27^th December, I was returning to my home, I had to dash (after getting an ultimatum from home, anyone would......) this rush was augmented by the ‘sub-zero’ gush that hit my face like a punch, left my face covered with a layer of ice (I thought so) and reflexively induced in my mind an image in which I had turned into an Ice-Cream and the stray dogs were licking me, so would happen if I delayed further.

Therefore, I started satisfactorily early and was happy that I would reach on time.......but ‘Bhagwan jab deta hai, chhappar phad kar deta hai’......even the quandaries......

Kanpur, the Manchester of Northern India, is the ‘magnum opus’ of mismanagement. It is perennially and whole heartedly there to problemize every errand. Me and my friends booked a two-seater for the bus stand. But that 20 min ride took exactly 67 minutes. Why!!???...... Our steps forward to the destination were blighted by the Muharram procession on the very ‘wide and spacious’ streets of Kanpur.

Religion is a strong incentive for doing anything, anywhere, anyroad without an iota of external objection. They were there......on the streets with flail like things, thongs, whips, barbed wire, fire and other noxious things and the Police present there so that it goes on slickly. Blood dripping from their backs.....skin, flesh and blood had assorted into one.....mourning and imitating the sufferings which (..............) underwent some (........) years ago (ahem...my history was always awful!!!!). I suffer IN THE NAME OF GOD. They were doing the most gruesome things (which made Shakespeare call Lady Macbeth a ‘Shameless Fiend’) to themselves (disqualifying themselves from Human community), which I wouldn’t even do to my Maths teacher (OH GOD!! I hate her more than anyone......phew!). If you were a ‘kafir’ you could turn your face away but if you were one of them, NO VIEWER DISCRETION, even if you were a six year old and have just learned how to not pee on the bed while sleeping.

Whatever, we somehow crawled out of that uncensored bloodbath after several close shaves with other vehicles. But the driver stopped this side of the flyover (with the bus stand on the other side) because the flyover was blocked by the Police due to Muharram processions so we had to walk it. The idea seemed feasible for a second but when you have a bag full of dirty laundry on your back and you are returning after one month you need some extraordinary incentive to do that. Even Edmund Hillary wouldn’t have needed more impetus than we needed at that second. In that cold breeze coupled with starvation, the warm bed in my room and mom’s food were magnets enough to make me ascend.

Finally we were on that bus to Lucknow. It slowly stuffed with passengers. The driver entered the bus, sat on his seat, spat his pan masala out of the window (the incorrigible habit of about a million Indians) and twisted the ignition key. When we reached the bridge over River Ganga, several people bowed their heads to the river and two men took out a one rupee coin and threw it out into the river!!.....just like that......which they would’ve hesitated to give to a beggar in need took almost no time to take the coin out and bury it in that deep water.....whom did they give it to??.....the river??,the fish?? They gave it to no one. God..... (if is present) never asked for it!!! Such kind of people are drowning India’s money before everyone and no one’s stopping them (undoubtedly, the best fooling machine award goes to!!!-----RELIGION***Applause***). 43 men were on that bus. 2/43 drowned 2 rupees. Now you are good enough at probability (m not) to calculate the net amount of money drenched every day in the rivers throughout India. Law says destroying currency is a crime......if you see someone deliberately spiflicating currency notes, you could sue him in the court......but what if you see someone drowning it in a river where it would lie fallow??.......it would just vanish without any clue. There’s no law for this probably because it is backed by a powerful force....RELIGION. IN THE NAME OF GOD, I throw this coin in this river. ‘I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER THE SUM OF ...........’ is written on the currency notes......but under what criterion that river the bearer of that sum!!?? We don’t think about the river when we pour our sludge into it putting the whole aquarium at stake!!

Whatever, at the end of the day I’m at my home....in my warm, cosy bed. All this has been happening and will keep on occurring. Faith and patriotism are the most potent tools which anyone could use to make his ends meet. People can do anything if you stir the prospects of faith in them. We can only be thankful to the initiators of such practices that they didn’t start any grimmer or more slipshod practice.......... imagine if in the procession they would have been harming others!!! (Being a fellow countryman you should share our grief!!!).....or if the coins wouldn’t have sufficed our Gods!! (You believe so??.....go on!! Give something new to us!!!)

The Good, The Bad and The Inexplicable

“Our connection to reality is never just perception. It's always theory-laden. Scientific knowledge isn't derived from anything. It's like all knowledge. It's conjectural, guesswork, tested by observation, not derived from it.”-----Karl Popper

So, were ‘testable conjectures’ the great innovation that opened the intellectual prison gates? No. Contrary to what's usually said, testability is common, in myths and all sorts of other irrational modes of thinking. Any crank claiming the sun will go out next Tuesday has got a testable prediction. Until proved, any intellectual and any simpleton has equal comportment for his declaration.

Consider the ancient Greek myth explaining seasons. Hades, God of the Underworld, kidnaps Persephone, the Goddess of Spring, and negotiates a forced marriage contract, requiring her to return regularly, and lets her go. And each year, she is magically compelled to return. And her mother, Demeter, Goddess of the Earth, is sad, and makes it cold and barren. That myth is testable. If winter is caused by Demeter's sadness, then it must happen everywhere on Earth, simultaneously. So if the ancient Greeks had only known that Australia is at its warmest when Demeter is at her saddest, they'd have known that their theory is false.

What was it that made this explanation false....its the testability, the scientific contemplation. If there is some defecting in any story that you are told (not just a logical defect....any bad explanation), what does that mean? As David Deutsch said, “Explanation is an assertion about what's there, unseen, that accounts for what's seen.”

The myth of Persephone’s forced marriage might appear poise with the logic of weather cycle...or it might appear so at the first glimpse but it fails on the scientific balance....because the explanatory role of the marriage can be replaced by infinitely many ad-hoc explanations. Why a marriage contract and not any other reason for regular annual occurrence? Here is one. Persephone wasn't released. She escaped, and returns every spring to take revenge on Hades, with her Spring powers. She cools his domain with Spring air, venting heat up to the surface, creating summer. That accounts for the same phenomena as the original myth. It's equally testable. Yet what it asserts about reality is, in many ways, the opposite.

This easy variability is a precursor of bad explanations. Until you have some strong reason to prefer any one variable over many others available.....your explanation is bad. Good explanations can’t be easily varied while still explaining the phenomenon. Our explanation of seasons connecting the earth’s tilt and sun’s inclination is a good one....because every detail in there has a functional importance and ‘hard to vary’.

Now if the Greeks would have discovered that seasons in Australia are out of phase, they could have easily varied their myth to predict that. For instance, when Demeter is upset, she banishes heat from her vicinity, into the other hemisphere, where it makes summer. But altering their theory wouldn't have got the ancient Greeks one jot closer to understanding seasons, because their explanation was bad ‘easy to vary’. If the axis-tilt theory had been refuted, its defenders would have had nowhere to go. No easily implemented change could make that tilt cause the same seasons in both hemispheres.

This ever-redolent quest for hard-to-vary theories is the basis of all progress. Two approaches blight progress. One is easy-to-vary theories and the other is explanation-less theories. If you told about some occurrence or phenomenon unarmed with a hard-to-vary explanation....its just like they’re telling you that a wizard did it.

When you are told that carrots have human rights because they share half our genes -- but not how gene percentages confer rights -- wizard. When someone announces that the nature-nurture debate has been settled because there is evidence that a given percentage of our political opinions are genetically inherited, but they don't explain how genes cause opinions, they've settled nothing.

That the truth consists of hard to vary assertions about reality is the most important fact about the physical world. It's a fact that is, itself, unseen, yet impossible to vary.—Bertrand Russell

A Little Laugh

Well, if till now you've been thinking that the theologists and philosophers are the people who've forgotten to laugh then this is gonna change your mind.....I present a few jokes which I stumbled upon recently while roaming in the 'Brobdingnagian' world of internet......have a laugh

"A philosopher," said the theologian, "it is like a blind man in a darkened room looking for a black cat that isn't there."

"That' s right," replied the philosopher, "and if he were a theologian, he'd find it."
--------------- on exam. qs and ans.------------


How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?

1) "Hmmm ... well this is an interesting question isn't it?"
2) "Define a 'light bulb' ..."
3) "How can you be sure it needs changing?"
4) Three. One to change it and two to stand around arguing over whether or not the light bulb exists etc.

---------- an interesting aspect of philosophy----------

Don't 'look' at anything in a physics lab.
Don't 'taste' anything in a chemistry lab.
Don't ''smell' anything in a biology lab.
Don't 'touch' anything in a medical lab.

and, most importantly:

Don't listen to anything in a philosophy department

----------- laws of philosophy-----------

The First Law of Philosophy
For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher.


The Second Law of Philosophy
They're both wrong.

Question:- What do you get when you cross the Godfather with a philosopher?
Answer:- An offer you can't understand

Here's an old chestnut :

By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher - Socrates

Here's another one :

One day the great Greek philosopher Socrates (469 - 399 BC) came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"

"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Test of Three."

"Three?", exclaimed the student.

"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to test what you're going to say. The first test is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"Oh no," the man said, "actually I just heard about it."

"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second test, the test of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"

"No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates interrupted, "you want to tell me something bad about him even though you're not certain it's true?"

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed.

Socrates continued. "You may still pass though, because there is a third test - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"

"Well it....no, not really..."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"

The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why he never found out that Plato was having an affair with his wife.

A philosophy professor walks in to give his class their final test . Placing his chair on his desk the professor instructs the class, "Using every applicable thing you've learned in this course, prove to me that this chair DOES NOT EXIST."

So, pencils are writing and erasers are erasing, students are preparing to embark on novels proving that this chair doesn't exist, except for one student. He spends thirty seconds writing his answer, then turns his final in to the astonishment of his peers.

Time goes by, and the day comes when all the students get their final grades ... and to the amazement of the class, the student who wrote for thirty seconds gets the highest grade in the class.

His answer to the question was- "What chair?"

Supermarket and Suicide

The idea of being able to choose a sudden exit fascinates me on many levels. For example, I may be at a party having a good time and suddenly the thought crosses my mind that I could actually just walk out and leave it. Sometimes once I get this thought in my mind I become possessed by my own curiosity. Then I may feel compelled to immediately leave the party and walk to some random spot where I could not have predicted I would be at that moment. I may touch a mailbox and think to myself 'I could easily have never touched this mailbox. I could easily still be inside. But instead, because a random thought possessed my mind, I am having this completely different experience now, one which could never have been foreseen.'

In a way I guess it seems totally ridiculous that I get this amazing high from walking out of a good time and touching a mailbox by myself, but it gives me this surreal sense of being a free agent that operates my mind at its own whim, as opposed to being led into predictable patterns of behavior designed by evolved instincts or learned behaviors. And leaving in itself is so sudden - a complete change to the senses - there is something so exciting to me for a moment when an exit is made and suddenly I am standing outside in the vast wild world.

Once I was at the supermarket when I got an attack of this type of thinking. I started to fantasize about walking away from my shopping cart and going out into the parking lot and exploring the suburban streets behind the supermarket- being somewhere completely unexpected and not being in the supermarket at all. The thoughts overtook me and I abandoned my full cart of groceries to get the rush of walking out into the parking lot where the world could not have expected me to be coming- to penetrate a moment in that lot which never thought it would see me.

Standing in the parking lot I was truly heady, intoxicated by own freedom, feeling that I was seeing some secret surreal moment. For several minutes I stood there on top of the world enthralled by own consciousness and the sensation that I had been newly born by walking out the automatic doors. I was communing with the branches of the trees and the cracks in the pavement as if I was in the midst of an intense acid trip. I was thinking about making memories and making memories of making memories and the memories of doing that some more (yes, these are those very memories!)

But after these wild sensations wore down, I became more conscious of the other reality. The reality that I really did need to buy groceries in the near future was the same one that had propelled me toward the supermarket in the first place. Now that reality came back more strongly to my mind. I sighed to realize that although I was free to go off and do whatever I pleased, that it would only mean that I would have to come back to the supermarket tomorrow and start back over with all the shopping. Finally I had to concede that the only thing to do was to go back in and buy my groceries and I may as well just go back and get my cart right now so I wouldn't have to start all the way back at the beginning tomorrow.

When I went back into the supermarket, though, my cart was not in the aisle where I had left it. Because I had only been outside for a few minutes, it surprised me that my cart would have been already moved, and I searched for it in vain throughout the store. After going up and down each aisle several times in search of the work I had done assembling my groceries, I began to feel incredibly lost. At that moment it occurred to me that the entire experience was a perfect description of suicide. I had suddenly chosen to walk away from my unfinished work and jump into a different reality. Then I had experienced a euphoric freedom, which was followed by the return of the original need to perform my human duty. Then, realizing the error of my whim, I had attempted to return to my human body, only to be devastated by the loss and the finality of what I had done and forced to begin from the beginning.

After that experience I decided to resist the urge to leave at such moments. Instead I make it a point to experience suburban supermarket parking lots in a psychedelic sense during my walk in and out from the car. That way I still get to chuckle to myself in knowing euphoria without slowing down my chore in the slightest.

Philosophy of Viagra

Remember: "It is clear that Viagra needs to be examined not only from a sociological but also from a philosophical point of view"!

The impotency remedy Viagra is the “fastest selling drug in history” (McGinn 1998). It is no longer just a medical phenomenon, but also a cultural icon, appearing in television sitcoms as a pretext for jokes or as a murder weapon. Viagra has socio-cultural implications not limited to sexuality, but concerns various parts of our cultural landscape. Being relatively convincing in terms of bio-medical efficiency, criticism of Viagra has so far mainly been expressed in the (often feminist) “Liberal Arts” camp where Pfizer (the maker of Viagra) is reproached for its profit-oriented negation of any psychological, social, emotional, and relational components involved in impotency. Further criticism ridicules Viagra’s mechanical imagery of a “techno-fix” (Vares & Braun 2006) not only intensifying the medicalization of impotency current since the early 1980s (Tiefer 1986), but also making “sex into a medical function like digestion” (Tiefer 2003) and the fact that Viagra renders masculinity as a mere problem of chemical engineering, plumbing, and hydraulics. A further concern is that through Viagra, the traditional gender role of the “potent man and the happy woman” is restored without any critical revision (Loe 2004). In spite of, or because of, the narrow humanistic basis offered by its producers, Viagra has obtained the status of a lifestyle drug.

It is clear that Viagra needs to be examined not only from a sociological but also from a philosophical point of view.

What do philosophers have to say about the “viagrification” culture? Is there a philosophical principle behind Viagra as a cultural phenomenon?

Possible subjects are:

• Viagra and Posthumanism (artificial life)
• The Body as a Machine
• Reality and Desire
• Pursuing Hedonism. Why not?
• Non-natural sex?
• Ethical concerns about Viagra
• Viagra and the Virtual. Through Viagra the desire is not created but has always been there in a virtual (that is, not actual but also not non-actual) form. Through Viagra the desire becomes (virtually) real.

A simple Question

Hey friends....

I have been thinking over a question for a long time....I present this question to you.....

Would you take a billion dollars if as part of the deal the ‘Earth’ would be made an uninhabitable place a year after your death!!???.......(of course you would think about your friends, family, grandchildren!!) ......but what if the condition is changed to that the Earth would be poisoned a thousand years subsequent to your demise???

We feel strong obligations towards our immediate generations....should we not feel the same for our great grandchildren and their children and the generations thereafter??!!!

Specialisation

Well well.....I took a loooooong break this time. Though I thought no one cared but breathtakingly some did!!! they asked me why I didn't update it.....

I thought that better than answering them I should probably write something....so I just sat before my computer and thought I should write on something.....

I was listening to some songs and this one song by Oasis named 'Specialise'.....struck me.....a great deal about specialisation started coming into my mind....so I thought that my 'topic hunt' is over...

So.....

The universe in which we live is said to have started from nothing.......nothingness exploded into so much that it is still expanding. What was that force which caused this explosion....is not the question I wish to discuss right now... but the topic of discussion is that what materialized it?? Why aren’t we spiritual and religious and why are we material in our day-to-day practise?? I contemplated a lot and thought that the answer might be ‘Specialisation’.

So, at the beginning it was all nothing....then occurred ‘Big Bang’ and eventually specialisation took place. The things which specialized in energy were called energy and things specialising in matter were called matter. In matter; things specialised in planets, stars, satellites and other celestial things. The ones which didn’t specialize in anything formed the vacuum......the space. Matter also specialised into Living and Non-Living. Life first came in water and then few cells specialised to walk on land, some specialised in flying!!...and the evolutionary specialisation continued. Some specialised into plants and diversified our environment. Darwin’s theory of evolution has its keyline saying ‘Survival of the fittest’ but it should have been ‘Survival of the Specialised’.

After several specialisations man was born. He specialised into tribes and civilizations. Some specialised in their works into carpenters, farmer, labourers etc. Some specialised in power to become coons, leaders, soldiers, social servants etc. Some specialised in their views and became sophists, teachers, philosophers etc. Some in exchange and economics and became businessmen, traders, exporters etc.

Some specialised in worship and eventually into religions, and then gradually specialisations occurred within these religions, like Catholics, Protestants, shia, sunni, shaiv, vaishnav etc. Initially we worshipped one God then these Gods started to specialise into several other sub-gods.....some for wars, some for love, some for prosperity etc....... though these specialisations were brought about by Man alone but he boldly establishes that they were due to the Gods themselves!!! Knowledge also specialised into philosophy and science and they were further developed into an assortment of groupings. Then these subjects specialised into several sub-divisions. I could only imagine the extent of specialisation when my dentist asked me to consult some other dentist because I had problem in my 19^th tooth whereas he dealt only in the first 14!!!

Our houses specialised according to our habitats. Now there are several specialisations in food....seasoning, baking, sizzling, mixing etc.

At the outset only one king managed the whole kingdom but now we have several departments and portfolios to manage smaller areas like that of roads, bridges, malaria, transport etc. Thus you can deduce easily that whatever you do is specialised, in this manner you are a specialist....no matter if your work is petty or you are some thug!!!! You a thief....you are a specialist; you a clerk you are a specialist!!! Because only you can do your work, no one else can do it better than you.

Right now we are developing new specialisations everyday. That is why we say that ‘Universe is Expanding’. The moment this specialisation stops our world will start to shrink and we will say that the ‘Universe is Contracting’.

One nice morning it just struck me that I could easily define meditation, pride and salvation on the basis of specialisation.

Pride is simply to feel that your specialisation is unique or is rare.

Meditation is to discard the sense of superiority of your specialisation. The moment you forget your specialisation.....you are meditating. People have tried several ways to meditate and elevate but this is the best and simplest.....you just forget the reason you think you are unique for and you are meditating.

And

Salvation......when you discard the thought of your specialisation you are meditating but when you discard your specialisation as a whole you attain salvation because specialisation is a material thing and discarding it completely would take you to the divine level.

We humans are only using a certain part of our brains; just a small percentage; a major part of our gray matter is a waste; but when we start using more and more of it.....our dimensions of specialisations would increase and after several specialisations maybe we would see that all the specialisations which we did were identical.......... it was just that we couldn’t see their unity!! But presently we are progressing on the Specialisation road and it might be that after the ‘Dead End’ we would have to return back. Then new specialisations will have to be made so that we could return. For instance, we specialised on how to clear villages and forests to develop towns and cities and now we are specialising on how to clear townships to develop villages and forests. English.....the universal language is spreading throughout the world thus decreasing specialisation.

One might ask me that why am I so much opposed to specialisation??.....there can be two answers to this......

1. 1. I oppose specialisation in the same manner as people oppose materialism.

2. 2. Maybe criticising specialisation is my specialisation!!!!

The Blue Pill or The Red Pill??

“You take the blue pill -- the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe." Morpheus, The Matrix ------http://www.youtube.com/v/uGQF8LAmiaE

In The Matrix Universe, an authorized member of a Zion crew offers a prospective human in the Matrix a choice of ingesting a red pill. Doing so activates a trace program that allows the crew to locate the human's body in the Matrix powerplant. Once the person is found, commands are sent to the pod to awaken the person.

Red pills appear to have either seen "glitches" from the Matrix (e.g. a book continuously respawning on a shelf, regardless of attempts to remove the book), or have such a nature and/or awareness as to question their life within the Matrix, and refuse to dismiss the strange events - basically those who have figured out the illusion of the Matrix.

According to the character Morpheus, exiting the Matrix can be traumatic, particularly to those who have lived in it for too long. As a rule, crews normally only offer the red pill to those no older than teenage. After that, the risk of denial and psychotic episodes from the reality of separation could increase. This rule was violated by Morpheus in rescuing Neo, who was approximately 30 years old.—from Wikipedia

The BLUE Pill or the RED Pill??

The RED Pill is the path of Philosophy and Reasoning and Critical Thinking and Science and testing.  The BLUE Pill is that of belief and emotional decision making.   Which shall it be?

One of the core themes of The Matrix is the concept that if you want to transform your world, you must first identify how you have been programmed, decide whether the programming is accurate, then decide whether to reprogram yourself.

As a simple start to the Red Pill path or some further steps along that path you might  go to http://www.snopes.com and find five of the beliefs that you have held to be true that are not true and you have just learned that they are not true by going to this site.

Another exercise would be to realize that you already should be aware that things are not always as they appear to be or as we are led to believe. Name one such thing in your life.

This should open up to the possibility that not all beliefs that we hold to be true are actually true and that it might be of some value to question beliefs and to examine them to determine which beliefs have more evidence and reason to support them and distinguish them from others with less support.   Philosophy is a method for doing that examination concerning some of the most basic questions and issues human have ever confronted.

Is it better to live a harsh reality or a comfortable fantasy? And why? This is one interpretation of a key question faced by Neo, the hero of the movie The Matrix. Neo has a conversation with Morpheus, who explains that what Neo has always perceived as “reality,” including his friends, his job, and his entire existence in 20^thcentury America, is actually a simulation caused by a race of computers that has taken over earth long ago and has enslaved human beings. Our brains, according to Morpheus, are simply kept alive in a fantasy world so that we can provide electricity to the machines. But a few individuals are occasionally able to disconnect themselves from this matrix of fantasy and regain control of their body, thereby fighting a desperate battle for supremacy on the planet. Now, Morpheus says, Neo has two choices. If he takes a blue pill that he is being offered, he will forget about the matrix and go back to his illusory but relatively safe and predictable life. Take the red pill, however, and you will see the world as it really is. The trade-off is clear: comfortable fantasy or harsh reality? What would you choose, and why?

Some may question the assumptions underlying the choice. What makes us think that Morpheus is telling the truth? What if it is the red pill that leads to an imaginary world? This is a valid epistemological point. How do you know what is real and what is not? What kind of evidence do you have that you were dreaming last night of being a butterfly, and are you not in fact a butterfly who is now dreaming of being a human being? There are some reasonable, though by no means foolproof, ways out of this basic dilemma. For example, dreams—unlike what we consider reality—have no temporal continuity and are often characterized by arbitrary rules of engagement (contrary to, say, the laws of physics). But Neo did not have such a luxury, since in his case both situations felt very real. Furthermore, some people on drugs, or affected by particular brain disorders, really do have a hard time distinguishing between reality and hallucinations.

However, this kind of existential response based on radical skepticism skirts an interesting question. Let us assume that we have good reasons to believe Morpheus (as Neo does in the movie, given some recent disturbing experiences that had shaken his conception of reality); what would you then do about it?

In essence, the choice can be seen as one between truth and happiness (albeit the latter may be of a rather limited variety). In this sense, the question becomes of utmost interest and of surprising practical relevance. For example, you are faced by this dilemma when you examine your religious beliefs. Since there is no more evidence for the existence of a god than for the existence of unicorns, but believing in god makes you feel more comfortable and gives eternal meaning to your life, should you believe the unbelievable or attempt to find your way through the tortuous road of secular morality and meaning? Of course, most people don’t really choose to believe in a god, they rather culturally inherit such belief from their parents and friends; but most of us do arrive at the rejection of god by an often long process of questioning during which we are faced with terrible questions of existential meaning and of good and evil. In this sense, consciously becoming an agnostic or atheist is indeed more difficult than the other path, and it is like taking Neo’s red pill.

Less controversial (if you actually believe in god and don’t therefore buy the above argument) but equally dramatic is the choice of taking or not taking drugs. The “reality” offered by drugs is more pleasurable (at least temporarily) than the real life out there, especially for poor or psychologically damaged people. Why not avoid the pain and go for the blue option? The same question could be framed in terms of why spend your time reading this blog which is talking of some elusive and out of the place things rather than watching ,say, some video on youtube?

Surveys show that most people chose the red pill, yet I found quite a bit of disagreement on the motives. Essentially, however, there are two main reasons that can be advanced for taking red over blue: pragmatic and ethical ones.

The pragmatic motive is that living in an imaginary world can be pretty dangerous. One of the reasons human beings have been so successful during evolution is precisely because our large brains have an uncanny capability of assessing reality, of finding cause-effect connections, and therefore of manipulating the world to our advantage. One could object that plenty of people in modern society believe all sorts of weird things, from astrology to gods, and yet seem to function reasonably well. But this is because, in fact, most of the time they do not act on their beliefs. For example, while many people would claim to leave their lives in god’s hands when they are so questioned, they nevertheless take out insurance policies, look on both sides of the road before crossing, and go regularly to the doctor, if they can afford it. When they do behave according to a strict adherence to fantastic beliefs, bad things happen. A recurrent example is offered by Christian Scientists who die (or, worse, let their children die) because they do not believe in getting medical attention when they are sick. Reality does have a way of biting your back side!!!

The ethical reason represents an even more general answer to Neo’s question: regardless of practical consequences or of feelings of pleasure and discomfort, it is simply right to choose the red pill. We are social beings, and by nature we have a tendency to relate to other humans and to help them out, especially if they are our kin or friends. This tendency constitutes the basis of most of our ethical systems, and it implies that it is our duty not to shut ourselves out of the world in order to simply seek pleasure or avoid pain. This, however, begs the question of what is right to begin with and of how we determine it. Essentially, we are now faced with the radical moral skeptic question: why bother, if it does not affect your own happiness?

The point is, even a science fiction movie can generate profound philosophical questions, and these in turn are not necessarily idle speculations on the sex of angels but give us the opportunity to examine some of our most basic choices and their often far-reaching consequences. And remember, an unexamined life is not worth living. Or is it? And finally you answer honestly in the comments that which pill would you take???...The Blue Or The Red??

Understanding Memory (Part 2)

In my last article.....I pointed out a 'probable' relation between Memory and Understanding!!!!!!!!

Well I would like to thank my friend Sukrit for helping me out further with it and point out the many flaws in it......which has strengthened my theory further and also did a slight modification......I donno how to put that conversation before you so I thought that best way would be to put it exactly before you as it took place!!! So here it is,

me: hey!!

 sukrit1990: hi

 me: so wassup?

 sukrit1990: nothing yaar

  bas gettin bored

10:13 AM tum batao... read my comments?

 me: yaaah

 sukrit1990: :)

 me: quite good argument

  but you know m talkin about long time intervals

10:14 AM when u r into memorizing alot n a lot......u consequently lose ur ability to understand
all u know is how to mugup

10:15 AM sukrit1990: really mae?

  is that so?

  hey c'mon

 me: yeah that's wat i've observed

  !!!

  n read!!!

10:16 AM sukrit1990: i memorized lots of poems in nursery class

  i still remember them and my power to understand is still there

 me: ha ha......that's ur versatile stage

  ur mind is very flexible at that stage

10:18 AM 

u learn manythings at that stage..............but that dosen't mean that u gonna do it whole of ur life

  :)

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

Mark Twain

10:19 AM sukrit1990: achcha ..... let me take u to a different level

 me: yeah

10:20 AM sukrit1990: why didnt u plot a straight line with slope of -1?

  why is it a hyperbola?

  u mean to say when u are not understanding...... u can memorize infinitely?

10:21 AM me: yeah that's human mind

10:22 AM i say that there's a possibility

  that u cud do it

  but not neccesarily everyone

  !!!

 sukrit1990: hmmmm...... okie

10:23 AM me: kmow a diseaes called somewhat 'savant' something

  wait a sec

10:24 AM yeah "AUTISTIC SAVANT'

  :)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome

  u cud read it

10:25 AM According to Treffert, something that almost all savants have in common is a prodigious memory of a special type, a memory that he describes as "very deep, but exceedingly narrow".[1]

  get it???

 sukrit1990: hmmmm...... ya..... but thats a disease man

10:26 AM me: shudn't we include diseased humans in our studys???

  well u cant say that's a diseases!!

10:27 AM that can b looked upon as a special ability

10:28 AM sukrit1990: okie ... call it a special ability..... but special abilities shud be considered as exceptions .... not as ur study

  :)

10:29 AM me: well ur seeing the infinite end of that graph is also an exception!!!

  u cud neveer reach it...talking theoritically

10:31 AM satisfied

  ?

 sukrit1990: not at all

  firstly... i dont think they shud be inversely related

  secondly..... even if they are, it shud not be a hyperbola

10:32 AM me: ok i m not very certain about the shape of the graph

  its jst a possibility

 sukrit1990: haan.... can be

  but an intereseting theory on a whole

10:33 AM something on which i would like to study bout

  and discuss

10:34 AM me: is the rest of the theory satisfying

  ?

  to u?

10:35 AM sukrit1990: i only read this theory till now

  still have to read the others

 me: do u know others too?

10:36 AM sukrit1990: not yet

 me: ha ha

  well then thanx for this discussion'

 sukrit1990: hahaha

  in fact i shud thank u

  a really nice theory

10:37 AM me: it has help me identify several loopholes in it

  n it'll help me improve it

 sukrit1990: keep working on it

 me: like i haven't described many points in it

 sukrit1990: who knows.. u can get a nobel prize for it

 me: which i'll describe now

10:38 AM n plz tell ny other u find

        sukrit1990: ya sure

    me: i'll say u read one on superstition

  its got another of my theory

 10:40 AM 

sukrit1990: sure

 me: thanx again ......bbyeeee

 sukrit1990: bye bye

 me: gotta study for my class tests

 sukrit1990: kk

 me: gotta both memorize n understand!!!

10:41 AM haha

 sukrit1990: hahahaa

 me: bbyeeeeeee

 sukrit1990: best of luck

  bye

 me: thanx
So I think that you might have gotta know what actually was the problem with it!!.....once again I would thank Sukrit for his contribution.>:)

Understanding Memory

The human mind is a mysterious thing......many sceintists and thinkers and philosophers have tried to understand and decipher its working but a few have have succeded and that too partially. I am no greater than them so I just thought of a very basic thing......our memory and our understanding ability. Do they reside in totally isolated premises or do they have a connecting door. I am not talking about the physical divisions in our brains which the sceintists have carved out.....but the abstract thing!!!!

After a lot of contemplation and thought of a very interesting relationship between them which seems to be correct. well i think that the human mind's memory and understanding have a HYPERBOLIC relation between them. The graph to the right depicts the relation. take y=memory and x=understanding (or vice-versa)...the relation may be pictured so(the graph line in the 1st quadrant).

The more you memorize the less you understand and the more you understand the less you can mug-up.....now that's some disadvantage....but you could escape it by choosing the optimum point. At that point you can both learn and understand optimally. Its upto you how swiftly and easily you identify and reach that point. Yes there's also arises a possibility(I beleive that anything's possible [:)] ) that there can be born such a man who could choose two such points and can both learn and understand to the sheer extremity......(the second graph line in the 3rd quadrant) and in this way he can two optimal points.....

quite analogous to the core 2 duo processor!!!

""weird thoughts I have""

Ant and the Red-Tape

In my childhood my granny used to tell me a story........

Once in a country, fell a drought. There lived a parrot and a sparrow. They flew off to another country in search of food; unfortunately it was also struck by a famine. But there they found a single grain of food. They started to break it into two. After a long struggle they broke it with the help of a  crack in the trunk of a tree. Half of it got stuck in the crack itself and the parrot flew away with the other half. Desperate to have that half grain, the sparrow went to a woodcutter and asked him to open that crack so that it could take that grain.

The woodcutter refused. The sparrow went to the king and asked him to scold the woodcutter for he didn’t open the crack for it.

 The king refused. The sparrow went to the queen and asked her to divorce the king ‘coz he didn’t scold the woodcutter  ‘coz ........and the queen refused.

 So the sparrow went to a snake and asked him to bite the queen ‘coz she ........;.

The snake refused. So it went to a wooden cane and asked it to kill the snake ‘coz.......;.

The cane refused. The sparrow went to the fire and asked it to burn the cane because......;.

Fire declined the request, so the sparrow went to the river and asked it to extinguish the fire but the river refused. So the sparrow now went to the elephant and asked it to drink the waters of the river but the elephant too turned it down.

After losing all hope the sparrow was crying and an ant saw it. It asked the sparrow the reason for its sadness.....the sparrow explained. The ant took the initiative and went into the elephant’s trunk. The elephant said that it will have to drink the whole river only then the scratching might end. The river was petrified and said that it would rather extinguish the fire......and so on the trail went up to the woodcutter and he opened the crack ; finally the sparrow got its half-grain.

In this folklore, we observe that all the trouble was caused for nothing. The woodcutter would have easily opened the crack in the first place.....or if not him the king would have just scolded and ordered him to open it......but no one did his job correctly and finally a feeble and minute ant had to take the enterprise and help the sparrow get its part. Although this is a bedtime story told every alternate night by my Granma and might have no meaning for her but it contains a very significant message in the frame of today’s scenario.  The elephant here represents the red-tape, the sparrow- victim and the feeble and insignificant ant, overtook by pity for the sparrow’s heartache, took the initiative against a very “authoritative” elephant. The ant improved the way things were going and made sparrow’s work easy. The ant in a way here is representing the common man......who is very small in this red-tape world and is scared to heave its say. But he forgets the advantages of his minuteness.

This myth also tells us some other points worth noting like the emotional turn-on of the ant. The ant became emotionally attached with the sparrow and committed itself to bring justice to the ‘victim’. If it would not have done this emotionally it might have backed off due to the fear of the mighty elephant. The other thing is that this sentiment cropped up spontaneously. It didn’t need any external persuasion and the sparrow didn’t have to beg it for help. The ant came out on itself and changed the minds of all those who were certainly burly and brawny than it was and no one blamed it because no one was able to track it down. The same is the case with us people.

Now-a-days many of us are victims of the mechanics of the complicatedly knit red-tape and we are going on to be the sufferers if we don’t rise up. There is a possibility that the woodcutter, king, queen, snake et al had a syndicate of their own and had conspired against the petty sparrow. And we see that they succeeded in their task.....but had to finally give in to the determination of the ant. The chain of reformation which the ant had started continued up and up to the level of the king and even influenced him to kneel.

The ant here was just like a small point, an iota at the foot of a large pyramid. Our beauraucracy is constructed like a pyramid. At the base it is very vast and just like spotting an ant at a pyramid’s base could be a Herculean task by the same token tracking a common man at the clerical level could be difficult....that’s the advantage of minuteness I was talking about earlier. But all it takes is the ‘mettle to enkindle’. You have to take the risk on yourself to start this reformation and decontaminate the system. Although it was difficult for the colossal elephant to spot the tiny ant but the possibility of the elephant spotting the ant and crushing it, never dies. So if you rise, you’ve got to risk yourself. One more thing to be pointed out is that if in ant’s place there would have been some dog or tiger (symbolising some popular people in the system) the same would have been difficult.....because it would have been easier for the elephant to kill that dog and that tiger.

While in this fable we see that the sparrow had an easy access to the king, it is not the same these days. You must ‘know someone’ to approach the high levels unswervingly.....or you’ll just be stuck in the cobweb of the ‘babus’. This fact alone renders the story as theoretical, but the message is very clear and we should learn from it. The ant made the whole system going. So if the red-tape could work then why shouldn’t we take the enterprise? And not just one such sacrifice but we need many volunteers who are not afraid to be trampled beneath the elephant. I know its the ‘easier to say than do’ thing so I don’t put it as a mandatory thing; its not easy to play that ant; but you could at least compress your ‘ego’ the size of the ant instead of the elephant. The society might then be purged of all the ‘scum’ of the red-tape and system.

It's Only Superstition!!!

A  Hindu or a Jew, a kid or an adult, catholic or a protestant, a farmer or an executive everyone is fettered with credulities. Superstition is a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to supposedly irrational beliefs of others, and its precise meaning is therefore subjective. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be influenced or foretold by specific, unrelated behaviors or occurrences. A well educated man might scorn pejoratively the idea of tagging on a superstition but he still has some of ‘em buried in him. We are bred in an atmos loaded with superstitions. And such intense are its effects that we’ve got them etched in our minds even now……..it’s the upshot of such things that we are petrified if, say,  a black cat crosses our way. It is a common sight nowadays to see opulent people spending their every spare dime on ‘pundits’ for some rite b’coz they saw themselves sleeping on the pavement in a dream….or something preposterous like that.

 

Our world has many superstition embedded in it.

Exempla gratia:

According to legend, during the time of a plague, Saint Gregory I the Great ordered that people say "God bless you" when somebody sneezed, to prevent the spread of the disease. In Western folklore, superstitions associated with bad luck include Friday the 13th and walking under a ladder. It is also believed that if you were to step on a crack, your mother would then break her back. Often people will throw salt over their shoulder after they spill it, in order to blind the devil, who sits at your left shoulder. Breaking a mirror is considered to cause 7 years of bad luck. In India, there is a superstition that a pregnant woman should avoid going outside during an eclipse in order to prevent her baby being born with a facial birthmark. In Iran, birthmarks are called 'maah-gereftegi' which means eclipse. In Korea, there is a superstition that leaving a fan on in a closed room will suffocate the occupants.

 

It is not bad to have superstitions. A human mind, when sees a particular out of the ordinary thing occur, it ties it to something which you did somewhere in the past and thus emerges a new superstition. You then tenaciously believe in it and pass it to others (directly or indirectly) spreading it geometrically in all directions. Each one of us develops some superstition or rather naïveté…remember Dhoni unstrap and strap his gloves before every delivery.

 

Do these superstitions really have some effect and are they logical in any bearing? Are they rational? Considering the rhetorical aspect of the question the consensus would be a “YES”. Greek and Roman pagans, who modeled their relations with the gods on political and social terms, scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods, as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. "Such fear of the gods (deisidaimonia) was what the Romans meant by 'superstition'. The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion".

 

Discussing further….take the example of probably the most famous superstition that if a black cat crosses your way bad luck’s gonna come to you. So if a black cat passes thus you stop there waiting for someone else to cross it and take away the jinx with him. One such person happens to pass and then you joyfully move on; but God is watching you and He is angry because you did bad with that man and would curse you…..thus bad luck’ll come to you. But then again if you would have passed through that cursed area God would have been happy with you because you saved any other man from the curse and would relieve you from the evil eye. So we see that whatsoever, superstitions ultimately have no effect, how a belief goes wrong just by changing your point of reference!!!

 

The above discussion puts a big question mark on many other superstitions. Man is very logical in his approach owing to his rational mind then what is it that forces him to make irrational conclusions?? You could see many such beliefs entrenched around you and such beautifully camouflaged that sometimes we give in to them without us being aware of doing so. I would be reiterating to say that we have some unique credulities of our own and limited to us. But there are some widespread ones too and I know it would be too bold to say but have you ever given a thought of GOD also being a superstition!!!

 

It is certainly possible that somewhere in the past when many men were seeing the ‘out of the ordinary’ things happen, unexpected goings-on they would have taken the shelter of some ‘Superhuman’-God, who was making all this happen….or it is also possible that (in the past) some crazy, maverick philosopher would have given his theory of God and the petty sapiens (flabbergasted and unable to interpret these outlandish things) surrendered to it (which explained all things). And this theory became so popular that it is extant even now and is certainly going to be redolent many centuries ahead. Just like those men took the shelter of God, we too take the shelter of superstitions (like eating curd before going and doing some important task insuring that it finishes properly), and then we also have a major superstition (GOD) with us and within seconds our morale is soaring. When you seriously contemplate on this theory you may find many unexplained things as explained.

This is what I thought…..you can refute if you want to on this proposition…….

Science and Religion

Without Religion, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. ~ W. H. Auden

Religion, if opposed by anything the most, is by science (that’s what we think). Science relies on thorough analysis, on speculation, on inspection. It believes on what you actually see and that can be proved by experimentation, logic and calculation. A scientist might never find a testimony of god in his laboratory. He is able to see the farthest star in the sky and the smallest atom but in all this material things will he see anything like God? Therefore, he very confidently rejects the presence of any such entity as God. Strong believers in science accept this inference without one iota of counter-argument. They forget that the scientist is also a human being and he is ordained to slip-ups. The rejection of great theories of Euclid and Newton are an evidence of the brittleness of our thinking and the constraints in our approach.

 

The conflict between science and religion has been centuries old. Science has always been one-eighty to religion. Science talks about benefits in the real world while religion talks about them in the abstract. The upshots of science are real and swift and science is so fascinating. Just evoke your experience when you’d first saw through a telescope lens or when you’d first played a video game….with these things in the first place who has got time think about some intangible thing or a spiritual miracle?

 

Two things are compared only when they are of same nature. But you might argue that how can we compare science and religion? But after weighing the pros and cons of the matter you will find that religion too is a kind of science!! The only difference lies in the fact that science’s inventions are perceptible externally and can be showed to everyone, you could inspect it whenever you want whereas religious inventions are internal and its you and only you who has who has to put all endeavors and experience it. No one else can make you feel it. No one can build feeling inside you unlike a scientific theory. A scientist is always eager to reveal his inventions to you which is quite analogous to the case with a spiritualist. Scientific theories are being made ad infinitum while destroying the older ones whereas religious theories have not changed one iota to what they were thousands of years ago. But the glitch is that the people want proofs for all that they see. You can’t use a microscope to view a distant star; similarly you can’t use a materialistic reason to speculate a spiritual certainty.

 

Nowadays you may find many people using religion for their own interest, but they are mere imposters and should not be trusted. On the contrary; fake coins only imply the presence of real ones. In this aspect science has helped religion very much by proving that these imposters are phony. Those shams had once reached the peak of the religions and had modified it (the Catholic Church’s saying that earth’s orbit is round and earth is the centre of the universe was completely to their aesthetic tastes; but when someone challenged their dogma, he was overpowered by them). For many years they misguided us. Take Hinduism, for instance….in Ramayana instead of paying attention that whether Ravana had ten heads or Hanuman’s tail was a mile long, we should focus on its aesthetic value and absorb the characters of Ram, Laxman and Sita.

Science has also helped religion in one more term…it has given us a temper to hypothesize and inspect. Certainly science is not an advisable vehicle in the road of spirituality; but nevertheless we can use it limitedly to inspect the legitimacy of a thing.

The disappointment of people from their spiritual leader arises when we start mulling him on a material balance. Jesus knew and taught about spiritual things; but this doesn’t mean that he knew about the movements of celestial bodies, about gravity.

 

Religion is said to have evolved due to dissatisfaction from materialism. If it is this then hasn’t science strengthened the notions of religion by unfolding the mysteries of this universe? Just envision the beauty of this universe!!! It all started from nothingness; a small point exploded with such intensity (Big Bang) that its reminiscent is continuing till now and will continue; light and its speed(299458792 miles a sec); the complex structure of universe(The Perfect Design); Island Universes; atom—so small!! Yet it can destroy a whole country. We know all this because of science and when we reflect upon it we certainly wanna know about its Creator. This “Perfect Design” happened, because it just happened or was their really a controlling force, some “Uncaused Cause”, some “Unmoved Mover”, something like God.

 

It is baseless to argue on their compatibility. None is opposing the other. Just like meditating will not give you the Fourier series; microscope and Bunsen burner will not prove religious theories. The urge to find God is fully based on individual forces and capacity; nothing external can influence it. Buddha understood God when he was away from materialism and then spread it to all. Science is busy solving the material problems of man whereas religion is busy with his spiritual ones. They might seem a one-eighty now but who knows they might seem same at some point of time (Atomic Theory: all matter is identical at the atomic level, no matter what it looks like to our eyes). They might converge and meet somewhere in time, if we keep on bickering we might have to confess that even though we have full knowledge about both but we are blank about its Creator.