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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2024
- Hooray! We've reached episode 50, and it's time for an AMA. In this episode, Amit and Ajay answer questions from gentle readers that were solicited through Twitter and elsewhere. No holds barred, straight from the heart!
We refer to many of our earlier episodes during this conversation, so rather than link them individually in the show notes, we'd urge you to check them all out here: / @amitvarma
The character-limit also didn't allow us to list all the episodes of The Seen and the Unseen that we have mentioned, but you can browse them here: seenunseen.in/ OR here: / @theseenandtheunseen
As you can see, the learning curve on Everything is Everything has been steep. In the comments below, please tell us what you like about the show -- and what else you'd like to see from us.
And if you like watching Everything is Everything, please like, subscribe, share, comment. :)
USEFUL RESOURCES:
1. Amit on Twitter: / amitvarma
2. Ajay on Twitter: / ajay_shah
3. The Seen and the Unseen -- Amit's audio podcast: seenunseen.in/
(Also on all podcast apps. And TH-cam, though less than 1% of listens come from here: / @theseenandtheunseen )
4. Ajay's organisation, XKDR Forum, on TH-cam: / @xkdr
5. In Service of the Republic -- Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah: amzn.eu/d/hwGILb3
6. The Art of Clear Writing -- Amit's writing course: indiauncut.com/clear-writing/
7. The India Uncut Newsletter -- Amit's newsletter at indiauncut.substack.com/
8. Wild Strawberries -- Ingmar Bergman: • Wild Strawberries (195...
9. Population Is Not a Problem, but Our Greatest Strength -- Amit Varma: indiauncut.com/population-is-...
10. Eamonn Butler on Amazon: tinyurl.com/w38653jx
11. Seeing Like a State -- James C Scott: amzn.in/d/9bEhzN6
12. Essays -- George Orwell: amzn.in/d/c5m2osY
13. The Functions of the Executive -- Chester Barnard: amzn.in/d/1ClkZPN
14. Against the Grain -- Jmes C Scott: amzn.in/d/dRbom94
15. Order without Design -- Alain Bertaud: amzn.in/d/3LBgbrQ
16. Milton Friedman on the minimum wage: • Milton Friedman on Min...
17. The Skeptical Environmentalist -- Bjorn Lomborg: amzn.in/d/9w2sB5t
18. Hardcore History -- Dan Carlin: www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-hi...
19. Making Sense -- Sam Harris: www.samharris.org/podcasts
20. Ideas of India -- Shruti Rajagopalan: www.mercatus.org/ideasofindia
21. Grand Tamasha -- Milan Vaishnav: carnegieendowment.org/podcast...
22. When Crime Pays -- Milan Vaishnav: amzn.in/d/fjX2slc
23. EconTalk -- Russ Roberts: www.econlib.org/econtalk/
24. Early Indians -- Tony Joseph: amzn.eu/d/gM6QMPU
25. Who We Are and How We Got Here -- David Reich: amzn.eu/d/8LjrP1A
26. Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study -- Thomas Sowell: amzn.in/d/8Lq9Uln
27. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants -- Peggy Mohan: amzn.eu/d/fFbFLm1
28. Profit = Philanthropy -- Amit Varma: indiauncut.com/profit-philant...
29. Determinants of Trade Misinvoicing -- Ila Patnaik, Abhijit Sen Gupta, Ajay Shah: tinyurl.com/3v5zwyta
30. Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance -- Claudia Mueller & Carol Dweck: psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-0...
31. Indian Colours (where Ajay gets some of his shirts from): www.indiancolours.com/
32. Wanting - Luke Burgis: amzn.eu/d/44JFHdr
33. A Meditation on Form -- Amit Varma: indiauncut.substack.com/p/a-m...
34. The Ascent Of Man -- Jacob Bronowksi: amzn.in/d/3k71FaL
Produced by Amit Varma
Shot by Vaishnav Vyas and Nomsita MS Haritashya: / vaishnav.vyas
Edited by Nomsita MS Haritashya: / nomsitaharitashya
Thanks to Gaurav Chintamani for helping with sound: / gaurav_chintamani
Chapter images & additional illustrations by Simahina: / i_am_simahina
+1 for EIE Discord community. Even if Ajay and Amit remain passive there, the EIE community would benefit immensely from each other - sharing books, articles, papers, etc.
Agreed
Agreed. Please create one
Yes
Totally agree!!
Totally
As someone who, starting about a decade ago, made lifelong learning and trying to find a small but intimate community to share mind-space with a source of purpose and meaning in my life, my surface area of serendipity significantly widened after chancing upon Everything is Everything! Thank you Amit and Ajay for being the humble polymaths that you’ll are, and putting these out! It has certainly enriched my life, and given me the chance to feel like it’s amongst a community of like minded folks. Deep gratitude for that! 😊
One great episode, two beautiful shirts!!
I've grown to enjoy the ease with which Ajay knows himself and his thoughts and his philosophies on life.
Even the questions were great. What an episode, absolutely riveting!
The first in 50 which has touched 2 hours mark, hope an 8+ for 150th episode as in the lines and evolution of the seen and the unseen
The Unix episode was longer -- and no, I think this is about the outer limit for this show. Each show has its own natural length. EiE has around 40 mins as a floor and about 2 hrs 20 as a ceiling. Seen/Unseen in its current format has no ceiling and a floor of maybe 3 hours. My next show might well be 10 minutes on average. Different concepts and visions demand different treatments.
Congratulations on the 50! Pls count me in for the hike too.
Gentelmen, it's been an absolute pleasure. Congratulations on 50 episodes.!
Many more intelectual content to come, let's go!
Wonderful and confratulations on 50 episodes! Onwards and upwards.
I can very very comfortably include this in the top of my list of the best hours of my life. Not just this, but the entire EIE bundle of 50 EPISODES, even I feel so much attached to it, it feels like it just started yesterday…. And @Ajay, @Amit and @Aditi, please count me in the TOP SPOT in the 10 people list of ‘under the stars EIE’❤️
Thank you for this timeless piece, will keep coming back to this episode. :)
Many many congratulations to all 4 of you. Thanks for your service
Congrats for reaching 50 episodes!
To quote Hilary mantel, we are oblivious of information until we are ready for it.
What a wonderful episode. Thanks for being so generous with your answers - definitely left me with a lot to think about.
Thanks a lot for making these episodes. Congratulations :)
Congratulations for the milestone. Eternally grateful that you guys do what you do.
Woww.. congratulations on 50th episode and thank You so much for including my questions.
One of the best. Long but informative.
Oh, this is brilliant! Please keep being yourselves.
Love the new glasses Amit!
Thank you for answering my questions !
Congrats 🎉
13.12 Amit is proved right❤
What an episode!
Btw, there are disease that just exists in India and not anywhere else!! That's so interesting! Amit, can you please recommend where I can read more about this??
Any of the academic literature in genetics, sindhis have something if I recall correctly
Congratulations 50!! ❤❤❤
Right book at the right time ❤
Blockbuster episode! Brilliant and insightful. Thanks guys for what you do.
What is Ajay working on nowadays? Would love to know his projects.
May I point you to www.mayin.org/ajayshah
Congratulations 🎊 🎉
Please do a session on Environment vs Growth. It would be a blessing to listen to some deep insights about the term "market failure" with regard to environmental concerns as Ajay Shah has mentioned, and the nuances of the non-homogeneity of the problem.
A Way forward or a direction towards optimal ways of striking a balance along the different dimensions of the non-homogeneity, would be great, with more focus on the 'governance' side.
And Ending with Amit Verma's note on How freedom v/s coercion affects this dichotomy, or where to find the median.
Excellent episode as always. Congratulations on the milestone. Also, how does Amit eat mangoes?
Not at all, now that I've resumed my Keto diet.
Congratulations 👏
Hey guys! Please count me in on the hiking thing.
Thank you Amit and Ajay for doing what you do. Such a beautiful episode :)
However, i had a personal question. May be i will ask on the 100th AMA. Ajay has mentioned his spouse in one of the episode. But have never heard anything from Amit about his spouse. I am curious to know more about both of your partners - what do they do, what are their interests, how did you guys meet. Please ignore if this is too personal.
Congratulations
Congratulations to both of you and to your BTS teams! I often revisit many of my favorites and this one is probably going to be one of my most re-played.
Anyway, I really wish I had asked this when I had the chance, but I can't resist this one now. Maybe you can answer it here, or take it on your 100th episode. I really hope we are getting more than 52.
Amit's remark that "the moment you create a bar, somebody decides what that bar is" on the "nice republic w/o universal suffrage" question reminded me of the argument between Captain America (CA) and Ironman(IM) in the movie Captain America: Civil War. Yes, I know. :)
The issue in the film is that, given the amount of collateral damage these heroes cause on their way to the greater good , should they be brought under a United Nations' umbrella made specifically for superheroes? IM is all for it.
But CA says something similar to what Amit said, and I'm paraphrasing - "Who decides where we act? People with agendas, and agendas change."
Where would you both, Ajay and Amit, stand on this issue if it was a real thing to worry about? Should people with special powers, (say Musk develops a jetpack and creates an army of people flying around saving lives where they want) be completely private individuals using their own resources and technology as they see fit? Or should there be governments' oversight/intervention? thanks for indulging!
My short answer is that consent and freedom are paramount. Superheroes, like non-superheroes, should be free to do whatever they want as long as they infringe no one else's rights. When they do, the law should apply. They should no more be preemptively constrained than you or I should.
@@amitvarma thank you!
How can i learn about geography? Which is the best source or Maps?
Amit and Ajay
Specifically Amit, you're of vata prakriti as per Ayurveda. If possible dig into Ayurvedic Principles.
Read Prakriti by Robert Svoboda to begin with. It will give you framework and principles which will be extremely useful (most likely will change life for good)
Ayurveda is nonsense. Not its fault, because it came into being long before modern science, but every founding principle of Ayurveda is wrong.
I've discussed it more in this episode: th-cam.com/video/2t23ydu2NVQ/w-d-xo.html
❤
Can you recommend a toolkit booklist to learn about tribalism racism privilege?
Someone time stamp this !!
Bangladesh also benefitted from the export quota because it was not a middle-income country.
Not on twitter, so missed the chance of asking you people many of my questions that I had for you. Anyway, I will try one in the comment section itself; So Amit&Ajay, while defending capitalism, I often get asked, "Capitalism causes a society deeply caring for just one thing - PROFIT. And that's harmful in some ways - for instance - take in account the kind of films we make in mainstream Hindi cinema. Profit seeking forces the whole industry to churn out low quality mass material, while our "Parallel cinema/experimental cinema" just gets sidetracked more and more. Also, an overtly "profit-seeking" society eradicates the moral attitudes of human beings."
So, Amit&Ajay, how should I tackle with these thoughts??
Saving this for our next AMA episode, whenever that is. Maybe ep 100?
@@amitvarma No man!!😭😭 Don't know if I will be alive till then!
"Life's itself a gamble" - as one Amit once said.
Should a nation be split into smaller pieces with a federal structure or union like Europe union to place more accountability at local level?
Why do we hang on to a nation image which itself is fairly new.
Decentralisation episode will be interesting for you
Please use chapters for the youtube video so that we can switch to next question directly
We always do, but impossible for this episode because of character-limit issues. Too many questions.
Great show but the sound was really low
Ajay, What are your thoughts on the book Debt by David Graeber ?
This is a question I have too. I gained a lot of perspective from Graeber’s book, but I’m not sure how it coherently fits into making sense of the world today and making sense of a lot I’ve been learning from this show.
@@shivanisetty I am skeptical towards the ideas of David Graber ..!
Ham first, ham first
Mr. Shah what do you think about the book how Asia works by Joe studwell
@amitvarma Any chance we could hear Sam Harris in a conversation with you on The Seen and the Unseen? :)
Ajay on the point of Crypto , does the relatively unstable nature of exchange value hinder its ability to be used consistently for transactions on a bigger scale and with no backstop authority will we ever reach the scenario where they take a lot of volume away from Fiat.
I am optimistic. Fiat money worked poorly for hundreds of years. Only at inflation targeting did we figure this out. Crypto currency is not even 20 years old.
The value of crypto currencies will vary based on the institutional quality of the country.
@@ajayshah5705 Probably countries with more experienced institutions would have to take the lead.
Would be interesting to see what the Japanese CB does with their latest experiments with Fiat.
Pls host Anurag Kashyap in the seen and the unseen once.
+1 For EiE trekking group.
ajay and amit , i hear you speak about how state interference in daily life is a bad thing and that in genral that is why communism as an idealogy is horrible, but if that is the case then what about country like cuba where even though poverty rate is low but hunger index is near 2% only(i attack such measure because like you said measures can be gamed and poverty measurement has flaws as well) also isn't that truly the best thing you can do for poverty better hunger and home ownership (90%) is the best for a country
i would also like to add that if we are talking about horrors of what happened in communist regimes (oppresive and huge loss to the society ) then i think we should also make the case for how many people die in capitilistic society due to unseen externalities like poor mental health , xtreme pressure for performance from a very young age (all symbols of constant need to beat a measure and prove your self worth coded into us) . lastly , doesn't the ideas of public choice theory if not largely but to an extent come into picture even in a communist states, i mean the idea for making strong fiscal policies still remains , and no a benovalent dictor argument cannot be played out here since at scale (russian communism) couldn't be center run and had to be decentralized into smaller people first organizations
People vote with their feet. For decades, there has been huge migration flow from Cuba to the US and not the other way around. Ask yourself why that is.
Sitting here in 2024, the damage that communism and socialism do is not even up for debate. The 20th century is a cautionary tale.
I've been wondering about something: I lost my reading habit, and now I find that conversations and videos help me learn about the world more quickly. Why should I rebuild my reading habit? Can anyone help clarify this for me?
In my case, I've noticed that what I read has better retention as compared to what I listen/watch.
Reading, I believe, engages more mental muscles. Also, in reading it's easier to go back (reread a word or sentence) in case you missed it. Watching/Listening is more prone to be a part of multitasking dance.
When you choose a way of life, you pay for it with your life.
8:47 cities are hellscapes.
If they were, people wouldn't flock to them. Revealed preferences.
which starbucks amit hangs out? :)
In December 2023, the Bangladesh Minimum Wage Board established the garment sector’s updated minimum wage as 12,500 Bangladeshi taka (BDT), equivalent to $133. Can someone tell me what is the current value of India's current average Minimum wage in dollars? Is it 190-195 ??
Varies by state. Roughly 13k a month and including mandatory benefits it's 17k.
That was fun!
At 29:50 min on topic of negative impacts of plastics ,Ajay talks about switching to plastic pouch vs Tetra Pak cartons which are made of paper. I didnt understand why would you promote plastic vs paper packaging . UHT milk in cartons also saves fuel as no need to boil milk as it’s Ultra heat treated(UHT). India is the only country where pasteurized milk is sold in plastic pouch. Rest of the world consumes in paper packaging, glass or Plastic cans. Plastic pouch is BAD. Hope both of you will take deep dive on this topic and share with your listeners outcome of same.
It seems that the grammage of plastic waste per litre of milk is higher when using tetra paks instead of pouches. Think of the normal solid waste handling of an Indian city, and not an idealised recycling story around either.
i have an important question. Who is nomsitha?
Nomsita is the cinematographer and video editor that makes EiE.
Who are Vaishnaw and Namsita?
Bangladesh enjoys 'most favored nation' status?
Also corporate taxes and less vlogging at its ports 😅
One thing which doesn't sit welll with me, is the disdain towards 'mass culture' like cricket or Bollywood. If a person likes something, she likes something. She doesn't have to feel bad about her preferences being 'mass-y'. Doesn't Amit himself say that no mattter what you read, just read. There is no 'good' or 'bad' book. So I don't subscribe to this preference of 'high culture' at the expense of 'mass culture'. Life is short. If someone likes Bollywood, there is no need to interrogate that choice further, it's fine.
Yes, this might be one of the areas where Ajay and I are not quite aligned. 🙂
Ajay dismissing China as an uncivilized country was quite surprising and somewhat distasteful.
Technically they purged their "Civilization" but i get what you mean
Yeah, agree!
Apologies for the confusion in terminology. The people of China was (and in some ways is) a great civilization. The Chinese state is a top 10 uncivilized state.
Sometimes while speaking, you refer to the Chinese people and Chinese state in the same way, by mistake.
If you watch the Ukraine podcast, Ajay clearly differentiates between the Russian state and the Russian people.
I try to constantly maintain the distinction between India (the people of India) vs the Indian state (a community that has the monopoly of violence upon India) vs the Indian cricket team (a bunch of blokes who grew up in India). But mass culture use of these terms is swamped by the term "India". I should try harder.