Cost of living

There's no such thing as free lunch. Most of us almost agree with it without even arguing about it. Result: Though we agree with it we don't like it. But I try to present somethings that might actually help in liking it not just agreeing with it. The axioms of human survival (like everyone wants to be peaceful, survive, be clear etc.) are of course assumed for this post as is with every other post on this blog.

There are different kinds of struggles based on the kind of society one lives in. The chief characteristic of a society that determines the kind is its interdependency structure. The more transparent the structure is, the less appealing is the saying. Hence the goal becomes to realize the structure. This requires mastery of your emotions and logic which you get by mental maturity. I will present some ideas about how to try to realize the structure.

The structure you are trying to realize is interdependency structure. Results in graph theory can be very useful. Consider humans as nodes in a huge human graph. There is an edge between two nodes if there is an interdependency between the two humans. Each edge has cost for its existence and maintenance. The total cost of all edges connecting a group of people decides the average cost of living for the group. Humans always try to optimize the resources they have to maintain the edges. The actual algorithms like finding minimum spanning trees, or shortest paths among nodes are in P. But more serious issue is that the graph is not revealed all at once. The graph is slowly built and a current model of computation namely streaming model comes to rescue. I am not aware with many results of streaming model in graph theory but research in this direction is very promising.

Streaks of thought: Streak 2

Streak 2:
Mind only business with most but do classify some as your heros. That will keep you motivated intangibly.

Actually this is a mirror streak of streak 1. Streak 2 reflects the actual mood in which I came up with streak 1.

Streaks of thought: Streak 1

I several times have flashes of thoughts in mind based on the situation I am in and it is not always possible to hatch it into a full-blown post. So I decided to add them as a series like those of my health posts. (Now that I have found out how easy that is.)

Enjoy the steaks err.. streaks.

Streak 1:
Classify a few as heros and for the rest mind only business.

Cloaks of complexity

This post is about how complexity is one of the most important fuels (hence not misused) for efficient functioning of a society. Yesterday there was complexitycast release on Scott's reasons for believing P!=NP. At end of the cast Bill Gasarch gives his reason to believe P!=NP which is a one sentence summary of part of what I wanted to write:) I decided from now on to maintain a set of possible upcoming posts in the right-side panel.

Ethics, rationality, innocence, creativity, productivity etc. are all desired in society and appreciated and these traits make survival of many possible. Each of these traits have cloaks of complexity of different classes. I call them cloaks as most such traits are not really complex except for getting used (mature?) to them. As you get used to things you unveil the cloaks. While some cloaks can be unveiled by many as part of hardwired process in the society, there are cloaks which are too heavy to lift off like proving hard theorems and hard math. Any such harder cloaks can be handled only by a tiny proportion of the human population.

In my opinion it is this type of cloaking by Nature that keeps its existence. Now comes the main point. This process is adapted (as usual we borrow many things from Nature) by many systems in the society to keep their existence. Einstein once said: The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. This is not wrong if done with good and generous will. If people misuse this and put unwanted (unnecessary) cloaks of complexity it only hurts in the long run. The point is if they cannot uncloak any complexities provided by Nature they put new cloaks of fake complexity to uncloak them later on, much like creating false demands.

Contributions to society and reasons for balance

No one denies that one cannot survive in a society unless he contributes to the society.

Let's take setting where people are aware of themseleves (souls?) and their powerful containers (bodies?) of a finite capacity. These containers are endowded to them at their birth and they are moulded as they grow and several hidden and measurable variables influence the process. (Usually there is a hidden variable hypothesis because not everything could be explained by variables that we can be aware of or measure.)

Measurable variables include like what kind of education they receive, level of richness they experience, level of security etc. Hidden variables are usually measured as probability distributions with some possible priors like assuming that events happen for eventual good to humanity. Though the containers have finite capacities their moulding process decides combinations of chemical elements that they can hold thus with a potential of exponential variety of containers. One can think of categories like nerds, businessmen, peacekeepers, radicals etc.

Depending on the combination that their containers can bear, people contribute and collaborate to experience their combinations. (They can experience their mixtures only when used).

The key element for a harmonious experience is probably the awareness. The awareness of ourselves and our containers (our combinations). It's because of existence of other combinations that we are able to experience our combination. So there's no point in one category ridiculing another. Some reactions might have to be done with extraordinary care: Think of human knowledge about nuclear reactions, there are excellent benefits if properly used and pandemoniac consequences if some factors (like awareness) are ignored.

Bottomline is to keep in mind that one only contributes of what he is abundant in: that what his container can hold. It is then upto the congregation of humans to decide how to synergize. This is possible when we have balance in the awareness of ourselves and our containers. This is why we need the balance that most people stress on having.

Health: Optimizing constraints

After you have walked the steps through childhood (don't know pretty much about health), adoloscense (obsessed with certain aspects of health, like looks) in the journey towards better health, time would come to start being more like adults:) Let me explain what it means.

A society invests most power and authority in the age group in which one is considered adult. There is a valid reason for that because that's the best productive stage for most people. Because people want many variety of things in that stage they are forced to try to make optimal decisions if they need to get all those and in the process they fulfill the needs of others as well since humans are very symbiotic in relationships.

So in any journey it makes sense to call you an adult when you are at a stage where you have to optimize several constraints and you will face this stage even in your journey towards better health (ofcourse if you are on the journey for long enough). What are the typical constraints you would have to optimize?

• Money: Don't spend an outrageous amount on nutritional food, on gym fees, personal trainers, fancy short-cut health plans etc. Try to invest money like try to build a gym of our own.


• Social life: Don't overfill the buffer of health benefits. Spare time for your other aspects of life as well and that is the key for longer term benefits.


• Time: Even a 30 min workout (including changing, stretching etc.) will start working for you and hence be smart.


• Health: Of course never let your effort for balance drag you back into your old habits.

This listing thoughs seem non-algorithmic is nevertheless useful for achieving balance (optimization of several constraints) as it provides cues for verification of balance. Walking on the line of balance is an art and there are several ways of achieving it. It is undeniable that there is nothing arguably right or wrong in art which is nevertheless very important.

A small note about making optimal decisions:
Humans always make optimal decisions but only relatively, based on what they perceive. That is every human being makes a locally optimal decision. Greedy strategy doesnot always work towards global optima but as you start being more like an adult your optimal decisions tend to be like global optimas because of the reason I explained, in second paragraph, about this age group being very influential in society.

Link to previous health post.
Added the link on September 25, 06 11:00AM

Man, Machine and Math

Scientists and artists are both fascinated by one thing: Nature. Artists are more obsessed with causality while the former are with results. Both scientific and artistic efforts try to use rationality but under different bounds and are important. Working in bounded rationality is something that is hard to be avoided in this finitistic world. The most profound questions in science happen to be those that question causality like the quest for Unified Field Theory by physicists, quest for proof of P?=NP by mathematicians. Artificial Intelligence is one of the most coveted dreams of man that if realized has unparalleled consequences on machines. An artist can dream of a machine pursuing its dreams like in A.I. by Speilberg. A scientist can dream of finding proofs for most intriguing theorems automatically.

What is the main problem in realizing such dream machines or dream theories like unified theory? It's their complexity. Efficient representation of ideas is very essential in making them useful. Math is a popular tool that allows us to make judgements about different representations, to apply the ideas to a large scale avoiding manual errors, to give new insights which are elusive without it. There are many wonderous things in Nature that are not mathematical (or atleast not mathematized yet) like humans, plants, viruses etc. (BTW the P vs. NP question precisely asks whether humans can be completely efficiently mathematized in terms of their mathematical ability).

Most people agree that to understand a phenomenon completely one must be able to look inside the process. But when we start looking inside our own processes we start being spiritual. For example in one way or the other we try to reason out some important events based on karma philosophy. Though there is no consensus mostly because of non-verifiability scientifically, we eventually settle down for it. If someday we can formalize karma using math, which would certainly be extremely sophisticated and need lot more evolution, we could have unified field theory, more predictability of events in life etc. But then again we need room for growth even then. We don't have to worry unless we overturn the existing logical system.

Health: Dodging injuries

One of the most important preparations you have to make for a journey is to make sure you avoid bad sideaffects, injuries etc. In this post I try to give some tips on dodging injuries on your journey towards better health.

• Workout has its own costs. It not only requires tremendous amount of dedication but also has ethics to be followed - the ethics to be responsible for your body. Just because you are dedicated and going to gym everyday you cannot do whatever you want to at the gym.


• Make sure you have sufficient knowledge of what you are doing with weights or cardio machines. READ instructions, ask the personal trainers, ask the experienced people, read from magazines.
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• Don't be adhoc in the type of exercises you do. Make sure you concentrate on all regions of your body - roughly speaking upper, middle and lower body.
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• Give sufficient time for the body to recover after exerting it.


• Make sure you strecth different muscles for relaxation after working them out.


• Have plenty of water around you and drink before even you feel thirsty. Believe me dehyrdrating experience could be really nasty.


• Take special care of your joints, especially knee joints.


• Injuries can be checked using RICE.


• When lifting heavy weights make sure you have someone monitoring you. Minor mistakes here could result in fatal or lifelong injuries.


• Based on my friend, Reagan's advice, a good heuristic for judging a right weight for you is that you should be able to do atleast 4 reps and atmost 8 reps.


• Generally speaking there has to be balance between using your body and being responsible for your body.

Link to health posts so far.
Edited: August 28, 06. 11:07 AM.

Incompleteness and room for growth

Recently I read an exposition on Godel's proof of incompleteness. There the authors Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman do a very nice job of explaining not only the proof but also triggering philosophical insights without loosing the details. The two main results of Godel's seminal paper are: any logical system capable of supporting Peano's axioms (simply stated a system supporting the well-evolved axioms and deducing abilities of humans)

• could not be both consistent and complete


• could not prove itself consistent without proving itself inconsistent

So why is the result so astounding or profound? One of the main reasons is that he proved (to be clear he used no meta reasoning) to show what great minds (like that of David Hilbert, Jules Richard) have been conjecturing about limits of human ability of mental conception. This result has many practical applications similar to those of the result by Cook's result on complexity of theorem proving procedures (the seminal paper in complexity theory). They both gave us reasoning ability to direct research efforts in their respective fields viz. logic and computational complexity (and algorithm design). There are results in almost all fields having similar effects (like result of Nash in game theory, result of Einstein in atomic physics).

If a system cannot be complete and consistent what reasoning can we take help of, to design and implement a system that is useful. No need to worry! We have pearls in pile of human-knowledge-jewelry known as probability theory, theory of statistics at our disposal. These theories for example helped building randomized algorithms, learning theory which unquestionably have proven to be useful.

The research directions consequent to any negative result like incompleteness theorem are essentially examples of positive thinking. The incompleteness theorem implies conjectures which intuitively are true but hard to be proven are always possible thus ineffect guaranteeing room for growth or increased depth of understanding. Look out for the recent exuberance over the potentially complete proof of Poincare's conjecture by Grisha Perelman who purportedly denied the Fields medal.

Anthropicism, science and time

Couple of weeks ago there was a fun contest on Scott's blog about coming up with best antrhopic statement. I took part in that contest (you can find my 3 entries in the comments of that post). The winning anthropicism was from Lev Reyzin.

Though my thrid entry was close to what the winnig entry implied mine was not stated with proper flavor of wit and context! But then I thought I have my blog to write about what I think on the topic:)

Anthropic thinking mainly questions of why things happen the way they are happening and the things of interest are related to human existence. Scientific thinking tries to focus on answering how things are happening not bothering too much about why they are happening. Eg. Physics answers how two bodies attract each other but does not bother why they should attract at all in the first place. Computer Science for example worries about understanding how to reveal what human mind works in a way that can be applied efficiently to machines. But it does not worry about why human mind works that way.

Anthropicism is an effort to accumulate wisdom with reasoning analogous to science. But it is different from science in the sense that it is not so straightforward to verify and replicate the process. Meaning that it might be practically less advantageous. Nevertheless it also tries to find truths in a meta theoretical and meta practical world. Also the history of humanity shows being obsessed with immediate practical benefits is not that a great idea.

Now we can start thinking there is no point of anthropicism because it mainly works in a layer not immediately applicable. Well so far atleast we have not rated anthropic thinking as irrational thinking:) Science is a layer that is a bit above immediate feelings. Anthropicism is a layer a bit above science. Time is the ultimate judge in deciding what is useful and what is the truth because only time has the ability to question the basic assumptions or axioms on which all other theorems are built. So far anthropicism and science have passed the test of time and we did not need a layer much above anthropicism which is above philosophy which is above science which is above common fleeting experiences.

Health: Faring well on the plateau exam

Once you start your journey towards betterment you are tested by Nature for your patience, balance and dedication as those tests are needed to judge if you are really worth the end result.

So don't feel bad if you are experiencing plateau regions in your progress. Infact it's time to put in more effort to pass the test since it's exam time! Here are tips on how to do well:

• Realize that it be a surprise test! For some people this might come early for some later.
• Since it's a surprise test regularly check if you are on a plateau. Use proper ways like measuring waist line, measuring weight only in a reasonably periodical way, being realistic (by getting statistics from various expert sources) in expectations etc.
• On the plateau:
  
  • Increase workout for atleast by 30 mins to your regular time.
  • Add more enduring exercises (like fat-burn or more repetitions) at the cost of perhaps reducing some impacting (like high-range cardio or heavy weights) ones.
    
  • Cut down on the weekly cheating from once a week to once in two or even three weeks depending on how long is the exam. You will know when the exam is over. Because instant result (like in GRE).
  • Unlike in some exams shortcuts don't work:) Think of it as a defence work where you are tested for real accumulated worth instead of your ability to be worthy. This is not an entrance exam it's like a midterm or even final (I don't know yet:))
  • Don't look at others' progress or strategies too much. Why? Because their question paper could be different and you would be wasting your energies for negative results.
  • This is an untimed exam. You won't be forced to finish. If you quit in between luckily no loss except for the benefit of opportunity cost. You would atleast be where you are. But this is not a great thing to do.

Link to health posts so far.

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.

Health: Organizing my posts

I have got couple of notes to write more about health. Some of my previous posts on health tips already cover some of these. So thought I will make a post organizing my previous posts.

1. Startup
2. King of nutrition
3. Breaking the habit

For every new health post hence forth I will add a pointer to it's previous one.

Happy journey.

Purpose of purpose

Understanding life has a lot to do with understanding its purpose. Why? Because we don't want to waste one of the most important resource time. Why time is important? Because it is finite. Well I can take more whys in comments if any body is interested.

When we apply for graduate schools or any academic jobs or highlevel jobs we are asked to describe, many times in written or a few times oral, of what our goal or purpose of applying for or working in that position is. This is because only then can they feel justified to invest in both their and our resources for society.

Most people search for their purpose when asked for. This is good and benefitial to society. But on an individual level if one wants to be really successful he needs to clearly understand the purpose of having a purpose in life and only then can he focus his energies effectively which is needed for success. But beware you cannot just describe anything that you want as purpose. You have to add wisdom and rationality for any desire to be called a purpose. This is possible only after considerable experience of the universe.

One essential phase in understanding the purpose of life is not having a purpose and feeling the need for it and honestly and courageously facing it to move forward to the phase of having a purpose. It's like building a bridge/building/subway system etc. We first don't have those, then we feel the necessity of those and then build them strong and effective and it takes lot of honest, courageous effort. The adjectives used for effort are non-scientific (but essential) and the effort would be scientific. The other phase is that it needs reevaluation, maintenance work too:) So the bottom line is just look around yourself in Nature and you will understand what are the phases.

Now what kind of purposes we can have. Based on history and current events we should have a purpose to live happily. For that we have to choose a proper method that will not get in others' purposes. After exploring for a while (for most people around 20-25 years of life - not kidding) choose a specific domain where you know you can contribute and work towards doing that. If that is not very satisfying then have a purpose to prosper because for that you have to do the above. It's just another way of looking at it - probably more common but not very insightful and nevertheless useful. Ofcourse:)

Health: Breaking the habit

There is a famous saying: Humans are creatures of habit. Maintaining health is part of human activity and hence is a habit. But there is also another famous saying Old habits die hard. The two sayings together indicate us potentials as well as traps. First saying indicates we can achieve things by habituating them and once done they are hard to break.

So for better health, we have to break a lot of habits like

• Being lazy (eg. not workingout regularly)
  
• No physical activity immediately after eating (eg. sitting comfortably after eating)
  
• Underestimating calorie facts about food (eg. when nutrition facts are missing)
  
• Being embarrased for looking at nutrition facts (eg. when buying or eating)
• Being embarrased keeping track of your diet (eg. among friends)
  
• Eating to reduce stress (eg. eating chips, nuts)
  
• Eating when not needed (eg. not skipping dinner for an extravagant lunch)
  
• Not considering snacks as a significant intake (eg. ignoring a pretzel/banana)
  
• Qualifying food based on taste instead of nutrition facts (eg. Pepsi/Diet pepsi)
  
• Not paying attention to popular warnings about health (eg. obesity/smoking)
  
• Mishandling of achievements (eg. stopping workout for no reason because you know you can workout)
  

Though this post is intended to be a sequel to my health posts the power of habit is true for many aspects of life.

Relativity and the power of detachment

Recently I was reading about relativity. This gave me some added clarity of not only how Einstein was motivated but also how we can better understand our lives (which ofcourse undoubtedly are part of this universe).

Newton revolutionized thinking by making coinscious choices to hypothesize and test and thus came up with some very useful laws. That was a big step during those superstitious days. Einstein went a step further by proving that choice making is relative and there could be no reasoning for a preference towards a hypothesis. He showed that encounters (elements in space-time coordinates) are necessary and sufficient to describe the events in the universe. He builds up his arguments using a key fact that experience of the universe is very involved in describing universe. And later in time one of his very good friends showed that no formal system could be consistent or complete which implies there is no reasoning behind choosing a specific system.

Since all choices are equivalent atleast scientifically and universe is anyway precisely described in space-time coordinates we need not get attached to particular point in the universe, as things keep changing anyways with our measured time. Ofcourse this assumes rationality and that you want to be ahead (aware) of events happening in human society. Don't attach any transcendental values to systems, choices people make or preferences.

Eg. If you analyze labor standards in different countries there is no reasoning to say American standards are better or other standards are poor. If you define labor as the work people do labor for living (which is reasonable because all other work is made for extra it's not easy to standardize that kind of work) that is getting food and shelter then America by its wealth needs less of it and hence labor cost is high and hence standards.

So relativity besides its usual contribution gave us a paradigm of how to think in a world with changing experiences. Sprititually it is suggested not to attach to any wordly things. This can be suggestible even scientifically. Also you can feel the difference if you just live according to the situation not getting attached or stuck. Most importantly don't get attached to your feelings because they are the most flickering of all experiences.

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.

Inspiration, motivation and implementation

What does it take to work continuosly and be productive? Why is it hard not to get lost in unnecessary and useless activities? This might be because of inability to find inspiration. Inspiration triggers planning. Motivation is something that is completely situational sensitive and most necessary step for implementation. Each of the three phases are required for achievements or success. Implementation being the easiest and lowest level of effort hierarchy.

First let's see how to hone ability to be inspired. Be aware that you are human being and part of a big community which is highly interdependent. The work you do for community is credited and rewarded and the better you use your energy for the work the better are the rewards. Bottom line is be rational. Read and learn about great people to find inspiration. It takes time and lot of effort to be inspired.

Motivation is situational and hence we must be careful that we make proper choices to be in right situations whenever we can. Try to see situations with positive outlook and don't look at the world as completely adversarial. If you feel you are in a bad situation then realize early that the adversarial flavors of situations are only to train you to face tougher situations more effectively. After watching a very well done movie BLACK I feel that we must be very fortunate to be normal.

Once inspired and motivated implementation should be ruthless and is relatively not hard. But it is very easy to screw it up if one becomes unduely complacent.

I started this post on May 9, 06 but finished on May 11, 06 after watching BLACK.

Learning from losing

Recently there have been posts about rejection on Luca's and Lance's blog and an extraordinary comment by Oded. I was really impressed by the insight brought out by Oded.

His insight actually teaches a lesson of how to learn better from any kind of failure. We must strive for clear and real understanding of the situation and that gives us energy to courageously face it and cope up with it instead of letting it take us over. Many people think this kind of analysis is losers' attitude and to be practical we don't need any such waste of time. It is true that such an analysis is usually triggered when one is in loser's state but such effort of getting out of that state is infact one of the greatest applications of human mind. Infact such an analysis is actually a precursor to start being practical. Some people don't need these precursors but there's nothing bad about needing it. Afterall nobody is completely powerful. The absolute greatness is in ability to survive through odds. Ofcourse it's irrational to consciously choose to be in odds unnecessarily.

There is a thin line between learning from failures and justifying failures. We must be careful with that. We learn the difference as we mature.

Changed title on May 9, 06. 9:47PM US EST.

Health: King of nutrition

As a continuation to my health tips, I want to talk and point to benefits of Protein the King of nutrition.

Eating smart is one of the very important things to do in maintaining good health. It is very suprising because to be good these days, we have to do pretty much any thing smart:) Protein has tremendous benifits in helping weight management. I personally experienced the benefits. Your hunger remains controlled among many things. It is very hard for vegetarians to get good source of protein. By good I mean equivalent to that we get from non-vegetarian diet. But food technology research has progressed very nicely and we now have protein isolates that can be consumed, even gratifying your palate. Soy protein, whey protein, milk protein isolates come in delicious low calorie bars. Whey protein is also available as a powder form. Among all kinds of proteins WHEY protein seems to be the best. Here's a link to benefits from WHEY protein.