Quote of the day

"Evil starts at 15Volts!!!"

I believe this is indeed a profound statement. Check out the following talk by psychologist Philip Zimbardo to know more.

Answers

Grad school kills the child like spirit in most poeple. It really does. A couple of answers that some friends in grad school gave me are evidence for this claim.

This gem of a conversation happened early this year. Calgary was experiencing a total lunar eclipse. At about 15 minutes walk from my house, there is a nice open area that masks us from the blinding city lights. IMO, a nice place to enjoy a celestial spectacle. I was going there when I met a friend and asked him if he would come with me. The (now classic in my friends' circle) resposne was, "Ill look it up on youtube". :) A lot of responses came to my mind but this being a 'U' blog, I cannot write them here. :D

The second one happened quite recently. Its now the fall season in Calgary and it is breathtakingly beautiful. One evening when it was a bit rainy, I was just standing at a point and enjoying the awesome fall colors. Another friend passeed by and his remarkably bland observation was, "Oh, Did'nt you see them last year!!". I had no clue what to reply!

Life of mammals

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a thousand pictures (or may be more, depending upon the frame rate).

The clip in the following video is from the BBC series called "Life of mammals" (part 5). The song is not from the original video. Definitely watch between the time slots 2:40 to 2:50. Absolutely awesome. Anyone who sees this will get a very strong intuition on some of the biology and physics of tails in animals.

If possible, please watch the entire series. I am absolutely thrilled and fascinated to see this. I think a smart kid can work out the principles of evolution by watching this series. No irritating teachers, boring text books or painful exams will be needed. Following is the first part of the series.

Fallin for Calgary's fall

வண்ண வண்ண இலைகள்
வண்ண வண்ண நினைவுகள்
இலைகளோ உதிர்ந்தன
நினைவுகள் ஏனோ உதிராமல் ஒட்டிகொண்டன

Approximate number sense

NYT had an article a couple of days ago about the innate number sense that humans posess. It also gave a way to test our approximate number sense. Check it out. I scored 90%. Good way to kill some time!

LHC

LHC - Large Hadron Collider. Some crazy physicists, in collusion with equally nutty engineers and others, are gonna accelerate particles to super high speeds (very close to the speed of light) and collide them head on in order to find out whats inside them. And then, what Prahlada said "தூனிலும் இருப்பான் துரும்பிலும் இருப்பான" (he is inside the pillar, he is inside the atom) is expected to come true. The sarcastically or respectfully (depending on the side you are) named 'God particle' is expected to pop out of the particles when they collide at such high speeds with each other. Lets see what happens. And interestingly, Stephen Hawking thinks this is not likely to happen and has even placed a bet of $100 on that.

Meanwhile, in headquarters, a conspiracy is brewing.

P1: We conduct thesis defenses for students in order to find out whats in their head.
P2: Yes. Thats right.

P1: Why dont we follow the LHC model? Lets accelerate grad students along the corridors of our department and then make them collide head on with each other.
P2: Then?

P1: We can then observe if their knowledge of thesis pops out.
P2: Wow. Thats a wonderful idea. Will talk to the co-ordinator right away.

P1: I am wondering what would be the pairing. It sure is boring to smash grad students from the sam lab with each other.
P2: Yup. We could do Theory vs S/W Engg; Crypto vs HCI; Bio computation vs Quantum computation etc...

P1: That sounds good. I really like the pairings.

BTW, a lot of nuts have joined together to claim that the world might end when they start the LHC. Scary huh (this has been refuted so many times already). But if thats really the case, then I know what to do tonight. I meant Ill pray. I hope you were not one of those perverts who thought otherwise.

Lows

It is when you hit a low point, you have the best opportunity to:

• Introspect and fix errors in ones thought and action via first principles
• Reach the highest possible point.

This is because, when you are at a low, there is no pressure to meet expectations. This takes one out of the glare of attention. No one cares what you do. It is easiest at this point to work on things (e.g. discipline) via first principles. To reach the highest possible point, we need the most acceleration. It is obtained best when you have been gradually increasing it for a long time. Contemplating these (personal) truths always helps me at lows (Not that I am at a low now. Just some random musings).

Psychology experiments

They say, that other sciences have classic laws but psychology has classic experiments. Biology has Darwins principle (don't know why it is not called a law), physics has Newtons laws and so on. But, psychology has experiments. Asch's conformity experiments and the Ultimatum game are very popular and I am guessing should be found in all standard text books (am guessing here because I have not read any psychology text books). Please read briefly about the above two experiments before proceeding.

There are a lot of variations that one can think about in the conformity experiments. For e.g., when the actual subject was told to write down the answers, conformity decreased tremendously. Also, when one person other than the actual subject was told to give correct answers, again conformity decreased. From our day-to-day experience, these results are intuitively correct. I have some more variations that I think are very interesting (there could be some ethical questions to be considered before proceeding with these though):

a.) The questions need not always be about the correct answer to a question. One other idea could be to ask about the usefulness of a product. Another idea could be to ask about political opinions.

b.) Instead of the other people in the room merely answering their question, what if they are made to gasp or look at the actual subject curiously when the actual subject gives out the answers?

c.) Choose the other participants such that the subject does not know them. Introduce the others to the subject and tell the subject that each of them either has  phd in mathematics, is a prof in physics etc. Let it be that all of them are from famous places like MIT, Stanford etc. Then conduct the test. This test could be both in terms of right/wrong answers and in the form of opinions.

I think these are very interesting variations but I do not know if these have already been done. The first one could explain why people buy useless products advertised by others. The second one could bring on more pressure to conform. I like the third one most. It could tell how we conform in the face of 'expert' opinion.

The second experiment is the Ultimatum game. It seems a bit trivial to me. Of course, if someone offers me $1 when they are taking $99, I would reject it. But, what if someone were to offer me $100000 when they took the left over portion of $1 million? There seems to be some work in this regard but this version is not being talked about often. I think, the version where I will stand to gain much more than my monthly income is the one people should be interested in. Even in that case, the experimental setup is not quite right. In the case where $100, is to be split, researchers can spend that and the subjects will know that they will get that amount. But in the case where the amount to be split is $1 million, the subjects do know that they are not going to get the huge amount of money and it is only a thought experiment. This could seriously affect the outcome. So, the case where $1 million is the amount to be split and with a different kind of experimental setup is the one that is needed. 

If there are any experts in this field reading this, please enlighten us about what you think about these suggestions.

PS: The promised continuation to 'Correct Action -1' is coming up soon.

Correct action - 1

From Gautama Buddha in his eight fold path to Patanjali in his niyamas, correct action have also found great emphasis in Indian spiritual discourse (probably in a lot of others also). I have been intrigued by this for a long time. When life was much simpler in small communities, correct action was probably slightly more easier to define that today (am not implying that it was easy to follow). But, in todays world, where the actions of one person living in one part of the world has its effects on the four corners of the world, it is not easy to define. Some questions that evade easy answers would be

a.) I want the sky to be blue and the river water pure enough for me to drink directly from it. But, does it mean that I quit my jog which depends on an economy that for its very existence has to pollute both land and water?

b.) I want to be friendly and compassionate to everyone around me. So, do I fight the oppressive and often violent social structures of which I am a part of?

The questions are endless. The answers are not readily forthcoming. From my experience, the actual answers are quite personalized to every individual. But, that is not to deny a common factor in the different ideosyncratic answers. The methds I try come from three different domains - spirituality, science and misc (for want of a better word). I do acknowledge sometimes the directions from any two of these are directly opposite to each other but its part of the problem to deal with such situations.

Spiritually, I find that it really helps to contemplate on compassion and selfless action. If the action that I do is contradicting either of this, it is a big red flag to me. I would be extremely cautious even moving a centimeter in that direction.

Scientifically, I find it is important to have a basic understanding of evolutionary biology, human psychology, physics (at both the particle and astronomical granularities), computer science (this is slightly questionable), anthropology (society, culture, language) and philosophy. Now, I am not an expert in any of these. But, many times, our society decides to take a course of action with the reasoning couched in the language of one of these sciences. Without a basic understanding of these sciences, it is certainly not possible to identify most of the baloney dished out to us in the name of science.

The miscellaneous title gives an impression of this being not so important. But, that is certainly not the case. Its use only reflects the poverty of my english vocabulary. This category contains the fields of environmental studies and current affairs. Undoubtedly, my study of environmental effects of my middle class life practices and awareness of current affairs played a huge role in creating a huge shift in my outlook to life.


PS: In the next post, I will post some example of when each of these were helpful to me.