Finding order in randomness. Finding randomness in order.

About you, if I were to pen a song  It would not take too long Not because you can be written about  Or sketched in words a few  But because I've carried them throughout In my heart since the day I met you

We think we communicate mostly with words. But the fact if we don't know exactly how much communication or information exchange is happening on the subconscious level. We understand so little about the brain, and consciousness that this question is unequivocally unanswered - exactly how much information exchange happen on the subconscious level. I think it is far more than we think. The conscious brain is good at reasoning after the fact i.e. coming up with reasons why we think a certain way. And these reasons are not always right - they are just an attempt by the pre-frontal cortex to make sense of how we are feeling at the time. e.g. you meet someone for the first time. There is a lot of information exchange happening. Just you looking at this person, there are processes in your brain forming an idea about this person - they way he looks, the way he walks, the way he moves, the way he smells, the way he talks, his facial expressions etc. etc. there are many other non-verbal data ...

 What is happiness? Popper answered this question the best in his answer to what is the meaning of life. "All life is problem solving" Problem in the Popperian sense is not always something bad. Problem can be any unsolved thing that you are working on and the definition is not limited to science, art etc. Raising your kids well is also a problem in this sense, and so is trying to get better at dodgeball. Working on a problem is a process of knowledge creation. So in a sense, life is a process of knowledge creation. What is a good life then? what is a happy life? It is a life where the problems you are working on, the knowledge that you are creating, are interesting to YOU. This is the key here - YOU find these problems interesting and are free of coercion in choosing these problems. This is easier said than done. I wrote about it in an earlier blog post , but I believe most misery (excluding misery due to physical pain/limitations, or psychological issues that are real e.g. ...

  At the end of a long day filled with stress and turmoil the man heard his heart say why all this endless toil You work so hard from dawn to dusk maybe let down your guard you ain't Elon Musk Work is a cope of the restless of mind but there is still hope you can choose to be kind So be kind to yourself man and your inner child within really do whatever you can lest the child goes Slytherin Stop running from the true you dreams unchased is a crime life gives chances a few my friend, now is the time

 Several have postulated that there is a link between "madness" and creativity. I have a theory here (which someone else might have postulated as well) that it is a specific kind of madness and creativity that are linked. The specific kind is being on the schizo spectrum i.e. not full blown schizophrenia but on the spectrum somewhere AND having high analytical IQ. Such individuals are the most creative.  There have been several cases in history of highly creative individuals having these schizo genes. Newton definitely had them. He made all his major contributions long before the age of 30, and then the schizo sorta took over and he spent his time trying to find hidden meanings in the Bible and turning metal into gold. Newton was what we classify today as a 'schizotypal' or a 'schizoid' personality. One of the main manifestations of this personality type is being unforgiving and holding grudges, and Newton was known for that. Apart from being solitary and dist...

 It is easy to see when someone else is behaving in a way that is irrational or detrimental to their own well being. But when the same applies to oneself it is very difficult to realize that you are behaving or following similar irrational/ unhealthy patterns. why is that so? I think it is because when someone else is doing it e.g. ending up in a relationship with a person they know is not good for them, we can observe that fact without getting involved. So all our faculties are impartial in the sense that all the computing power can be used for analysis purposes. And we can see the pattern in that person, and the fact that he/she is again repeating it. But when it comes to oneself, the same faculties are actually busy enacting the pattern and some of these faculties are shut down by the pattern itself (the pattern is again just a set of ideas that get executed). So, one of the key features of this pattern is that it shuts down the ideas that can actually recognize it. A good analo...

 It’s a funny thing- death. We all die. It is the only certain thing they say. Apart from taxes. Religions have sought to make it easier, philosophers have written volumes on it, spiritual seekers have tried to confront their fear of it and most of us in fact deny it without knowing. This is because we human beings are 2 things - our physical body (including our brain) which is mere hardware, and the “person”, the abstract entity, the self-aware conscious being which runs on this hardware but is not defined by the hardware. The person is abstract, and does not die unless the hardware (i.e. the body) does. And currently, all bodies die. So death is inevitable. There is sort of a disjoint between these 2 processes - of the body deteriorating and the person trying to accept it. The person does not deteriorate at the same rate as the body. In fact, the person never deteriorates unless there are issues with the brain (i.e, hardware problems) which do happen with age.  I have writte...

 How does the brain decide if something is important enough to remember? i.e. something is important enough to be saved into long term memory. The mechanism the brain uses is that of feelings - if something makes us feel an emotion - and the stronger the emotion - the more likely and strongly the memory is saved. And it is disproportionately biased towards fear/anxiety - so events that come with fear/anxiety are more favorably saved into long term memory (and sometimes the process itself can get stuck and cause PTSD). The reasons for this are obvious - evolutionarily speaking anything that could jeopardize the survival of the organism is the most critical to remember for the future.  It doesn't matter how impactful the actual event is, if you don't feel anything much the brain is not going to save it. So if you see a tiger and you don't have any corresponding feeling after seeing the tiger, you will not remember it.  I personally struggled with anxiety for a long time, an...

 People say having children is the most meaningful thing they have done and their children give meaning to their lives. To a certain extent this is noble, but when taken too far I think it is outright immoral. Some people want to live their lives through their children. It's almost like the child is an offshoot of themselves, and they want the child to 'achieve' and do well so that they feel vindicated and successful as parents. That is immoral. In fact, having ANY kind of expectations from your child, and attaching your own self worth to your child is outright violating the rights of the child. It puts a lot of pressure on the child and it is detrimental to the child. It is, infact, immoral. Let children become their own persons without coercion. Of course help them do that - by talking to them without coercion using logic and arguments - but let them be. There is always a way to do this. 

Talking to a friend (who is perhaps the only person I know personally who is interested in this stuff) about knowledge and specifically the problem of probabilities and frequencies and also of induction (the idea that our observations is how we get knowledge and then predict the future)  It all comes down to 1 thing really - knowledge and the process that creates knowledge which is explained by Popperian epistemology. Induction does appear to contain some knowledge and appears to be useful. However Induction is not true, not that it happens and it is false, but rather induction does not happen at all - we always have theory first and then we attribute it to induction. However, the reason induction (or what we think of as induction) contains knowledge in some instances is because it could be part of an explanatory theory. The sun rises in the east everyday and an inductive theory of that would be like - “the sun has risen in the east until now and based on that it will be rising in ...

 I believe there is objective beauty, like there is objective morality. David Deustch makes a case of this in this book 'The beginning of Infinity'. Or you can watch this - Why are flowers beautiful Now there is objective beauty and subjective beauty. Subjective beauty is not necessarily objective - there are evolutionary/cultural ideas that make us find certain things attractive in order to get us to act in certain ways. And these things are not necessarily objectively beautiful.  I have wondered - is there a subjective difference between one's enjoyment of objective beauty and subjective beauty. i.e. do we feel different when we are experiencing something that is objectively beautiful vs something that is just subjectively beautiful?  only a theory of beauty and aesthetics can answer that and we don't have one yet

  Most people spend all their lives enacting memes (i.e. ideas) of their society without questioning them. And by most I mean almost all. At any given time, it is actually just a handful of individuals who introduce new memes that are radical and change civilization in a profound way. The rest of the populace just continue enacting these memes.  And I was surprised to realize that almost all of these ideas/memes that dominate the lives of people have evolutionary origins i.e. they are memes that have as their basis evolutionary programming. e.g. below things dominate lives of almost everyone - Food - which encompasses gathering, cooking, eating, restaurants etc. Sex - which encompasses looks, appearance, attraction, social games, pursuit of sex etc. resources - money which encompasses accumulation of wealth, jobs, working towards getting more money  Family and friendships - forming social connections, staring a family, having children etc. Violence/Conflict/Resource compe...

  Should one be thankful since the “probability” that one exists is so low ? Not really - thinking of probability in these terms is meaningless when we don’t understand a lot of things - eg consciousness, qualia, creativity etc. It’s like buying a KitKat and asking what is the probability that this exact KitKat is in my hand right now out of the billions that have been manufactured and why KitKat and not katkit (ie why did they name it KitKat) etc. Such probabilities are meaningless. I understand where this line of thinking comes from - wanting people to appreciate life more given how “improbable” it is that we are here. But that’s not the reason to appreciate life in my opinion and this kind of reasoning - first of all is not useful and secondly doesn’t have much meaning as I said. There are reasons to appreciate life of course even though we don’t understand a lot of them yet (since philosophy, including moral philosophy hasn’t ma...

 Someone said some time back "I love older movies, they are so much better. They don't make movies like that anymore - older movies are so much better". I promptly pointed out this reasoning is mistaken. The fact is that there are a LOT more older movies than newer movies. Like a lot lot more. If you classify newer movies as movies released in the last 5 years, there are like perhaps a 100 times more movies made from the dawn of cinema till 5 years ago. So even if say only 5% of older movies are good as compared to 10% of newer movies (which is the other side of the preposition) even then there would be 50 times more "good" older movies then newer movies. 

 Anything you don’t want to do, but “have” to do because of any number of reasons - societal norms, religion, culture, bodily needs, responsibilities etc. - is a shame.  That is a bold statement, I know. I don’t mean to say that you should drop all those things you don’t want to do. That would be immoral in many cases. What i am saying is that those are the areas where progress can happen and if it continues we might have a way of life where we never have to do anything that we don’t want to do (unless not doing it is immoral). All the things we have to do today (which we don’t want to) are problems which will be solved and automated or eliminated with progress (ie creation of knowledge) in science and philosophy. There include things like having to work for money, having to exercise to maintain health, having to eat “healthy”, having to take care of children etc. etc. 

I see the road ahead  Leading to success But I want to instead Just make a giant mess Why would you, you may ask And be right to do so It’s just I’m not up to the task  I’m quite lazy and slow  You see I’ve taken that road before And success I did get But then my feet were so sore  And my shoes all wet So now I shall stay put And forgo the chance at glory “He was never afoot” Shall be my story   

  Searching for meaning  In a confusing world Is almost becoming kind of absurd You have the teachers You have the books You worship the preachers Who turn out to be crooks So what shall a man do To live a life worthwhile  Maybe -  to oneself be true  And do what makes you smile  PS - “Unless you are a psychopathic serial killer. Then don’t do that please.”

No, not anymore can we wait It’s time to pick up the sword Now we take charge of our fate And fight the evil untoward  I know, we abhor violence  But when evil is just this far It’s no time for silence  My brother, it’s time for war 

Every time I fumble You extend your hand to pull me up  What if the next time  I place my heart in it instead? 

One of my favorite verses from the Bhagavad Gita (and also one of the most popular ones) goes- यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत । अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥४-७॥ परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् । धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥४-८॥ Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata Abhythanamadharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham Paritranaya sadhunang vinashay cha dushkritam Dharmasangsthapanarthay sambhabami yuge yuge   Here Krishna is telling Arjuna that whenever  there is decay of "dharma" (a concept that is not easily translated in English in fact, but more commonly translated as "one's duty" or "righteousness") in the world he will be born again to restore righteousness and destroy  evil. Some people take this literally i.e. through reincarnation Krishna will be born again in a human form and take these actions. However, I think that is not what this means. Krishna is not a person here but he is knowledge, ideas. What he is ...