On Maturity

It is a custom post. There was a discussion about maturity and a lack of therein, and then someone defined maturity, [which is not something that I agreed upon] and hence, this post is dedicated to the debate. Without wasting much time – let’s see how maturity is defined.

Thesaurus:-

“responsibility, sense, levelheadedness; wisdom, discrimination, shrewdness, sophistication.”

Wikipedia Maturity (psychological):-

“Maturity is a psychological term used to indicate how a person responds to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate and adaptive manner. This response is generally learned rather than instinctive, and is not determined by one’s age. Maturity also encompasses being aware of the correct time and place to behave and knowing when to act appropriately, according to the situation.”

Now, how do I know – if someone is mature or not? All of the definitions clearly   asking for a reference – against which Maturity would be measured.

“The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.” – Douglas Engelbart

“Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.” – John MacNaughton

“Maturity is: The ability to stick with a job until it’s finished; The ability to do a job without being supervised; The ability to carry money without spending it; and The ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even” –Abigail Van Buren

“Maturity of mind is the capacity to endure uncertainty.” -John Finley

“Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values.” –Joshua Loth Liebman

“To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.” – William Arthur Ward

There was a stupid story told:

A sage was saving a scorpion from water, and the scorpion was stinging the sage , and jumping back to water. Again the sage was saving the scorpion, and the scorpion, in turn stinging. One guy stopped at this site, and asked the sage – “Oh Sage, why you are so hellbent on saving a scorpion who is stinging you continually? Don’t you have the maturity to understand your own loss?” The sage replied – “It is the lack of maturity of the scorpion, that I am trying to fix with my maturity. I know how to save it, but it does not know how to stay saved. And it only knows how to sting. Poor scorpion. Let me try to save it again, under the assumption, that it would slowly become mature.”

I am sure, there are people like that sage, and people like that scorpion. Unfortunately, it is people like that scorpion, and mostly the people like the on looker defines the term “maturity” with no understanding what so ever of the bigger picture.

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one” –Wilhelm Stekel

Ok, we now have lots of names and lots of quotes. What is maturity then?

It is very easy, on a subjective note – to state : “This is an immature guy.” Now, who judges you? Here is one example. What a sane person would do, when it sees a rabbit baby is being  hunted by an wolf? Or a kitten is being hunted down by Dog? One who is not bothered to save them would be termed heartless, immature. Think about the bigger picture. Saving someone now wont save them forever. Also, saving someone would most likely to kill someone. The wolf babies would die, if their parents do not bring food to them. The knowledge that injustice can not be avoided, can only be reduced or be done to someone else is maturity. Now, how many people know this?

Maturity clearly differs on intellectual levels. For the people who are inside the “curve”, people who are outside – [both ways] are immature. Clearly these people outside the “curve” are immature as : they do not think about daily chores, they do not care for themselves, they do not think making one presentable is a prerequisite of being *shown* as mature. They invest their time on dreamy business, like writing stories, may be painting, may be doing maths. For people inside the curve, these are signs of immaturity, these are waste people.

Now, go to the opposite end of the spectrum. For people outside that “curve” 99% of the humanity is immature. Just the way a human collects a well breded dog, if an alien would like to sample humanity, it would sample this “outside” 1%, as a sample of what this species is capable of.

Please bear in mind that  acting to what your mind says never was, is, and never will be a definition of maturity [however that is a sure tell tale sign of immaturity]. That is assertiveness,  not maturity. It can show you as a strong person, and neither a strong person is necessarily mature, nor is a mature person can always be strong.

Maturity is accepting the hard fact that there are  flaws like above in the world, and there are flaws in everyone of us.

And for the best part, as acceptance of the above, a mature person does not judge another person. Judging people is a sign of immaturity to them. Because one does not necessarily know the bigger picture of why another person acting a particular way. Starting to knowing other peoples point of view, makes one mature. And it makes people less judgmental.

Let’s understand what so called “maturity” and mature people did to humanity.

They crucified Saint Peter and burned Joan Of Ark to start with, only to be hailed as heroes for later. They acted in a way that was not thought as appropriate for their time frame. See the convenient way of making one “immature” ?

These people did not let Dr Sheik Abdus Salam die peacefully in his own country. According to them, the  zealots, it is inappropriate /immature to consider reading the mind of God.

Alan Turing had to commit suicide for the sake of these people. It was inappropriate to be a gay individual, at that time, in U.K. And prior to that what he did? He saved his country from Germans, by cracking the Enigma code. Now, check the sage story again.

Boltzman was depressed and committed suicide for them. Gogh did the same.

Even greats commit mistakes, and shows immaturity. It is also a sign of maturity to understand that even if you are the authority, you are not infallible.

Dr Chandrashekhar was termed immature by Sir Eddington.

It matters not. Life goes on. It is apparently immature to even post this. But, someone should still try to save the scorpion from itself.

On Day 975 | BigB’s Blog Post

The original post can be found here.

http://bigb.bigadda.com/?p=7124

Here, now, BigB is BIG, and is really really BIG. I have tremendous respect for the actor in him. However , it does not mean that I can not argue with him. As being taught by the argumentative culture of the ancient   India, I would try to argument politely why the post by the BigB might not reflect reality, or truth.

The argument of BigB follows from the following thought process:-

1. Comparing some great person ‘A’ of current time frame with some great person ‘B’ of past time frame and assigning a greater value to anyone implies reasonable doubt on ‘A’s greatness.
2. A ‘statement’ is a ‘fact’ – because someone ‘knows’ it is to be true.
3. Indians thinks so little of themselves, that a comparison is imminent and unless ‘other’ [defined to be western] people gives approval, Indians are not happy.
4. As an icing on the argument – respected BigB mentioned

“I visit the UK often and I observe that every time there is a British defeat or an unsuccessful venture, they will always put up for public broadcast a previous achievement of the country, almost immediately. It shows the character of a nation.”

Let’s go one by one, with respectfulness and politeness.

For [1] we are assuming that greatness can even be compared. Human nature is to compare things, and it has created a part of their knowledge called “arithmetic”  – which deals with numbers. For example distance is a number. To compare greatness, we need to represent greatness by a single number. Now, the question would be, is it justified? Who was the greatest physicist of all? Who was the greatest mathematician of all? Who is the greatest footballer of all? The greatest politician ever? The greatest general ever? The greatest painter ever? How can we assign numbers to them – so as to compare? Simply speaking there is no way.

Actually, I am wrong. Assuming there are qualities inherent in greatness, for example for painting, we assume we can give values to the following qualities:-

• Theme
• Drawing
• Coloring
• Shading

Representing an work of art this way has is foolish. A type of this can actually be found in Dead Poets Society, where

“their poetry textbook, prescribing a mathematical formula to rate the quality of poetry which Keating finds ridiculous”

It is indeed ridiculous. There is no comparison between piece of art, and in general there is no comparison between piece of any human work, and greatness. However, even if someone tries to compare 2 great individuals, how this act of comparison would result in degrading greatness of one – is open to question. I , in my humble opinion, can not find any mechanism to it. If  Sir Hawking is being [and is being constantly ] compared with Sir Newton, then how come it is a disrespect to Sir Hawking is something that is worth introspecting.

[2], is a  misguided statement , at best. A fact is a fact, only when experimental results verifies it,  which is believed by majority of the individual at that point of time. Please note that, a fact is different from truth. In times of Ptolemy, earth was considered flat, and was a fact, and that was untrue. For a fact, what you believe in d0es not matter. Even Einstein has a say in this, on the distinction of truth from facts:-

“A scientific person will never understand why he should believe opinions only because they are written in a certain book. Furthermore, he will never believe that the results of his own attempts are final.”

In essence, it means avoid arrogance while making statements like “I know it for a sure fact.” Eddington was trapped, Einstein was trapped, even greats like Fred Hoyle were trapped in this kind of mind game. Einstein remarked once:-

“To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”

That sums up the mentality that facts are different from truths, and even facts are not what a single man believes, but a mass phenomenon. One man can not hold forth, even if he is an authority at that particular topic.

The [3] point is plain to disprove, but then I would go slightly orthogonal to it. We have different movie industry in India itself. I am sure every locale would & certainly should take pride on what their local film industry is. However, **we know for sure fact** that Bollywood is way better than Bhojpuri film industry. Why it is so, is a principle of economy. What pays more, gets more talent. It is an endless cycle. Matter of the fact is, whether we like it or not, Hollywood pays in astronomical figures. And while it is arguable of the quality of the films  it churns out every year, it is not arguable that Hollywood is to films what Alexandria was to Knowledgeable people & books at classical age.

While someone like BigB – can not, will not, and should never be judged based upon the fact that whether he ever acted on a Hollywood movie, the case is still strong for the other not to good bunch of actors which Bollywood poses. A a typical movie buff and a huge fan of the BigB himself [BigB, please forgive me for putting up this post – contradicting your thought process, but I admire the actor BigB  and not the philosopher BigB , hope you would understand] none could depict his roles in Anand, Zanzeer, Sholay, and Black, and Last Lear. PERIOD. Even Akira Kurosawa or Satyajit Ray never worked on Hollywood. However, Hollywood accolade them. Einstein was just some random physics student from German Polytechnic,   but he was credited for his work. A humble beginning does not mean a thing. But if you are good enough, accolade would come. Van Gogh was only credited after death. But the *fact* is, if you are good, accolade would come. Comparing to Hollywood is not at all a slave mentality as depicted by BigB.

On [4], it shows unrealistic expectation from an island nation – who were once saved from Bankruptcy by their other “Great English Speaking Nation” [a.k.a U.S.A] and still believes, albeit mistakenly that they are still great. The days of the U.K. is all gone, and that is a *fact* again. To show just one  example of their unrealistic expectation, and flaws in inherent judgment,  they proclaimed  “Graeme Hick” as the next Bradman. They thought it as a *fact*, as they “knew it”. That argument would not lead anyone anywhere. Remembering the moments of victory, in moments of despair, is a soothing affect as best. It does show however, the character of the nation, in a very poor fashion. However, in the moments of victory, when you remember all of your pasts defeats, that makes much more sense. But, yes, on principle, only greats can take a fall, and then start running and be great again. See Steve Jobs for example.

Hence, I rest my case.

Learning things where you are not good at, a perspective

“You’ve also got to take a look at your strengths and weaknesses, and decide if you want to [a] play to your strengths or [b] remedy your weaknesses.”

This line generated a healthy debate, at start, and then as usual like with any online debate, lost it’s original inception in the sands of time, and posts 🙂 for which my wrong way of putting information is responsible. The question, which started the debate was great. I am not certain if the question was asked with proper understanding of the true potential of the question, but, it was definitely the right question to ask. The question was:-

“Why there is no 3rd option? apart from [a] and [b]”. All that means is “Why can not I retain my strength, and improve my weakness? ”

Questions which are that simple, are sometimes most hard to answer. When this question was asked, I actually reflected hard on this question. A very easy answer would be the guy quoting it forgot to mention the third option. That would be a joke :D. However, I have found that, there can not, ever be a third option. A 3rd option requires intermixing genetic trait, and learning theory – which strictly follows from the known laws of neuroscience. Of course neuroscience can not, and would not answer this question alone, because the very basic trait of it lies in economic or Pareto Principle, which in turn a reflection on Game Theory. Also it requires the principle of  “Diminishing Marginal Return“.

Let me now establish this result. It would be on the line of Richard Dawkins work “Greatest Show on Earth” – chapter [5,6,7,8,9].

Let’s start with the basic premise, it says:-

1. An Individual who is really really good at something may sucketh at other things.
2. He can choose to build on his strength or,
3. He can remedy his weakness.

Definition:-

The percentile value he has in a population of individuals with regard with that ability, if it is more than 50, then it is his strength, and if less than 50, then it is his weakness. Let’s define it as such. There is no absolute value of strength and weakness or fitness[sic. Evolution]. Hence I can still remain at bucket “Good” while competitors can move to “Better” category. The question is, how can we choose?

Theorem :- [2] & [3] can not happen together. Stronger version:- “I can not remain at my percentile position at  what I do best while improving my percentile position on weakness without incurring a very significant cost  in time and resources, such that,  for all practical purposes, it is always better to sacrifice some of my strengths to gain on weakness to generate  a better overall Utility value”.

Let’s start by looking into this strong statement. [1] is axiomatically true. [2] and [3] are individually true, comes from the freedom of choice. But together [2] & [3] states something really interesting, which is not apparent unless you know a thing or two about learning process. Let’s analyze it.

Why you are good at something? Current research shows genetic trait followed by training. Please note that *both* are required to be really good at something. I do not want to raise a nature vs. nurture debate, but it is proven beyond doubt that “being good” requires a solid backup from both nature and nurture.

Why you are not good at something? It can be :-

1. You are not genetically gifted
2. You are gifted, but you lack training.

In case [1], you are just not there to compete. A  genetically gifted person would always beat you, in lieu of training. Hence the issue would be there can be people with [2], who lacks training, and they can in principle would be able to remedy their weakness. Does this make sense?

Now, we proceed to the last part of the proof. We are talking about not only genetic abilities, but abilities which are more complex that that. Now we invoke neuroscience and proclaim that actions by us are of 2 types, untrained or active, and trained or passive [The technical terms differ, but bear with me, please]

Example of active action is learning cycling. This is where cerebrum takes an active part, and gradually makes it into a habit, and transfers the  learning into cerebellum . Now, how much transfer should happen to the cerebellum, follows Pareto principle. The most *important* and *mostly used* actions are transferred in Cerebellum. Also note that brain maintains a *working set* memory – tuned to the the kind of work/action we usually do.

All these formations gives rise to an economy in brain, that it is optimized for regular work, which generates a utility factor, and now, the question : “Does making a new strength surpasses the utility factor?”  If it is possible, then adding  more and more strength would let the utility factor increase more and more, while keeping the other strengths constant. But, that is against the law of marginal return.

However, I did not specify the mechanism that prevents it from happening. It is as simple as this:-  If you are trained in your strength, the whole body/brain optimizes for that line of tasks. Unless you are dealing with a similar kind of task, to excel in that brain would require a different optimization, thereby, moving you out from where you were excelling earlier.

It is bound to happen, because, your total utility is bound by optimizations in brain, which is bound to your strengths, which are factors of your Utility. The law of diminishing marginal return states that there is a limit, beyond which you can not stretch utility coming any single source, i.e. action.

The story is almost over. I just proved that you loose some of your finest qualities to make something else your strength. However, it can be argued that you can revisit, and strengthen your now slightly weaken strength. But then, we are assuming infinite time. While you were busy strengthening  your weakness, in a multiplayer game someone else would clearly beat you on your earlier strength.

Hence,

Lemma: It is impossible to do both [a & b] in limited resource/energy and time. For all practical purposes, when  you concentrate  on improving your weakness, the resources needed to maintain your strength were redirected to your weakness, which requires a lot more effort than maintaining the older strength, thereby making your original strength feeble. In that time, other people building on your weakness , would most certainly beat you.

The objective is always not to be really good at something, but to have more overall Utility value, even if at the cost of other not so important traits.

P.S. Some friend of mine tried to  demolish the observation by proposing the thesis – “I can be real great driver, while learning to be a real good cook.” Explain that. The reader should do this exercise. Hint:- allocating time is of essence, also the chance that someone else would beat you while you were neglecting it.

New Genesis

WMAP Image of the Universe

In the beginning God created radiation and ylem. And ylem was without shape or number, and the nucleons were rushing madly over the face of the deep. And God said: “Let there be mass two.” And there was mass two. And God saw deuterium, and it was good. And God said: “Let there be mass three.” And there was mass three. And God saw tritium and tralphium [Gamow’s nickname for the helium isotope He-3], and they were good. And God continued to call number after number until He came to transuranium elements. But when He looked back on his work He found that it was not good. In the excitement of counting, He missed calling for mass five and so, naturally, no heavier elements could have been formed. God was very much disappointed, and wanted first to contract the universe again, and to start all over from the beginning. But it would be much too simple. Thus, being almighty, God decided to correct His mistake in a most impossible way. And God said: “Let there be Hoyle.” And there was Hoyle. And God looked at Hoyle… and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased. And Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by supernovae explosions. But in doing so he had to obtain the same abundance curve which would have resulted from nucleosynthesis in ylem, if God would not have forgotten to call for mass five. And so, with the help of God, Hoyle made heavy elements in this way, but it was so complicated that nowadays neither Hoyle, nor God, nor anybody else can figure out exactly how it was done.

Amen.

This is Gamow’s tribute to the Christening father of the “Big Bang” .

What lies their beyond the furthest stars? Beyond the furthest star – lies creation itself.

Amen to that.

Enacting Tagore – Again

As  my friend Pami pointed out, I have 2 states in life. Not happy with anything at all, and IPL is happening and Deccan Chargers are winning. Now, of course IPL is not happening now, and that leaves me in a very infuriated state. No entertainment at all.  So, here is my situation depicted by the great Poet:-

================================

এ দুর্ভাগ্য দেশ হতে হে মঙ্গলময়

চূর্ণ করি দূর করো  সর্ব তুচ্ছ ভয়

লোকভয় রাজভয় মৃত্যুভয় আর

খিনপ্রাণ দুর্বলের এ পাষানভার

এই চিরপেষণ যন্ত্রনা ধুলিতলে

এই নিত্য অবনতি দন্ডে পলে পলে

এই নিত্য  অপমান অন্তরে বাহিরে

এই  দাসত্বের রজ্জু ত্রস্ত নতশিরে

সহস্রের পদপ্রান্ত তলে বারম্বার

মনুষ্য মর্যাদা গর্ব চির পরিহার

এ বৃহত লজ্জারাশি চরণ আঘাতে চূর্ণ করি দূর করো

মস্তক তুলিতে দাও অনন্ত আকাশে

উদার আলোকমাঝে উন্মুক্ত বাতাসে ||

=====================================

There would be no translation today. Not in the mood to do it. If I am still alive tomorrow – perhaps there would be a translation, perhaps not.

Let’s have a try… at Translating Tagore

Tagore was great. And when it comes to translating his poems into English, he was at best mediocre. And this opinion was not even voiced by me, but my Higher Secondary English Teacher, who was a student of Comparative Literature. He said : “People, Tagore was brilliant while doing translation back from the English, or any other languages, but did not – or could not do justice to his own impeccable writings.”

So, in case you can not read Bengali – you can not do a proper comparison. As an example, he started with  one example poem in “শেষের কবিতা” – but let’s put the original one at first:-

“Blow gently over my garden,

Wind of O southern sea…

In time when my love cometh

And calleth me.”

Now, Tagore did translate it line by line – keeping the essence intact, and made this masterpiece :-

চুমিয়া যেও তুমি – আমার বনভূমি

দখিন সাগরের সমীরণ –

যে শুভক্ষণে মম আসিবে প্রিয়তম

ডাকিবে নাম ধরি অকারণ ||

Now, compare that. You can not, Tagore is so way over Donne in his Bengali translation.  Now I tried to translate Tagore back.  Here is what he had to say about his own writings:-

আমার লিখন ফোটে পথধারে

ক্ষণিক কালের ফুলে

চলিতে চলিতে দেখে যে  তাহারে

চলিতে চলিতে ভুলে ||

I made it into my about page in this blog. Mine is:-

My musings are passing flowers
Blossomed on the side of the road
Only to be glimpsed by the roadies
Who forget them once they strode…

And that brings me to try my luck on translating more of Tagore. He did not do justice to the alliteration or the scope of his own poem in English. I with my feeble imagination, tried to tie the translation back to it’s root.

Here is what he did with “চিত্ত যেথা ভয় শুন্য”

————————

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

—————

On it’s own right – it is great. But compare it with the bengali one:-

চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য উচ্চ যেথা শির, জ্ঞান যেথা মুক্ত, যেথা গৃহের প্রাচীর

আপন প্রাংগণতলে দিবস-শর্বরী বসুধারে রাখে নাই খণড ক্ষুদ্র করি,

যেথা বাক্য হৃদযের উতসমুখ হতে উচ্ছসিয়যা উঠে, যেথা নির্বারিত স্রোতে,

দেশে দেশে দিশে দিশে কর্মধারা ধায় অজস্র সহস্রবিধ চরিতার্থতায়,

যেথা তুচ্ছ আচারের মরু-বালু-রাশি বিচারের স্রোতঃপথ ফেলে নাই গ্রাসি –

পৌরুষেরে করেনি শতধা, নিত্য যেথা তুমি সর্ব কর্ম-চিংতা-আনংদের নেতা,

নিজ হস্তে নির্দয় আঘাত করি পিতঃ, ভারতেরে সেই স্বর্গে করো জাগরিত ||

——————–

Here is what I have done with it:-

—Noga’s Bogus Version —

Where the soul is fearless and the head is held high

Where freedom of knowledge persists

And a world exists

Which on every night and day

Keeps the shackles of domestic walls at bay

And is neither fragmented or small

By any narrowness at all…

Where ideas fountain out

From the openings in the soul…

And flows in thousands of streams – around the cosmos

And achieve it’s goal…

Where the rill of the reasons bed

Is not rendered dead

By the dreary sands of silly habit

Where potence still has it’s exhibit…

Where every joy , action and  thought even regular

Is guided by thou, as the leader…

O father, please strike our terrene

So that it may awake into your heaven.

——————————————-

PS. Let me know how it feels. Please do remember a MacBook pro and lots of dictionary is there to help me out.

Following The Footsteps of The Giants

Science, is a collaborative enterprise. This is what Carl Sagan had to say about science. And like only Sagan could, he gave us mind boggling examples to back up the claim.

In 1655, a young Dutch enthusiast was looking the night sky with telescope, as we see it. He wondered whether there is life on the other planets or not. He thought that availability of water in liquid form was essential for existence of life and therefore the properties of water should vary from planet to planet, since the kind of water that is found on Earth would instantly freeze on Jupiter and vaporize on Venus. He even reported observing dark and bright spots on the surface of planet Mars and Jupiter. This he explained could only be justified by existence of water and ice on those planets. In general, he wondered how the Mars would be, as a shelter for extra terrestrial life. He was Christiaan Huygens, the father of theoretical physics.

On October 19, 1899 a 17-year-old young American climbed a cherry tree to cut off dead limbs. He was transfixed by the sky, and his imagination grew. In his own recollection:

“On this day I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn . . . and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars…”

This young American, was none other than Robert H. Goddard, the founder of liquid fueled Rocket. He was transfixed on going out of the blue planet, and planting his foot on other planet. But he knew, he might be way out of his time, so he fixed his energy on going to the moon. Mars was in his dreams.

And it is going on today. We are following the same footmarks by the Giants, before us. On 10th October, 1960 C.C.C.P fired a probe at Mars. That was the beginning of the *real* Mission To Mars. And, still after 50 years of the first failed try, we are firing probes at Mars, and trying to get the 1st Manned mission to it.  A toast to the journey that is science. Find more about it here.

It does not end here. In fact, it has only began. Nearly after 350 years it was conceived in the mind of Huygens, the journey, is still ongoing.

The above, is what we can see. The below is what a man longed to see, the landscape of Mars.

 

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See for yourself, thou non-believers! Chaos & Collatz

Ah, this is a fun post, just was wondering about our paper, and whether there is solid proof about existence of Chaos, in Collatz. Here are the phase space imagery:-

Phase Space - Collatz

Phase Space Collatz 2

The idea is, one of these was generated by some 300 digit decimal, and another by 600 digit decimal number’s walk into Collatz Convergence. The phase space diagram looks exactly  same for both. Hail Chaos, possibly it would put an end to the Conjecture.

Systems of Belief And Science – A comparison between Science And Religion

Today, it is Eid, and tomorrow it would be Ganesh Puja, in India & world wide. While it is great to have festivity, and better to have festivity without less and less reason, I can not but wonder about the global delusion called religion.

Human, by nature are inquisitive. They, by virtue of an overgrown cortex, started asking questions a long time ago. For those who are intrigued by the way "How we came here" please do yourself a favor and watch this:-

 

The Ascent of Man

Human, and every other race and species were not created out of imagination of some celestial being, but by blind chances. And we, as human did really well to partially realize that. This, however brings a question, what is the thin line between fact & fiction? How we know that what we are correct – when we talk about science, and just perhaps bluntly wrong, while accepting religion as an alternate theory?

The case is presented here, the key differences between the philosophy/ideal of science versus that of religion.

1. Assume you are in a crime scene, and trying to find out the criminal. How would you find him/her? By the nature of the crime of course, by virtue of what evidence he/she left. Question remains however, why the crime was committed? What was the motivation behind it? In this perspective, science differs from religion. Let’s see why. We know the complexity of the structures in Universe, and we know what complex organisms give birth to slightly more complex organism. Also we know sometimes, organism reduces complexity to became more streamlined to need – example snakes lost their legs. By virtue of this, one who possibly created the universe would be so complex, question would arise for his origin. And his motive, why he created it? Science, albeit rhetorically [Mind you science is there to reason with you] answers the motive – "There was no reason". Religion imposes human understanding on the reason of creation, Science avoids the question, stating it does not know. At least, not yet.
2. This brings to the second part, when you don’t know something – please keep the mouth shut. This has been the philosophy of science from long. While with religion, when anytime a question is not to be found an answer for, an all powerful God would be created, and duly, the answer is "God Knoweth" or "God is the reason for everything".
3. The most hard hitting point, on which I became and atheist, is that of Judgment. Science does not judge people, or phenomenon, it merely states what a person is, what a phenomenon is. Religion does. While it is agreeable to have some kind of bounds on the nature of man – who are hardwired to do nasty things, it is not right to judge people, cause there is no power vested upon anyone to judge another one. But let’s be judgmental for an instance. And assume that someone created a laboratory – where for the sake of what none knows – he inflicts pain, and pleasure into the lab animals, and that is exactly what makes him happy. How would you judge that guy? A sadomasochistic pervert? Now look into the Universe, look into the bio diversity, and see that ones survival is surely ones death. If this would be created by an Individual, all powerful he might be, but the ultimate "sadomasochistic pervert" he surely is. Science is the only path that is theistic enough to disagree, that such a person could ever exist, because if he does, then the living beings are helpless, and living is not worth it. However, that is not what religion believes in. I personally believe that if there is a God, and there can be [albeit very feeble or no evidence] he definitely does not have a say on how the Universe works, that is, he is not sadomasochistic.

I hereby refuse to believe in religion, proclaiming a sadomasochistic God. Science refuse the sadomasochism, hence I took shelter in Science.
Let Science prevail.
Amen to that, and happy festivities.

Chaos is the God

So, this is the post – just after leaving MS, all set up, and I thought I would say hi, again.

The whole of existence human think about there is a purpose – to his/her life, there is a master plan – there is some big insight he is missing – and he becomes adherent to a deep sense of something that can not be explained.
The mystery of missing answers drives them into spiritualism – and that is how you get  religion.

Invent a GOD – who is answer to all possible questions for which human kind is yet to get the answers. But that can not be a solution. Setting up GOD to end the recursive construction of reality fumbles when we ask questions like – "Who created that God guy anyways?".

For those people who want to get into the reality here is it "there is no design, no master plan – no purpose in life – apart from the ridiculous wish to immortalize the gene pool through our progeny".
But even that is not a plan – a mere side-effect at best of the Cosmic fugue.

I don’t like the idea – that I am here for nothing. I am not telling you that you have to like the idea. You do not have to like an idea to accept it as a truth. And as a matter of fact – almost all truths I have encountered – I did not like much of them.
But that was my delusion when I was very young – "Man is born to do some greatness".
Now it is not.
I know now that am just a machine – fairly complex one at cosmic scale – but still a machine – whose job is to reproduce – nothing else. In the endgame I would be judged on my performance of what kind of progeny did I procreated. That is all there in life.

All the commandments I am obeying – are set of local rules from the time when I was conceived, and even today. Small local rules making havoc – on macroscopic levels.

Now, I see the joke.

Whole of my life, since I was a kid – I searched and searched for answers to questions – which almost none could answer – at least not the people whom I grew up with. I got mature, and with more and more learning – made me the man I am today.
And today I can safely claim I know the basics of how things are. I know the answer. I know the answer of how I exist today, if not the why.

It is chaos. Chaos is the GOD. If there is anything that can have a God status in this Universe, it is Chaos. Chaos is that there is – Chaos is that ever was – and Chaos is that ever would be.

Stability of matter – or spontaneous conversion of unconscious matter into consciousness – are result of Chaos, a possibility I never thought of. But it is. I have, rather say a proof – that would evidently establish the fact that doing simple arithmetic operation like

42 = (9 X 6) base 13

can be seen as digital chaos. Chaos is not about having no rules. Chaos is about having simple rules – very simple ones and then making the application of that grow – both in time and in space.

The above image are of Monarch Butterflies – and they are as much created by chaos – and simple rules as

the horrid looking stonefish here. The face of Katrina that makes her India’s heartthrob is indebted to Chaos in

the same way as the girl next door. All chance – all local rules. The invisible hand of Chaos. What is real then? Only one thing  – Chaos. Every other thing would be destroyed by the cosmic dance of Shiva – who is the bringer of Chaos. But from Chaos would come attractors – and with attractors comes stability – and creation.

This is the joke – that there is a really a power out there, a destroyer of Universe, a creator of consciousness, but this power – neither care a thing about stability or creation nor itself is conscious.

I would end this with some verse written 5 thousand years ago, in Rig Veda:-

There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?

There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.

Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.

Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.

Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.

Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen
– perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not –
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps He does not know.

Amen to that.