Finding order in randomness. Finding randomness in order.

  Consciousness arises in the physical brain but is not a physical process. It is a “program” that runs in the brain. And this program is not linked with the brain/body in any fundamental way apart from the fact that it runs on a particular brain situated in a particular body. This may sound something simple, but the implications are profound. And that explains a lot of the struggles of us conscious beings. Consciousness is not so much a biological evolutionary process – it does not degrade with age as the brain/body does (the degradation that happens in old age is again due to degradation of the hardware). It is an abstract thing – not physical – so there is no such thing as degradation. Prime numbers do not degrade over time, music does not degrade over time – the physical instantiations surely do, but the abstractions do not. So, consciousness, as an abstraction, does not have “degradation” built into it. But the brain/body does. And therefore death i.e., death of the physic...

I believe a lot of psychological misery in this world is due to coercion. Coercion by society, culture, gender, evolutionary forces and the most dangerous of them all - self-coercion (which is needed anyway for the other coercive forces to have their effect). There is also one, perhaps bigger, sense in which coercion is wrong - it is authoritarian and stops the growth of knowledge. But let's focus on misery for now. Coercion happens when people pick an idea, and write it in stone. All ideas it is in conflict with are just ignored. And then they want this idea to materialize. And they attach their wellbeing to it materializing. The reasons for this could be any number of things - from "it is the right thing to do i.e. morality", to "it will make me happy" to "it will make my life meaningful" etc. The idea is so strongly entrenched (it's written in stone after all), that feedback (from things like one own state of mind) is typically closed off. The i...

  When life seems rough You smoothen the groove When the going gets tough You help me crunch through When stuck in myriad ruts You say - here, go a bit nuts Rain or shine..our bond is such Oh peanut butter, I love you so much

  I believe Fundamental research i.e. research into fundamental fields WITHOUT a prior agenda (of solving a specific pre-determined problem) is one of the, if not the, most important field we as mankind should be investing in. It is only this kind of research that has the best chance to produce solutions for problems that we currently face, and more importantly for new problems we will face in the future.  We currently face several existential threats- climate change being one of them. However, to think these will be the last existential threats or that we know of all possible future existential threats would be naïve . Our best defense  against future unknown existential risks is again - fundamental research - which helps us understand the nature of reality and in the process come up with solutions for problems. Iterative research or research with a specific goal in mind has its place and is essential too. It is required to take a particular solution ahead and better...

I have been thinking about what love is. The English language (or maybe all languages for that matter) is limited in the fact that it has only one word to describe the blanket of emotions/states of mind we call “love”. I am not talking about romantic love. The fact the default association of the word “love” is to romantic love is perhaps a side effect of the romantic movement that started a few hundred years ago. And what a successful movement it has been in changing society, family structure and our lives completely in the process. What we take for granted now when it comes to romantic love was an alien notion just a few hundred years ago.  I digress. What I want to really talk about is love in a universal sense. The love of things and ideas and experiences. What is it? What happens when we say we love something or someone? Is the love of person fundamentally different from the love of something else - like one’s work, or hobby or a book or art or even a pet? I think it is not fun...

Setting medium to long term goals is overrated (and even harmful at times). I know how controversial that sounds. But hear me out. You have this goal and you are working towards it. Come what may you won’t give up. Perseverance. You are a fighter. You don’t give up. You achieve your goal and feel great. You are so proud of yourself. And so are others around you. So what’s wrong with that?  I think setting a medium or long term goal is like putting a blinder on. You are focused on that goal to the exclusion of other things. Read that again. Because you have the blinders on, you could miss something that could be even better. It’s exactly like taking a walk with a blinder on. You know your destination (your goal) and you are determined to reach it. You walk and don’t look left and right. And in doing this, you miss some amazing paths which could have led you to an even better destination.  So living a life based on set goals is limiting. Instead, life should be lived based on fu...

 I am a scatterbrain. I am not very organised in most things in my life. My apartment is kind of a mess at times with books and things all over. I tend to do things last minute and am quite bad at planning. I think it comes from my perfectionism, but rather than looking at these (and other aspects of my personality) as defects, how about I treat them in a neutral way. As long as I am not causing active harm to others out there with these facets - they are not good or bad, they just are. So a better way to think about myself would be - everything about me that doesn’t cause active harm to other humans (or myself) is to be judged in a neutral way. I am not allowed to label it as a “defect” or a “disorder”. I just call it a facet of my personality. And as with most things these facets give me certain advantages and also certain disadvantages. So let’s take my lack of organization for example. Based on the above I don’t see how it could be causing any active harm to anyone else. So i s...