Yesterday, I met a strange man. He was one of those poor souls who has been shown the rosy picture of a K-ary hierarchical tree that forms the basis of a Multi Level Marketing system.
He had, in a way, tricked me into meeting him. He said that he and a group of friends work on the consulting sector of e-commerce. I had (and have) no time for a venture outside my work and other endeavours. Yet, I agreed to meet him just to know what kind of business was he in.
He started explaining me some concepts that he had picked up from a book written by a bankrupt author. These are systems I was well aware of. I asked him to skip to the crux of the matter as he was only wasting his time re-explaining things.
There are inherent designs that are doomed for failure by very nature (mathematically). He was so knee deep in that puddle that he failed to understand the principle of such structures.
He constantly threw me random questions like, “What’s the similarity between Flipkart and Facebook?” or explaining random shit like, “Why all people are unhappy working.” Most of the answers to such questions exposed his deep ignorance or flawed understanding of two basic things – firstly, how new age companies work and secondly, of human behaviour. Coming from a financial analytics guy, such flawed understanding was a bit strange. Nonetheless, I gave him some alternate explanations to his problems.
When I started explaining the geometrical implication of such a scheme, and I had only explained the tip of the iceberg, he said that he was sorry and he could not listen to me any longer. Till that point of time, I had still maintained a demeanour that sided with him. I assured him that I still had an open mind and was listening to his flawed understanding of a system. (For example, if the earth’s entire population was arranged as a tree with no more than two people under one person, there would be no more than 32 levels of hierarchy.)
The problem is, his training asks him not to accept inputs from sources outside the system, which he admitted to. I feel pity for these poor souls. I shook his hand and said, “Sorry, I can’t work with a person who is not receptive to ideas.” I kind pretended that he had offended me and that said it straight on his face, “You will not be a pleasant person to work with.” I could see that he was taken aback by my straightforwardness. Hopefully, one day, when his business is doomed, he will remember me. I will give him free lessons in mathematics and algorithms.
P.S.: Read this excellent article by Dean and Laura VanDruff.
P.P.S.: It is fun to tinker with the minds of such gullible people for a Monday night’s worth of entertainment.