Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Post Secrets

There is this blog called PostSecrets where people post anonymous postcards with their deep secrets. It’s good place to find weirdest thing people do, have, or think. It’s also a good place to reconfirm yourself that your habit of biting third page of a book isn’t unique and there is at least one person who does that. Humans are surprisingly alike in terms of things they think that only they do and nobody else does. For some, finding company is relief; for others, novelty lost.

However, what this blog is turning out to be, specially in last few months, is a showcase of evils in people. Earlier secrets seemed genuine, now they seemed to be specially made to able to send to PostSecrets, or are secret not in real life but are about PostSecrets itself. Looking at these secrets is like looking dark deep evil inherent in human heart. Normal looking people doing intentionally mean things to others and finding pleasure in them. One can say that knowing depths of evils of normal people is good thing in the sense that one can prepare better. I feel it is destroying whatever small remnants of my faith in goodness of people. It feels bad to know that such people exist and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I can, of course, stop reading that blog but I cannot really bring myself to do so. Maybe because knowing others’ secrets is human curiosity, electronic form of snooping, perhaps. Now they have even brought out many books. You can never be too amazed by what people can make money on internet from. First it was milliondollarhomepage, then stuffwhitepeoplelike and now postsecrets. These guys are not even producing their own content! Gone are days of working hard to rise up in the society. These days people can be world champion in solitaire and win million dollars. May be I should take two year sabbatical and think of an idea which will make more money than years of toil and education.

Breaking the Bias – Lessons from Bayesian Statistical Perspective

Equitable and fair institutions are the foundation of modern democracies. Bias, as referring to “inclination or prejudice against one perso...