I am notoriously unpopular for my pro-American attitude partly because of my blunt straightforwardness which might be considered extreme. While different people I argue with have different reasons to find faults with American culture some say their culture is not deep and is superficial and materialistic.
See, cultures that are based on or adapt modern science are bound to be like that. In fact the materialism is what separates impulsive judgements from rigor of the reasoning. Sure impulsive judgements might be handy at times but more often than not they are are not dependable with the given size of human population and scale of interaction on the planet.
Older cultures obviously are not based on modern approach to reasoning and tend to associate mysterious depths to understanding of life etc. Thanks to the western influence on the approach of reasoning we have tools to embrace uncertainties in a much better way. Why should we take that embracing uncertainty is a good thing? See, this is based on western influence and western cultures have had to evolve under harsher conditions of life because of climate and landscapes etc. Tropical countries naturally support life without requiring much effort from the human side at least not on the scale needed in colder climates. Well why we do we need to live in harsher climates? Well as I said before the size of human population you know, we can not cram lot of people in one place without dropping the individualistic animal instincts within us. Why do you think western influence resonates with many modulo survival fears!
Embracing uncertainty can seem to be superficial but actually it's deeper on the scale that actually matters for survival. It might seem majority of American export being "service" is superficial but re-think and adjust your views. They know how to run empire at least without repeating mistakes (on a relevant time scale). One can ask why am I so certain about my views. It's mainly because one has to instantiate at a certain level otherwise there won't be any objects of decision and I instantiate (am certain) where there is representation/room for uncertainty.
Obviously America is a big country and I don't have samples of interaction from all of it but from east coast which I believe is the strength of the US in causal terms. Coasts stimulate not just America but most countries on the planet so no big surprise. My experience in the mid-west through Madison also reinforces my hypotheses but I am glad and grateful I experienced east coast first as there are many local optima that can make people get stuck in mid-west type areas.
Showing posts with label Materialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Materialism. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Military and free market
The two most important (overriding) systemic forces are military and then free market. Free market has some influence on military but the latter overrides in case of a dead lock. There might be (are?) other meta-forces that actually "cause/control" these but these are the objective forces that can be manifested to actually make a difference in the living. It does help to detour (as long as the objective is kept in mind) into some of the spiritualities to have some entanglement effects on the forces but it's hardly replicable or communicable. One has to figure ones own way by honing the empathetical skills which are more or less like theorem proving skills in terms of communicability.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Estimating empathy
This post has been on the "Set of possible upcoming posts" for over an year now. I have been wanting to write this post since last election campaign. I just had become a big fan of Obama and his stress for inclusive politics to improve the way DC operates the US (and the world :). Then I joined Waisman center whose mission coincidentally focuses on foundations of life, developmental disorders and Neurodegenerative disorders. A few goals essentially are about "understanding" psychological disorders and especially empathy deficits that can produce dysfunctional families!! Obama had mentioned about empathy deficits in Washington while people at Waisman focus more on a social, personal level. Obviously there's empathy involved at many levels of human life.
The main reason I wanted to write about empathy was that although mentions empathy many times in his speeches and which underlies his inclusive attitude, rarely did he say how others can acquire that skill. If you think about it you quickly realize that empathy is the most basic psychological quality (instinct) that creates any value in the society! Think about stock markets, music, movies, any art for that matter, even intelligence, quest for survival etc. So it makes sense to attempt to quantify such an important quality keeping such a scale of human civilization functioning so that there are guidelines for people to try to acquire such ability in an effective way. As Scott always says the meat of non-trivial reasoning is typically in quantifying, since it captures the complexity of the task without taking about trivial (im)possibilities in the rationale-extremes.
So what tools can we rely on! My favorite is obviously computational. As I mentioned before too the notion of computation is really unifying many spheres of knowledge since it tries to model the though process of human beings that underlies every sphere of knowledge. Its impact on all fields is so insuppressibly real that if there is no impact of computer science on a field then its realisticness can be questionable! Studying emotions like empathy and qualities like intelligence are a tricky thing. But as long as we have end goals for these computational thinking can help ask real questions. A few successful examples are the quest for artificial intelligence and computational game theory which ties up computer science and economics which helps design good societal games to keep the society stimulated in a healthy way. Hence for psychologists to ask truly relevant questions about empathy or other types of emotions its important to be able to take the machinist approach.
For e.g. we can rely on tools from interactive proofs (IP) where we can convince others of the truth of the statements using some communication protocols. The IP class is very powerful that means there are lot of things can in theory be communicated with others in effect creating empathy. Of course finding the protocols itself might be exponentially hard based on what we want to communicate. Usually experience in survival (survival instinct) seems to be the closest causal reason for intelligence which can be efficiently verified (polynomial time verifiability). Isomorphisms across spheres of knowledge and across time actually indicates that and actually realizing those isomorphisms actually fascinates me and indicates robustness of our human survival instincts.
The key to pick on survival instinct as the cause is the assumption (axiom) that everyone wants to survive. But how do you communicate with those who don't view this axiom like suicide bombers etc.? Well that's why we need some sort of enforcement of axioms otherwise there can be no basis for reasoning. Usually the best way to enforce axioms is to show the benefits of having those axioms like let's say proving non-trivial theorems (consequences) of those axioms and hoping that at least one of the consequences impresses them to fall for the axioms. For e.g. people fall for America for various reasons, like money, liberty, luxuries etc. etc. Empathy can only be verified after achieving it. Actual way of achieving is like coming up with theorems. So estimation of empathy is equivalent to theorem proving which means it's NP-hard! We can only hope to achieve practical approximations assuming P!=NP.
The main reason I wanted to write about empathy was that although mentions empathy many times in his speeches and which underlies his inclusive attitude, rarely did he say how others can acquire that skill. If you think about it you quickly realize that empathy is the most basic psychological quality (instinct) that creates any value in the society! Think about stock markets, music, movies, any art for that matter, even intelligence, quest for survival etc. So it makes sense to attempt to quantify such an important quality keeping such a scale of human civilization functioning so that there are guidelines for people to try to acquire such ability in an effective way. As Scott always says the meat of non-trivial reasoning is typically in quantifying, since it captures the complexity of the task without taking about trivial (im)possibilities in the rationale-extremes.
So what tools can we rely on! My favorite is obviously computational. As I mentioned before too the notion of computation is really unifying many spheres of knowledge since it tries to model the though process of human beings that underlies every sphere of knowledge. Its impact on all fields is so insuppressibly real that if there is no impact of computer science on a field then its realisticness can be questionable! Studying emotions like empathy and qualities like intelligence are a tricky thing. But as long as we have end goals for these computational thinking can help ask real questions. A few successful examples are the quest for artificial intelligence and computational game theory which ties up computer science and economics which helps design good societal games to keep the society stimulated in a healthy way. Hence for psychologists to ask truly relevant questions about empathy or other types of emotions its important to be able to take the machinist approach.
For e.g. we can rely on tools from interactive proofs (IP) where we can convince others of the truth of the statements using some communication protocols. The IP class is very powerful that means there are lot of things can in theory be communicated with others in effect creating empathy. Of course finding the protocols itself might be exponentially hard based on what we want to communicate. Usually experience in survival (survival instinct) seems to be the closest causal reason for intelligence which can be efficiently verified (polynomial time verifiability). Isomorphisms across spheres of knowledge and across time actually indicates that and actually realizing those isomorphisms actually fascinates me and indicates robustness of our human survival instincts.
The key to pick on survival instinct as the cause is the assumption (axiom) that everyone wants to survive. But how do you communicate with those who don't view this axiom like suicide bombers etc.? Well that's why we need some sort of enforcement of axioms otherwise there can be no basis for reasoning. Usually the best way to enforce axioms is to show the benefits of having those axioms like let's say proving non-trivial theorems (consequences) of those axioms and hoping that at least one of the consequences impresses them to fall for the axioms. For e.g. people fall for America for various reasons, like money, liberty, luxuries etc. etc. Empathy can only be verified after achieving it. Actual way of achieving is like coming up with theorems. So estimation of empathy is equivalent to theorem proving which means it's NP-hard! We can only hope to achieve practical approximations assuming P!=NP.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Vacation by choice
August 2009 has been a great month in many aspects which kind of means lesser posts on my blog as well. More or less after graduating it's been harder to wander in meta space of analyzing life since I am actually living the life!
For the first time in my life every I had a vacation by choice/ Although I managed to sneak in a few hours of meetings this has been a great vacation with my friend Amy! I have taken time off from work a few times before but it's mostly been very situational and for others and not really by choice for the vacation sake! After a wonderful weekend trip to Niagara falls (trying hard not to get trapped on the Canadian side) we spent the week just in the wonder of taking a vacation!
In creating value I realized the concept of affording (not just financially) vacation is a good indicator of measuring the success! Even religions also encourage this idea by concepts like keeping sabbath etc. It's just probably trivial to acknowledge that relaxing for relaxing sake is a good idea to being balanced ensuring long-term productivity. But actually experiencing that is not so trivial experience especially for someone growing up in a lower middle class in a third world country. The fact that such experiences are possible is a good way to keep human efforts for progress stimulated!
For the first time in my life every I had a vacation by choice/ Although I managed to sneak in a few hours of meetings this has been a great vacation with my friend Amy! I have taken time off from work a few times before but it's mostly been very situational and for others and not really by choice for the vacation sake! After a wonderful weekend trip to Niagara falls (trying hard not to get trapped on the Canadian side) we spent the week just in the wonder of taking a vacation!
In creating value I realized the concept of affording (not just financially) vacation is a good indicator of measuring the success! Even religions also encourage this idea by concepts like keeping sabbath etc. It's just probably trivial to acknowledge that relaxing for relaxing sake is a good idea to being balanced ensuring long-term productivity. But actually experiencing that is not so trivial experience especially for someone growing up in a lower middle class in a third world country. The fact that such experiences are possible is a good way to keep human efforts for progress stimulated!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Affording half-knowledge
I wanted to write this post in late September 2007 when I was still figuring out how to create enough value for my work in computer vision and robotics that would be worth an average PhD from CIS department at Temple University. Growing up in a country not only with low resource/population ratio and system's quite immature (relative to US standards: look we need some standards and I prefer US standards!) it was a common thing to hear "Half-knowledge is dangerous". Such perspectives are so deeply rooted in the culture that risk taking is almost impossible (probabilistically people who take risk is roughly 0.000001=1/Million).
Risk for potential embarrassment and failure is a necessity for growth! This assumption was revived after watch season 1.4 of The Universe which inspired me to finish this post. One episode on "Beyond Big Bang" was really appealing as it showed the journey of humans' theorizing about the universe. History channel put together these events nicely in perspective of how the current established theory (still of course incomplete) about universe is an outcome of so many attempts which were either only partially correct or wrong. So essentially we all survived through "half-knowledge" phases and still do not have complete knowledge about anything. There are dangers in having half-knowledge but this is a necessary transitional stage to attaining full-knowledge as it is continuous process. So it always essential to be able to afford half-knowledge.
To afford half-knowledge we need to create value which is a very important part of the survival business. Creating value obviously needs forward filtering and backward smoothing by developing models, gathering observations and evaluating them by communicating with the rest of the human community. The key point I want to make though is that we need to start with some model, some proposal distribution, some importance weighting scheme so that we can eventually get it right. The point is there's is no point in waiting for ever to get it all right since that would mean not being able to afford half-knowledge. Scientists or systems that can afford half-knowledge are analogous "bullet-swallowers" unlike "bullet-dodgers". So questions like: When are you ready to graduate? When is a romantic relationship good enough for marriage? How much money do I need to open a company? When do you sell a product? etc. all can be answered only if we can "swallow" and create value to be able to afford half-knowledge.
Risk for potential embarrassment and failure is a necessity for growth! This assumption was revived after watch season 1.4 of The Universe which inspired me to finish this post. One episode on "Beyond Big Bang" was really appealing as it showed the journey of humans' theorizing about the universe. History channel put together these events nicely in perspective of how the current established theory (still of course incomplete) about universe is an outcome of so many attempts which were either only partially correct or wrong. So essentially we all survived through "half-knowledge" phases and still do not have complete knowledge about anything. There are dangers in having half-knowledge but this is a necessary transitional stage to attaining full-knowledge as it is continuous process. So it always essential to be able to afford half-knowledge.
To afford half-knowledge we need to create value which is a very important part of the survival business. Creating value obviously needs forward filtering and backward smoothing by developing models, gathering observations and evaluating them by communicating with the rest of the human community. The key point I want to make though is that we need to start with some model, some proposal distribution, some importance weighting scheme so that we can eventually get it right. The point is there's is no point in waiting for ever to get it all right since that would mean not being able to afford half-knowledge. Scientists or systems that can afford half-knowledge are analogous "bullet-swallowers" unlike "bullet-dodgers". So questions like: When are you ready to graduate? When is a romantic relationship good enough for marriage? How much money do I need to open a company? When do you sell a product? etc. all can be answered only if we can "swallow" and create value to be able to afford half-knowledge.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Gain from Obama campaign
Lately, I have been increasingly gravitating towards following Obama's talks in his presidential campaign. Needless to say his speeches are very enticing. His audacious "walk-through reasoning" approach is quite refreshing and rigorous and can stimulate lot of ordinary people to improve their efficiency in dealing with their day-to-day issues. He clearly stresses on a contest based on relevant observables and merit based on policies instead of fighting on something personal and irrelevant. Sounds like a computational guy to me. Alan Turing (a Computer Science hero) argued something like this on defining artificial intelligence and you can see a nice post on it by Scott here.
Now this is very refreshing to see a politician with such perspectives. A lot must be learnt from him by politicians in India and probably all around the world. To contest based on reason with rigor avoiding "easy" and "nasty" tricks is no simple task. In his interview at Google last year one of the audience asked him what he had learnt from past democrat candidates who lost the elections, he said the main mistakes were that they were not clear of what they stood for and hence became defensive when they were attacked and actually sounded like their opponents. Being clear and honest and courageous and rational all go together. It's takes a holistic approach to be rigorous and effective in getting things done.
He admits he may not be perfect and may make mistakes but will make his government very transparent that can actually unleash the true power of democracy. His repeated indications that a democratic government's success is measured by the standard of living (including freedom) of majority of the population show his strong understanding of the fundamentals. There will always be ordinary and extraordinary people in the world at any given point of time. It's the self-justified goal of humanity that the quality of life of all humans should increase. Simply speaking it should be ordinary that ordinary people should be able to dream, strive and hope to be extraordinary while pushing the bar being of extraordinary to next level. He is a great example to show subtle differences between idealism and extremism, between fundamentalism and being strong in fundamentals, between having true high-level knowledge and hand-waving.
For me Scott:Computer Science :: Barack::Politics. Scott's core love for science, his results and his talent in presenting the results and Barack's core love for democracy and his talent in pooling people together are truly truly awesome. I truly wish (unfortunately I cannot vote this time, not being a citizen) that he wins but we surely can gain a lot just from his campaign.
Now this is very refreshing to see a politician with such perspectives. A lot must be learnt from him by politicians in India and probably all around the world. To contest based on reason with rigor avoiding "easy" and "nasty" tricks is no simple task. In his interview at Google last year one of the audience asked him what he had learnt from past democrat candidates who lost the elections, he said the main mistakes were that they were not clear of what they stood for and hence became defensive when they were attacked and actually sounded like their opponents. Being clear and honest and courageous and rational all go together. It's takes a holistic approach to be rigorous and effective in getting things done.
He admits he may not be perfect and may make mistakes but will make his government very transparent that can actually unleash the true power of democracy. His repeated indications that a democratic government's success is measured by the standard of living (including freedom) of majority of the population show his strong understanding of the fundamentals. There will always be ordinary and extraordinary people in the world at any given point of time. It's the self-justified goal of humanity that the quality of life of all humans should increase. Simply speaking it should be ordinary that ordinary people should be able to dream, strive and hope to be extraordinary while pushing the bar being of extraordinary to next level. He is a great example to show subtle differences between idealism and extremism, between fundamentalism and being strong in fundamentals, between having true high-level knowledge and hand-waving.
For me Scott:Computer Science :: Barack::Politics. Scott's core love for science, his results and his talent in presenting the results and Barack's core love for democracy and his talent in pooling people together are truly truly awesome. I truly wish (unfortunately I cannot vote this time, not being a citizen) that he wins but we surely can gain a lot just from his campaign.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Entanglements and emotions
Entanglements are very commonly observed at microscopic level. These phenomenon were discovered when classical physics enabled us observing the microscopic phenomenon. The entanglements don't commonly manifest in the same way at macroscopic level but I think they do in some fashion. Think about it. Emotions like feelings of togetherness, compassion, right or wrong and on the whole the subjectivity of human beings is kind of entangling behavior. The subjectivity is like an evolving function until it is actually observed when it collapses to objectivity. The cultures which focus on the latter part of trying to observe and collapsing things to objectivity are currently leading because they are capable of supporting more biological life. The older cultures which focus on the former part cannot support life as efficiently but they have their own definition of life. They rather prefer life to be non-mechanical and mechanical life just isn't life for them! But see this is just a matter of choice. And see the choices one makes defines his or her characteristics and personality. Usually heroes stand for the objective strategies which favor purely rational arguments. As Scott put it they are bullet swallowers instead of bullet dodgers.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Streaks of thought: Streak 15
Neils Bohr once said: "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."
The founding father of Computer Science, Alan Turing also came up with a test for artificial intelligence based on observations alone. Scott's post about Turing's philosophy about machines and morals is worth a read. Also (after reminded by Scott's post) according to Aumman's theorem we have to behave based on observable priors to be considered "rational".
Einstein effectively was unproductive after generalizing his theory of relativity "for invariance results among accelerating frames" because of his trouble accepting the uncertainities underlying Nature's laws. I intend to add a full post about uncertainties but for this post I would like to say that all these statements suggest us to use concrete evidence in all walks of life instead getting drained by intangible correlations woven by emotions.
The founding father of Computer Science, Alan Turing also came up with a test for artificial intelligence based on observations alone. Scott's post about Turing's philosophy about machines and morals is worth a read. Also (after reminded by Scott's post) according to Aumman's theorem we have to behave based on observable priors to be considered "rational".
Einstein effectively was unproductive after generalizing his theory of relativity "for invariance results among accelerating frames" because of his trouble accepting the uncertainities underlying Nature's laws. I intend to add a full post about uncertainties but for this post I would like to say that all these statements suggest us to use concrete evidence in all walks of life instead getting drained by intangible correlations woven by emotions.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Exploiting structures
In one of my previous posts I mentioned that "abstraction" or "pure" is relative and is a continuous spectrum based on ones imagination capabilities. People like balance between surprises and predictability. This is because it gives non-triviality more value that lets our most basic ego survive in a modern way. The more the balance is off the more frustrating one becomes. Too many surprises or too much predictability can be frustrating in different ways. Working on "real-world" problems can be frustrating because of too messy structure and less predictability. Theorists tend to be easily frustrated by this and choose to work where things are more predictable. They work by putting a "nicer structure" (e.g. black-box model for query complexity) onto the real-world and exploit that structure in a non-trivial way. Typically since these are essentially imaginary structures one needs higher mental abilities to be able to produce. Engineers on the other hand tend to work on real-world structures directly as they can withstand more frustrations with less predictability (usually because of monetary rewards). Of course monetary rewards are proportional to the amount of work on the real-world structures. An important point to note is that both use "principled tools" for exploiting the structures. It's just that engineering tends to be more lazy (demand driven) than theory. Both are "supposed to be" scientific enterprises and essentially all human beings like exploiting structures which leads to my following paragraph.
Through out my blog you can notice hidden and explicit inclination towards capitalistic philosophy with materialism. Capitalism is based on simple premises and sophisticated creativity while communism is based on sophisticated assumptions and minimal creativity. Here I mean creativity that can be objectively verified. According to me objective verifiability is one of the major steps in human progress. This is what that led to modern standards which clearly can support unprecedented human population. A simple example is that in ancient days "killing and conquering" was an honor which can not be justified except for lack of objective materialistic understanding. Materialistic modern way can be very useful in reducing domination by race, killing etc. Since people like exploiting structures people tend to build structures of their own to work on them. Materialism can be a very useful guide to focus on real structures (including the "nicer structures" I mentioned in my last paragraph) instead of intangible unverifiable imaginary structures. Since verifiabilty is inherent in capitalism and materialism things can not go unchecked while this is not the case with communism.
Through out my blog you can notice hidden and explicit inclination towards capitalistic philosophy with materialism. Capitalism is based on simple premises and sophisticated creativity while communism is based on sophisticated assumptions and minimal creativity. Here I mean creativity that can be objectively verified. According to me objective verifiability is one of the major steps in human progress. This is what that led to modern standards which clearly can support unprecedented human population. A simple example is that in ancient days "killing and conquering" was an honor which can not be justified except for lack of objective materialistic understanding. Materialistic modern way can be very useful in reducing domination by race, killing etc. Since people like exploiting structures people tend to build structures of their own to work on them. Materialism can be a very useful guide to focus on real structures (including the "nicer structures" I mentioned in my last paragraph) instead of intangible unverifiable imaginary structures. Since verifiabilty is inherent in capitalism and materialism things can not go unchecked while this is not the case with communism.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Principle of abundance
Modern science laid the universal foundation for rational materialism. Though materialism might be incompatible with several religious beliefs true materialistic rationality can not mislead us in our search for understanding the universe. It is important that it should be true and rational materialism. In fact given the complex structure of the society our survival is currently based on, it is probably the optimal choice to take on. This is because we can then work on complexity of the universe since we can concretely measure (and hence share) our understanding of the universe in terms of "material". To efficiently study the complexity the asymptotic view of amount of resources needed and several "on average" analyses like amortized analysis have shown to be very useful for e.g. in understanding nature of computation which has contributed to understanding universe.
The key to be effective in studying complexity is to be smart enough to care about details and mature enough to have a macroscopic perspective. If a complexity theorist gets too involved in non-asymptotic details he might not be able to make any real contribution. If he is not careful enough with the details of his proofs and assumptions he will be wasteful of resources. Working on non-asymptotic details like creative engineering is an evolving profession like that of practicing law, medicine, programming where as more and more complexity is revealed it becomes more and more important. To work based on asymptotic behaviors it's important to have an abundance perception of the universe in terms of time, life, opportunities, possibilities etc. along with finiteness. If we do not work in finitistic set of assumptions things might turn out to be too abstract to be useful some times.
It is important to understand that the abundance is finitely measurable and is not free which makes the process interesting and safe.
The key to be effective in studying complexity is to be smart enough to care about details and mature enough to have a macroscopic perspective. If a complexity theorist gets too involved in non-asymptotic details he might not be able to make any real contribution. If he is not careful enough with the details of his proofs and assumptions he will be wasteful of resources. Working on non-asymptotic details like creative engineering is an evolving profession like that of practicing law, medicine, programming where as more and more complexity is revealed it becomes more and more important. To work based on asymptotic behaviors it's important to have an abundance perception of the universe in terms of time, life, opportunities, possibilities etc. along with finiteness. If we do not work in finitistic set of assumptions things might turn out to be too abstract to be useful some times.
It is important to understand that the abundance is finitely measurable and is not free which makes the process interesting and safe.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Spiritual materialism
Recently I attended a spiritual retreat organized by Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization at Peace Village in upstate NY. The retreat I attended was titled "My Self, My Work and My Life". This one was special because the theme was to discuss how to optimize your gains from life. The speakers and audience bounced around the ideas of how to "align" universal values (like to be peacful, loved, happy), thoughts and actions to maximize subjective gains and hence optimize overall gains.
Such exercises can provide us with insights that can help us to be creatively materialistic. It is not completely impossible to be creatively materiaslistic without spirituality but it can certainly help and make things lot easier. An analogical post that actually motivated the theme of this post is this.
Update: Added a picture I took at Peace Village to support my ending sentence of the post. 3:56 PM
Such exercises can provide us with insights that can help us to be creatively materialistic. It is not completely impossible to be creatively materiaslistic without spirituality but it can certainly help and make things lot easier. An analogical post that actually motivated the theme of this post is this.
Update: Added a picture I took at Peace Village to support my ending sentence of the post. 3:56 PM
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Streaks of thought: Streak 8
Thank you for shopping at our place! Thanks for your help buddy. Thank you very much for dropping me off here. Two or more parties involve in an act if and only if all of them have stakes in the act. Then why thanking? Reason for such thanking is not for the act itself but for sticking only to the act and hence helping in performing the act pleasantly to optimize everyones resources (energy, time, money). By the way all the resources that we really worry about in the current world are manifested in the form of money. Basic resources like food, clothing, shelter are not a serious concern in the age of abundance.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Realistic perception, perceptual reality
Is perception real or is reality is defined in terms of perception? This definitely reduces to the chicken-egg problem. But many deep philosophical questions are reduced to this problem. This problem is Ph-Complete (Philosophically Complete) that is if this problem is solved then any philosophical question can be answered. Now since we donot have a solution for this problem we have to focus our energies on approximations based on assumptions which is called practicality. We have to live with it. Even computer scientists cannot avoid such situations:) Lookup NP-Completeness.
Now the question I started with, is important in life to do something meanigful and worthy. Since we donot know what is the true definition of reality or perception what we can do is be efficient in balancing both. Dynamic balance of perception and reality is important in life. Live in the present. If you live too much on the past you are giving to much weight to perceptual reality and if you worry too much about future then you are having un-realistic perception. You can see a post that talks about unrealistic perception. Importance of balance in life comes from age-old wisdom. When you don't have any opinion or neither realistic perception nor perceptual reality it does not mean you are balanced - it just means you are ignorant of things around you. One has to constantly progress, do things but maintain balance. Only then balance is meanigful.
Importance of dynamic balance is hinted by Nature in it's every aspect: Earth is round, circle is a unique geometric object, there are cycles in seasons, most cosmic paths are closed even if very large. The heavenly bodies keep moving but are in equilibrium nurturing life and energy.
How can we try to achieve this balance? Science and Art are the answers. Science tries to give us realistic perception and Art contributes by stressing perceptual reality. Thus they both are, equally importantly, helping humanity. Morals, emotions etc. are like software for the hardware built by more objective Science.
Now the question I started with, is important in life to do something meanigful and worthy. Since we donot know what is the true definition of reality or perception what we can do is be efficient in balancing both. Dynamic balance of perception and reality is important in life. Live in the present. If you live too much on the past you are giving to much weight to perceptual reality and if you worry too much about future then you are having un-realistic perception. You can see a post that talks about unrealistic perception. Importance of balance in life comes from age-old wisdom. When you don't have any opinion or neither realistic perception nor perceptual reality it does not mean you are balanced - it just means you are ignorant of things around you. One has to constantly progress, do things but maintain balance. Only then balance is meanigful.
Importance of dynamic balance is hinted by Nature in it's every aspect: Earth is round, circle is a unique geometric object, there are cycles in seasons, most cosmic paths are closed even if very large. The heavenly bodies keep moving but are in equilibrium nurturing life and energy.
How can we try to achieve this balance? Science and Art are the answers. Science tries to give us realistic perception and Art contributes by stressing perceptual reality. Thus they both are, equally importantly, helping humanity. Morals, emotions etc. are like software for the hardware built by more objective Science.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Retaining relationships
We are all relatives of Adam and Eve and since 'relative' is a transitive relation we are all related to each other only to different extents. Human society and cultures weave amazing designs with relationships. There are plenty of aesthetic and real benefits from nurturing relationships. There are four key ingredients in a relationship - the objectivity and subjectivity of the two entities (people) involved. We have to be careful and rational in handling those four elements to retain or build any relationship.
A relationship it will last as long as both people involved in it find it useful in their own ways. Things get dull if their ways are almost identical and things get too messy if their ways are too different. But how do we know for sure how different two are and which is the best combination? Experimentation is inevitable and it is not wrong. Both the parties should be independent and be willing to participate in the experiments of building the relationship. There are protocols to be followed in the experiments. The protocols ensure safety simultaneously leaving some room for creativity. Different cultures have different protocols. So when we encounter change in cultures it might be a bit hard to decide which protocol to follow. But to keep things effective in life it's better to follow one's native cultures.
The usefulness of a relationship is usually both objective and subjective. The objective benefits can be easily made to be mutally win-win case by clearly and honestly applying logic. The unsurmountable problems come of course with little surprise from subjectivity. But we donot know how problematic subjectivity is until we build the relationship. If we find that subjectivity is too much of a problem then both parties can focus on objective part and limit their relationship to that level instead of ruining it. The best way not to ruin is stay away from the relationship. Don't overturn it making it bad to break it. That is just egoistic.
A relationship it will last as long as both people involved in it find it useful in their own ways. Things get dull if their ways are almost identical and things get too messy if their ways are too different. But how do we know for sure how different two are and which is the best combination? Experimentation is inevitable and it is not wrong. Both the parties should be independent and be willing to participate in the experiments of building the relationship. There are protocols to be followed in the experiments. The protocols ensure safety simultaneously leaving some room for creativity. Different cultures have different protocols. So when we encounter change in cultures it might be a bit hard to decide which protocol to follow. But to keep things effective in life it's better to follow one's native cultures.
The usefulness of a relationship is usually both objective and subjective. The objective benefits can be easily made to be mutally win-win case by clearly and honestly applying logic. The unsurmountable problems come of course with little surprise from subjectivity. But we donot know how problematic subjectivity is until we build the relationship. If we find that subjectivity is too much of a problem then both parties can focus on objective part and limit their relationship to that level instead of ruining it. The best way not to ruin is stay away from the relationship. Don't overturn it making it bad to break it. That is just egoistic.
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