Influencer Chronicles: Your Social Media Following || Acharya Prashant(2022)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00 If there is a problem in physics, mathematics or engineering in front of you and somebody

00:10 offers you a particular solution, do you just go to the last step and accept the conclusion?

00:20 Is that scientific or rational?

00:21 Do we do that?

00:22 No, we don't do that.

00:23 What do we do?

00:25 If a conclusion has been offered to us, the conclusion is the last thing we focus on.

00:35 What do we focus on?

00:36 We focus on the process.

00:41 We focus on the assumptions that the problem solver is making.

00:46 Have you started for example with a hypothesis?

00:50 Have you made the hypothesis explicit?

00:54 Or are you just hiding your assumptions?

00:57 Then in the problem solving mechanism, there are let us say 21 steps involved, assuming

01:04 a simple kind of problem.

01:09 Is each step of the problem logically related to the previous and next one?

01:21 Or is it so that step number 12 is disconnected to step 11 and something totally unrelated

01:29 comes up at step number 13 and we accept it?

01:35 How does one step follow from the preceding one?

01:42 When we are solving a problem in academics or wherever, this is the way we proceed.

01:51 And if we don't proceed this way, we know what happens.

01:56 The problem does not really get solved.

01:57 The solution won't work.

01:59 If you have written for example a computer program, it won't compile, it won't run.

02:06 If you have tried to solve a problem in mathematics, the solution would be false or unattainable.

02:12 Worse still, there is often an evaluator who will mark you zero on your solution.

02:18 Why?

02:19 Because he will be able to see through your thinking by looking at the various steps you

02:24 are following.

02:26 But when it comes to an influencer, often the medium of consumption is the video.

02:33 Is that true?

02:34 That's how you…

02:35 The pace at which the solution is delivered is quite fast.

02:42 Often it is deliberately kept fast and we do not have time to pause and think over what

02:52 has been said.

02:54 Equally, the video medium offers you an opportunity to simply press the pause button, does it

03:00 not?

03:02 Why do you allow the influencer to run away with whatever he wants to serve you?

03:10 Make him halt, ask him, "So, this is what you just said?"

03:15 And it was a short sentence of let's say just 8 words.

03:20 "I want to question you here."

03:21 He will want to simply hop over, he will want to quickly jump to the next thing.

03:31 You shouldn't allow him to go to the next sentence if the previous one itself has not

03:36 been justified or established.

03:41 Can I go to the next step of solving a problem in differential calculus when the previous

03:47 one itself is faulty?

03:51 And forget about moving from one step to another.

03:53 Can I even start solving the problem?

03:56 If my assumptions are all wrong, not only they might be totally wrong, more commonly

04:03 they are not even explicitly stated.

04:10 In statistics, for example, when you solve a problem, you often have to start with hypothesis.

04:18 And what do you do?

04:19 You openly state your hypothesis.

04:21 Remember what statistics, when in class 6 we were dealing with basic ideas of congruency

04:28 etc. and there were problems.

04:32 How did we start?

04:35 Let there be a triangle ABC and then there is a similar triangle XYZ and this was stated

04:43 right at the beginning of the solution.

04:49 Is that not true?

04:51 You are making your assumption obvious.

04:54 Now the person who is coming to you, first of all, is he assuming something, assumptions

05:00 are dangerous.

05:01 Secondly, even if he is assuming something, is he accepting that he is operating on assumptions?

05:12 That does not often happen and we lack both attention and time.

05:19 So for example, a YouTube video comes to you and you start watching it and within 5 to

05:25 7 minutes something just runs over you.

05:33 We have not been trained in critical thinking when it comes to matters of life.

05:39 We know how to think critically, but all that skill, all that training, we have somehow

05:49 reserved only for problems dealing with science and technology etc. not for problems that

05:57 deal with life itself.

06:02 I find it very interesting and also saddening obviously, there are a lot of people who do

06:16 very well in science and technology etc. in their personal spheres are often deeply superstitious.

06:27 How are these two things possible?

06:29 These are possible because the same education that told us to think sharply, so as to clear

06:39 the JEE for example, told us to keep all the thinking prowess aside when it comes to life

06:48 issues like motivation, like purposefulness, like friendship, like time management, like

06:59 values, like money, like love.

07:05 When it comes to all these, we behave in the same primitive ways as any uneducated person

07:12 would.

07:16 Believe me, as the trend is, if you are mostly B.Tech students here, how many B.Tech students

07:23 here?

07:25 Lots.

07:27 A majority of us do not directly serve the field of our education.

07:37 What then is the point in passing through all these years of rigorous training?

07:44 There is a point.

07:46 The point is that the mind should become accustomed to looking at anything in life with inquiry.

07:56 Even if you do not work as a mechanical engineer after having a degree or even a PG in mechanical

08:06 engineering, still if you can retain the faculty of critical thought, your education has not

08:14 been wasted on you.

08:17 But we do not retain that.

08:21 In the classroom, we are very inquisitive.

08:25 In life, we are simply submissive and subordinate.

08:29 We just accept anything.

08:31 There is a circuit diagram and there is a certain flow of current and you will want

08:38 to know why there are certain fluctuations, where is the impedance coming from, what is

08:43 going on.

08:47 And there is resistance and impedance within the mind that we take as just natural and

08:52 normal and we do not go into it.

08:56 Why?

08:58 And you will find it very interesting that the knowers who came up with the verses in

09:06 Vedanta were actually taking a process that is very similar to the kind of process you

09:14 take when you want to solve a scientific problem.

09:20 Is that not highly liberating?

09:22 You are so near yet so far.

09:27 The sages were scientists in one sense, scientists who proceeded through the honest and rigor

09:36 method of experimentation, observation and independent verification.

09:45 That is exactly what you also do in your labs and workshops, do not you?

09:51 You solve a problem and you start claiming I have solved it.

09:55 Will that work?

09:57 No.

09:58 It has to be independently verified.

10:03 If there is no one else to verify it, then you should be the verifier at some other point

10:09 in time because the problem is internal and it might appear solved in one mood, in one

10:15 frame of mind.

10:16 So, return to the solution two days later and question yourself, is it solved?

10:22 Does it still stand solved as it appeared two days back?

10:27 We do not do that.

10:28 And that is the reason why very, very ordinary and mediocre people succeed in fooling us.

10:38 I appreciate the question.

10:41 People with very little worth, very little understanding of life are able to preach even

10:49 to distinguished audiences like the one here.

10:55 How does that become possible?

10:58 The fellow might be working as a scientist in ISRO or DRDO or probably even in NASA and

11:06 he regularly bows down to some primitive peddler of local kind of superstition.

11:15 Amazing.

11:17 Now, this is magic.

11:19 How does it even become possible?

11:23 The fellow leads a state-of-the-art research lab in Europe, Zurich, but cannot begin his

11:37 day without looking at one particular direction in the sky, eating one particular kind of

11:47 dairy product.

11:54 And some brainwashed kind of fellow visits his home and he'll organise a great function

12:03 to welcome and facilitate him.

12:07 Why have you compartmentalised the mind in two halves?

12:15 Why do you say that mathematics has to be applied only to numbers?

12:23 Mathematics is not necessarily numerical.

12:31 You get what I'm trying to say.

12:34 Why can't the same spirit of inquiry be present to everything in life when that same inquiry

12:40 I will not accept without verification.

12:45 I will not take anything just because it seems to be coming from a particular authority or

12:50 high seat or respectable position.

12:53 I will not take it.

12:57 The first freedom is to be free to question, to question others and to question yourself.

13:08 I feel like doing this, but why?

13:11 Why should I be a dictator unto myself?

13:19 So if you have a book written by those influencers, pause at every sentence.

13:25 Though most of them don't write books, they don't have anything worth writing.

13:31 Pause at every sentence, analyse.

13:34 Just refuse to move to the next sentence till you are contented with the current one and

13:40 the previous ones.

13:43 And if they are saying something in video or audio form, we said the pause button is

13:50 always there.

13:52 Don't let them, as they say in English, pull a fast one.

13:59 You understand what it means to pull a fast one?

14:04 Haath ki safai.

14:08 The magician on the stage does it just so cleanly and so swiftly that the audience is

14:15 unable to catch the trick.

14:18 Don't let them get away with this.

14:21 Don't let him pull a fast one.

14:24 I repeat.

14:28 And then people sometimes ask me, and they seem a bit irritated.

14:32 They say, "Sir, why do you give so many gaps when you are speaking?

14:37 Sometimes you seem to pause even for a minute, 60 entire seconds.

14:42 Why do you do that?"

14:43 And I ask them, "What is your problem?

14:45 If I give you thinking space, if I give you breathing space, you know what the problem

14:50 is?

14:51 We are accustomed to being steamrolled.

14:56 Just come and run me over.

14:59 Don't give me time and opportunity to think because I've lost the capacity to think.

15:05 And if you'll give me the opportunity to think, I will feel irritated."

15:10 I can imagine.

15:13 I can waste myself in worries.

15:18 Fancies and dreams I like, but critical thinking I abhor.

15:26 Why must that be the case?

15:28 Please.

15:29 And remember, the world throws so many things at you continuously.

15:37 If you will not have the filter of thought and enquiry, you will be enslaved and exploited.

15:52 You live in a world full of ignorant beings and when you are ignorant, you are violent

15:57 and exploitative.

15:58 That's a rule.

15:59 When you are ignorant, you do not know yourself.

16:02 When you do not know yourself, how do you take care of your anxiety and lack of fulfilment?

16:09 You try to do that by exploiting another human being or animal or whatsoever is there in

16:15 the world.

16:18 You have too many desperate people around you and they do not know what they are desperate

16:23 for.

16:26 But they feel the unease, they feel the internal pain and anger.

16:33 So they'll do anything to somehow get rid of their suffering.

16:40 And how do they want to get rid of their suffering?

16:42 By exploiting others.

16:46 [Music]

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