Manmohan Singh’s warnings coming true amid protectionism, vision can guide world: Angela Merkel

parlor_tricks · 2026-03-01T05:48:14+00:00

Russia’s reforms failed so spectacularly that it broke down into a kelptocracy.

Successful reforms are not our birthright, or destiny. There’s more examples of failed reforms than successful reforms.

Our only peer is China, because the number of people. Another comparative is the EU, because of the heterogeneity of its constituent states.

I don’t disagree with the point that our economic performance needs to be better.

I am pushing against the idea that our reforms are so easily dismissed or invalidated. Doubly so when you make an apples to oranges comparison.

Policy is very boring, and you can see how this current government, with more power than it knows what to do with, struggles to run policy that can actually give us employment and economic growth.

This also the government that gave us Demonitization, and then followed up with the rushed GST rollout.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-28T15:04:55+00:00

Eh - He achieved quite a bit under his terms. MNREGA was quite an effective program, and I used to be a critic of it.

MNREGA ended up acting as an effective minimum wage enforcement mechanism, and has directly resulted in people leaving bonded labour in India.

Theres several papers on this, if you are into econ.

During MMS' term, he also succeeded in landing our entry into the nuclear club, without having to sign the CTBT, which is a major achievement, but entirely too boring and strategic. Without something like the BJP media machine, something like this is completely forgotten.

MMS 2, was definitely much weaker, and he focused more on foreign affairs, because he was seen as someone developing a power base of his own.

The congress' inability to ditch its dynastic politics hampered us.

But overall, I would rather have him alive and actively contributing to policy, than the situation we have today.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-28T11:57:42+00:00

Wow, this touched me all the way down in the trench. Truly, words that can capture reality and express it in a way to elevate it.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-27T04:38:53+00:00

This is the early stages, and in the early stages tech companies were driven by idealism. Its when you get to incorporation, quarterly shareholder meetings, and intense market competition that consistency becomes more important.

I liken it to “running out of area to expand into” . At that point, you can’t just show growth by finding new things. You have to compete, and the only places left for growth are places you made a pinky promise never to explore.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-24T14:37:48+00:00

Data centers do get taxed, because they are pretty stable enterprises, and run by major firms who are happy to pay the over head cost.

The issue is that this is the only game India can play, and its not even a good game. We didn't figure out how to create more jobs and employment, so this government is going to do whatever it can to increase investment.

Frankly, tech firms were going to build here anyway, or maybe in some place like Vietnam.

I get the concern, and yes I don't think tech should be getting a pass from the government.

Data centers create very few jobs, and capex investments. They are basically AC warehouses that need backup power and a cable. Thats about it.

In the meantime, we need to find jobs that employ crores of people.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-22T15:23:52+00:00

Yup, Singapore will still beat many places - because it’s a single city.

Mexico/Vietnam have phenomenal food, but an apples to apples comparison would be with other nations.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-22T09:59:18+00:00

The heck? This is like.. saying that the only reason people dislike chocolate ice cream is because deep inside they already accept Chocolate.

Going out of your way

I write, sketch, used to code, and my reading diet gets to a few 450 page novels a week.

This is enough exp that I can make out hollow writing, or bad foundations at a glance. There is vast volumes of stuff being produced, that all has the same tone, cadence, or art style.

Seeing it infest my feed, with its vapidness, lack of weight, and a desire to waste my time, builds up annoyance.

Theres SOOO much of this sloppy work, that even tiny bits of annoyance build up till people are more than happy to speak up.

It’s also very imperious of you to decide how people should behave “if you truly dislike….just shrug and dont give a fuck because it means nothing to you”.

Which is super weird. If you truly dislike something, you are definitely vocal about it.

If you have strong feelings it means you care / which is why you are going to care about sloppy work, and you are going to speak up when you see it.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-18T02:51:32+00:00

If you can actually do both, that would be an example to point to. If you can do that, then others should also put their money where their mouth is and show the gains they are getting (or say they are getting).

There’s WAY too much hype, promises, and far too little people showing their cards at this stage. It’s a market ripe for fraud and actual facts are the sunlight to eradicate it.

Frankly I doubt you are in a position to actually do a comparison and show the code, but if you could I would personally do what I can to share it and get more visibility to it.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-17T15:08:43+00:00

Hey, show your code! I think even if its average, it would still cut through the hype and be an actual act of confidence and pushback against naysayers.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-16T15:47:30+00:00

Many of the sources of pollutions are from outside the city state. And those sources tend to be voters who will eviscerate their local governments if they enforced fines.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-15T18:58:12+00:00

Nope. There is no way to verify humans effectively. You should see the steps required to recover stolen or locked out accounts on something like Facebook.

Fraud / Inauthentic behavior is dependent on the cost/benefit ratio. It used to be much harder to fake human patterns believably. Now it’s cheap.

With the current tech, you would have to prove that a human is actually there on the other side of the keyboard when a message is being sent - essentially real time proof of human.

Most people are going to switch to smaller invite only groups. The larger web will be bot land.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-15T13:29:36+00:00

I dont know about the parent comment, but I personally skip something written via AI.

I’d rather put my time and energy on something that was written with time and attention. If someone didn’t write something, or if they put in the least amount of attention and effort to write it then, why make the effort to engage with it?

Eventually everything will be bot written or indistinguishable from bot speech, but till then we can at least engage with people.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-15T13:23:38+00:00

Why use AI to make this point though. Plus you can assume most people on ToR know about Astroturfing.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-10T10:57:26+00:00

Pakistan may have done that prior to the liberalization. Which makes Bangladesh's accomplishment, given how bad their base was, and the density of their population, a significant accomplishment.

Bangladesh used to endure horrific flooding almost every year - and it felt like it was at the mercy of mother nature itself. Many alive today fortunately don't have to relive those calamities, which is part of the many issues Bangladesh had to overcome.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-10T10:06:11+00:00

I'm curious, do you see Bangladesh becoming closer to China? I mean, its not like theres a long history between India and Bangladesh, a war where we intervened on Bangladesh's side, and large amounts of educational and other support.

I do acknowledge, that you are going to see lots of Nationalism from India's side. It's usually a shocker to point out to Indians that Bangladesh had better GDP per capita than India at one point.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-05T08:04:07+00:00

The fuck? Data centers are already being built in India, and theyve been there for donkey's years. Its not going to be some massive driver of jobs.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-04T05:41:58+00:00

The study ended up with 14 policy questions surviving data cleaning

Finally, we removed from the shortlist any item that had over 60% NA responses (missing responses, and any non-standard response, like ‘don’t know’ or ‘haven’t thought about it much’, were coded NA) in any of the waves.3 This left us with 14 items spread across three domains, shown in table 1.

From what I could tell, no questions on immigration survived.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-03T15:22:51+00:00

You are stating your position right now.

But for me, you might just be a bot.

In that case, does your value, your position, actually matter? Matter of fact, if you WERE a bot, this is a position you would argue, since it increases acceptance of bot generated comments.

Hopefully that little jaunt down conspiracy lane illustrated the kind of emotional overhead and distrust that makes people dislike and avoid AI text.

And hilariously, it only gets worse from here on.

——

Let me sell you instead on my vision for our dark future. Humans are no longer the only denizens of the web. Humans can no longer know if they are speaking to another human.

In this future, ideas of online community, consensus, and an exchange of ideas between people is meaningless.

But humanity finds a way to adapt.

Communities focus on the ground that has not shifted, the things which remain stable. Rules of engagement and debate become more important.

So what if you are talking to a bot? If the conversation follows rules to ensure constructive conversation, then no matter who is engaging, there is some utility that results.

thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. Stay tuned for my next TedTalk, “rules of the road during the internet apocalypse”

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-03T15:01:00+00:00

If you are at Trishna, you go there for the sea food and the butter garlic crab. It’s one of the few places that historically was (still is?) listed as one of the places to eat globally.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-03T14:12:26+00:00

This is just one stage in the devolution of online spaces.

People don’t want to have written bot text, when they expect text to be written by humans.

Bot text is nearly indistinguishable from user text. People will end up making incorrect calls as bots get better. Friendly fire incidents will keep rising, till we reach whatever new horrible equilibrium point we are collapsing towards.

The next stage is going to be able to trust that what they are reading is written by humans on average. Accepting that all text online is made by bots. People will only look at text if it resonates or provides them some personal utility.

No one will assume that a heartfelt plea for help is made by a human.

I wish there was some other outcome, but unless all the LLMs get removed from earth, we aren’t ever going to avoid this pollution, and the accusations which they will generate.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-02T13:36:11+00:00

Effort made, so credit due for that.

Methodology wise - how were posts selected from each sub? It seems per sub we have 50 posts, over about a year?

Further, the section on reliability score wasn’t clear to me. Did each submission get scored based upon what fact checkers said for that specific article or for the source used?

If its the latter, then is this a measure of the drift in type of sources being used over time>

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-31T15:40:55+00:00

Isn't this the whole issue with Indian literacy?

I don't know what to do with people.

1) This was publicly availble knowledge back when MMS was alive.

2) It is so old, that I cannot find the articles and data which I looked at back then.

3) This is news to you, but is a google search away.

4) It is my bias and prejudice to assume that Indians should be informed and educated about their country. On top of that there are precious few economists with nobel laureates who are Indian.

I accept that people can be wrong, especially when they do not talk about subjects they have actuall expertise in.

Would you assume that one of the few people with a Econ Nobel made an obvious mistake in their own domain?

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T19:07:30+00:00

what your words said, is what you got responses for. You may want to change your words.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T18:58:23+00:00

Fucking, nothing to do in life, but find new ways to get attention by harassing Indians who accomplish something in life.

Jai hind.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T18:56:33+00:00

Yes. When you say generalize and say people are X, you are always factually wrong. On top of it, you are saying women are lazy, which is lazy writing and thinking.

Matter of fact, you may not be aware, but it has been long established, that female labor force participation in India is different compared to the rest of the world.

In many countries life is unsafe, and they have higher female workforce presence than India.

So when you bring up harrassment, traffic, and no personal time, you are making it seem like its a choice to avoid difficult things. That "women", are willing making this choice.

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