Even Bill Gates doesn’t know this…

It all started when I read the posting titled “Even Bill Gates doesn’t know this…” in a common discussion forum. It was the umpteenth time that I read the same old content of what =Rand(1,254) function does in a word document. I felt rather disgruntled at the juvenile content of the posting, more so when many of the replies were showing surprise at the so called ignorance of Mr. Gates. I was surprised that not many are thinking about why Bill Gates should know this in the first place. After all he has not coded a single line for MS Office or any product of MS in today’s market (At least ever since his makeover as a “Geek Genius” by Pam Edstrom, PR Chief of Bill Gates). In fact the advent of Windows itself, let alone Office, was very lucky and unknown for a long time to William H. Gates, while it was being developed, for he was busy managing the affairs of Microsoft by that time. (For more details you can read: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates - Marlin Eller, Pam Edstrom)

Leaving aside the bugs in Office codes and Bill Gates, one must appreciate the programming skills of the originator of this mail. He is so skillful in programming the mindset of the readers that he influences what is called the emotional reaction so successfully. Myth and Mystery have impressed people over a very long time and on most occasions we are habituated to use the emotional intelligence over rational thinking. It is emotionally satisfying to know a bug in a famous and almost foolproof application (at least for the non-developer users) and it’s more thrilling if it’s a secret mystic bug that even the ‘Original Geek’ doesn’t know. We don’t even care to think if it’s possible for our senior manager, let alone the Chairperson, to know a possible bug in the code that we write for our project, but we will be happy to proclaim the unawareness of Mr. Gates. I really doubt it if a programmer himself would remember a bug that he himself has solved.

This very behavior is the root for the world economics and stock markets – the logical versus the intuitionists. While the professionals use rational analysis, most of the small investors invest emotionally (read - what their heart or hunch says) and lose more money than they gain. Rather than analyzing the ROI, Market Cap and Area of operations etc., the emotional thinkers buy when the market is going up and sell when it’s coming down based on some advice from a so called friend/colleague, all this while not really understanding why it’s happening or where it’s going. The best thing for a small scale investor could be choosing some real performers that have a management with strong ethical values, potential for future growth, and find out the price at which it would be a good buy and try to buy it at a margin of that threshold. I know I am being too impractical by trying to predict a definite outcome of a STOCK INVESTMENT, but frankly stocks are for long term players and if you want short term gains in real life that too consistently and that too above 7%, go play Don Corleone.

The point that I am trying to make is that the thinking pattern is what that differentiates the judgment/reaction, given a similar situation to two persons. While one pattern need not necessarily be superior to other, it makes sense and adds a lot of value to adapt to rational thinking more often than not. The raising emotion may tempt me to watch Brazil vs. France but it would not help me finish this article any better. But again I may not stop cheering up for my favorite team even when they are on the verge of a defeat, for I know miracles do happen. However, in case of complex situations especially involving work or business I better put my emotions at bay and use my head instead. The bandwidth, time and energy that would have been saved for better things simply overweigh what the satisfaction of bulk mailing these bugs would give me.

Now, I am not an avid supporter of rational thinking to the extent of being stone cold. One has to use his brain to reason out the ways and his heart to decide which way, for not all things in life happen according to reason. If so there would not have been the words ‘Love’ & ‘Humanity’ in the dictionary!