Monday, March 24, 2008

Logic can't Predict Behavior

There is a meaning in everything that happens around us. There is a logic in everything that happens around us. We may not be able to understand the logic behind these things. When a few variables are visible to us or can be perceived by us we can correlate and we can understand the relationship between them we can ascertain the behaviour. But when there are too many variables and the complexity of the correlation between them is high how can we ascertain the behvaiour of the system. This becomes virtually impossible. My conviction is that the best of the supercomputers will not be able to derive a sense of the system to predict the behaviour. But this cannot be concluded to mean that there is no logic in the behaviour. There is the logic. But it is that we are not able to perceive it. Inability to perceive does not mean absence of logic.

The comfort in dealing with a system which has a logic, though cannot be perceived, is the comfort in the belief that there is a reason. We are most perplexed when we do not know why something happens. Even more when we assume that there is no reason why something should not be happening. The intelligence is knowing the ignorance of the intelligence in the system. There is a logic in the system and things happen as per the logic of the system. We are unable to perceive it.

Take the movement of stock market. Can anyone in the world be able to predict the behaviour of the market? It is impossible even though there are tonnes of trees sacrificed in trying to do this. The number of reasons that could affect the movement of the stocks can go and on. The weather in Gulf of Mexico, a riot is Kenya (effecting the oil/commodity price), an earthquake in Indonesia, resignation of a minister in French government etc. etc. Now can one really capture all the nitty gritties of the various factors which could affect the stock markets. It is impossible. But then we have to believe that there is a logic and not try to get into the logic. The moment we get into the logic we will be wrong because we cannot comprehend all the factors or variables and will be therefore have a limited perspective.

The beauty is letting go, accepting that there is a logic in the complexity and that the only thing we could do is control our behaviour assuming that this is something we could do.

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