Purvagraha

There’s a fascinating Sanskrit word — पूर्वाग्रह — which translates to prejudice or preconception. But the translation misses something: the suffix आग्रह does not mean either judgment (-judice) or conception. It means insistence, or appeal. And when this insistence crosses over a moral boundary, it becomes दुराग्रह — a stubborn, obstinate insistence on something. This word is closer to हठ (or हट्ट in Marathi). Unfortunately, I cannot find a suitable English word or phrase that accurately conveys the meaning of either दुराग्रह or हट्ट.

Someone with prejudices or preconceptions can nevertheless stay quiet. But it is the “-आग्रह” that makes them garrulous. Thus, prejudice — while by itself benign — when metastasizes into words and then into action, can be particularly malignant. A better man would tell you that he writes, speaks, makes art to battle this malignancy. And if I were a romantic, I’d tell you that, too. But I just want to have fun. Prejudice, bullshit, privilege and ignorance together make up some of the most perennial sources of content on social media. You would imagine that wading through all of it is interminably exhausting — and you’d be right. But once you’ve developed an emotional detachment from it all, once every bit of outrage and indignation has been stripped away — you realize that all you can do is laugh.

It is Sisyphean. The digital world is designed to spread falsehood, misinformation and to amplify only the most raucous voices of hatred and ignorance. But in the spirit of Camus, one must imagine Sisyphus happy — not indignant or even derisive, but simply amused at the absurdity of the world.

And as luck would have it, there’s a mathematical framework for the absurd — along with all its prejudices and preconceptions: Bayesian reasoning. Under this framework even the most outrageous opinions, instead of being rejected outright, find a modicum of acceptance. Imagine you receive a WhatsApp forward claiming that tomorrow the sun will rise from the west. And instead of laughing it off, you allow for that “possibility” — even against every rational bone in your body. And then you wait and watch. As days go by, and as you watch this solar system doing what it usually does, the possibility dwindles into an infinitesimally small quantity which is nevertheless not zero. You might have conceded that what was very obviously impossible is now merely highly improbable, but on the other hand, what was outrageous earlier is now laughable.

Moreover, Bayesianism as a way of looking at the world is immensely liberating. Emerson wrote that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds… Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

When a celebrated economist¹ was called out for changing his opinion too often, they famously replied, “When the facts change, I change my opinions. What do you do, Sir?” A Bayesian approach not only frees you from “a foolish consistency” and dogmatism, but also grants you an excellent philosophical (perhaps even mathematical) parallel to Camus' “rebellion as antidote” credo. To my knowledge, a better analogy does not exist.

पूर्वाग्रह, thus, can be immensely entertaining, and the absurd can be quite a lot of fun to write about. And if you’re lucky, your audience will laugh with you.