Redefining Retirement

World Tennis No.1 Ashleigh Barty’s recent announcement of retirement from professional tennis at the age of 25 was ‘shocking’ breaking news for all media channels and social media. It is not the first time that a sports professional is retiring at the peak of his or her performance and fame. Yet, these are rare exceptions rather than the norm. Competitive sports as a career have a much limited span than other regular professions some of which do not even have any official retirement age.

Coming just a few weeks after winning the Australian Open, a first in 44 years for an Australian woman who won three Grand Slam titles in three different surfaces- Wimbledon, French and Australian Opens, Barty’s was a bold decision. She held the World No.1 position for 121 weeks and for three consecutive years at No.1.

Why now, why so soon? Barty articulated the answer as she felt ‘physically spent’ and having no ‘emotional want to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore’. Well, she will have her said reasons or unsaid reasons to take such a decision.

In recent history there are a few, still very few, such examples of professionals retiring at their peak and at a relatively young age. Let me take one more such extraordinary retirement of a sports star.

In 2016 the German-Finnish racing driver Nico Erik Rosberg announced his retirement just five days after winning the Formula-1 World Championship. That Rosberg’s father Keke Rosberg himself was the F1 World Champion in 1982 or that he was brought up in Monaco may be incidental to his illustrious racing career starting with competitive go-kart racing at the age of six, progressing into car racing at the age of 15 and winning nine races in 2002 at the age of 16. As teammates Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton had several F1 race wins and a much documented rivalry between them.

As teammates, Hamilton and Rosberg won 54 of 78 races over four seasons. Hamilton had 32 victories, 55 podium finishes and qualified ahead of Rosberg 42 times. Rosberg had 22 victories, 50 podium finishes and qualified ahead of Hamilton 36 times. During this period, Hamilton won the Formula One World Championship title twice, and Rosberg won the title once.

Retiring from F1 racing as a World Champion at the age of 31 is not something everyone would want to do. But for those who want to do they have their reasons. As for Rosberg, he too felt he achieved what he wanted, and wanted to focus on other things in life with his young family.

It is not that retirements make news only for the young. The old too can take such bold decisions to retire. When Pope Benedict XVI resigned as Pope in 2013 it was received as a shockingly extraordinary decision. And indeed, it was shockingly extraordinary if we look at the history of papacy in the Catholic Church. It was for the first time in more than 700 years a Catholic Pope was voluntarily resigning. Otherwise, in the modern era popes retired only on death. Pope Benedict XVI cited poor health related to old age as the reason for his resignation. While that is a genuine reason for any retirement in most professions, that was pretty much unusual for a Pope. The former Pope now known as Pope Emeritus leads a mostly private spiritual life after retirement. He himself has expressed his desire to be known as “Father Benedict”. He finds his fulfilment even beyond papacy.

These and other similar cases of extraordinary retirements point towards new possibilities of defining and defying retirements as we know the concept in its traditional sense. The industrial era brought with it certain definitions and limits of the concept of ‘work’. Retirement is one such. Work was defined as doing certain tasks for remuneration to accomplish set goals within a certain time limit and with specified starting age and retiring age. In the pre-industrial world retiring was more of a natural process of retiring hurt or retiring due to old age. In sports, entertainment or such voluntary and highly specialised professions fitness and winning chances determined voluntary or forced retirements. By and large most people followed the normal course of work and retirement.

Things have started changing in the last couple of decades for a small but growing number of professionals in different fields. People have started redefining success and fulfilment. Doing more of the same thing, going for the Nth championship title, multiplying the monetary rewards or being in the limelight of fame are not always the motivating forces for these small number of people. They have other ways of finding fulfilment which could be personal or even irrational to others. For long retirement was the opposite of work. Not anymore, even for the many regular retirees. Many of them ‘retire’ while they are physically and mentally active and they ‘retry’ different things rather than retiring from active life.

Recently someone met me for career guidance after over a decade long break from a corporate career. She asked me ‘are you retired?’ I said, ‘No. I stopped working’. I had to give a short explanation to make her understand the difference. I stopped working almost 12 years back and never allowed myself to be retired. I made a late entry into my corporate career and to compensate for that I made an early exit!

Alternative to work for many people used to be some other work for long time and even now for the most. But now for a small minority non-work is an alternative to work. Non-work need not mean being idle or being of no value. Non-work would mean to stay away from the limitations and the perks of work and find other meaningful or fulfilling activities, personal pursuits, or social engagements. This choice can now happen at any stage and at any age. That is why we now see youngsters starting up different things early on in their life while at the college or in their early corporate careers.

Work is getting redefined in many ways in the 21^st century, much faster than in the previous century. So, are all the other things related to work. Maybe in the 22^nd century humans may not need to work at all. Instead, they will go back to the Garden of Eden, the sandy beaches of the ocean or to the alluring snowy mountains while machines do all the work, much of the thinking, planning and management!

“When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” - Lao Tsu

War, Peace, and Collective Morality

 Just as we are getting out of a devastating pandemic the world is in the grip of a war between Russia and Ukraine, as if we need uninterrupted misery. Every war has its own reasons. But should there be war in the 21^st century world? The answer may be ‘No’ but the actions go the opposite direction.

After the end of World War-II the world has witnessed a relatively peaceful coexistence with sporadic limited-edition wars, localised conflicts between nations and prolonged civil conflicts in many nations with military and diplomatic interventions from bigger nations.

There are several theories that explain this prolonged era of relative peace. One is that the human and economic consequences of the two world wars in the first half of the 20^th century remained live in the minds of two or three generations of people reducing the propensity for war. The other theory is that after the World War-II several nations came out of colonial rule and became independent and mostly democratic focusing more on the social and economic welfare of their citizens. These or other such theories may have been partially true for many nations for several decades.

Paradoxically, the birth of several new nations in the 20^th century also planted seeds of ultra- nationalism leading to expansionist rivalries and ethnic identities. The other post World War-II trend is the continued rise and growth of the defence industry both in the government sector and in the private sector often working collaboratively to mutual benefit. Peace is the enemy of ‘progress’ for the defence establishment. And continued peace will in fact lead to the death of the weapons industry. Thus, war is often seen as matter of national pride and a means of power and prosperity for some.

Most of us individually want peace and prosperity. But the powerful want war for prosperity and they don’t care what happens to posterity. And we the ‘peace loving’ individuals too collectively want to win the war for our nation. It doesn’t matter another nation is defeated, devastated, or occupied or all these three put together. We will be proud of our brave soldiers, government, and the weapon’s establishment. And in the event of our nation being defeated we will still feel proud of our ‘brave soldiers’ who laid their lives for us and build one more war memorial. And, of course, we will for ever keep our grudge against the winning nation and await the next best opportunity to strike.

Surprisingly a war is a good time for a lot of moral discourse. While the nations will be divided in their loyalties to the warring nations all of them will indulge in some collective moral grandstanding. Even those who support the war would propose peace as their objective. It is, therefore, not funny to hear Vladimir Putin saying that his country is engaging in a war against the small neighbour to avoid the World War-III. How noble a thought it is! Other nations while supporting one of these warring nations will indulge in providing humanitarian aid to the suffering and to quickly evacuate their nationals stuck in the war zone. And almost every nation will enhance their military and weapons budget. No one in power will seriously advocate to reduce defence budget or stop production and trade of weapons of mass destruction. The START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talk) has only ended up in talk while weapons industry grew well globally. The core of all diplomatic actions by nations is their own national interest. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is diplomatic morality if one can call it morality. All collective morality stops at the national border.

For most of the public, it is hard to get the whole truth during a war. Each side will create their own version of truth. In the age of digital media minting and disseminating misinformation or manufactured truth is a lot easier. Governments everywhere have a penchant for controlling media and the more autocratic the government the greater its control over media. In fact, every war is a war of misinformation. In such a context the collective morality is built over misinformation and motivated lies.

Well, philosophers will say that peace is not the absence of war and spiritual leaders will say that one could be at peace even during a war. Peace is an ‘inner’ thing- be at peace with self, with others and with God…and yet go out to wage a war for the sake of peace, for the sake of truth!

How do we make sense out of these paradoxes?

Not easy. Human race evolved from a tribal ancestry and the underlying collective emotion is tribal. In the recent centuries such tribal emotions have expanded up to the scale of a nation in many cases and sub-nationalities within large nations. It is harder for anyone of us to think humanity as priority, when we have a family, a community, religion, region, ethnicity, language, and a nation to belong to. With a constitution, a huge number of laws and government machinery we can protect the concept of the nation in some sense. But there are no such binding rules beyond that.

And there are no world leaders- worthy or worthless! All leaders are tribal or clannish while some of whom wear the mantle of national leaders. Yet, there is no dearth of literature on world peace and international brotherhood. "The whole world is one family", 'We are children of the same God', "Loka Samasta Suhkino Bhavantu", and " We are part of The International Community"- as if there is one such thing! All that is fiction, slogan, and poetry. But let us keep dreaming and let the imagination fly high. One day, there won’t be any need for war!

“You cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time.”- Albert Einstein

Vax Morality and Novak’s Morality

Champion tennis player Novak Djokovic has been in the news during the Australian Open tennis championship in January 2022. Not for winning the championship, but for not being allowed to play. He reached Melbourne for the tournament on invitation and was later forced out of the tournament and was deported without playing a game as he was unvaccinated. Djokovic has now publicly announced his decision not to take the Covid-19 vaccination. He is deeply convinced about the decision and is willing to bear the costly consequences of even missing the upcoming French Open and Wimbledon Championships where he is the defending champion.

This is a very interesting development as the decision comes from an illustrated world champion with 20 Grand Slam trophies in his showcase or wherever he has kept them. He has been world No.1 for a record 360 weeks and still has more tennis in him to reach or break new world records. It is interesting that Djokovic is not making an emotional spot reaction but a thoughtful decision. It is also interesting to note that he is not an anti-vax campaigner nor is he in the pro-vax camp. He is just using his freedom of choice whether to have a medicine or not.

Covid-19 pandemic has brought in several new rules and new ways of public behaviour. Since it was a global health emergency people, experts and nations were learning new things by trial and error. While the World Health Organisation was giving some studied guidance, people and nations around the world tried their own immediate and local coping mechanisms in the absence of an effective cure against the Coronavirus. What you can’t cure has to be prevented. Logical. So, pharma and vaccine companies worked overtime to come up with vaccines that may prevent the spread of the virus. And to their credit several vaccines came up in a relatively short time and the authorities approved the use of such vaccines with limited clinical trials.

The vaccine morality has divided the world broadly into two categories- the pro-vax and anti-vax camps. Pro-vax folks advocate that vaccination is essential for everyone and those who do not get vaccinated harm themselves and others. While the anti-vax people advocate that these vaccines are not yet proven regarding their efficacy and long-term negative side effects and hence oppose any vaccine mandates. Novak’s declaration has brought in a third possibility of vax-neutrals who retain their freedom of choice while neither joining the pro or anti-vax groups. This third category of people are not making their choice based on data analysis nor do they oppose anyone. Yet they want to exercise their freedom of choice.

Let’s examine this a bit further.

Most, if not all the currently available vaccines against Covid-19 are not really vaccines by the very definition of vaccines. A vaccine is a preventive medicine that will protect the vaccinated from a disease or infection for one’s lifetime or a defined period, say for 10 or 15 years. None of the Covid-19 vaccines claim to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of Covid-19 for the vaccinated person. On the contrary there have been plenty of instances of vaccinated people contracting the Corona virus and spreading the virus to others. So, if the vaccine is neither protecting the vaccinated person from the disease or from becoming a virus carrier what great reason is there to mandate vaccination on every thinking adult?

Okay, the pro-vax camp may still say that even though the vaccine may not prevent the disease, it will still add some immunity in the vaccinated person and reduce the chance of death due to Covid-19. But then, there are many other means of improving immunity and general health without the vaccines. Eg., there are many ethnic or local plants and foods that boost immunity. Should we mandate all of them? No. Instead, provide information on all such options and let people choose what is best for them.

Let’s come back to the morality of it. Most of the moral codes are aimed at protecting the freedoms and encouraging the duties of individuals to have a safe social co-existence of a community or a larger society. That is a fair proposition without which no society can function effectively. In the recent past we have seen several discussions around vaccine equity, vaccine nationalism and vaccine patenting etc., All of that have valid moral grounds but all those grounds have been breached by companies and nations. There was no system to ensure that the rich and poor nations had the same access to vaccines or medicines and the same kind of inequity was seen among people within nations. There was no system of a liberalised patent system for these ‘emergency use’ vaccines to make them available for everyone in the shortest time. And, of course, there were huge differences in the pricing and the vaccine schedules. However, like in many other social crises such inequities are to be expected. Therefore, the summary of all these is that moral codes emerge in a social context and they do evolve rather than staying unchanged.

Well, the majority of us (me included) would take the easy path of going with the flow. Will trade off personal choices for peace, harmony, and personal convenience. So, we all stood in the queue and took the vaccine shots, twice and some even four times. Most of us belong to the pro-vax camp. Novak chose a new morality around the vaccine. And he has every right to do so and let’s respect it. Djokovic may not have all the data, but he still has the freedom of choice to inject a medicine into his body or not. One can agree or disagree with him. But let us grant him the right and wish him well. Let’s not slam him, vax or no-vax, grand slam or no grand slam!

‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.’- Arthur Conan Doyle

Statistics, AI, and the Champion’s Mind

 

Watching the 2022 Australian Open Men's final match between Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev was a treat to any sports lover. Or for that matter for anyone who likes exciting entertainment. That it was a duel between two high ranking tennis professionals with great skill and grit is just understating facts. So many comments and commentaries have already been made about this exciting match with a nail-biting finish at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on the 30^th January 2022. This piece is not about the match; rather this is about how our minds get conditioned and confused with statistics and collective intelligence or lack of it.

Behind the fascinating game is a curious play of statistical probability that has played differently in the minds of people and at different times of the match. Well, before the starting of the match vast majority of spectators have gone with Nadal as the winner looking at his track record and the fact that there was no Djokovic added to their belief. Surely there were some people who have placed their bets on Medvedev looking at the way he has fought big battles on the world tennis circuit in the recent years. Moreover, Medvedev was seen as younger, taller and a strong underdog while Nadal was seen as coming back after long injury break and a good 10 year older than his youthful opponent at the finals.

The mind map of spectators changed a bit after Nadal lost the first set without much of a fight. Some doubts would have creeped into the minds of some people but still most of them kept their faith in Nadal. In the minds of most spectators the pendulum almost fully swung into Medvedev’s court after his straight second set win, though this set was harder for both. In a match that needs three out of five sets to win one way to look at the statistics is that Medvedev’s probability has already crossed the 66.6%, ie., two out of three. For the moment, only very few people would look at even giving Nadal the remaining 33.3% probability of winning the remaining three sets. Because that is a difficult proposition, and the mind looks for easier options based on ‘historical data’ which is coloured often by the ‘recency effect’ of the latest set of data. For most of us future is just a scoping of the past and present to a longer timeframe with minor changes.

The confirmation bias is almost completely tilted in favour of Medvedev when the score board showed 0-40 (offering three breakpoints to Medvedev) in the very first game of the third. At this point the tournament’s AI was giving Medvedev 96% chance of winning. Afterall, what is the need to suspect the AI? Unlike human brains the AI has no bias!

Really? No. AI too is biased by a program that works on statistical algorithms created by humans. Or that is how it works mostly as of now.

Well, after Nadal won the third set people started suspecting the AI. And of course, the AI too would have started revising the calculations, just like the Google Maps re-routing the way after a wrong turn taken by the driver. And then goes the fourth set to Nadal and statistically the odds are even now! But the spectators’ minds have almost tilted towards Nadal as that is the outcome most of them wanted anyway. They wanted to go with a champion who is going to create a historic record and not with an upstart young player, however powerful he may be.

Now the question is what would have been Nadal’s state of mind during this dramatic match at various stages swinging from deep despair to high hopes? We wouldn’t know that. I would imagine that with a champion’s mind Nadal would never have given up hope. In fact, during the entire match there was no significant reaction from Nadal to indicate that he has given up on the match. On the contrary, he kept playing despite all the odds and probably an aching body.

At the end of the long match, Nadal could barely walk to the presentation podium. In fact, we saw him sitting down during the presentation ceremony out of sheer fatigue and pain on his legs. A great champion’s mind cannot be constrained by statistics and AI. True champions will junk all statistics if they don’t help boost their winning chances.

Well, all this is based on what we saw on the final day of the tournament. There could be a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios that would have changed the outcome and the analysis. We do not know whether the tournament would have gone this way if Djokovic was part of the tournament. What if by sheer stroke of a couple of missteps by Nadal or smart flukes by Medvedev the fifth set would have gone in favour of Medvedev? All these could be possibilities.

Statistics normally deals with larger number of events or historical data from which we derive certain probability calculations. These probability calculations keep changing as the data set changes. Yet, the probability calculations can go wrong in real life situations. Why? Any Probability number that is less than 100% always leaves a chance of going wrong. For instance, 99.9% probability of winning still leaves a chance of losing. Luck often plays at the margin. That brings us to the realm of possibilities. What is possible may not have occurred in the past at all, yet it could just emerge in the future. And the future could be the next moment or after a million years.  

Nadal did not allow statistics to come in the way of his determination. For him what he imagined appeared more real than what appeared on the score board during the game.

‘Everything you can imagine is real.’- Pablo Picasso