In the Arms of an Archipelago

As the calm and serene waves of green
Below the surface wage a battle unseen
Tumultuous thoughts ebb and flow
Darkness of desire, dreams aglow

 

 

As solitary islands lie amidst the waves
Needs of life mingle with wants & craves
The overwhelming desire to absorb it all
The ocean, the sky; sights big and small

 

Like drops of rain mingled with the mist
Little grains of sand cascading from my fist
Little joys of life are few and far between
While we dwell incessantly on what has been

 

As sand gives way beneath running feet
At the heavenly place where earth, land and sky meet
The past yields to a glorious future yet to be
Life, here I come. I have an answer to thee

Things are not as they appear

This post is probably going to be more or less random as I have no idea what I am going to think of in the next few minutes. The general idea I would like to explore is some of the basic principles that hide beneath some of our day to day activities and thought processes.

1) Murphy's Law:
In its crudest formulation it states that "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". I find this to be one of the widely quoted adages and have come across this in the context of many things. This is inherently a pessimistic approach at heart but I have known many who have interpreted this positively to try and counter as many problems as they could think of. Being an optimist (most of the time :-)) here is how I look at it from an analytical point of view.
This "law" in itself is just an adage with no mathematical or theoretical backdrop. This means that there is a finite probability that this may not be valid and may in fact be wrong. Thus as stated by this law itself, if it can go wrong, it will. This is a contradiction in itself and leads me to believe that this in fact does not hold good.

2) Short and sweet:
I think that the growing popularity of T20 in cricket, Youtube and Facebook etc are all linked to the same phenomena namely dwindling attention spans. As modern life gets more and more complicated, we are being bombarded with information every instant and our brains are not capable of handling the volume. In fact, our brains do not even process most of the information that our senses normally send it. It acts on what it thinks is important and saves the rest to our subconscious mind. This is one of the reasons why people under hypnosis can recall vivid details about an encounter while their conscious minds cannot.
I think that the way the brain tries to handle this information overload is by time slicing (a scheduling method) where it allots a small time frame for processing an event before moving on to the next.
The result of this is that we are becoming incapable of sustained thought which is essential for creative thinking. This is going to become a challenge in the future and I already see it happening on the job. The focus in any training be it for toddlers or engineers seems to be in keeping them engaged which is a good thing but I dont think it gets at the root cause.

3) Codes of Conduct:
Shall I be kind or turn a blind eye? A question that springs to mind every time I see a beggar or some shady character peddling something. Actually, the question is bigger than that. Most of us are faced with situations where we have to decide whether we should take a chance and help someone out and risk being taken for a ride. The response is usually dependent on non quantitative data like how kind (gullible) the person is or some other emotional response. Interestingly, this social interaction was modeled using a computer game a long time ago and many different strategies came to the table.
The biggest surprise was that out of all the models the most successful strategy that emerged was the simplest and something that we have always heard of: "Tit for tat".
This strategy comprises of a few simple rules:

1. Make your first move nice and co operate
2. Be in a position where it is possible to retaliate
3. Forgive past transgressions

If you think about it, these simple rules have been at the heart of even the Cold War ( Mutually Assured destruction). In essence, the best strategy is to help people but only if you have the capacity to retaliate if needed. Dr.Richard Dawkins has some wonderful thoughts on this in his book "The Selfish Gene". Simple rules for a complex world, just the way I like it :)

Thoughts welcome!

Are we getting smarter?

I guess everyone would have noticed that kids nowadays on an average seem much more intelligent. This might not appear very surprising but I got thinking about this phenomena a bit more and it seems that there might be more then what meets the eye.
It is a well known fact that the rate of evolution in humans is 10 to 100 times the average long term rate. You might be surprised to know that 10,000 years ago no human had blue eyes but now the gene OCA2 has emerged and so we do. The mundane (and perhaps logical) explanation for this phenomenon is that the population explosion that mankind has experienced provided for a lot opportunities for mutations to creep in. That plus the added challenges of post industrial life may have contributed to this accelerated rate of evolution.

From this viewpoint it seems natural to assume that generation next will be better equipped to deal with the challenges that we now face and indeed we do see this happening in the animal kingdom as well. However, can this phenomena alone explain this growth in intellect? Rats, ants, rabbits, mosquitoes even, all propagate at rates much higher than humans but I am yet to see a rat that can understand calculus (not that I have tried teaching it to one :-)). Cockroaches have a few million years of lead on us but they havent done much beyond survival yet. There seems to something else driving our evolution that cannot be explained away by physical processes.

Here is my hypothesis:

Before I present it I think I need to point out a surprising form of memory called "Flatworm memory". In an experiment conducted in in 1953, Dr James McConell made a few worms get through a maze and then he killed them and fed them to a second batch of worms. These made it through the maze faster than all the control groups. The same experiment has been repeated with goldfish, rats and canaries with similar results. An injection of RNA seems to induce the same result. So, this cannibalistic experiment seems to point out that somehow memory is being absorbed and hence knowledge is being passed on by the act of digestion.

Maybe humans also transmit information in some way to their surroundings. If we assume that mankind as a whole is connected to a hypothetical meta physical universe that holds the consciousness of the species itself then things start getting interesting. Knowledge acquired by prior generations get accumulated in this "cloud" and any new sentient being that can tap into it instantly inherits this vast expanse of knowledge. This can explain why people are getting smarter. Yes, we have the internet and news travels fast but that is information. Knowledge is a different ball game. It is the ability to interpret information and God knows that the internet does anything but help that cause. Looking at major religions we can draw similarities between many stories and all seem to have a similar theme. Is this coincidence because during ancient times it was not possible for stories to circle the globe rapidly or is it something else? Here for example is a list of the similarities between Jesus and Krishna.
This is not mere speculation, the Global Consciousness Project has been running for over 10 years gathering data and analyzing correlations between random numbers and for many major events they have noticed a significant deviation. This is being speculated to be the result of a global consciousness that can actually have physical and measurable effects. Surprised?

Maybe there is more than just our appearance and genetics that makes us HUMAN. Certainly a tantalizing prospect.

The Cerebral Osmosis

I have always gone by the notion that no knowledge is trivial. I have a habit of asking question ( too many sometimes!) and I do border on getting on peoples nerves sometimes. The other hazard this entails is that I feel compelled to offer my insights on most problems at hand and thus it has earned me the reputation of being a "fundebaaz". I am still trying to figure out if that's a good thing or a bad one but occasionally I do see some people asking me for advice so I gather I am not a total screw up so far.

This fascination for learning has been a with me for a long long time now. I remember reading a
book called "Tell me Why" while in the 4th grade. That opened up a whole new world for me, a world beyond my syllabus books, a world beyond television and a world which very few people around me knew of. I was hooked on to those books and I started reading more and more. My parents were very encouraging and bought me the other books of the series which cost quite a bit during those days. That childlike curiosity has carried on somehow and even today, I cannot resist learning a hitherto unknown subject. The downside however is that I loose interest very soon and hence find it very difficult to get down to the nitty-gritty details of what ever I may be pursuing. The end result is that I am what you call the "Big Picture" guy. I have sufficient information to connect two discrete hypothesis but can prove neither :-(

The only solace I find is in Quantum Mechanics and Astro physics and I have spent a lot of time on these subjects. I have a mathematical bent of mind so Quantum mechanics does not freak me out but what I love more about these subjects is that they bring me to the edge of human understanding. It gives me the chance to interpret what I see and theorize on what I cannot.
I look at the empty space and think about Zero point energy and what could cause it. If intangible things like space and time can be subject to a very physical thing like mass then can we disregard the premise that an intangible thing like thought can effect the physical world?
The Universe is full of knowledge and the entropy of the Universe is increasing which in turn defines the direction of time. The logarithm of the entropy is what we call information. Does this mean that the accumulation of information by sentient beings effects the entropy of the Universe and hence the flow of time itself, time which in turn controls the rate of assimilation of this information in the first place?

The scientific part of me rejects this hypothesis outright because of its obvious inadequacies and because of its inherent inability to be quantifiable. However, I just have this tinge of suspicion in me that keeps on trying to convince me that there is a bridge between the physical reality and our mental projection of that reality. This suspicion is further re-enforced by observations like what is called the "Measurement problem" in Physics. To put it simply, an electron has a finite probabilty of being in a certain place at a certain time but unless an observer actually "looks" for it, it is impossible to tell where the electron is. Thus it can even be speculated if an electron exists in the first place or if it materializes only when a "measurement" is made. This is similar to the Schrodinger cat experiment as well which leads to a cat being both alive and dead at the same time. The predicament in both cases is due to the fact that the act of making a measurement implies a certain level of interaction with the system and that level of interaction may be enough to alter the system itself.

Once you begin doubting the electron then the world falls apart. I am beginning to wonder if the world we see and the lives we lead are anything but a mathematical model. Every point in life is a branching point in the space time continuum and the choices we make define the reality we encounter. Isint it a fact that happy people tend to lead contended lives, lucky people always tend to be lucky? These are intangible objects and maybe these people are unknowingly projecting their reality as they see it. Its a fascinating notion. It gives us the power to change the world as we see fit. Ohhh! I just may have rationalized the Matrix.

Well easier said than done. There may or may not be a link between conceptual and physical reality but the fact still stands that the Universe has been around for a lot longer than us so we definitely DID NOT imagine it all. There is physical reality and it is undeniable but it is also hard to imagine that the faculty of consciousness is geared for something as inane as survival and pro creation. When one average guy on planet Earth can close his eyes and think about things from Quantum Chromodynamics to Hawking Radiation, it is a victory for human intelligence and perseverance. We are a part of the synchronised framework of the Universe and our physical presence is indescribably miniscule but maybe we are measuring the wrong thing. Any sentient being that can stand up, look at the stars and ask "Who am I?" has more power then they imagine.

Eagles eye view

Wow! Its been a while since I have penned down my thoughts. Probably because I havent "really" had any thoughts. Of late life has been just a roller coaster ride.. its been fun but hardly the kind of ride where you get to appreciate anything but the speed and the twists and turns.
My initial thought was to pen down the highlights of the past two years but the more I think about it the more pointless it seems. Which brings me to a more important question..
Is there a level of abstraction of looking at life that can make even living itself seem trivial?

The more life is looked at with a microscope the rougher it seems. People say that one should learn to laugh at oneself. People also say that learn to forgive. What is the common theme behind these age old tenets? Isint it the fact that they preach abstraction. If one can look at ones life from a vantage point seperating the event from the subject and the perpetrator then would the world be a better place to live it?

For instance, if someone pours a bucket of water on you when you are sleeping. You are bound to be angry. Why? Because YOU have been woken up, YOU are cold, YOU are wet and hence YOU are angry. Watching the same chain of events unfold for a stranger on television would elicit anything but anger.. strange isint it? Just seperating the event from the subject (YOU) turns a potential conflict into a script from a comedy flick. The pertinent question is how high can this level of abstraction go. Global warming, pollution, threat of nuclear holocaust.. on a tiny planet planet populated by simple minded savages.. a planet which rotates around an insignificant star in an insignificant corner of a galaxy.. a galaxy which is one of the billons probably teeming with life.

Does this mean that all our worries, pains, strive for perfection, our affections, our afflications are all inconsequential in the larger scheme of things? Maybe they are. However, if everyone stops reacting then we will have world peace but would this be a world worth saving? Do I have a point to make? Yes I do and it has all to do with salt.

Salt! I like a bit more on my food but many dont. What has that got to do with world peace you may ask.. well the point is that there is a level of abstraction for everyone. It is not a global standard that can be defined. Even the best cooks cant estimate MY need for salt can they!
The fact is that the more you distance yourself from the nitty gritty details of life, the happier you will be but what level of distance you maintain has to be your decision alone. Once your BP hits the roof you know its time to move to the next level of abstraction.