Thursday, June 23, 2011

IIM Prof in Sexual Assault Case

Are you shocked? I would be if I saw a headline like that in a newspaper or on a television screen. But why should we be shocked? Aren’t IIM profs human beings like everyone else? Don’t campuses provide professors with plenty of opportunities for sexual assault?

When the former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York for attempting to rape a hotel chambermaid, the whole world was shocked. Why? Aren’t IMF chiefs human beings like everyone else?

Sexual assault by anyone is an unpardonable crime against the dignity of human beings. But isn’t our shock in certain contexts unreasonable? Illogical?

The reason for such shocks is our expectations based on statistics. None of the several hundred professors who have worked at IIMs during the last several decades or are currently working there have been arrested for sexual assault. This zero incidence of sexual assault or arrest for sexual assault so far by IIM professors conditions our mind to rule it out in future. If an incident occurs, it goes against our expectations and we are shocked. But that it didn’t happen in the past is no reason why it shouldn’t happen in future.

The way statistical probability persuades our mind to adopt certain inconsistent and unreasonable attitudes is amazing. If I have intestinal cancer and my oncologist cheerfully assures me that I have a 65 per cent chance of surviving it, I feel happy. But do I have any reason to feel so? The doctor is giving me probability based on historical records. About 65 per cent of the people whose intestinal cancer was diagnosed at a particular stage of growth and treated survived. While such numbers are useful to identify any patterns in the past and to plan in general for future such as estimating demand for certain types of treatment, does it mean anything for me as an individual with intestinal cancer? None at all. Can’t I be part of that 35 per cent on death row as easily as part of that 65 per cent? Even if the survival rate is 99 per cent, why shouldn’t I be part of that 1 per cent? History helps only when the probability is hundred per cent. I know I will die because everyone who is born dies.

But we like to look at the sunny side, almost always irrationally. Otherwise why would we buy lottery tickets when we know that we don’t have even one-thousandth of one per cent chance to get any of the major prizes? Somehow we hope we will be part of that laughably negligible minority.

This shows that we are not creatures of reason but of hope, hope of the most unreasonable kind. Advertisers understand this and play on this. When they say, buy this soap or that shampoo and get a date with Kareena Kapoor or Aishwarya Rai, we go ahead and loosen our purse strings. 

1 comment:

  1. I believe that humanity is not as skewed as you suggest. For every optimist, there is a pessimist.A preponderant majority of people do not buy lottery tickets since they know logically or empirically that chances of hitting a jackpot are minuscule.

    In a lighter vein, are not IIM profs conditioned to be less human than others?

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