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?"