milkshake? Yes or No
My friends who are into programming would best understand if I use  the analogy of a binary tree. Decision making is a process best defined  by a binary tree. And if you can always break down your decision into  binary trees, you’ll find they are neither complex nor hard to take.  Also when you break down your decision into smaller binary decisions,  you notice they are governed by certain logical rules. When asked the  above question, you do realise that you can ask for only one beverage,  and thus as soon as one of the answers is Yes, the rest automatically  become No.
I left something in midst of an hypothesis. That is, ideas set us  apart. Why so? Because as you see decisions are binary and logical. Do  you also realise that things that are binary and logical, do not need  the explicit services of a human brain ? What is computer programming  really ? Breaking everything down into binary decisions and defining  certain rules. Programs are governed by if-else statements, that are  essentially binary, and switch statements that are just an aggregations  of if-else statements. Rinse. Repeat. Iterate. Recurse. At an even basic  level, everything that is automated is afterall electronic, and hence  binary. 0 or 1, high or low. But ideas? That is something computers are  not capable of. We cannot write programs that come up with ideas. People  working in the fields of AI and Machine Learning may claim otherwise,  but let’s try to analyse that as well. What is Automated Intelligence or  Machine Learning ? The ideas that they come up with, even though might  look like “new” ideas, but are they really? Ofcourse not. We programmed  them with certain rules. ML is based on the idea of rules changing  themselves as per the situations and environment. But again there are  rules that define how old rules morph into new ones. It is ultimately  all logical. The ideas coming out of such a framework aren’t true ideas,  they are decisions, that look like ideas. All thoughts and actions of  AI or ML systems are not really original, or causeless.
But why, you may ask, is it important to understand about ideas and  decisions at such a deep level ? That is because, a future like that  shown in Terminator or Matrix films isn’t far away. Because we human  beings, for our existence, need to realise our single largest gift –  that of formulating ideas. Because we need to understand that while  automation takes over the world, artificial intelligence can only take  decisions, not formulate ideas, and hence can never have an edge over  us.

Let us again go back to history to have a deeper insight into this.  And for that let me show a little animation. The bell curve (yeah I know  I am not great at plotting graphs), represents, more qualitatively than  quantitatively, the number of people involved or the economic  importance of each sector. Assuming, you, my reader, are from an urban  environment, having access to internet, and the leisure to go through a  mindless rambling of a blog article, I can safely guess that most  money-earning people you know around are from the tertiary sector.  Banking, finance, consultancy, computers, electronics, management and  other such sundry “white collar” jobs. I can also safely assume that at  least 9 out of 10 of you have never really thought about what your  Dad/Brother/Uncle/Grandfather/Sister/Aunt/Mother really does at work.  Try asking them. Try figuring out in what way do they really impact the  lives of human beings ? From someone who designs cars, to an architect  who design houses. From the accountant who checks out the employees’  salaries to the cashier who doles out cash to people. The software  developer who fixes bugs in code, to the guy who designs a new  wristwatch. They may revel in the knowledge that what they build is  being used by thousands or millions of human beings, but really, to what  extent are they affecting their lives. The car owner or the flat  dweller, does he appreciate the the architect or automobile designer’s  efforts in silent retrospect at bed at night ? Do you remember the name  of the person who hands you out cash at the bank window every month ?  Does anyone ever silently thank the app developer every time their nifty  little software on their phones does something amazing ?
What do people remember and think about and talk about then ? People talk about how Warren Buffet says “Don’t save what’s left after spending. Spend what’s left after saving.”.  People think how Henry Ford brought the assembly line to car  manufacturing and brought cars to each household. People think about Steve Jobs‘ or Bill Gates‘ or Larry Page or Sundar Pichai’s speeches and how they visualize a smarter tomorrow, a connect world.  It’s because these people come up with the ideas, while those mentioned  previously are just executing a set of binary decisions governed by  certain laid out rules. Each of their jobs can be, (and will be, if not  has already been), replaced by computers or robots.
Right now sitting here, we do not know what the ‘quartenary’ sector  of production will be. It lies in the future. But what we can be  definitely sure of is that there does lie a quaternary and a quinary and  a senary and so on, sectors in the future. We (that is we the human  race), used to farm and hunt and fulfill our basic needs tens of  thousands of years back. Then from among us, ideas started  proliferating. Ideas like farming tools. Ideas like arrows, bows,  wheels, and soon we had tools that could help us do the work of the  primary sector more efficiently. Soon we spread across the globe,  increasing in numbers and in our needs. While the farmer used to cast  his own tools out of molten metal earlier, we soon had people dedicated  to farming, backed up with another dedicatedly making tools for farming.  And this scales up pretty fast. Soon most people found themselves  making tools that help the primary sector, and thus was the emergence of  secondary sector. Every time an idea comes that that says Task A can be  done better with the help of Tool X, there starts a new occupation  called Task B of producing Tool X. And right on their heels follow an  idea of Task C that produces Tool Y that helps in Tast B.
. . . . . . . Task C → produces → Tool Y → used in → Task B → produces → Tool X → used in → Task A . . . . .
So we all are surrounded by chains of tasks and tools created of links  like the one illustrated. And as time goes by and we abstract ourselves  away from the real grassroot task, and engage ourselves in indirect  tasks (like B and C), it is easy to see, Tasks like A can be automated,  without the need of a human doing it. As we keep moving towards tasks D,  E ,F, more and more tasks from the right end of the spectrum, like A,  B, C will not need human intervention.
Today’s emerging fields like Computer Science, Data Science, Financial  Analysis, Biotechnology, will be tasks menial and repetitive, and crude  as farming or hunting, in the future when the aforementioned bell curve  moves onto quaternary and quinary fields of production.
Today we stand on the brink of the 4th wave. And in an amusing  coincidence, the world of computers are said to be moving from 3rd  generation (microprocessors) to 4th generation (AI) while  telecommunication technologies are on the brink of shifting to 4th  Generation LTE. Today we stand we stand where the peak of the bell curve  is on the juncture of the 3rd and 4th fields of production. And that  means, there are some folks right among us, who are already working on  creating the future, building that 4th generation of automation, which  though seems cloudy today, will soon take shape tomorrow. Some of them  like Sergey Brin, Andrew Ng, or Pranav Mistry are  prominent public figures, while there are scores more quietly tinkering  with something in their kitchen or garage. But what I am certain of is,  while we as humankind, do not clearly know what this 4th wave is, there  are many among us who already do, who already have a crystal clear  vision of ideas that will form this 4th wave, and are working actively  to bring it upon us.
What sets the people who are ahead of the curve, apart from the ones  who go with it, or follow it, is that they are men of ideas, and not men  of decisions. In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned how wearing the same grey shirt everyday helps him avoid  taking a simple decision of picking a wardrobe everyday. Hidden subtly  inside it, is the deep message that the builders of tomorrow think more  and decide less. They are men who focus on vision, not those who focus  on process.
I wish I could give a more fitting conclusion to this article, but I  am poor in articulation, and I am already amazed with whatever I have  written till now. This article has been lying on my laptop for more than  2 months now, and conclusion or no conclusion, it’s high time it saw  the light of the day. Wishing those 5-10 readers that my blog gets at  max, a very very Happy and Prosperous New Year ahead.