Includes posts on physics, philosophy, sciences, quantitative finance, economics, environment etc.
An unreal review of the book The God Delusion. […]The book gave me a strange feeling of dissatisfaction. You see, you may believe in God. Or you may not believe that there is a God. Or you may actively believe that there is no God. I fall in this the last category. But I still know that it is only my belief, and that thought fills me with a humility that I feel Dawkins lacks.[…]
The story of Helen Keller is the story of the dark reality that traps you in the absence of your senses. It is also an illustration of the role of language in breaking out of that darkness.
In this post, I get into the risky business of interpreting scripture. Why is it that we do not appreciate others interpreting our beliefs? Well, that is fodder for another post.
Mathematical finance is built on a couple of assumptions. The most fundamental of them is the one on market efficiency. Is it wise to trust this assumption? Are there limits to it? Are we operating at the right scale to ignore the shakiness of the market efficiency assumption?
People tend to follow the money gradient. When a particular field is lucrative, more people tend to end up there. During the IT boom time of the previous decade, most of the talent flowed in there. Finance also has been a not-so-strange attractor for academics. Here is a look at the culture shock associated. Another excerpt from my upcoming column in the Wilmott Magazine.
This short piece is part of a column coming up in the Wilmott Magazine. Although summarily treated as a sort of curiosity, this idea may indeed blossom into a full-length book. For that reason, you will find more posts on related topics soon. For instance, why is it that hard work does not always equate to enhanced bank balance? Why do celebrities and entrepreneurs make so much more than normal employees? Want to know? Stay tuned…
The last post in this series, this one exposes the extreme cases both in allowing and in denying bonuses, and their implications. Both the options imply our acceptance of certain economic idea. And, as with most things in life, it is not quite clear which is right, once you think long enough about it. A happy and stable middle ground is what we should seek and find.
If you generate profit, don’t you deserve a share of it? Profit generation and increasing shareholder value — these are the hallmarks of top talent in our capitalistic world view now. What is good for the shareholder is certainly good for the talent as well.
Another common argument is that bonuses are necessary to retail the so-called “talent.” Are they?
If hard work does not entitle us to fat bonuses, perhaps our “talent” does? This is the third in the series of posts based on an upcoming column of mine in the Wilmott Magazine.
The second in the series of posts based on an upcoming column of mine in the Wilmott Magazine, here is the common argument about hard work and the perceived entitlements.
This is another series of posts based on an upcoming column of mine in the Wilmott Magazine. In this series, I will examine at the arguments for and against huge bonuses and golden parachutes. The first in the series, this post merely sets the stage for the next half a dozen. The starting point of this series is the public resignation letter by Jake DeSantis, ex-EVP at AIG, and his reasons for believing in the fairness of the huge bonus packages. And my arguments against them, with the personal suspicion that my views are perhaps more a case of sour grapes than of moral high horse.