The Sound, Structure, and Science of The Inductive Economy
Grounding Principles and Assumptions (in a rant)
Man is a composite, an average, for the lack of a better word, of his influences, inspirations, and ideas.
I do not make bold claims. I am just as influenced, inspired, often possessed by ideas, as anyone else. The only difference is that I curate my muses exceptionally well and accept my limitations and fallibility.
In this essay, I want to outline my intentions behind The Inductive Economy- what it means, what we intend to achieve, how do we go about, and why is it needed?
The idea of The Inductive Economy possessed me when I was finding it extremely difficult to reach out to and connect with Indian academics and scientists, both in and out of India. Often, I was annoyed at myself, at everyone, society, and the lot. However, as part of growing up, reframing my challenges proved a game-changer. Apart from altruism, you need to frame your case in a win-win-win framework so that you can persuade the party you’re persuading to visualize the scope and scale of their work and it’s potential for broader impact on Indian society.
There is a fundamental reason why Oppenheimer captured the imagination of the entire world, while Rocket Boys’ impact has hardly penetrated popular culture in India. We have misaligned incentives, misidentified our heroes, and misdiagnosed our problems… consistently and with pride (for some godforsaken reason.)
Somewhere, somehow; this needs to stop.
The West’s ability to celebrate scientific progress and even vigorously debate the basic tenets of what the overton window of progress is precisely what separates them from the rest. The challenges of Nuclear Power didn’t deter them from not developing it. The lesson: you build the science first, debate the ethics later. There are always ‘genie back in the bottle’ arguments, but when you spend 0.7% on GERD over a 30-year window, we (India) simply do not have the opportunity and nor the bandwidth to entertain decelerationist arguments. It is too expensive in terms of time, capital, and attention.
Build first, talk later.
In Neil Gaiman’s ‘The View from the Cheap Seats’, he recalls a conversation he had at a Chinese Sci-Fi Convention.
He asked his Chinese Host: where did China acquire the ambition to focus so much of its attention on science and technology, which is a clear marker of their improved living standards and infrastructure. His Chinese Host replied that they went to the root source of inspiration: books, television, and the arts.
And you can see the impact of this clearly in the numbers.
Art, Media, and Communication are the first points of Attack.
The socialist view of this axiom is to enable suppression; the techno-capitalists’ interpretation of this is enable a flourishing.
The impact of Star Wars, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Dexter’s Laboratory, Doctor Who, and Fringe can only attributed to time-wasting, stonerdom, and a supreme delusion of infinite time (something old people believe they have great wisdom and young people have little to no perspective on.) This mis-measurement holds water only when assessed through the first 20 years of an individual’s life (and when assessed by a third person)- however, these are the ephemeral memories that motivate young people to pursue a purposeful, creative careers developing technology and building businesses.
Prosperity is the ultimate result of compounding.
We need better storytelling, better communication, better narrative-setting, so that we can inspire people- young and old- to go out and build the economy. Exponential transformations of the economy don’t just fall out of the sky. They take years and years of time, patience, capital, and momentum to come together.
Individuals are responsible for impact.
Splitting the structure of society, we find three tracks- The State, The Market, The Community, as per Raghuram Rajan’s work- however, when we delve into the structure of India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, we encounter a new type of institutional entity called, a Sutradhar - a non-government, non-market entity driven by individuals, pulling the state and markets together to deliver goods and services to benefit the community.
Tools such as AADHAR, UPI, DigiLocker (part of the India Stack) was built by no greed, no glory volunteers. The unique proposition India managed to fulfil was this: building global influence (after servicing the needs of her own massive population) in a capital-as-a-strategy and infrastructure-as-a-strategy approaches dominated by the United States and China, using low-cost, population-scale software. If these tools were built by the market or the state, they would’ve neither been low cost, nor population scale.
The bottom-line I am writing towards is this: neither the State nor the Market is coming to save you. You have to save yourself. However, when the State and the Market are in the decline, you have step in as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t? Maybe. Maybe not.
Similar to how India Stack paved a way to solve the problem of geopolitical influence, we need a new third way to solve the problem of a Sci-Fact economy. Sci-Fact, not Sci-Fi.
This begins not with capital, nor with resources.
It begins with respect and recognition.
Somewhere we need to celebrate our scientists, academics, and public intellectuals. We shouldn’t care about their politics, because, let’s face it, India is an extremely political country. People can believe whatever they want to believe, but if their work is indisputable at the levels of bits, atoms, and business models, we need to learn to compartmentalize our feelings and cheer them on.
The West has multiple such institutions to celebrate their researchers, academics, and teachers. I am unsure of what we have. Shaastra and other such magazines and new media publications are stepping up and we need to step up and cheer for them.
But, let’s take stock of what the West has actually managed to achieve. Look at the work of The Simons Foundation.
Jim Simons is the money behind Quanta Magazine, The Flatiron Institute, Math for America, among many more.
He represents a new way to contribute capital. Something we need to look at and learn. Let’s not view profits and capitalism in a way we’ve been conditioned to treat them. Part of life is to grow up and expand our horizons. In this particular domain, success is best determined by the responsible and impact-oriented allocation of capital.
The Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan-era has ended, we need to start behaving like it.
So, why call it ‘The Inductive Economy’ ?
Simple.
The past is a pretty shitty indicator of society-scale change.
We live in a world dominated by models, mindsets, and messages that massage our intuitions to believe an accurate interpretation of past events, modelled impeccably, can help guide us to a better future.
This is reductive fallacy.
The new inventions, discoveries, and breakthroughs of the future do not come from the past or models of moments from the past. Past attempts may influence future directions, but past problems require future-back thinking, not past-forward thinking.
The Inductive Economy is a our attempt to engage with ideas that are non-consensus, but right. And they may be in domains of art, science, and entrepreneurship. And increasingly, we will come to live in a world where the products, services, and breakthroughs at the intersection of the three will be the greatest drivers of prosperity and progress.
This is the age of virtue, virtuosity, and velocity.
We need to let go of our bias toward reverting to reductive models of reasoning to ones where we leverage an inductive mode of reasoning. After all, entrepreneurship, in my opinion, is a shining example of applied inductive reasoning.
Now that my semi-rant has concluded, what can we expect at The Inductive Economy?
Expect conversations with ordinary people who have achieved extraordinary things.
Let’s learn from these high achievers.
Let’s learn what drives them, what are their visions of the future, how can we get there?!?
Expect podcasts, video essays, book reviews, interviews, blog posts, micro-lessons, and a supply of counterintuitive- non-consensus and right- ideas to help frame your thinking and your perception of the future better.
Thanks for reading this and welcome. :)