Thursday, December 18, 2008

Calculating the worthiness of an individual


(Please read this most only if you like math enough to understand it and hate it enough to bear my interpretation of how it can be used)


Let us consider a situation where a person's value (I know it’s a vague term) varies from 0 to 1, where 0 stands for a guy with no morality and is despicable while 1 stands for the ideal morally conscientious guy.
Every decision a person takes would involve levels of morality and immorality, hence varying from 0 to one. Let us say we frame the system in such a way that 1 would stand for a morally correct decision where both the person as well as the persons he is affecting from the decision gain from it and all the parties are morally satisfied with the decision as well.
Once I have defined 1 in this manner, then obviously a possibility arises of a decision carrying a value of more than 1, when the person taking the decision gains nothing from it but the remaining parties do. If one thinks with this logic, if the person makes a loss, then the value would be the greatest.
The trick of playing this game called LIFE would be :
1)To have the ability to make these decisions
2)To have the ability to make decisions to affect many people hence increasing the value of the decision.
3)To make decisions so as to increase the overall value of the net effect of all the decisions at the end of the game.

The net effect could be calculated as

N.E = D1*D2*D3*D4*.........Dn
where n is the total number of decisions taken in one's lifetime.

There are certain traits that one can derive from this above formula.

1) If the value of the decisions is consistently less than one, N.E tends to 0 (for large n)



2) The only possibility of boosting N.E is if the value of D is greater than 1, i.e: when the person taking the decision gains nothing from it but the remaining parties do.



There are certain factors which affect the value of D
1) Due to empirical evidence, it is assumed that most people want to have a large value of n.
Also, most people are also influenced to a great extent by the effect of D rather than the value of D, i.e: the impact of D on the parties concerned rather than whether the value of D is lesser or greater than 1.
Also, there is a correlation with the impact of D with the consistency of D lying between 0 and 1
It has been noticed that when D lies between these limits, the impact of D tends to be stronger. However, this is true only during a certain stage of N, i.e: from the beginning to a certain value.

Considering all these factors, man seems to have evolved with time to use a time tested strategy of playing the game called LIFE.
He starts not bothering much about the value of D, but with the impact of D. Of course, there are aberrations here and there, however this is the overall trend.
At a certain n (the point is primarily dependent of how powerful the impact of his D's are, but n is generally greater than n/2); man takes a shift and starts gradually changing the value of D's to greater values. However, these too, are calculated to ensure that the decline in the impact of the D’s is not too great.
When the n is close to its upper limit( man is aware of this because there would now be considerable periods of time where he would not be able to take any D's as he would by busy with other activities, like staying alive), the value of increases greater than one significantly.

The general trend that is observed is that despite this, N.E is less than 1
However, as man relies on evolution and improvisation, most new generations just try to find the optimum points where they choose to increase the value of D. Some succeed most don’t.

8 comments:

Gayathri said...

very well put up..although i enjoyed reading it,i personally opine that u dont pester a common reader with too much of math..(not that i overlooked ur disclaimer!)

Aditya Nair said...

Point noted.
:D
thanks for the the comment.

R said...

A lot of other variables are involved directly. Firstly man doesn't make all his decisions to please himself or others. There is often a pre-defined set of morals that he adheres to, whether society agrees or not. So a morally conscientious man might be making decisions that displease others the most, depending on his choice of morals. and he might be doing this with more regularity than a man with no morals. and there's one point i heartily disagree with. that of your view on moral and immoral people. just to illustrate my point, a moral may forever be concerned with pleasing people in his immediate family and social circle. but an immoral who works with logic, is often able to look at the bigger picture and in turn come up, with a best possible solution that isn't viewed as one, immediately, and doesn't make his closest people happy, but is the most effective one anyway. Morality clouds judgement if not tempered with reasonable intelligence and enough space to adapt, adjust and modify.

Balajee said...

Ask Kakaseri to read this. He'd probably welcome reading another mathematical theory he'll ever understand besides Gas Dynamics.

Hari Vishnu said...

dude.. philosophy and mathematics.. u've shown what engineering teaches us.. to present any form of bullshit in a technically sound way to convince the reader hes actually reading something :)..

u actually took the pains to draw those graphs? lol.. S grade to this one man ..

One Weird Guy said...

GEEK ALERT....GEEK ALERT!!! lol....just kiddin

just goin to read but cudn't resist this comment....

Aditya Nair said...

@Balajee: I think he will, considering I have gone out of my way to complicate things :)
@Hari: FInally! Was waiting for someone to comment what you did :-)
@Joel: Bull. :)

Unknown said...

Ha haa..made perfect sense and yet none. With this talent you should become a motivational speaker or write a book! :D