Mastering Intuitive Thinking

I asked a question in my last class and insisted on having the right answer, which was a number. After a couple of wrong answers, one student gave the right number. When I asked her to explain, she appeared clueless. A few in the class laughed. I told them not to do so.

Why? I knew she did not think logically when she gave the answer – her voice showed under-confidence. Her correct answer was a result of intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is not necessarily logical. The reasoning happens in a subconscious state. I was merely trying to see if she could do a post-hoc analysis.

Most of my research contributions are results of intuitive thinking. Logical thinking is essential but not generally enough for innovation. If a problem can be solved through logical thinking, it will be done by most people around you. AI can also do it. If you are trying to do great research, you must master intuitive thinking.

Not Knowing is not as Easy as You Think

Not knowing too much is sometimes a mark of wisdom, particularly for researchers.

Let me start with a story. There was a king who liked to show off every new cloth he bought. Hearing about his obsession for new clothes, two men arrived in his palace claiming to have the skills to weave clothes that can be visible to people who are worthy of the jobs they are doing. The two men asked for a hefty sum of money to buy gold and other materials that will be used for making the special dress. The king readily obliged.

After a few days, the king grew restless and sent his minister to check the work progress. The minister saw the two men working hard but could not see anything in their hands. The needle was just moving in the air. The two men asked the minister about his impression of the dress. Fearing that he will be exposed for being unworthy for the job he was doing, he started praising the two men and quickly returned to the king with the good news.

Finally, the day came for the king to wear the dress. Arrangements have already been made for common citizens to have a glimpse at the magical dress.

The two men brought the dress with smiling faces. The king saw nothing. Fearing he will be caught for being unworthy of being the king, he started praising the two men, and they put the dress on him. Everyone in the court started talking about the wonderful dress and complimented the king. The King then went out of the palace for the planned procession. The citizens showered praises on him.

Spoiling the whole celebration, a kid in the crowd shouted “The king has no clothes!” The confused citizens started whispering to each other, which soon turned into a laughing competition. Realizing that he had been fooled, the king ran back to his palace. The two con-men were nowhere to be found.

Now coming back to research, remember you will quite often have the feeling of being unworthy for not knowing something. You will pretend to know what others around you pretend to know. You are likely to spend months mastering a tool or method, not because you see its usefulness, but because others pretend to have benefited from it.

You are afraid to say what you don’t see because being a child is not easy at all. It means facing judgment. You have a reputation of knowing too much. It is not easy to have the courage to bet on it.

PS: "The king has no clothes" story was likely told first by the 11th century Jain scholar Jineśvara.

Enter the Entitlement Olympics

 
The real problem with India is not the lack of resources – wealth has little to do with happiness. The real problem is the overwhelming sense of entitlement that permeates every social discourse related to national resources, and it is not merely by chance, but rather by design.

Feudalism was never allowed to disappear after its death; its skeleton was used as a framework for governance. Why a vast percentage of Indians aspire to be part of the government is a question better not answered to avoid sounding trivial.

The point of discussion should instead be the justifications for the entitlements. It is generally implicit that better pay leads to better productivity. A horribly wrong argument, actually. Consider the salary of a government primary school teacher in my native village as an example. Teachers in private schools in the same locality earn ten times less. Outcome? Even daily wage laborers these days are sending their kids to private schools, even though it means economic hardship for them.

Since it is apparent that work and entitlement have little correlation, the motivation to form groups to demand more is quite high. Our elections are actually entitlement Olympics. Even failing in elections does not leave out a group – road blocking, rioting, going on a strike, and media outraging options are always available.

Explaining the mental health crisis among students

What is the primary reason behind the mental health crisis among students? Who should be held responsible? Most people on social media blame schools and colleges for it. It is far easier to come across a social media post attempting to evoke an emotional response than a post presenting a nuanced view point. It is far easier to gather likes by writing a “Toxic work-culture in IITs” story than by presenting data from well researched articles and performing a factual analysis.

In my view schools and institutions these days give far more emphasis on mental health than they did 20 years back. Beating is banned in schools. Every IIT now has a psychological counselling cell to help students in distress. Yet, the outcome is exactly opposite. There are far more students who need help now than 20 years ago.

Months back many became very upset when I expressed my opinion on social media that institute-level initiatives are never going to fully solve the problem. Why? The primary source behind psychological distress is relationship issues particularly within family.

One is far more vulnerable to mental distress if family support is inadequate. In the rat race of reaching the top, parents often ignore the psychological well-being of their children. About 30% of students I surveyed told me they are in IITB just because of their parents.

Many parents with all good intentions over manage their children’s life. Of course those children are not very well prepared for real-world challenges because they were hardly allowed to be independent. In rare cases, parents inflict great violence if things do not go according to their plan as in the attached image.

Parents should understand that it is not even in their interest to force children to do something just to brag “My son is working in Amerika” in future. Often such a mask of arrogance is put on to hide “no one cares for me these days.”

What should parents focus on is raising emotionally healthy kids who can take care of not just themselves but also others around them. They will be much better off in the future as they themselves will require emotional support when they get old.

The Indian social divide no one talks about

"Beerappa Siddappa Doni, a youth from the Kuruba community from Amage village in neighbouring Maharashtra, got the 551st rank, as per the UPSC results that were announced on April 22, 2025.": https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/belagavi-village-erupts-in-joy-as-youth-from-shepherding-community-clears-upsc/article69482382.ece


While debates on social divides typically focus on caste and gender, the rural-urban divide is the elephant in the room that everyone ignores conveniently.

How many students in IIT BTech programs come from rural India?

"There are no recent statistics that provide a direct figure for the percentage of students in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) who spent a substantial portion of their childhood in rural areas. Available data, such as a 2014 Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) report, indicates that only 9.77% of qualified candidates came from villages, with 76% from urban areas. However, this refers to the place of origin at the time of the exam, not necessarily where candidates spent their childhood." -- Grok.

Note that about 65% people live in Rural India.

As someone who grew up in a village, economic hardship was not the only challenge. The real hardship was finding a role model. Most of my friends dreamed of government clerical jobs in government offices. In the tiny town where I went for my intermediate education, most of my friends dreamed of bank PO jobs. A close friend and I seriously planned to join the Indian Navy as sailors. The plan did not work out, fortunately. We got sufficient information to plan for engineering education only after the 12th exam. My friend now designs microprocessors.

Judiciary: An Almost Perfect Role for AI

What is a law? We call it a law when the answer remains unchanged no matter when, where, and who asks the question.

Let’s say consider a bag having 50 kg of rice. If kg of rice is taken out, according to the law of mass balance, 30 kg will be left out in the bucket. It does not matter if the question is asked in Mumbai, in Paris, or in New York. It does not matter if the question is asked in the morning, in the afternoon, or in the middle of night. It does not matter if the question is asked by Ramesh, Aadi, or John.

The law governing humans is expected to work in the exact same way. That is why the lady in the picture personifying justice is blind. The verdict of a judge is expected to remain the same no matter who commits the crime, where, and when.

Does that really happen? Absolutely not! Judges do not keep their eyes blind folded. Not that they are expected to do so, but there is no rational reason why we should assume that a judge always rises above personal and ideological biases to deliver justice. If judges were super humans, we would not have one court having the responsibility of reviewing decisions by another court.

Once we accept that judges can have human biases, the question is how to correct a judge. Is there a mechanism? Maybe there is one, but it is not effective at all. Member of Parliament Nishikant Dubey is correct when he says judges are making decisions on the basis of religion. Vice President Jagdish Dhankar is correct when he says judges are failing to recognize the line between implementing laws and making laws.

Is there an answer to address the judicial crisis? Yes. If we can write a computer program to implement the law of mass balance, we can definitely write a computer program to implement the law concerning property rights.

Of course, we need to keep in mind that the law of mass balance and the law of property rights are not exactly the same in nature. The former considers numbers as inputs, while the latter has to interpret textual information. Nevertheless, with the advent of large language models, it would be quite an easy job to develop an AI tool which would do a better job at interpreting texts and speeches to implement the property law than a human judge just like a one line computer program can do a better job at implementing the mass balance law.

It is needless to mention an AI judge would be truly a judge with eyes blindfolded, 100% free of personal and ideological biases.

Will an AI judge always make perfect decisions? First of all, an AI tool is only as good as the data it is trained on. Given the subjectivity of texts and speeches, there is always a possibility of misinterpretation. In cases of doubt, a decision made by an AI judge can be reviewed by a human judge.

Whose responsibilty is a child's education?

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend of my father about the recent problems faced by our village school, where I had my education. Among the many issues he shared, one caught my full attention. An ST student has stopped coming to school, and the headmaster has been visiting the student's house for several days to convince the parents to send the student back.

It is possible that the parents are making the student work or that they have decided to send their child to another school. The headmaster is in the dark, as the parents are either not at home or avoiding him whenever he visits their home.

Why is the headmaster so worried? Because his higher-ups are threatening to take strict action against him if students drop out, particularly those from marginalized communities. Of course, the higher-ups of his higher-ups are pressuring them to stop dropouts, and so on.

That brings us to the question: should the parents or the government be responsible for a child's welfare? In my view, holding a headmaster accountable for a dropout case is absurd. If we accept that the government has the authority to decide the future of every child, bureaucrats will gain the power to harass either the parents or the headmaster.

The vast majority of parents care about a child's future much more than any government. Of course, there are rare instances where parents neglect their children. However, concerned local citizens should come forward to take responsibility and help the parents. I am not saying the government should have no role in education, but it should be the last one to take responsibility in such matters.