It was Dr V’s birthday this weekend, and we found ourselves in the Great English countryside; those great undulating fields and hedgerows that still whisper of an older order. There’s something about England’s pastoral stillness that throws modern anxiety into relief. The calm of inherited hierarchy, the sense that everything has already been decided, makes you think of those of us who were told that nothing was fixed, that we could climb forever if we just kept studying, working and performing.

The Dreams

The American Dream is: I start a business and I win!

The Indian Dream is: I struggle; my parents struggled but I make an incremental leap and the pathway is education; the Generational Company.

That faith, the Indian Dream, and by corollary the American one, was always incremental. Work hard, collect degrees, ascend by merit. It was a kind of soft socialism: the state would open the schoolhouse door, and the child of a clerk might someday become a civil servant, a doctor, an engineer abroad. It worked, for a while. But every compact eventually expires, and late stage capitalism has decimated every type of Dream there is, whether Indian or American.

The End of Incrementalism

Peter Thiel recently called today’s economy an “inter-generational fraud”: the elders own the assets, the young hold the debt, and the system tells the latter to innovate while giving them nothing to inherit.  Indian millennials, model pupils of meritocracy, have collided head-on with this reality.  They did everything right and still arrived too late.  Degrees now deliver anxiety, not mobility.  Education remains sacred but hollow, a ritual of reassurance for a world that no longer rewards it.

The great Indian middle-class compact depended on two illusions: that the economy would endlessly expand and that merit would always be rewarded.  Both illusions have collapsed.  A world of stable bureaucracies has given way to venture capital and algorithmic precarity.  The ladder has turned into a treadmill.

A New South-Asian Left

Out of this fatigue comes something quietly radical.  In New York, figures like Zoran Mamdani embody a generation unafraid of the word socialism.  His politics are not imported romanticism but a response to lived inequity: the working-class Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indo-Caribbean communities of Queens and the Bronx who watch the old desi elite consolidate power through nonprofits and tech start-ups.  They see the distance between theory and rent, between merit and survival.

Their language, justice, housing, dignity, comes not from the Ivy League but from the taxi depot and the bodega.  It is a reminder that South Asia’s original moral vocabulary was always egalitarian before it became aspirational.

Is India is held together by the patience of the marginalised?

The Hindu Exception

Set against this is the remarkable adaptability of the Hindu-American story.  The Brahmin–Bania compact, that ancient fusion of the intellectual and mercantile, has found in Western capitalism a natural extension of itself.  It does not wrestle with guilt; it optimizes.  Where others see exploitation, it sees efficiency.  The result is a cultural divide inside the diaspora: the socialist cadence of the Muslim-Bangladeshi-Pakistani left, and the managerial optimism of the Hindu right.  Both claim authenticity, yet they speak entirely different moral languages.

Material success comes easily to a civilisation that never considered wealth inherently sinful.  For others, the tension between faith, fairness, and survival remains unresolved.

The Death of the Dream

The Indian Dream was not false; it was finite.  It lifted millions out of poverty, produced scientists and novelists and global CEOs.  But it cannot reproduce itself indefinitely in a saturated world.  The pipeline from exam to office to visa has narrowed to a trickle.  The next generation faces something its parents never did: stagnation after success.

Across the diaspora, one senses exhaustion; the feeling of being permanently proximate to prosperity but never secure within it.  Education has become the new inheritance tax: everyone pays, few benefit.

After Meritocracy

Maybe this is the moment to stop mourning meritocracy’s death and start questioning its sanctity.  If the compact is broken, the question is not how to fix it, but what to build instead.  A society that measures worth only by productivity was always going to collapse under its own cleverness.

Perhaps what follows the Indian Dream will be smaller, slower, more communal: less about climbing, more about belonging.  The South-Asian story has never truly ended; it just keeps rewriting its social contract.  The new one will have to begin where the old one refused to look: with justice, with rest, and with the ordinary dignity of staying put.

Kabir removed three of Dave’s comments, and while I felt it was over-moderation, I’ve kept my promise not to interfere unnecessarily in his threads.

The excerpt above, though, is interesting — the comparison between Zia’s Pakistan and Modi’s India. What’s striking about both is the twin emphasis on capitalism and cultural conservatism: the promise of economic growth wrapped in moral revival. It raises a deeper question — whether right-wing politics are, paradoxically, the only antidote societies find to extreme inequality.

Class, even more than caste or creed, is the fundamental distinction in any society. The bottom half ultimately has more in common with each other than with the top half. Yet society endures only when that bottom half is so compromised that it cannot mount effective resistance. When the Establishment promise uplift but depend on the passivity of the lower half, then the “distribution of prosperity”, twinned with ideology, itself becomes the subtlest form of control.

Dr. V had to give a talk at Princeton, and I tagged along. We expected an elite university (our milieu for the last decade). What we didn’t expect was how stunningly beautiful the town would be.

Everything felt curated: the neoclassical facades, the quiet wealth (it has a Hermes store for Heaven’s sake), the perfectly measured charm of a place that knows exactly what it is.

It made me think of how different America’s internal geography is from the UK or France. In Europe, the capital is the cultural and intellectual heart—London, Paris. In the US, it’s more like Germany or Italy: multiple regional power centers—city-states in all but name.

And Princeton is one of them. Unlike either of the Cambridges:

• Cambridge, Massachusetts is a behemoth, flowing into the urban sprawl of Boston, powered by MIT and Harvard.

• Cambridge, UK is insular, its 31 colleges often more concerned with their individual legacy than the town around them.

But Princeton, somehow, has achieved a kind of graceful middle ground. It’s not sprawling, but it breathes. It doesn’t dominate, but it defines.

Gated Ideas in a Gated Town

That evening, we were invited to an extraordinary dinner party hosted by a Princeton professor. The kind of gathering where you’re surrounded by brilliance, good wine, and the conviction that ideas still matter.

But I couldn’t help noticing something else: college professors in places like Princeton are granted the luxury of their ideals, in large part because the entire ecosystem is so structurally exclusionary.

Princeton, for all intents and purposes, is a gated community.

As of 2024, the median home price in Princeton, NJ is over $1.1 million—nearly five times the U.S. national average. Rental prices are similarly astronomical. It is demographically filtered, spatially curated, and intellectually fortified.

Within that bubble, you’ll hear eloquent defenses of democratic socialism, but it’s hard to ignore that tenure-track positions are harder to land than an Ivy League admit—and perhaps just as arbitrary.

And as much as no one wants to say it aloud:

Anti-Asian bias in academic hiring is very real.

Numerous studies have shown that Asian Americans are underrepresented in elite faculty positions relative to their qualifications—particularly in the humanities and social sciences, where subjectivity in hiring runs highest.

It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s a selection problem, compounded by cultural bias and institutional inertia.

In the US, you can preach equality—so long as your postcode guarantees you never have to live it.

America in Microcosm

Just a few minutes away from this curated idyll are Trenton and New Brunswick—working-class, immigrant-heavy, racially diverse. Princeton, by contrast, is gorgeous, white, and model minority.

The contrast isn’t just economic—it’s institutional.

The capital of New Jersey is Trenton, but since 1945, the official residence of the governor has been in Princeton.

First at Morven, and since 1982, at Drumthwacket—a colonial mansion tucked into the town’s leafy heart. Technically, not all governors have lived there. But still—the symbolism writes itself:

The governor rules from lily-white Princeton while the capital sits a few exits down the highway.

Only in America could the aesthetic of governance matter more than proximity to the governed. The wealth gap isn’t subtle—it’s spatial, architectural, and historical.

The U.S. is now the most unequal developed country in the world:

• In 1980, the top 1% held about 10% of national income.

• Today, they hold over 20%, while real wages for the bottom half have stagnated.

• By Gini coefficient, the U.S. ranks as the most unequal among G7 nations, and in the top 15 globally.

Yet you wouldn’t know it, sipping wine in a Princeton garden.

America in Microcosm (continued)

Princeton, for all its symmetry and charm, is a mirror—reflecting the best of American soft power and the worst of its structural imbalance.

It is a world unto itself. Beautiful. Immaculate. And bordered by realities it doesn’t have to touch.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Questions for the Curious:

• Is elite academic liberalism still credible when it’s practiced from within such enclaves?

• Can tenure-track academia survive as a serious pipeline for ideas if its selection processes remain this opaque?

• And for those excluded—by race, class, or ideology—where do real intellectual alternatives now come from?

But, as a biologist I like looking at health indicators. Harder to fake (thought not impossible), and clearer in interpretation.

First, let’s be honest: Pakistan is now the “slow kid” in the subcontinent. Mind you, many South Asians will admit that they are more handsome people because they are taller and lighter skinned (let’s be frank here), the advantages Pakistan accrued through its Cold War alliance with the US and less strident adherence to socialism than India have been frittered away. Anytime India sees itself clustering with Pakistan, it has to wonder “what are we doing wrong???” (again, the story in India is inter-regional variation). Despite over a generation of war and strife, Sri Lanka still had a lead in these indices, but the other nations are catching up. Finally, Bangladesh’s status is a basket case still shadows some of the numbers, like the number of physicians per thousand and age at teen births and motherhood. All that being said, what’s the good of having physicians if your life expectancy isn’t that great?

The psychiatrist in question is Aruna Khilanani. Her parents are doctors. She was educated in private schools. But, she talks about her experience with discrimination. You know, stuff like not being supported as much in her medical residency as a blonde peer.

We have a problem. Who has the standing to point out the hypocrisy and manipulation of these people? I’m frankly sick of it. Any brown person in the United States does experience some racism. But those of us with education and resources are not really underprivileged in any way. The vast majority of white Americans, whose life expectancy is decreasing, have it worse off than us. That’s just a fact.

In India the vast rural population with more than a century long experience in political mobilization, has pushed governments to spend money in rural areas. Redistribution has occurred via irrigation projects, rural roads, NREGA, subsidies, loan waivers and recently, direct income transfers. Any negative externality arising from agrarian activity has been borne by urban residents (eg: Delhi smog) but farmers were not penalized. Aside from rural-urban dynamics, democratic redistribution has led to a spatial equalization of agricultural productivity across the country.

Though the condition of Indian cities is depressing, the upshot of a democracy dominated by the rural majority is comfortable food security. In fact, even though India’s use of pesticide is quite low by global standards, and its agricultural yields, cold-chain infrastructure sub-par, it has become a major net agricultural exporter. This is in huge contrast to China which has become a massive net importer of food. This is an important strategic advantage for India.

There are signs, though, that India’s redistribution toolkit might be reaching the limits of its efficiency. Concurrently, a more reformist Indian government, awash with surplus grain, wants to re-orient farmers towards higher return crops or even an exit from farming. An urbanising electorate may also not be as willing to redistribute their hard earned tax monies towards their rural co-citizens.

The reorientation of the Punjab-Haryana farmer away from rice and wheat will require tact and persuasion, not ordinance fiat. The set patterns are very comfortable from the economic (MSP + diaspora remittances + armed forces recruitment) and psychological (we feed and secure the nation) perspective. The simple promise of higher incomes might not convince historically agrarian communities who havent fully embraced the money economy.

The Prime Minister has proven to be a masterful communicator. We have not yet seen the same skill in his dealings with the farmers. The approach there has oscillated between genuflection and disregard. The potential is there for the 200000 sq. km tract of well irrigated, fertile land in India’s north west to become the new California Central Valley (47,000 sq km). India can then become the land that greatly increases global access to premium agro-products like fresh, dry fruits and vegetarian protein. The latter (beef-mukt world) will also resonate with many urban supporters of the government and even the farmers themselves.

Is this the Big One as they say for Economy, Finance and Society

Since 1998 was working in Wall Street. A lot of my work involved Risk in billion dollar portfolios. Most people, look at the upside, but because of my work started looking at the downside and its effects.  By 2003 or so there was some focus on what is called fat tail risk, a higher than normal probability of the downside.  By about 2005 or the chatter was about a collapse of the housing market, i.e. Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS).  Then 2008 Financial collapse happened.  However, the underlying economic structural issues were not fixed. The Too Big to Fail Bankers (TBTF) and oligarchs were bailed out and the average joe hung out to dry.  Those who predicted the 2008 Financial crash, once again warned of a knock on on Finance/Economy would make the dominoes fall and much bigger financial crash.    The Covid-19 Pandemic is a sledge hammer, shattering the dominoes.

As seen financial collapse was expected and predicted. Even the pandemic was not unexpected.  These are not Black Swans, i.e. unexpected events.

To quote from 2011 article by Matt Stoller

And while this may not be hitting the elite segments of the economy right now, there will be no escape from a flu pandemic or significant food shortage. The re-engineering of our global supply chain needs to happen—and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse.

Couple of Points/Factors to think About

The Virus War: Make no mistake, this is the real war on Terror. The enemy is invisible, insidious and within.  Normally wars have some breathing space, bombs fall and then a few days of respite.  This war is like water torture a continuous drip drip of sickness and death.  Eventually fatigue sets in, and many become immune to the daily numbers of sickness and death. The Stalinist “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” becomes the reality, with the death of humanity.

Nation State:  Democracy, mature or not is not a panacea in this kind of crisis. The nation state with the population vested in sacrifices for their common good and destiny is the most well placed to ride out this crisis (eg Korea, Taiwan).  Unhappily, globalization has eroded the common purpose of a nation state.  At the upper end of society, the educated and high wealth are vested in the nation coming together.  The fault lines are at the lower end of society.  Semi-skilled and unskilled are pitted against immigrants.  The poor are divided by racial lines.  This part of society has no vested interest in a democracy or a nation state.

eg. Singapore Fault Lines: The unskilled immigrant low paid labor (1.1 million, 20% of the population) were out of sight, and out of mind. Singapore seemed to have stopped the spread as of March 23, 509 cases and 2 death. The numbers started then exploding, April 23 a single day, the new cases were 1,037.    55 Singaporeans and 982 low skilled immigrants.

Supply Lines: As the unskilled and semi-skilled, low wage workers start to fall sick, expect supply line disruption.  That is food and essentials delivery from warehouse to the local grocery store or supermarket. Maybe an essential pin to fix your motor is no longer available.  Workers in distant Banana Republics, working for multinationals like Dole are going to fall sick and no longer work.

City vs Rural: Cities are dependent on food supply lines, power and water to name the least. Resources are dependent on City/Local govt.  Sense of community, is questionable.  Rural communities on the other hand for the most part can be self sufficient assuming they have one critical resource, water available locally.  Obviously, suburban are intermediate, once again the critical factor being locally available water.

Now to look at a few countries, and their strengths or vulnerabilities based on the above four factors.

NOTE: These are NOT PREDICTIONS.  Factors and issues to think about,

Sri Lanka (my Home country)

Positives:
80% Rural with most rural having locally available water. Even meat, i.e. hunting (against the law) is becoming quite common  (supply lines).  Older generation (over 60’s) has been thru this in 70-77 i.e. Economy collapsed, and we had to be self reliant.

Middle
Nation State:  In 2009 a nationalistic govt ended a 30 year separatist war. After loosing elections in 2015, the nationalistic govt is back in power in Nov 2019. I think they will ensure Nation State, by jack boot if necessary.

Negative:
City dwellers, specially in the high rises (6 -10 floors I think) for former slum dwellers.  Will there be power to supply water to the overhead tanks.  Will this part of society fracture.

To me the biggest threat is nearby India.  not as in the Govt sponsored invasion.  What is to prevent a couple of hundreds of fishing boat making a concerted rush to Sri Lanka.  This not without historical precedent, in the 50’s to 70’s there were many illegal immigrants from India.

UK

Positives
An economy and reserves, with right policies can mitigate the economic downsides.
Suburban towns that border large estates. i.e sheep and other food sources.
Negatives
The cities with immigrants and non English citizens not buying into the nation state

New Zealnd
The perfect place to wait out the Pandemic

Positives
Far away from the rest of the world. Self sufficient in food. More sheep and cattle than people.

Negatives
The Maori (15% of population) + Pacific Islanders (5% ?). The Haka is the cool dance of NZ/Maori and the All Blacks.  But many forget that Maori are warlike, and the Haka peruperu is a war dance.
If things go bad, are the Maori going to buy into a Nation state run by the Pakeah. (The cracks are there already)

Hedging Your Risk

Since 2005 I have advised friend and family specially in the US not to rely on house value, 401K, but to go for gold and rural property with own water source.

It is still not too late for gold as a hedge.  That is even with the price of USD 1,800/oz (May 23 2020).   Not much can be done with house, unless you are able to get a home equity loan.  The same with a 401K, take out a loan.  Buy gold, maybe if nothing really happens, sell the gold and pay back loans.  At worst, a small loss.  If the economy collapses, declare bankruptcy and hang onto/sell the gold.

Tried to keep this short as possible.  Once again much is what I have been reading since 2005.  Most or all predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis.  Post 2008 they have been warning of a much larger financial crisis, possibly caused by pandemics or break in global supply lines.  To name most Nouriel Roubini, Raguram Ranjan, Satyajit Das,  Matt Stoller, Matt Tabibi,   The blogs, CalculatedRisk (pre 2008 with Tanta. From Tanta’s posts learnt more about MBS than from text books), NakedCapitalism and ZeroHedge often highlighted these authors/finance analysts giving an alternate view of finance and economy.  Much of their predictions are in play now.

To conclude, as I started.
Is this the Big One as they say for Economic, Finance and Society

Too many references.  So just two.
The Big Cycles Over The Last 500 Years, Ray Dalio May 21, 2020

The Collapse of Complex Societies: Joseph Tainter 1988
Tainter lays out his theory of decline: as societies become more complex, the costs of meeting new challenges increase, until there comes a point where extra resources devoted to meeting new challenges produce diminishing and then negative returns. At this point, societies become less complex (they collapse into smaller societies). For Tainter, social problems are always (ultimately) a problem of recruiting enough energy to “fuel” the increasing social complexity which is necessary to solve ever-newer problems.

I had not read this prior to the current chaos in the US or when I wrote above.
For the uninitiated, Nature is the top most science journal. If you can get even a letter published, equivalent to 10 peer reviewed journal articles
Peter Turchin in Nature* 2010, predicting instability in the US by 2020

Sereno Barr-Kumarakulasinghe
May 2020, WilpattuHouse.com

We use administrative data linked to parish records from NorthernSweden to study multigenerational inequality in education, occupations, and wealth from historical to contemporary times. Our data cover seven generations and allows us to follow ancestors of individuals living in Sweden around the new millennium back more than 200 years, covering the mid-18thcentury to the 21st century. In our sample of around 75,000 traceable descendants, we analyze (a) up to 5thcousin correlations and (b) dynastic correlations over seven generations based on aggregations of ancestors’ social class/status. With both approaches, we find that past generations structure life chances many generations later, even though mobility is very high. The persistence we find using cousin and dynastic correlations is much higher compared to a simple Markov model limited to sequential parent-child transfers, but we also find that direct ancestor associations are very small. This suggests that there is a weak but constant kinship influence that attenuates slowly over generation.

These results align with Gregory Clark’s work in The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility. Last summer Clark told me that he is done with a draft of a new book that confirms and extends the data and argument from The Son Also Rises: though generational mobility is high in the short term, there is a long term persistence of social and economic status across lineages.

To me, the most striking element of Clark’s data is the persistence of Normans in the British elite. Though 0.30% of the British population at most, they were 16% of the student body at Oxbridge in the 12th-century. The proportion of Norman surnames at Oxbridge did not converge to the population proportion until the late 20th-century! This means it took nearly 1,000 years for Normans to regress (they are still over-represented in the British officer corps).

This tells us that social mobility over the generations is a thing. But, it also tells us that social mobility converges very slowly. This is intuitively surprising because single generation-to-generation changes in status are so extreme that one would predict the converge would happen much faster. Often one sees generation-to-generation correlations of income on the order of 0.50. But Clark’s data suggests that the systematic biases across many generations of status are such that the correlation would be closer to 0.90 to explain these results without an underlying phenomenon.

Why is this relevant? Clark had more access to surname information from Europe. But his data now extends internationally, and Clark claimed that this pattern is a cross-societal, and, the “intergenerational correlation” is very high. This includes India (in fact, some of the material in The Son Also Rises indicates that the correlation is higher in India than elsewhere).

This is the context where we have to understand comments like this:

There are two major dimensions to understand this.

When people are beating you down for being a “terrorist” it doesn’t matter if you are a Brahmin or Dalit, a Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. North Indian or South Indian. Light-skinned or dark-skinned. All that matters is that you are brown. There are some people who are white-passing or black-passing among subcontinental origin individuals, but these are the small minority.

Insofar as “white supremacy” is what you think determines the lot of non-white peoples in the United States, talk of caste privilege seems quite silly. It is correct that Indian Americans tend to come from “upper castes” and the socio-economic elite. But what if you think that the only thing relevant about an Indian American with a Ph.D. is that they are a “person of color” (or as they say now a “black and brown body”)? Then that caste/class privilege really doesn’t matter in this country. All that matters is what white people think about you.

But I think this view is wrong. No one in the United States cares you are an Iyer. But what Greg Clark’s data suggest is that it’s not just your name, it’s not just what other people think of you Your inherited “capital” matters. A very dark-skinned Nasrani from a line of doctors may not be comparable to the descendants of slaves and farm laborers. It’s not because they’re Nasrani. It’s because they’re the descendants of doctors.

In my view  a level 5 PISA score is the minimum requirement for a person to be considered a high school graduate who is literate in math, able to function in the modern global economy, or be qualified to attend college. The PISA report defines a level 5 PISA score or better as a fifteen year old that “can model complex situations mathematically, and can select, compare and evaluate appropriate problem-solving strategies for dealing with them.” How does America perform in the 2018 PISA report?:

• United States: 8% of students scored at Level 5 or higher in mathematics
• OECD average: 11%
• Six Asian countries and economies had the largest shares of students who did so:
  • Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (China): 44%
  • Singapore: 37%
  • Hong Kong (China): 29%
  • Macao (China): 28%
  • Chinese Taipei: 23%
  • Korea: 21%

Note that these six countries were among the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s, far poorer than poor Americans or poor Europeans or poor Chileans can even imagine. In 1979 China was unbelievably poor. Much of the population of China–perhaps as many as 100 million–had starved to death because of extreme poverty in the 1970s. Poor children around the world are outperforming American children in mathematics despite extremely low education spending per student and very low socio-economic level of their legal guardians, where socio-economic level is defined as:

• income
• wealth
• formal education of parents

Do any American high school student subgroups perform well in Mathematics? Yes, “people of color” or “minority” Americans perform well in Mathematics. America’s “people of color” or “minority” students are orders of magnitude more likely to get an 800 on the mathematics SAT than European Americans. If we assume this is an extreme tail end distribution issue related to European Americans having a lower standard deviation and non standard distribution in mathematics performance relative to “people of color” or “minority” Americans, we can explore the breakdown of Americans who score between 750 and 800 on the Mathematics SAT. Here European Americans perform far better relative to “people of color” or “minority” Americans.  In 2015 16,000 European Americans scored 750 or higher. 33,000 “people of color” and “minority” Americans scored 750 or higher. We further know that 51% of SAT test takers were European Americans and 49% were “people of color” or “minority” Americans.  “People of color” or “minority” Americans are [33,000/16,000]*[51%/49%] or 2.15 times as likely to score 750 or higher on the mathematics SAT compared to European Americans.  If we examine the 107,900 test takers who got SAT math scores of 700 or higher; 59,900 are “people of color” or “minority” Americans, versus 48,000 European Americans. “People of color” or “minority” Americans are [59,900/48,000]*[51%/49%] or 1.30 times as likely to score 700 or higher on the mathematics SAT compared to European Americans. For data junkie geeks like me there is a lot more data on SAT math score distributions here and here. The Greta Anderson article’s comment section in particular has some very intelligent commentators who have studied the American SAT score distribution. This is likely to be the subject of many future blog posts and Brown Pundits Podcasts.

What about this is worrying?:

1. European Americans in particular are sharply under-performing both very poor children around the world and “people of color” and “minority” Americans in mathematics.
2. American mathematics SAT scores have fallen between 1972 and 2016. 1972 is the earliest year for which I could find comparable SAT mathematics scores. In 2017, 2018 and 2019 the SAT mathematics exam was completely restructured to make scores no longer comparable to SAT mathematics scores between 1972 and 2016.
3. 90% or more of current jobs and businesses are likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), brain electro-therapy (meditation . . . practiced by civilizations around the world for over 5,000 years), brain sound therapy (naad or mantra yoga and their equivalents in Native American, Egyptian, Sumerian, Taoist and other civilizations around the world for over 5,000 years), bio-engineering tissue, genetic editing, and fused AI-brain interface synthesis intelligence. Almost all of these future disciplines are complementary to mathematics.

Future articles and podcasts are planned all six of these future disciplines. If you are curious about fused AI-brain interface synthesis intelligence, please watch my main man Elon Musk:

Some say that the tension and relationship challenges between America’s four big castes–European Americans, European “Latino” Americans, Black Americans and Asian American–are driving low math scores for European Americans “AND” other Americans. One example is where thought leader Mark J Perry explores the possibility that tension between the European American caste and the Asian American caste are lowering American  mathematics performance. Excerpts of his article are reproduced below:

Here’s a little creative editing below of the Star Tribune article “Bipartisan bill to build Minnesota’s ranks of white teachers of color sputtered: Legislation added less than bipartisan backers sought to increase ranks of color whites”

.  .  .  .

Minnesota is increasing spending to hire and retain white teachers of color as the state struggles to close a persistent achievement gap between whites and students of color. Asian students (see chart above).

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former schoolteacher, and legislators recently increased funding for the effort in the coming years, to $3.1 million more for various programs. But that represents an increase of only $299,000 from total investments of the last two years.

Advocates — who were seeking $80 million overall — said they were disappointed that lawmakers did not invest more to create a diverse teaching force with more white teachers to close the Asian-white achievement gap (see chart above). They said some of the additional funding approved will help retain minority white teachers, but ultimately it is not enough to increase the percentage of white teachers of color overall.

“We’re struggling just to move the needle one percent a year,” said Paul Spies, legislative action team lead for the Coalition to Increase White Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota. “The Legislature refuses to appropriate the money and make the policy amendments needed for systemic change to address the Asian-white achievement gap.”

A growing body of education research shows that increasing the number of white teachers of color can help narrow the achievement gap between Asian students of color and their white peers. Teachers who reflect the students’ racial background are critical to keeping students engaged, in class and successful, researchers say.

Advocates lobbied the Legislature this year to fund a range of existing and new programs, such as student-teacher grants, scholarships for aspiring teachers, teacher-retention funds, expanded pathways to teaching careers and bonuses to entice white out-of-state teachers of color to work in Minnesota to address the achievement gap between white and Asian students.

In the end, a new program focused on retaining white teachers of color — who are already in the pipeline through mentoring, training and fostering racial-affinity groups — was awarded $1.5 million for the next two years.

Meanwhile, white teachers of color in Minneapolis and other school districts have formed white racial-affinity groups as an “informal” way to mentor and support one another, talk about difficulties and find ways to recruit and retain more minority white teachers to address the achievement gap between Asian and white students.

Many European Americans respond to low American mathamatics performance by saying that we don’t need to learn mathematics because mathematics is racist. I shared my deep meditative feelings (ananda maya kosha) and intuition (vijnaya maya kosha) understanding about the beauty of mathematics here:

Post Modernism (d)

Because many European Americans think mathematics is racist or otherwise not correlated to college, career and business performance, they are trying to prevent the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) System from using standardized mathematical tests to determine college admission. There is a high probability that the State of California will comply in the near future. If this happens, this would likely sharply increase the number of European American students admitted to UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego and sharply reduce the “people of color” or “minority” Americans admitted.

In my view this is dangerous for three reasons which will be elaborated on below:

• If done in a nontransparent and misleading way it could increase American caste tensions between European Americans and “minority” and “people of color” Americans.
• The vast majority of Americans students enrolling in college have been mathematically illiterate for some time. Many or most of these Americans students DO NOT learn math in college and suffer from admission mismatch. The results for American society in the long run are likely to be ruinous.
• It avoids dealing with the main crisis–low mathematical literacy among American K-12 students. Especially disastrously low mathematical literacy among European Americans.

“People of color” or “minority” Americans will be the first to celebrate increased European American university enrollment and reduced “People of color” or “minority” American enrollment IF this is based on Yogyataa and Adhikaar (worthiness). However if increased enrollment is not based on merit, capacity and competence, the admitted students will suffer from admission mismatch. US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang (who I think the world of) warned that only 59% of European Americans admitted to college graduate. (About 72% of European Americans who graduate high school are admitted to college.) This is often disastrous for 41% of students admitted to college who fail or drop out with a lot of college debt and many years of their working life potentially partly wasted. I suspect that most of these 41% who drop out of college partly did so because of weak math preparation before entering college.

Another of America’s greatest problems is the soaring number of college graduates who are functionally illiterate in english and mathematics (where the standard for literacy in english and mathematics is extremely low). One of the world’s greatest thought leaders who embodies the merging of human heart with wisdom–Glenn Loury–explores this phenomenon:

Michele Kerr is a teacher in a tough Fremont California school.  She discusses the crisis in illiterate college graduates and unqualified teachers. [She has amazing ideas on how to improve K-12 academic performance that I think could be discussed in a future Brown Pundits podcast.]

Another reason American society as a whole should publicly acknowledge that most Americans who enter college lack mathematical literacy (causing high college drop-out rates and high percentages of recent college graduates who are functionally illiterate) is to  encourage humility on the part of college attendees in their interactions with non college attendees. Aside from very elite universities and stem degrees–does college attendance tell us much about mathematical literacy any more?

If European Americans want preferences at the expense of “minority” and “people of color” students in college enrollment, we should recognize that it is unlikely to improve American math literacy.  Having said this, we can try to minimize the damage to American mathematical literacy through transparent, open, explicit race based affirmative action that tries to minimize college mismatch. Preferences to benefit European Americans can be modeled after Bumiputera in Malaysia. Aside from the UC system and Caltech, most prestigious US universities employ a non transparent race based affirmative action. Race based affirmative action has sharply increased the number of European American students admitted and sharply reduce the “people of color” or “minority” Americans admitted because “people of color” or “minority” Americans academically outperform European Americans at the top right of the distribution curve. European Americans suffered less from preferential admission related admission mismatch because in these cases the universities could still sort out European American applicants who were not good in mathematics. Because of this, we would all be better off with race based affirmative action than going to a world where colleges were not required to consider mathematical performance in standardized tests. This would satisfy European American demands for more preferential treatment and increased college admissions. I think “people of color” and “minority” Americans would accept this if Universities were explicit in exactly how these preferences to benefit European Americans worked.

If America goes down the Bumiputera route, certain high academically performing “Asian” “European Americans” should be re-characterized as “minorities” and “people” of color so that that affirmative action benefits are concentrated to academically low performing European Americans. These high academically performing “Asian” European Americans would include:

1. Jews
2. Israelis
3. Lebanese
4. Iranians
5. Armenians
6. Azerbaijanis
7. Russians
8. Bulgarians
9. Romanians
10. Slovenians

[I would prefer a third option other than not considering mathematical performance for admission or race based affirmative action where European Americans were the primary beneficiary, but that is for another blog post.]

How to be good at Mathematics

I think the way to be good at mathematics is to fall in love. In this romance sometimes hours or days fall way as equations fall into place. We lose all external awareness. And then we find out a day has passed. When we come back to the world our body may have pain or bleeding  that we did not know.  It takes us beyond this world to music and dance . . . to an inner music softer still:

Mathematics is a pathway to what neuroscientists might call a nonsexual orgasm. Beyond gross thought. To goose bumps throughout the body where the hair stands on end.  Goose bumps up and down the back and with loving still sweetness in the brain A synthesis of the peripheral nervous system with the central nervous system perhaps? An awareness of many subtle parts of the brain and nervous system that always are but rarely observed. A slight observation of our autonomous nervous system? The parasympathetic nervous system begins a series of reactions. Our Vagus nerve slows our heart beat and breathing. Oxygen levels fall extremely low. Our glands start producing large quantities of endorphins and psychedelics (aushadi). A psychedelic high of drunk ecstasy as drops of bliss fall down:

Stanford’s Dr. James Doty (who we might interview) says that this resolves 80% of health challenges, sharply improving physical health, mental health and intelligence:

If we can meditate in action while doing mathematics vibhuti (spontaneous answers) come. If we can take tests this way miracles happen.

Mathematics becomes beauty. Becomes art. Patterns in patterns . . . a symphony.  Insightful concepts, products, process, academic papers flow unasked. The waves slow. The tanmatra of sight say some. Sacred geometries unlock. Spatial intelligence. General Intelligence or G increases:

Higher mathematics becomes possible. But I think this is only the smallest hint. Could G be a subset within a superset of deeper intelligence (Buddhi)?  If the brain and nervous system is a machine as Dr. Richard Haier believes, then the brain machine can be altered  in ways that transform our our big 5 psychological traits, unconscious brain, unconscious patterns, sensory inputs, preferences and subtle intelligences (Siddhis) . Ancient civilizations around the world have long explored the subtle intelligence (Siddhis) that meditation (electro-brain therapy) manifests. Mark Gober would say that meditation allows our brains connect with conciousness.

The education system needs to be transformed to increase mathematical competence, G (General Intelligence), deep intelligence (Buddhi), subtle intelligence (Siddhis), and connection with consciousness.

In addition to encouraging a lot more sports, exercise, stretching, breathing, music (brain sound therapy) and meditation (brain electro-therapy), America needs to:

• fire a very large percentage of teachers and ask them to reapply. No one is entitled to be a teacher. The old saying that there are no bad students, only bad teachers is partly true
• bring in large numbers of highly capable foreign teachers.
• be willing to increase class sizes if we can’t find qualified teachers, maybe by a lot
• hire special teachers for pre-school to 3rd grade who do not need to be literate in english and mathematics who can hug and serve as surrogate moms, dads and mentors for children who lack functional families
• pay teachers a lot more where their pay is based on performance with no tenure pay
• keep schools open from 7 AM to 7 PM including some weekend and holiday hours
• hire idealistic tutors who do not have teaching credentials
• implement strict discipline in disorderly schools and if necessary suspend and remove many children from schools
• inspire through all 5 senses. Some neuroscientists speculate that we have 33 sensory inputs instead of 5 sensory inputs. If this is true, inspire through activities that integrate all 33 sensory inputs.

A series of other blog posts and podcasts are planned to elaborate on the above. Below are successful examples of how to bring in foreign teachers to teach American K-12 children math:

This next part is very hard to say. There is an ancient popular saying in the east:

Many Americans have been intentionally speaking sweet untruth for a very long time about a great many things in an effort to be sweet and because they don’t want to hurt feelings. This makes it very hard to be truthful without completely and traumatic shocking many Americans.

To help others we need Yogyataa (worthiness), merit, capacity and competence. To use STE (spiritual transformative experience) terminology, we need physical strength, mental strength and spiritual strength to help others. Most people who try to help others lack this and inadvertently hurt the people they are trying to help. Many or most challenges and conflict in the world comes from people trying to help others and inadvertently hurting them. If we do not have physical strength, mental strength and spiritual strength it is enough to love others.

Krishna in Bhagavad Gita 18.25 warns “Anapekshya (disregarding) cha Paurusham (one’s ability) mohaad (delusion) aarabhyate (is begun) karma (action) yat (which) tat (that) taamasam (ignorant) uchyate (is).” Or when we disregard our ability out of delusion and begin action this is tamasic (or ignorant).

Love is not nothing. Love transcends thought and transforms our brain and nervous system. (Please read more about electro-brain therapy a couple paragraphs above.) Love helps us become better in math, improves our physical health, improves our mental health, increases our G (General Intelligence), increases our deep intelligence (Buddhi), increases our subtle intelligences (Siddhi), our connection with conciousness. Love increases our capacity, competence and merit. Love in time gives us the Yogyataa (worthiness) to help others.

To help others academically we personally need to be good at math. If we are not good at math, then we should love others with all our hearts, all our soul, all our minds, and all our might and step aside. Love gives us the wisdom and courage to not help and not suggest how others can help.

I think this is why one of the world’s greatest heroes, Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), famously said in 1865 during his “What the Black Man wants” speech:

• In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us… I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, — your interference is doing him positive injury.

• Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man. A great many delusions have been swept away by this war. One was, that the Negro would not work; he has proved his ability to work. Another was, that the Negro would not fight; that he possessed only the most sheepish attributes of humanity; was a perfect lamb, or an “Uncle Tom;” disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him. But the war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro.

The wisdom of Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895) applies not only to black Americans but to all poor people and all struggling people everywhere who are trying to learn math. I believe this only applies to people who lack Yogyataa (worthiness) to teach math. We should also try to inspire the small minority of Americans who are good at teaching math to help others learn math.

The example of Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895) lit a fire that Booker T Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois grew into an economic and academic miracle of success and excellence. Black Americans dramatically improved academic performance between 1865 and 1938.  When  the US Army tested Americans from across the country to recruit soldiers for WWI the world was stunned learn that American blacks outside the south substantially academically outperformed European Americans who lived in the south. American blacks who lived outside the south also had substantially higher measured IQs than European Americans who lived in the south. Black wall street in Oklahoma was a mecca of excellence and achievement between 1906 and the 1920s. Most astonishing though was the outstanding performance of black Americans in Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech–New York’s elite high schools between 1900 and 1938. In 1938 Black Americans were represented in Stuyversant almost proportionate to the percentage of New York City’s population which is black. Or that black kids substantially academically outperformed non Jewish European American kids in 1938.  (Please read chapter 9: Mental Abilities in Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell.)

It is hard to explain how extraordinary this was. This is 1938, long before the Asian economic miracle and the rise of nations all around the world. The US had almost half of global income and wealth compared to only one sixth today. New York was by far the most successful, important, rich, admired, professional city in the world by an ENORMOUS margin. New York had the largest pockets of excellence and achievement in the world with the best companies, the world’s undisputed financial center, best museums, best research and development, best schools, smartest people, best culture. Blacks kids were competing and winning with the best, hardest working and smartest kids in the world. Many of these children were Jewish–the smartest people in the world. [Full disclosure I am a complete total Judeophile.] To be in Stuyvversant in 1938 would probably put a child into the top 0.1% academically of all children in the world. This is the very right extreme of the distribution of performance. This is vastly more impressive than performance at the median, mean, or 75% or 98%. For so many black Americans to be in Stuyvversant meant either that blacks had a large standard error of performance or a high mean. I am betting on the second. Black American  must have been knocking mathematical performance out of the park.

Black Americans and the rest of us were inspired and lead by giants of men. Heroes such as Fredrick Douglas, Booker T Washington,  George Washington Carver, W.E.B. Du Bois. Leaders that belong to our entire species. May they inspire us as long as our species flourishes on this tiny earth (blue marble as the Native Americans call it). Their legacy lives through our continued excellence today.

Several paragraphs above we discussed how many believe that low American math performance is driven by tension and sub-optimal relations between America’s big four castes–European Americans, European “Latino” Americans, Black Americans and Asian American. I have read an enormous amount of literature and seen a lot of video content of academics and thought leaders making this case. The more I study their arguments, the less I understand what they are saying. I would like to steel man and present their arguments in a way that they would regard as descriptive, but I don’t understand them well enough to do this. Can anyone explain them to me in the comment section? Professor Wilfred Reilly finds that many or most of the supposed incidences of caste relationship challenges–also called “hate crimes”–either have not happened, or are ordinary crimes or are exaggerated. These “hate crimes” are incredibly rare and statistically insignificant.

My observation is that America’s big four castes deeply love and respect each other, intermarry and intermingle seamlessly . . . forming a beautiful unity in multiplicity of heart and soul. A symphony of grace moving towards synthesis. Beautiful, sweet and mysterious are the relations between America’s castes as the castes dissolve away.

I understand when Glenn Loury speaks of trans-humanism and christian charity. Because this is what I see. I understand when Kmele Foster (another of the world’s great thought leaders) does not see American caste or identify with the American caste of black American. This makes sense to me.  Maybe there are no castes at all.

Maybe the solution to our challenges, math and otherwise, are unrelated to caste. Do the phrases “minority” and “people of color” have no meaning?

Maybe we can all fall in love with math instead!

In the following interview, Glenn Loury and William “Sandy” Darity discuss the idea of “caste”–or “blackness”, “hispanic-ness”, “asian-ness”–having little meaning (5 to 10 minutes in):

Professor Glenn Loury–one of the world’s greatest economists has very considerately agreed to be interviewed by the Brown Pundits Podcast.  We will likely discuss education. Please send your questions for Glenn Loury.

We are also about the interview one of the world’s greatest thought leaders on socio-economic data, violent crime, hate crime, education and intelligence on Brown Pundits Podcast, Professor Wilfred Reilly. Hopefully we will be able to discuss how to improve mathematics performance. Please leave your questions for Professor Wilfred Reilly in the comment section:

Is there an interest in interviewing global heart-throb and male model paragon of male attractiveness Gad Saad and asking his perspectives on how to improve our capacity, competence and merit in mathematics? Please let us know.

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American Caste (a)

American Caste