The Nuance of Balance. What can robots teach us in approaching global challenges?
Humanoid Robots commonly use “Reinforcement learning” to figure out to walk by themselves. A very important factor here is “Epsilon, ε” or the exploration factor. If this is “Zero”, the robot will keep doing what it knows to reach a “Best way” of walking in one environment. When a floor is changed from wood to a carpet, this robot will keep falling down. If the “ε” is higher, the robot will keep exploring to find various different ways of walking, which can work in different environments. But if this “ε” is very high, the robot can not walk properly in any environment.
“Striking the right balance” between exploration and exploitation is a delicate factor that varies per application.
Zooming out to a bigger picture we can see that this attribute of Balance is universal in nature. While the concept of “Balance” can be easily explained to a kid, “Striking the right balance” is something even the leadership of countries and big corporations struggle with. This article is the first part of the series, where various contemporary challenges from business leadership to global warming are looked at through this lens of finding the right balance.
We can observe this “Balance” everywhere in our universe from nano-scale atoms to massive stars and planets. An atom would not be stable if not for the balance between the potential and kinetic energy. Planets and solar system as we know would not exist if not for the balance of the gravitational pull towards the centre and the centrifugal force to fly away.
A few months back, when I was engrossed in Civ 6, a turn-based strategy game for a couple of weeks. Before starting, I was expecting it to be a relaxing game where you build up a big military and attack everyone around you. But this had all the nuances and limitations of the real world where with limited resources one needs to build an empire. It needs to advance in science, civics, culture, religion, entertainment, history apart from a military. You just cannot progress completely in one domain. If you have too much forests, there was no land to develop and you are attacked by an enemy. If you massively start developing industry and military, your citizens become unhappy and unhealthy. There needs to be a good balance between these various aspects, bootstrapping with limited resources to be a successful civilization.
Earth’s atmosphere has about 21% Oxygen, 78% Nitrogen, and 0.04% CO2. We all know how the slight increase in Co2 levels is affecting us. “Oxygen” is extremely vital for our existence that we can’t be alive for more than 6 minutes without it.
If we look at this through the narrative of “Dualism”, ie good vs evil, right vs wrong, me vs you, that has taken the centre stage in our current world, it would mean “Oxygen” is the good guy and Co2 is the bad guy.
We should not forget that increase in Oxygen concentration would have more catastrophic effects like damage to our DNA and massive raging fires everywhere.
Our approach to global challenges should move away from Dualism which is about two opposing forces fighting to gain dominance. We should take the concepts of eastern thought process, Yin — Yang and Shiva — Shakthi (loosely understood as masculine and feminine energy) which is about two complementary forces working together to maintain life eternally. It is like the morning and night, the four seasons, etc that cycling through time without end. These are not archaic or abstract philosophical and spiritual constructs, but dynamic living concepts that we handle in everyday life and can make a big impact on handling the pressing challenges of the current world.
Capitalism or Communism as a system, Left or Right wing as thought, Economic development or Environment conservation as a policy, Tradition or Modernity in culture, Innovation or Status Quo in Businesses, there is no one right way. We have seen in the last 100 years, how an unbalanced development in one direction can lead to a skewed world and the destruction it can bring.
Excellence in any particular domain is less important than having the right proportion and balance between interconnected factors. In the next articles, I will explore in-depth these factors tilting the scales of balance in different domains. It is up to each individual, society, country to recalibrate and find their own right balance.
Next upcoming article: Why early Greeks are still influential than Mongols!
