Rohit Balakrishnan's Blog
July 31, 2021
The Mystery of Jackson Villa: An announcement
Dear reader,
As some of you might already know, I released my latest book, a mystery novel named "The Mystery of Jackson Villa". It is still a new release, with the release date being on July 1, 2021. During the launch period, it collected some 8-10 reviews, all of them being 5 star or 4 star, with a great reception.
Towards the end of the launch month, unfortunately, it got hit by a review scammer trying to sell me paid reviews. This happened as I was doing a successful free book promotion (which let the book reach as high as #14 in the Amazon bestseller list during this time),
Being well aware that it's against the Amazon guidelines in addition to being immoral/unethical, I ignored the request. What followed was something horrible. Suddenly, some odd 1 star or 2 star ratings started appearing for the book, pulling down a book that averaged 4.5 stars down to the range of 3.6-3.7 stars average in a matter of two days (last week). This especially targeted the Amazon US site, where 90% of the sales of most books come.
Needless to say, this downrating attack hurts the sales of the book badly. The average reader is turned away by looking at the star rating.
My request to you guys, this book is the result of my past one year and several months of hard work. Kindly review on Amazon after purchasing. I can guarantee that the story is top-notch. Help me deal with the scammer and set things right.
Regards,
Rohit
As some of you might already know, I released my latest book, a mystery novel named "The Mystery of Jackson Villa". It is still a new release, with the release date being on July 1, 2021. During the launch period, it collected some 8-10 reviews, all of them being 5 star or 4 star, with a great reception.
Towards the end of the launch month, unfortunately, it got hit by a review scammer trying to sell me paid reviews. This happened as I was doing a successful free book promotion (which let the book reach as high as #14 in the Amazon bestseller list during this time),
Being well aware that it's against the Amazon guidelines in addition to being immoral/unethical, I ignored the request. What followed was something horrible. Suddenly, some odd 1 star or 2 star ratings started appearing for the book, pulling down a book that averaged 4.5 stars down to the range of 3.6-3.7 stars average in a matter of two days (last week). This especially targeted the Amazon US site, where 90% of the sales of most books come.
Needless to say, this downrating attack hurts the sales of the book badly. The average reader is turned away by looking at the star rating.
My request to you guys, this book is the result of my past one year and several months of hard work. Kindly review on Amazon after purchasing. I can guarantee that the story is top-notch. Help me deal with the scammer and set things right.
Regards,
Rohit
March 13, 2019
Morality: An important and necessary tool for social progress
There is a reason why Morality/Ethics is not a respected field in general. The most popular views on morality are something of these sorts:
1). Morality is completely subjective, being nothing more than a personal opinion without any truth-value.
2). Morality is a cultural construct and each culture defines morality in its own framework.
3). Morality is about claiming a moral high-ground and teaching others how to behave from a position of authority.
However, when questioned more, many people holding the above notions start acknowledging that some aspects of morality are objective. For example, they tend to agree that killing innocents, rape, mindless violence etc. are objectively wrong — and that this is not a matter of opinion. But beyond this, they generally cling to the view that morality is a mere opinion/construct.
I would like to question this half-hearted approach. If one can accept that some of the most abhorrent crimes are indeed objectively wrong, why stop right there? Why limit our moral judgement to only ideas and actions that appear to be the most harmful? Why should we let the less harmful ideas off the hook? Someone might think — but there is no agreement on the lesser evils. We don’t need agreement to decide truth! What we need is logical reasoning instead. Rest assured, there exist people who justify all of the abhorrent crimes I listed earlier. That didn’t stop us from considering those to be objectively wrong, did it?
What are we scared of? Offending people? Upsetting cultural/religious sentiments? Are these more important that social progress? Is it worth slowing down social progress because some people would be upset over us holding an opinion? Or are we simply scared that we might be wrong? Yes, we could be wrong about the judgements we make in life — including moral judgements. This doesn’t mean we should stop making judgements and relying on them.
Remember that morality isn’t primarily about judging people. It is primarily about judging ideas/actions regardless of who is holding/doing those. We need to differentiate between good ideas and bad ideas — but that’s not enough. We need to differentiate between good ideas and better ideas and between bad ideas and worse ideas. Going easy on moral judgements is only going to help preserve social evils for longer. Am I saying that we should always express moral judgements? Not really — we need to be smart and tactful too. What I’m saying is that in principle, we should always be prepared to make moral judgements in our minds — and express these judgements whenever it helps the advancement of good.
After much discussion on morality, people often end up agreeing with one general rule: That we should be free to do what we want short of initiating violence on others. Beyond this, they might ask — what is the point of further discussion on morality? That still begs the question — why limit goodness to merely respecting freedom/liberty? Consider a situation where there’s a lot of freedom in the society but people end up suffering too much and living miserable lives anyway. Freedom is necessary, but not sufficient. Freedom alone doesn’t always lead to a happy society — unless people use it to build happiness in the society. Morality shouldn’t stop at freedom. It should never stop in its quest to make happier societies that suffer less — for which freedom is only one of the many tools.
We don’t always know the truth. We often don’t know the future. There are limits to our intellect and the amount of time we have in our hands. And there is always an element of unpredictability in our lives. None of this should stop us from valuing and trying to understand truth — for the love of everything good — and for the love of everyone dear living today or tomorrow.
1). Morality is completely subjective, being nothing more than a personal opinion without any truth-value.
2). Morality is a cultural construct and each culture defines morality in its own framework.
3). Morality is about claiming a moral high-ground and teaching others how to behave from a position of authority.
However, when questioned more, many people holding the above notions start acknowledging that some aspects of morality are objective. For example, they tend to agree that killing innocents, rape, mindless violence etc. are objectively wrong — and that this is not a matter of opinion. But beyond this, they generally cling to the view that morality is a mere opinion/construct.
I would like to question this half-hearted approach. If one can accept that some of the most abhorrent crimes are indeed objectively wrong, why stop right there? Why limit our moral judgement to only ideas and actions that appear to be the most harmful? Why should we let the less harmful ideas off the hook? Someone might think — but there is no agreement on the lesser evils. We don’t need agreement to decide truth! What we need is logical reasoning instead. Rest assured, there exist people who justify all of the abhorrent crimes I listed earlier. That didn’t stop us from considering those to be objectively wrong, did it?
What are we scared of? Offending people? Upsetting cultural/religious sentiments? Are these more important that social progress? Is it worth slowing down social progress because some people would be upset over us holding an opinion? Or are we simply scared that we might be wrong? Yes, we could be wrong about the judgements we make in life — including moral judgements. This doesn’t mean we should stop making judgements and relying on them.
Remember that morality isn’t primarily about judging people. It is primarily about judging ideas/actions regardless of who is holding/doing those. We need to differentiate between good ideas and bad ideas — but that’s not enough. We need to differentiate between good ideas and better ideas and between bad ideas and worse ideas. Going easy on moral judgements is only going to help preserve social evils for longer. Am I saying that we should always express moral judgements? Not really — we need to be smart and tactful too. What I’m saying is that in principle, we should always be prepared to make moral judgements in our minds — and express these judgements whenever it helps the advancement of good.
After much discussion on morality, people often end up agreeing with one general rule: That we should be free to do what we want short of initiating violence on others. Beyond this, they might ask — what is the point of further discussion on morality? That still begs the question — why limit goodness to merely respecting freedom/liberty? Consider a situation where there’s a lot of freedom in the society but people end up suffering too much and living miserable lives anyway. Freedom is necessary, but not sufficient. Freedom alone doesn’t always lead to a happy society — unless people use it to build happiness in the society. Morality shouldn’t stop at freedom. It should never stop in its quest to make happier societies that suffer less — for which freedom is only one of the many tools.
We don’t always know the truth. We often don’t know the future. There are limits to our intellect and the amount of time we have in our hands. And there is always an element of unpredictability in our lives. None of this should stop us from valuing and trying to understand truth — for the love of everything good — and for the love of everyone dear living today or tomorrow.
