"Don't Mathematize me!!", she yelled.
"Aarrr!! This is the revenge of the sadistic line segment! Thou shalt obey!", he cried with a gleam in his eye.
"Oh please! I'll do anything!", she implored.
He blinked briefly while some (un)savoury thoughts passed through his mind. Dauntless, he rambled on about circles, angles, and other ... ZZzzzzzzzzz.
(fade out)
(Announcer's voice) : Mathematics - the miracle soporific. Please consult with your health care provider and get your prescription TODAY!
Friday, November 30, 2007
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Horn OK, Please!
I was looking up "Indian English" on Wikipedia today, in an attempt to try and figure out what it is that I speak (no clue), and came across singly *the* most unintelligible article I've ever read on that (otherwise amazing) website.
Here are some pearls :
1. In devanagiri script of Hindi, all alveolar plosives of English are transcribed as their retroflex counterparts (so that they can't be flexed back)
2. All major native languages of India lack interdental fricatives (because we brush our teeth?)
3. Mostly in south India, some speakers allophonically further change the voiced retroflex plosive to voiced retroflex flap ... (egad!)
Well, fuck me, but can someone speak English please?
Some strange facts, though : The following are things Wikipedia claims are normal only in Indian English, whereas I was under the impression it was totally natural everywhere .. well, everywhere except America!
1. The use of the word "gift" as a verb
2. "pass out" (as in, to graduate from college/school)
3. "go for a toss" (as in, a plan goes phut)
4. Use of "Respected Sir" while starting a formal letter
5. Saying "one patty" (as in "two beef patties")
6. Use of the word "dress" to refer to any clothes (male or female)
... and more like that. Kinda fun, reading this :)
Friday, June 15, 2007
Hugo Weaving
Interesting Wiki-Trivia :
Hugo Weaving, of Elrond and Agent Smith fame, is the same guy who played Douglas Jardine in the old Bodyline series that aired in the 80s. Boy, this takes me back. Interesting, huh?
Hugo Weaving, of Elrond and Agent Smith fame, is the same guy who played Douglas Jardine in the old Bodyline series that aired in the 80s. Boy, this takes me back. Interesting, huh?
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Mark Shuttleworth
An interview with the man was posted here. From the interview :
"Free software is part of a broader phenomenon, which is a shift toward recognizing the value of shared work. Historically, shared stuff had a very bad name. The reputation was that people always abused shared things, and in the physical world, something that is shared and abused becomes worthless. In the digital world, I think we have the inverse effect, where something that is shared can become more valuable than something that is closely held, as long as it is both shared and contributed to by everybody who is sharing in it."
I am yet to see an an interview in which this guy does not talk sense. With all the GPLv3 debate hitting the fan, it seems like the right time to remember the ideas that led to open-source being the phenomenon it is today.
"Free software is part of a broader phenomenon, which is a shift toward recognizing the value of shared work. Historically, shared stuff had a very bad name. The reputation was that people always abused shared things, and in the physical world, something that is shared and abused becomes worthless. In the digital world, I think we have the inverse effect, where something that is shared can become more valuable than something that is closely held, as long as it is both shared and contributed to by everybody who is sharing in it."
I am yet to see an an interview in which this guy does not talk sense. With all the GPLv3 debate hitting the fan, it seems like the right time to remember the ideas that led to open-source being the phenomenon it is today.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Fly Catcher
This morning I found my trousers uwearable because the zip caught and would not come undone. I swore, changed my clothes, and headed out for the day. I returned to find this note taped to the crotch of the aforementioned trousers :
How dare you pile such unspeakable insults on this here voiceless zip! Has it not given its self wholly into your ungrateful service? Has it not plied its unlubricated trade tirelessly up and down thy vile crotch? Has it not ever endeavoured to provide complete and utter fulfilment without ever so much as catching onto one solitary pubic hair lest it unwittingly hurt you by doing so?
Be it upon thy head, young man, that you have caused unwarranted grief to a poor, defenseless zip, and pray that this act does not bring down upon thee wrath of the zip gods! Beseech the lords that they do not unleash upon thee that pent up fury in the form of The Fly Catcher - one that will wait until you have run out of underpants and forgotten to do thy laundry, and then spring upon thee to bite thee in thy witless balls!
How dare you pile such unspeakable insults on this here voiceless zip! Has it not given its self wholly into your ungrateful service? Has it not plied its unlubricated trade tirelessly up and down thy vile crotch? Has it not ever endeavoured to provide complete and utter fulfilment without ever so much as catching onto one solitary pubic hair lest it unwittingly hurt you by doing so?
Be it upon thy head, young man, that you have caused unwarranted grief to a poor, defenseless zip, and pray that this act does not bring down upon thee wrath of the zip gods! Beseech the lords that they do not unleash upon thee that pent up fury in the form of The Fly Catcher - one that will wait until you have run out of underpants and forgotten to do thy laundry, and then spring upon thee to bite thee in thy witless balls!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Fast Car
The laughter around him fades into the background. The girl in front of him continues to chatter away, and he stares, bleary-eyed, pretending to listen. He looks about him - a seedy bar in a seedy part of town. Two blocks from school. Yes, school - what a sham! The endless monotony of sitting through lectures which he doesn't understand, with friends who know him and yet, they don't understand.
The girl is talking, "... and it's in red too, my favourite colour! It purrs like a kitten when you revv it up. Do you want to take a ride in it?" Oh yes, her car. Delightfully mind-numbing.
He stands up and walks out - the girl chasing behind. He stops and looks about him - the full effect of his impotence hits him in the chest. Where am I going? Dad's broke and a drunk, and Mom's run away with someone with a job, with a future. He can't blame her - she deserved a better life - and she gave it her best effort, but Dad is just too far gone to respond.
She's talking again "... oh Come on! It'll be fun. Just you and me driving in the moonlight!"
"You got a fast car,
Is it fast enough so we can fly away
We've got to make a decision.
Leave tonight or live and die this way."
-- Fast Car, Tracy Chapman
The girl is talking, "... and it's in red too, my favourite colour! It purrs like a kitten when you revv it up. Do you want to take a ride in it?" Oh yes, her car. Delightfully mind-numbing.
He stands up and walks out - the girl chasing behind. He stops and looks about him - the full effect of his impotence hits him in the chest. Where am I going? Dad's broke and a drunk, and Mom's run away with someone with a job, with a future. He can't blame her - she deserved a better life - and she gave it her best effort, but Dad is just too far gone to respond.
She's talking again "... oh Come on! It'll be fun. Just you and me driving in the moonlight!"
"You got a fast car,
Is it fast enough so we can fly away
We've got to make a decision.
Leave tonight or live and die this way."
-- Fast Car, Tracy Chapman
Mensa hilariousness
Another little internet-gem :
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners. None of them got through spell check.
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners. None of them got through spell check.
1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off these bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
And the pick of the literature:
18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Smiles
Found this online somewhere ...
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are known to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are known to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Hannibal Rising
Was dying to read this one because it talks of his youth and the reasons behind his .. err ... evil?
Anyways, book was a bit of a disappointment. Lots of Shibumi-meets-CountofMonteCristo going on, but really the major problem was he concentrated too much on Lecter himself. See, my belief is that the reason Silence of the Lambs was such a wonderful depiction of Lecter is that, well, it wasn't! Lecter was merely something that happened in the background while Clarice went hunting for the mad butcher-guy, and that leant so much more power to the imagination to create Lecter in the image of, well, Anthony Hopkins :)
But sadly, when you focus just on Lecter and his own personal ambitions, it brings too much detail and robs the reader of the pleasure of imagining his evil-ness (evil-lity? evilfulness? what the f*@!# is the word?).
Conclusion : Cool book, but not memorable in the least.
Anyways, book was a bit of a disappointment. Lots of Shibumi-meets-CountofMonteCristo going on, but really the major problem was he concentrated too much on Lecter himself. See, my belief is that the reason Silence of the Lambs was such a wonderful depiction of Lecter is that, well, it wasn't! Lecter was merely something that happened in the background while Clarice went hunting for the mad butcher-guy, and that leant so much more power to the imagination to create Lecter in the image of, well, Anthony Hopkins :)
But sadly, when you focus just on Lecter and his own personal ambitions, it brings too much detail and robs the reader of the pleasure of imagining his evil-ness (evil-lity? evilfulness? what the f*@!# is the word?).
Conclusion : Cool book, but not memorable in the least.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Tolkien is dead, Long Live Tolkien
What a wonderful afternoon! Went and picked up The Children of Hurin, and went to the coffee shop to read it. Meanwhile, of course, a thunderstorm breaks out. I read it a bit, the storm abates, and I head back home before it restarts.
Sure enough, now that I am back home, ass on the couch, writing this here blog, the storm has just broken out in all its thunderous glory and is threatening to break my window panes. But I can tell you - this is THE most joyous feeling the world - inside reading Tolkien with the world shattering around you!
What can I say? So far, the book has definitely lived upto expectations. The story of Turin/Nienor is the same as that of The Silmarillion - not as terse though, but it retains the same sense of history that pervades all of Tolkien's works. In his own words :
"I doubt myself about the undertaking (to write The Silmarillion). Part of the attraction of The L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background : an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in the sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed"
-- J.R.R. Tolkien (Letters, pg. 333)
This book definitely does reveal new "unattainable vistas" by the passing mention of Vala, Maia, Feanor, etc. and at the same time describes in great detail some of the stories which are in themselves only given a passing mention in The L.R. Lovely day!
And to top it all, I am going to spend the evening watching Pan's Labyrinth. Oh the Joy!
Sure enough, now that I am back home, ass on the couch, writing this here blog, the storm has just broken out in all its thunderous glory and is threatening to break my window panes. But I can tell you - this is THE most joyous feeling the world - inside reading Tolkien with the world shattering around you!
What can I say? So far, the book has definitely lived upto expectations. The story of Turin/Nienor is the same as that of The Silmarillion - not as terse though, but it retains the same sense of history that pervades all of Tolkien's works. In his own words :
"I doubt myself about the undertaking (to write The Silmarillion). Part of the attraction of The L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background : an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in the sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed"
-- J.R.R. Tolkien (Letters, pg. 333)
This book definitely does reveal new "unattainable vistas" by the passing mention of Vala, Maia, Feanor, etc. and at the same time describes in great detail some of the stories which are in themselves only given a passing mention in The L.R. Lovely day!
And to top it all, I am going to spend the evening watching Pan's Labyrinth. Oh the Joy!
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Free Will
The following are my thoughts on the quintessential human idea we call Free Will : Humans consider themselves vastly different from other animals because of this notion that we are self-aware (while other animals are not) and are hence more "in control" of what we do, because we can view our own brains objectively and thus arrive at a conclusion from a given set of parameters - ie. we can "prove" to ourselves that our decisions are "correct" (not in the right-or-wrong sense of the word, but in that we do not do things contrary to our own internal set of principles, however loose those morals might be).
However, let us closely examine this notion of Free Will from a very simplistic perspective - one of making a day-to-day decision of, say, "Should I study today or should I just relax and have a good time?" - I choose this not because it is important, but quite the reverse - it seems to have all the qualities of an unimportant decision and therefore the best guinea pig for any theory about decision-making. Also, it so happens, this was the first decision I made today before deciding to write this article.
Now, when we make such a decision we would like to imagine that we are making it to satisfy some need (in a very hunter-gatherer sense of the word) as against doing it because circumstances force us to choose one instead of the other (ie. there did not seem to be any compulsion to study or do otherwise this morning). So why did I choose not to study? If we believe in Free Will (as we would like), I did it because I consciously wanted to give myself a "better life", and this choice pointed towards that "better life" (albeit temporary, it is better nonetheless). So now comes the harder question - How do we know what a "better life" is?
Here again, we have two options - either we have an intuitive sense (coming from emotions such as hope, joy, satisfaction) that relaxation is better than study/work, or someone has, in the past, told us that relaxation is better, and we have naively believed them (note: the second option includes the possibility that everyone we have ever met believes that relaxation is better, and therefore we also believe it - this does not make the decision any less naive - reliance on a collective human "knowledge" is even worse than reliance on one person's statement). So, again, if we believe in Free Will, we would like to believe that this notion of a "better life" arises out of our own emotions, and, eventually our brain/soul.
We go down one more level - where do these emotions come from? The notion of joy is only tangible at the level of a joyous moment. This can be likened to living a moment vicariously : for instance, when we watch a movie, we feel happy if "they lived happily ever after". Similarly, we experience happiness "through" those events in our own lives - ie. If a person had never had a single happy moment in his life, he would not know what happiness is!! Hence, we see that when we talk of an emotion, we are actually talking about the experiences that give us that emotion - the emotion itself is lost in a sea of memories and day dreams of the future. By itself, an emotion is vacuous. I do not mean to be a wet blanket, but it seems like any emotion is so intangible, that it actually IS only a collection of experiences which we categorise into one.
This is a hypothesis, but I hope whoever reads this is convinced of its veracity.
So now, we can explore this emotion further to find the root of Free Will. As we have seen earlier, it is these emotions that lead us to make a decision - but what precedes these emotions in this "flowchart" of decision-making?
The experiences : An experience (by this, I mean, any event in our lives) is, at the end of the day, defined by our perception of it (This idea is borrowed from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave", or, more recently, the Matrix movies). Hence, any experience, is governed by our five senses - which in turn, are governed by the electrostatic forces that move through our neurons from the various sense organs to the brain. Here, I mean that people with synesthesia, for instance, would have a very different experience watching a movie from a person who doesn't.
So now (and we appear to be closer to the destination), we see that any decision is made because of the firing of neurons through our body, which, in turn, (most of us would agree) are based on the "immutable" laws of physics.
Hence, if we believe in Free Will, we must believe that these laws of physics are, in fact, very much mutable (This idea arose last night in a very interesting conversation with a friend, and from a scene in the movie Waking Life, which has culminated in this article - the conversation revolved around the idea that all of physics can be viewed as a forest where each axiom/hypothesis is a tree, and the only axioms that survive are the ones whose roots do not interfere with those of a larger and longer established tree. We humans are merely blindfolded creatures walking around, bumping into the occasional branch. The questions of "who planted the seeds?" and "Which tree came first?" were not addressed due to intellectual cowardliness). Back to the laws of physics - if these laws were not mutable, then "they" would govern everything we do, and hence we have no Free Will. So, if we believe in Free Will, then we must believe that physical laws change continuously as we make decisions.
Many mathematicians, and physicists, would like to blame all of this on "quantum" behaviour ie. the fact that all matter is not actually "particles", but at a subatomic level, everything is a "probability", and particles cease to exist. It is difficult to disagree with that - it seems "too appealing not to be true" (an idea widely accepted in mathematics is that something that is beautiful is more likely to be true than something that isn't - a contrapositive idea to that of G.H. Hardy : "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.")
So we have arrived at a conclusion (somewhat) that if Free Will were to exist, then all our actions, and all the reasons behind those actions (note that I consider the very decision to do something an "action", and not the "reason") are governed by probabilities, and hence are in a constant state of "flux" as it were. This leads us inexorably towards an idea made popular by Buddhism (here I am definitely leaning on a very Fritjoff Capra-esque argument) - that of "Impermanence". Buddhism, of course, even goes further to say that since Impermanence is so fundamental to life, that the best way to cope with life's travails is to avoid attachment to all things in life, because everything is ephemeral. I don't consider myself learned enough to make such a bold statement, and I feel I have been arrogant enough in the expression of these ideas that I must stop here.
In closing, we examine the conclusion - I use the word "conclusion" rather loosely. For what is a conclusion? As in the case of most complex questions, a "conclusion" is merely a restatement of the original question with an emphasis on a different aspect of the question, thereby introducing us to a new line of thought, rather than making a final fullstop. Of course, I never did state the original question - a situation I must remedy. The question is this :
Should we believe in Free Will? And if we do, what are the logical conclusions we must arrive at?
However, let us closely examine this notion of Free Will from a very simplistic perspective - one of making a day-to-day decision of, say, "Should I study today or should I just relax and have a good time?" - I choose this not because it is important, but quite the reverse - it seems to have all the qualities of an unimportant decision and therefore the best guinea pig for any theory about decision-making. Also, it so happens, this was the first decision I made today before deciding to write this article.
Now, when we make such a decision we would like to imagine that we are making it to satisfy some need (in a very hunter-gatherer sense of the word) as against doing it because circumstances force us to choose one instead of the other (ie. there did not seem to be any compulsion to study or do otherwise this morning). So why did I choose not to study? If we believe in Free Will (as we would like), I did it because I consciously wanted to give myself a "better life", and this choice pointed towards that "better life" (albeit temporary, it is better nonetheless). So now comes the harder question - How do we know what a "better life" is?
Here again, we have two options - either we have an intuitive sense (coming from emotions such as hope, joy, satisfaction) that relaxation is better than study/work, or someone has, in the past, told us that relaxation is better, and we have naively believed them (note: the second option includes the possibility that everyone we have ever met believes that relaxation is better, and therefore we also believe it - this does not make the decision any less naive - reliance on a collective human "knowledge" is even worse than reliance on one person's statement). So, again, if we believe in Free Will, we would like to believe that this notion of a "better life" arises out of our own emotions, and, eventually our brain/soul.
We go down one more level - where do these emotions come from? The notion of joy is only tangible at the level of a joyous moment. This can be likened to living a moment vicariously : for instance, when we watch a movie, we feel happy if "they lived happily ever after". Similarly, we experience happiness "through" those events in our own lives - ie. If a person had never had a single happy moment in his life, he would not know what happiness is!! Hence, we see that when we talk of an emotion, we are actually talking about the experiences that give us that emotion - the emotion itself is lost in a sea of memories and day dreams of the future. By itself, an emotion is vacuous. I do not mean to be a wet blanket, but it seems like any emotion is so intangible, that it actually IS only a collection of experiences which we categorise into one.
This is a hypothesis, but I hope whoever reads this is convinced of its veracity.
So now, we can explore this emotion further to find the root of Free Will. As we have seen earlier, it is these emotions that lead us to make a decision - but what precedes these emotions in this "flowchart" of decision-making?
The experiences : An experience (by this, I mean, any event in our lives) is, at the end of the day, defined by our perception of it (This idea is borrowed from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave", or, more recently, the Matrix movies). Hence, any experience, is governed by our five senses - which in turn, are governed by the electrostatic forces that move through our neurons from the various sense organs to the brain. Here, I mean that people with synesthesia, for instance, would have a very different experience watching a movie from a person who doesn't.
So now (and we appear to be closer to the destination), we see that any decision is made because of the firing of neurons through our body, which, in turn, (most of us would agree) are based on the "immutable" laws of physics.
Hence, if we believe in Free Will, we must believe that these laws of physics are, in fact, very much mutable (This idea arose last night in a very interesting conversation with a friend, and from a scene in the movie Waking Life, which has culminated in this article - the conversation revolved around the idea that all of physics can be viewed as a forest where each axiom/hypothesis is a tree, and the only axioms that survive are the ones whose roots do not interfere with those of a larger and longer established tree. We humans are merely blindfolded creatures walking around, bumping into the occasional branch. The questions of "who planted the seeds?" and "Which tree came first?" were not addressed due to intellectual cowardliness). Back to the laws of physics - if these laws were not mutable, then "they" would govern everything we do, and hence we have no Free Will. So, if we believe in Free Will, then we must believe that physical laws change continuously as we make decisions.
Many mathematicians, and physicists, would like to blame all of this on "quantum" behaviour ie. the fact that all matter is not actually "particles", but at a subatomic level, everything is a "probability", and particles cease to exist. It is difficult to disagree with that - it seems "too appealing not to be true" (an idea widely accepted in mathematics is that something that is beautiful is more likely to be true than something that isn't - a contrapositive idea to that of G.H. Hardy : "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.")
So we have arrived at a conclusion (somewhat) that if Free Will were to exist, then all our actions, and all the reasons behind those actions (note that I consider the very decision to do something an "action", and not the "reason") are governed by probabilities, and hence are in a constant state of "flux" as it were. This leads us inexorably towards an idea made popular by Buddhism (here I am definitely leaning on a very Fritjoff Capra-esque argument) - that of "Impermanence". Buddhism, of course, even goes further to say that since Impermanence is so fundamental to life, that the best way to cope with life's travails is to avoid attachment to all things in life, because everything is ephemeral. I don't consider myself learned enough to make such a bold statement, and I feel I have been arrogant enough in the expression of these ideas that I must stop here.
In closing, we examine the conclusion - I use the word "conclusion" rather loosely. For what is a conclusion? As in the case of most complex questions, a "conclusion" is merely a restatement of the original question with an emphasis on a different aspect of the question, thereby introducing us to a new line of thought, rather than making a final fullstop. Of course, I never did state the original question - a situation I must remedy. The question is this :
Should we believe in Free Will? And if we do, what are the logical conclusions we must arrive at?
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Revenge
The blood. So this is what it looks like. The colours are so bright. The red, so deep.
The face. Looks so serene. Is this how they all look? No more the hideous faces twisted in rage. No more the thoughts bent on malice. So quiet.
The blade. Shining brighter than ever before. The death knell to all her foes. Oh the grandeur of it all! The expansive arc, the swift plunge straight through the heart, a cry escapes his lips .. and then silence.
The silence. Years of meditation should have prepared me for this. Blind-folded, hunting in the dark in the forests of ...., killing for survival, and surviving for the kill. The ultimate kill. Now it is done, then why the nameless fear?
The knife.The blood-soaked shirt reveals its deadly deed. Fate has a cruel sense of humour.
The dark. There he stands - waiting. A shadow cast under the streetlight. The hound by his side licks its lips, and awaits the feeding. It betrays no urgency, for some kills must be savoured to the very end.
The end. And the darkness comes up to meet me.
The face. Looks so serene. Is this how they all look? No more the hideous faces twisted in rage. No more the thoughts bent on malice. So quiet.
The blade. Shining brighter than ever before. The death knell to all her foes. Oh the grandeur of it all! The expansive arc, the swift plunge straight through the heart, a cry escapes his lips .. and then silence.
The silence. Years of meditation should have prepared me for this. Blind-folded, hunting in the dark in the forests of ...., killing for survival, and surviving for the kill. The ultimate kill. Now it is done, then why the nameless fear?
The knife.The blood-soaked shirt reveals its deadly deed. Fate has a cruel sense of humour.
The dark. There he stands - waiting. A shadow cast under the streetlight. The hound by his side licks its lips, and awaits the feeding. It betrays no urgency, for some kills must be savoured to the very end.
The end. And the darkness comes up to meet me.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Ideas worth spreading
Just saw this video of Jeff Han - un-fuckin-believable. Read through TED's website, and find it most intriguing. Had no idea something like this exists, let alone be available free on the internet for geeks like me to have a field day.
Well, hopefully there are more events like this one, because this stuff is beyond compare.
Well, hopefully there are more events like this one, because this stuff is beyond compare.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Brsingr?
From "Magician: Apprentice" by Raymond E. Feist :
"As the trolls entered the water, a flash of light exploded behind Pug's eyes. A searing pain ripped across his forehead as letters of fire seemed to appear in his mind...Without thinking, he mouthed the incantation, each word vanishing from his mind's eye as he spoke it."
Paolini, are you reading this?
"As the trolls entered the water, a flash of light exploded behind Pug's eyes. A searing pain ripped across his forehead as letters of fire seemed to appear in his mind...Without thinking, he mouthed the incantation, each word vanishing from his mind's eye as he spoke it."
Paolini, are you reading this?
Philip K Dick
Recently saw A Scanner Darkly and was deeply impressed by the movie and the theme. Just found this by stumbling onto it online. Although it might just be the ramblings of a nutcase with an overdeveloped sense of self-importance, it makes for an interesting read.
Path of Dreams
Olóre Mallë, or the Path of Dreams, is the road that once led from the shores of Valinor (not too far from Kôr), by devious routes, to the land of Men - a path trod by children of the forefathers of Men. Children who have once played on the shores of Valinor and heard the distant songs of the Solosimpi will ever after feel the yearning in their hearts to fare forth into distant lands.
A concept that was abandoned by Tolkien himself early in the construction of the mythology of Middle Earth, Olóre Mallë makes its first appearance in the Book of Lost Tales, in a tale told by Lindo to Eriol (aka Ælfwine).
This seems like an apt thought to begin a blog - sure to become a place of lost ideas and forgotten thoughts. It may, perchance, even mean something someday. Till then, it will remain a lonely spot in this ever-expanding alternate universe we call the Internet.
A concept that was abandoned by Tolkien himself early in the construction of the mythology of Middle Earth, Olóre Mallë makes its first appearance in the Book of Lost Tales, in a tale told by Lindo to Eriol (aka Ælfwine).
This seems like an apt thought to begin a blog - sure to become a place of lost ideas and forgotten thoughts. It may, perchance, even mean something someday. Till then, it will remain a lonely spot in this ever-expanding alternate universe we call the Internet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)