God

One chooses his god based upon whence, he subconciously feels, he would be granted the most pleasure.
I rather base that upon a concious feeling: Music is my God, and my Guitar is my Alter.

life is shit happiness is nothing but relief from this shit so even happiness is just relative to shit

nothing is worth sacrificing that simplicity of solitude

a lot of intellectual energy is wasted in despirately trying to break away from our psychological security blanket. this security blanket is an artifact of our own fears, and not one of physics. what a waste. things are quite clear after the blanket is deposed.

care for all
know the emotional idiosyncrasies of each one, and know how to combine them
and know that your own will probably never be acknowledged
probably not even by the one who should, probably
life will be shit, and you'll be satisfied

Description of events at Taj

Brings to mind considerations of the state of mind of the Taj staff. Unexpectable altruism, I think. Confusing; beautiful, but confusing.

and as it leaves
as that ephemeral palace
of daydreams and aspirations hesitantly dismantles itself
that same feeling of freedom begins to return

A Poem for Byzantium

Unforbidden shadows of you formed yesterday
I ran away to a room here on the bay
Interrupted life again, another new beginning
Where the silence echoes you're no longer with me

Here and now, i feel that i'm embracing freedom
Even though i may be alone, but that's ok

Through the darkness i would walk in the streets
Confessions never seemed to provide me with a release
Held me down and tried to cure me tried to give me reason
But nothing could separate this burdened mind from me

Here and now, i feel that i'm embracing freedom
Even though i may be alone, but that's ok
And looking out to a different sky will disengage me
Absence is never the answer, i know, but it serves as my shade

I do not seek and do not intend to find
A calmer ocean or a sun that will never rise
My world will never change and time will bring you to my thoughts
And i'll move on and then forget you all over again
Moving on, i can forgive you all over again

Here and now, i feel that i'm embracing freedom
Even though i may be alone, but that's ok
And looking out onto a different sky it seems so easy
Absence is never the answer, i know, but it serves as my shade

These are lyrics from Delerium's "A Poem for Byzantium", featuring Joanna Stevens.

Expresses a satisfied acceptance of permanent dissatisfaction.

I think it's glorious.

Till one minute everything is good, sufficient, perfect almost
It sneaks up on you, out of NOWHERE
Like a virus it infects every corner of your psyche
Colours every one of your thoughts
MINCES even the shortest train of thought
It's like wine, desensitizes you everything else
Nothing else matters
And you know all along that once it leaves, nothing will have made any sense
Happens every time
But this one's Different!!

The spirit of science is refrain from belief.

The only freedom is that from desire, and this sort of freedom breeds a creativity that builds to invincibility.

Moral authority is the most powerful and deadly weapon of man. Though, true immunity from this weapon is not procured by the use of this fact as a justifier, but is the slowly blossoming fruit from a gradual personal emancipation from desire.

K. Shah

Heart-melting

Sung by Suraiya, in her crystalline voice. Just a clip, though, not the whole song (which was removed from Youtube for some reason)

When one asks the question, "Is there any goodness left in the world?", it is equivalent to admitting the loss of his own goodness.

It is important to never ask that question, and to continue savoring the punishments of naivety.

Only in such a state can one stumble upon goodness.

The covetted distractions

How we constantly search for distractions from the raw beauty in life.
Surrounded by flowers and butterflies, we seek relief; how funny
Just wait till you find it; you'll think you're an idiot

Pleasure

I'll respond to the previous comment as soon as my time permits, forgive me.
Until then, the reader will remain content by watching this:

Bobby Jindal

http://merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=127151

New York Times said a few weeks ago, "If Mr Jindal wins, it may mean not that race no longer matters in Louisiana, but simply that…Asian-Americans now fall on the white side of the racial divide.

As a modern political fact, Jindal would have to run as a liberal Democrat to be of any use to humanity.

This provides a decent response. I haven't read much more about this, but if I come across something better, or if I come up with some actually coherent thoughts (I'm still in the process of hanging myself after hearing about this), I'll add.

But I'll add this much, which is unrelated to the actual problem I have with this piece of shit:

Amongst all other states, LA is one that needs a liberal democratic leadership (tons of broke homeless people, and they're mostly black). WHY this?

Bobby Jindal

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/nationalspecial/21louisiana.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

A born-again Roman Catholic, Mr. Jindal made a particular campaign target of these areas, visiting them frequently and bringing his brand of devout Christianity to their rural churches. His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools, a total ban on abortion, repealing hate-crimes laws — would have been welcome in these areas.

I want to draw everyone's attention to this.

I might write more on it if I think of something coherent to say while I try to go hang myself.

Purpose

I'd like to reexamine a topic about which I've written priorly. How does a purpose or goal affect the mind of a man? I refer to my previous post on Human Devotion, the one at the top of the target page.

I'll elaborate on the topic, in some time.

Measuring Humans

Again, this post discusses an obvious point that I feel needs to be stated emphatically:

That the world gravitates around money and power, that life is measured against that scale, is a common notion.

This contradicts the value system within which we often mature into adults: That value system that says Be a good person. Why? What I mean is, why be a good person?

The former notion, about the money and power, pervades most of life's domain, that is, most of the animal kingdom; It's an animalistic mode, and should not measure a man. Then why does it so often?

Indeed we are all animals, but we are human. Humanity is, indeed, a transcendence from the animal (as you may have noticed to be a common theme of my writing), but indeed the man is still an animal, and still subject to the scales against which animals are measured.

But it should not be so that, in measuring up one's life, on this animal scale of money and power, that the beautiful fact that we are human be forgotten. Our humanity puts us to a tougher test: Both scales are to be used.

A man is not a man if he manages to gather masses of money and power, but does not satisfy the be-a-good-person value system that we've created for our special species. Nor can he be a man if he indeed adhere's to goodness, but does not manage to measure up on the animal scale.

The mark of a man is scoring high in the money-power measure while maintaining his humanness, maintaining his value system.

For a more analytic discussion on this topic, see my previous post on Conscience and Moral Strength

Probability Disambiguation

Probability is a meta-physical concept.

This is the reason why it is difficult for many people to fully grasp and work with. We are accustomed to interacting with concepts that are or can be connected with the physical world that we experience through our senses. We understand things like location and size, because we experience those physical concepts through our senses.

Probability, chance, is not something that is experienced through the senses, and we try to form physical analogues in hopes that these will explain it to those of us with a weaker imagination (apologies for the arrogance; it's meant to motivate, not to insult).

Probability is a meta-physical concept.

Let's take, for an example, a particle, suspended in space, at a point, A, and that point, A, happens to be nearby your face. The familiar physical interpretation of your surrounding universe, in that case, is that there exists a particle, in front of your face, at point, A.

The probabilistic interpretation of the universe surrounding you, in that case, is that there exists a particle, and it exists everywhere, not just at point, A, but with a varying density of existence. It's existence is very sparse at most loci in the universe, but is very dense at point, A; it still exists everywhere, however.

The gap between these two interpretations is the reason why the idea that an electron, existing around a nucleus, has undetermined, stochastic location is mystical to the physicist, while the mathematical scientist shrugs his shoulders and nods a 'okay, go on' to the same.

The domain of existence of our particle was a spacial one. A stochastic variable might have a univariate Gaussian density, in which case, it's domain of existence would be the real field, a numeric domain of existence. In the same way as the particle, the stochastic variable has all real numeric values, but has varying density over the real field.

An analogue many-a-times used to embed the concept of a stochastic variable into the mind of the student is to view it as a collection of determined numbers, and its density as a sort of normalised population histogram. This is a convenient view to use, but it is not a faithful one. The inadequacy of this approach exposes itself in the fact that students have much trouble in more advanced applications of probability theory. The problem with this view is that it does not define a stochastic variable, it is a physical situation for which a stochastic variable may be used as a model. The stochastic variable itself is not a collection of numbers, it is not a number in the field. The stochastic variable is a mathematical meta-object.

Listening to Flamenco, followed by listening to some Arabic music...

Ever noticed that there is a strong cohesion between Arabic music and flamenco music? Also, (Spanish) flamenco is quite a bit different from music originating in other European locales. Probably because of the Moorish influence in Spanish culture.

Moorish influence in Spanish culture is evident in many forms, and more than that, the Arabs seem to have had some even more profound influence in Europe than is normally realised: For example, the (quite useless) definite/indefinite particles in romance languages. Latin, and other Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit, never felt the need (rightly so) to have definite and indefinite particles ('a', 'the'), but they are there in the romance languages, and even Germanic languages: Die (German); Le/Un (French), etcetera.

Resiliently Happy

Love's false pretense of solidarity

Having sustained it's injuries

The naive heart

It's Platonic presumptions

Refuses to defend itself and invites the ingenuine marauder

Finding pleasure in even it's own pain

My (Doomed) Experiment

this will be a less obscured post

I'm trying something new today. I'm avoiding doing what I feel like doing. I feel that I have lost control, to some degree, of what I feel like doing, and I am experimenting with regaining control of it. I am forcing myself into a decent routine for the day, and hopefully tomorrow.

This practice is not for the sake of forming a routine!

I am conducting an experiment, so see if, once the emotional mind is convinced that it is impossible to get what it wants, then does it alter its desire to something that it thinks that it can get.

Consider that.

If the desire of the mind can be controlled consciously, then man can take fuller responsibility over life.

This must seem a moot point. I don't think it's something that most of us keep in mind daily, however.

I hear myself preaching, but really, this is not a submittal to structure!

It is actually just an experiment. I'm trying something new; exploring different behaviours of the mind. My hypothesis is that the mind will indeed alter its desire to something that it thinks that it can get. This has to be because at the essence of the mind's purpose is simply a desire to be what it thinks is happy, and deciding to want something that it knows it will not get is tantamount to deciding, itself, upon its own certain dissatisfaction.

Of course I'm only including non-material desires here, like if I want Chinese food, and I'm sick of Italian, I'll order a pizza, just to see how the mind behaves. If the mind wants to pee, I'll surely go pee, though.

If, at the end of my experiment, I decide that my hypothesis is correct, then that would mean that the mind has a mind of its own, and it may have been working against us from the very beginning... Bastard mind.

Of course there is a bit of humor in this, I'm laughing while I'm writing :-) . If one thinks more seriously about this, however, one may gain something.

Also, since Nick and Alex are coming in on Friday, and will be here for slightly less than a week, it's likely that this experiment will not reach completion, and will have to be repeated after they leave and after I, again, gather enough energy and motivation to try something quite as daunting as this.

the quest for freedom from the forces of physics (including religious and metaphysical ponderings and such) is a superfluous activity carried out by physical entities (humans, in the special case continually under scrutiny), but existence of these entities is physical

or is it not purely so? are we more than our physical selves? anyway, that's a more fundamental question, and far too fundamental to submit itself to an intellectual discussion. it is one that is only addressed via experience, and possibly hard to convey. we return to the present discussion.

the quest for freedom from the forces of physics is an activity, carried out by biological physical entities, that is entirely superfluous for biological and physical existence. but this ritualistic activity is only performed by such biological physical entities, whose operability is only a gift of physical nature, the very thing against which this rebellion is carried out. It is maintained, without further discussion at present, that life, in general, and humankind, the flagship of which, is the most sophisticated fruit of causal physical nature.

The glaring contradiction: The outcome of increasingly sophisticated physical operations is an effort to overcome these same. Why?

I don't mean to raise question against the value, validity, or importance of this quest, but to only bring this contradiction into light. We can most swiftly arrive at answers only by addressing this contradiction. The answer is not Religion. The various (but vastly identical) religions of man provide non-physical, abstract, self-fulfilling, unverifiable answers to these questions and contradictions, and, when scrutinized, go even further to coalesce into a circular structure that is almost deliberately tautological. Only if you're a true believer will you know God, and then you'll realize how important it is to know God, and you'll become a good person. If you want be a good person, then become a true believer. These religions simultaneously claim to glorify the superiority of man over his limiting physical nature, while providing answers that cause this thirst for freedom to subside by promising it in the afterlife; they impair their very object of glorification.

So leaving religion to the side (a desperate request), we return to the paradigm being exposed here: Physics, itself, inducing the Strife Against Physics. The questions that this raises are the following:

1. Is there some self-motivated energy that, first, through the emergence of matter, then, through the emergence of life, then, through the emergence of man, is striving to somehow express itself? Is this the same energy that we sometimes sense and identify as Beauty?
2. Is it appropriate for the agents of this energy, the knights of this (un-?)holy quest, to maintain some degree of humility and bow an acknowledgment to their physical nature, in light of the fact that without it, their battle would have no horses, no swords and shields, and maybe not even a battlefield? We fight in the enemy's country; we must respect and heed the terrain.

and life continues to tempt me with falling into it's structure

and I continue to press against that physical reality, the only reality that I actually know

continue to push it's limits, continue to pretend to tell it to fuck off

but some point will come, when I have to swallow

when I have to say, yes, I admit my physical nature, and I admit that I am a subject of this physical reality, and though structure is violent, that degree of violence is, at the end, essential.

at the end, even I will bow down and pray to structure

but I know that my spent energy will not go forgotten, that it will be remembered as a holy martyr

I know that I will be legendary, the most valiant warrior known to humankind, in this infinite war between humanity and physical nature.

I've spent much energy revolting against it, successfully, and at this point, there is no structure left in my life

and as I continue to break and tear apart any residue of the same, I fall deeper and deeper in love with myself.

Solitude is the revealer of all things. This is why we fear it so. Solitude allows experience of the self. Experience of the self is alien. How odd; none is more alien than the experience of self. Beauty is a window into the true self, the selfless self. Beauty is the only venue of self-experience outside of solitude. Beauty is hahahhahahaha.... Beauty........ let her, who has no need, come to me out of despiration....... beauty. Desire without need. What is desire. Is there such? A desire without need? That desire is beauty. There is beauty, and there is death; there is nothing else. Sex is fusion, nothing else. If not, then it is filth. Neither pleasure nor solitude is bliss. Bliss is only pleasure in solitude.

The only thing in this world worth loving is Reality, Truth.

If something painful is revealed, love that pain as a child, a child born of you and Truth.

K. Shah

सुन्दरता के खयालात - Thoughts on beauty

What is beauty?

Think of the woman standing near a tree and admiring it's beauty. Is that beauty? Indeed!

More importantly, why is it beauty? What is so beautiful about a tree? And where else can one identify beauty?

Let us ask, what is the tree? It's nothing but the execution of a prescribed set of chemical and mechanical reactions at a cellular level. Its operations are quite utilitarian, are they not? Utility is utility, and not the same as beauty. The growth, operation, form and shape, the existence in its entirety is a result of these prescribed utilitarian operations, which serve only the purpose of survival and propagation of itself. Is that beauty? Does beauty not strike as something independent of this sort of self-service? Can something that is purely the result of simple, self-serving utilitarian operations be beautiful?

Indeed the tree is beautiful, but not the tree in the sense of itself, rather its projection onto the rest of the universe. The tree is beautiful because of the many leaves, arranged just as the are, each independently, but coming together in a peculiar harmony; because of the branches so; because of the interaction of all of that with the breeze and the surrounding. What is beautiful is the complexity of the emergent form.

The harmony struck with the environment at the macroscopic level, and a similar harmony, at a microscopic level, amongst the composing elements of a cell, each operating independently, but coming together in that peculiar harmony, that is beauty.

And it is not this emergent harmony itself, even, that is beautiful. It is its emergence, just the fact that it can happen as a result of utility, that is the beauty. Beauty comes out of nothing, and that is why it is so; that is why it is beauty.

Beauty violates physical laws, laws of conservation and of causality, and only in that it is so, it is beauty.

One asks the question: Why am I? That is beauty. The question has no function, no utility, but comes out of a process of thought, evolved through utilitarian motivations alone, operating via the chemical and mechanical interactions of independent entities that follow only physical laws, the very laws that are violated by the question that emerges from their operations. The answer to that question may well not be beautiful, but that the question is asked, is indeed.

Think again, the woman standing nearby a tree, admiring its beauty. What the woman admires is the sight of the tree, which in itself is only entertaining, not beautiful. What is entertaining is not beautiful, but that we are entertained by sights, that in itself is beautiful. The sight of the tree itself is not beautiful, but that it induces appreciation for itself in the mind of the onlooker, purposelessly, is indeed.

...her little pakora nose scrunches up slightly, as a thought enters her mind...
...she presses her lips together subtley,
and shifts them from side to side, as she thinks,
almost as if cranks or pedals for the thousands of little gears in her mind...
...her big emotive eyes, dense, dense, dense with feeling...
...even she doesn't know...
...she is a timed bomb,
that'll never explode...
...that'll just keep ticking and ticking...two...one...two...one...0.5...two...one...two...

The start of the end of Mughal India

Indian History Sourcebook: England, India, and The East Indies, 1617 A.D. Annotated

The Great Moghul Jahangir: Letter to James I, King of England, 1617 A.D.

When your Majesty shall open this letter let your royal heart be as fresh as a sweet garden. Let all people make reverence at your gate; let your throne be advanced higher; amongst the greatness of the kings of the prophet Jesus, let your Majesty be the greatest, and all monarchies derive their counsel and wisdom from your breast as from a fountain, that the law of the majesty of Jesus may revive and flourish under your protection.

The letter of love and friendship which you sent and the presents, tokens of your good affections toward me, I have received by the hands of your ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe (who well deserves to be your trusted servant), delivered to me in an acceptable and happy hour; upon which mine eyes were so fixed that I could not easily remove them to any other object, and have accepted them with great joy and delight.

Upon which assurance of your royal love I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominions to receive all the merchants of the English nation as the subjects of my friend; that in what place soever they choose to live, they may have free liberty without any restraint; and at what port soever they shall arrive, that neither Portugal nor any other shall dare to molest their quiet; and in what city soever they shall have residence, I have commanded all my governors and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires; to sell, buy, and to transport into their country at their pleasure.

For confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in their ships of all sorts of rarities and rich goods fit for my palace; and that you be pleased to send me your royal letters by every opportunity, that I may rejoice in your health and prosperous affairs; that our friendship may be interchanged and eternal.

Your Majesty is learned and quick-sighted as a prophet, and can conceive so much by few words that I need write no more.

The God of heaven give you and us increase of honor.

This was a letter written by the Mughal Shahanshah, Nuruddin Mohammed Jahangir, to the monarch of Great Britain We see that he gave the English exclusive and untaxed import and export rights for India, in exchange for a promise that he would receive gifts fit for his palace. Doesn't leave much to chance no? Such astounding foreign policy would have surely fixed our future fate.

Would, however, be interesting to think about what sort of conditions would have caused a nation of people that were intelligent enough to reach a level of civilisation that allows for the opulence of Mughal India to degenerate into one that has leaders who possess such utter disregard for anything other than art, music, and wine.

I've spent some emotional energy feeling angry at the Brits for the condition in which they left our country, but after actually reading this evidence of the state of total unconsciousness of our leaders, who had become more like leaches on the society by that time, I painfully admit that we may have deserved, and maybe even needed, a wake-up call around that time.

Diverging from the Regular Bullshit of LIFE

I find that most of the things of beauty associated with humankind are totally superfluous to biological existence and survival. (poetry, art, philosophy). Those are what make humans separate from animals. Aside from such things only the functional qualities of humans remain. (science, economy). The very nature of functionality is fearful. It is concerned with surviving biologically in the physical world that surrounds us. Why be so affraid of death? Imagine the wonders we could do if we forgot that we could die! Live like an immortal! Invincible! Discipline? For what? For success? FUCK success. Grasp the moment and make love to it! Become nothing! Become pure living energy!

Human Devotion

See the mother walking in the park behind her infant son, so interested in his every movement, in his discovery of the world. Her heartbeat follows his. She feels pleasure in his amusement and happiness. In keeping him secure, she finds a sense of security for herself. In him, she has found a purpose. She will strive to care for him with the same enthusiasm with which she nourishes her own body.

This is the elegant societal system through which humans are raised, conditioned, and perpetuated. The mother's emotions are the hands by which it executes its task. Until today, she had lived a life of self-servitude, as us all, but with the entry of this newly created human, who himself is an independent agent, as she had been, a slumbering altruism awakens in her, and she lives only to serve him. She has never been so motivated to maintain the livelihood of any other single human, but this one, this particularly special one, captivates and monopolises her working energy to an extent she has never experienced and doesn't really understand. She feels no need to understand it, she only derives pleasure from this new devotion.

Though of greater magnitude, this devotion is reminiscent of a young man's devotion to a successfull career, an older man's devotion to a hobby, a sportsman's devotion to the game, an artist's devotion to his painting, a dancer's to her dance, and maybe even a drunkard's to his drink. Indeed each of these procures a personal livelihood, in some sense, from the occupation, but still there is a sort of romance that the doer has with that which he does. The sportsman plays with a passion that at times may injure his material progression in the game, the young man may, at times, take steps in his career that hurt his quality of life, but chase a high position in his industry, and surely the mother's devotion to her child is in-congruent with self-servitude.

Stop.

Meditate on this devotion for a moment, free from the objects of it's operation. Why does it happen? What is the source of it? Why is it there in every facet of our human existence? It surely is, is it not?

Spend some time thinking on this thing, and then spend some time thinking whether it may be possible to live a life without it. Would it be possible to live a life without a romantic devotion to anything? In what would such a life result?

Let us think of the nature of this devotion. It creates a purpose in the mind, an objective, a goal. Without it, our lives would be devoid of a purpose. We wouldn't know what we are supposed to do as humans, what we are supposed to want, for what we are supposed to strive.

As a solution to this lack of purpose, we say 'to each his own reality', 'to each his own purpose'. To the sportsman, the game is the ultimate reality, and to the mother, her child's well-being. So many different realities.

Can there be such a multitude of realities? What is the reality for him who seeks only It? What is the reality for him who seeks to discover his own nature, the nature of humans?

Let us take a step back, and think about how each of these realities are created, so differently, for each of these participants in this drama of existence. Here we must think about a goal, a purpose, that is held by a human and how they affect his mind. A discussion on that will follow shortly.

I know, I need to get better at finishing my thoughts.

Beauty

Feminine thought process (versus that of males)

As everyone knows very well, there is a huge difference between the thought processes of males and females. I've been doing some thinking on what this difference is, and have come up with some crude ideas. I present them here.

First, I'll justify why I am bothering to address this question. The evolutionary process that governs our development as a species governs both our biology and our psychology (I would say the latter is a subset of the former, to a great extent). The recent human cultural changes have been driven to a large extent by advances in our technology, and the environmental changes that have been a result of these (abundance of food, population increase, and etcetera). Technological progress is relatively fast when compared with natural environmental changes. Biological (and psychological) evolution is designed to adapt in pace with natural changes in the environment (climate, etcetera), and is not fast enough to adapt to the recent (past couple of millenia) changes in our social structure.

Indeed, male-female relationships are a foundation of our society at economic, cultural, and biological levels. Smooth functionality of these is paramount to the success of our human society. Recently our society has been experiencing instability in male-female relationships, as is well known. From a male perspective, I can say that female behaviour has been an inconvenient mystery to me, and with this motivation, I've spent some time, recently, thinking explicitly on the matter. What follows is what I've gathered through from my thoughts.

The framework of human mental processes might be described, at a very general level, as bipartite: A stream of emotions; a separate stream of logical deductions. When a human evokes his thought process to guide his behavior, these two streams of thought reach independent conclusions for what the best course of action would be. Subsequently, some sort of supervisory control mechanism executes behaviour that is aligned with either of the conclusions delared by one of the streams, or possibly some compromise between the two.

The difference between male and female thought process lies in the nature of this downstream supervisory control.

Once in a while I've heard/read sarcastic references, by males of course, to 'chick logic'. The problem of understanding and predicting 'chick logic' often remains an unsolved and very serious problem for most males, throughout their lives. The problem is in the approach to understanding. The problem is, 'chick logic' is a misnomer.

Again, the difference between male and female thought process lies in the nature of the downstream supervisory control. Keep in mind that I speak of general male and female characteristic; almost no one is purely male or purely female. In males, the control strives to align itself with the conclusion reached by the stream of logical deductions formed from the circumstannces. The behaviour is carried out, and the emotions are dealt with in the aftermath. In females, the control strives to align itself with the conclusion reached by the stream of emotions. The behaviour is carried out, and the logical faculty is then charged with the task of rationalising the emotional behaviour in the aftermath.

I'm not finished making my point. Will finish this very soon!

A new thing learnt...

Happiness allows us to become familiar with and understand our environment, the outside world, and people and things around us.

Pain allows us to become familiar with and understand ourselves.

Fun deludes the mind.

Conscience and Moral Strength

There is a characteristic parameter that I would call 'Moral Strength', in people. The space over which this parameter is defined can be roughly partitioned into values corresponding to people who have a conscience, and those who lack in that (I also realise that I sound like a technical text book, but I can't help it as they are the only prose to which I've been exposed; maybe I should diversify my readings..? anyway).

Conscience is the ability to analyse one's actions and relate them to one's own morality, in an objective way, removed from emotional interferrence. The exclusion of interferrence by emotion does not mean that emotion is ignored, rather itself percieved objectively.

Wikipedia proposes a description of conscience in here. This seems to roughly agree with my proposed description of it.

A person with a sufficiently high level of moral strength has a disadvantage in life, in that he has some level of restriction on his behaviour. One with weak moral strength enjoys a limitless range of candidate behaviour. He is capable of anything; a second person is not able to predict, with confidence, how such a person might act or react.

During childhood, a person develops a theory of morality for himself by watching the interactions and effects of those interactions in the world outside of himself. The knowledge that a person gains through this observation is stored as a repertoire for behavioural reference for his future. The manner in which a person makes use of this stored knowledge is a function of the level of moral strength that the person has.

A person with a high level of moral strength behaves as he does in a situation that is presented to him because he searches this stored knowledge for a way of reaction that results in creating a consistent and desirable environment. One with a low level of moral strength searches for a way of reaction that results in an increased level of pleasure and utility for himself. Therein lies the core difference between those to whom we would ascribe a conscience, and those to whom not one.

This, however, is not all or nothing. There is indeed a continuum between the two types with different proportions of concern for environmental consistency and concern for one's own pleasure. Where one lies within this continuum is a function of the human parameter called moral strength.

The question remains: Why would one place environmental consistency above one's own desires and goals? We are all independent agents, are we not? The answer to this question is rooted in two areas: (1) The concept of reality, and (2) Evolution, though both are intertwined.

The societal advantage of having a conscience is obvious. A society can be successful when people behave in a consistent and mutually acceptable manner. That is why we have developed systems of Law. It may be so that during the evolution of humans, we developed a faculty that induces some level of altruism in us. This would serve as a sort of distributed legal system. Because the notion of altruism is in direct conflict with most of the other in-built motivations that humans carry, the strength of this faculty remained inconsistent, and we developed Law, a centralised means of accomplishing the same goal. And so I propose this as a root, in evolution, for moral strength.

What do we mean by Reality? The only reality of which we can be sure is that we have no conception of reality aside from that through our sensual faculties (touch, vision, smell, taste), and we know that the sensual faculties of different people are different, and this creates a different reality for each. As an example, consider sharks, who have a sixth sense for sensing electromagnetic fields. Before humans learned of the existance of such a thing, EM fields were not a part of our reality. Furthermore, our senses can be modulated by our brain: we get used to noises and smells, and we don't hear or smell them anymore; if we wear eyeglasses that make everthing look upside down, after a while we start seeing right-side-up with the eyeglasses on. These things concern physical reality, and there is another dimension of reality in the world: This is the abstract reality of emotion, righteousness, fairness, balance. We humans do have a sixth sense: The sense of balance in the environment. This sense is manifest in our moral strength.

A high level of moral strength allows us to perceive an additional dimension of our reality, in the way that sharks can perceive EM fields, we can perceive the effects of actions on the subjects and objects of those actions. The doers and the ones to whom is done. We can evaluate the balance in this and apprais the state of this dimension of reality.

A very basic level of balance is guaranteed by our systems of Law, but law does not delve very deep into this reality of emotions and balance, righteousness and fairness. And the framework of morality does not provide a balance between those with contrasting levels of moral strength. The delicacy and sensitivity of this situation is of paramount importance to him who is living a human life. Balance between two people can only be maintained if the levels of moral strength in the two are similar.

The only apparent advantage of being able to perceive this dimension of reality is that it enables one to understand and be aware of a collective reality, and to understand oneself within this. Though the disadvantages of this ability are many, it may be so that the satisfaction gained from this understanding provides the balance that is seemingly lacking. But this is arguable, and I say this only on faith in human evolution and reality.

If we do not hold enough moral strength, we become blind to this dimension. In the same way that the brain modulates the physical senses, it can modulate our perception of this reality of balance, so that we perceive it in accord with the other self-centered motivations we carry. In the absense of sufficient moral strength, we can make ourselves believe that something we do that is cruel is actually justified, or even the right thing to do. The danger presented by such a situation to society is clear, but it presents an even greater danger to the self. It allows a human to live in a self dillusion that is likely to fall apart at any time and result in tremendous suffering.

It's important to perform a rigorous analysis and filtering before accepting someone in closer confidence than those who share your blood.

The only two entities that will stand by your side and feel your pain as their own, under all circumstances, are your own blood, which will accept you and console you, and your productivity, which will suffer with you.

Exceptions are a rarity.

Scientology

A qoute from http://www.scientology.org/

In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true. An individual discovers for himself that Scientology works by personally applying its principles and observing or experiencing results.

Through Scientology, people all over the world are achieving the long-sought goal of true spiritual release and freedom.

Learn more about the beliefs of Scientology

Hahaha... I think they should reword this, no?

No one likes to program anymore!

Slashdot had this on it today:

From his journal, hogghogg asks: "I keep finding myself in conversations with tertiary educators in the hard sciences (Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, etc.) who note that even the geeks—those who voluntarily choose to major in hard sciences—enter university never having programmed a computer. When I was in grade six, the Commodore PET came out, and I jumped at the opportunity to learn how to program it. Now, evidently, most high school computer classes are about Word (tm) and Excel (tm). Is this a bad thing? Should we care?" Do you think the desire to program computers has declined in the younger generations? If so, what reasons might you cite as the cause?

I think that the reason programming might not appeal to the masses as it used to may be because nothing anyone can make compare to the software available commercially.

Back in the day, people would make a spreadsheet program for themselves, and use it. People would make a calculator, and use it. Hell, maybe even a game! These days, it's not possible for most computer end users to create anything useful for themselves, when compared to the commercially available software.

Whether or not this is good or bad is way to subjective for me to have any desire to get into, but I'd say one thing: It reflects that as a society, we've taken programming to a level of sophistication that can only be accomplished by a collaborative and dedicated effort, something most 6-year-olds probably don't get excited about.

MSFT desperate tactics

BetaNews reported a few days ago...

Microsoft is heading to college campuses to promote its Windows Live service in a new way -- by hosting college e-mail accounts. Called Windows Live@edu, 72 colleges worldwide have signed onto the service and discussions are ongoing with almost 200 more. The e-mail service provides a familiar interface to many students as it is patterned after Hotmail. However, students do not receive a hotmail.com or msn.com e-mail address, as the accounts it carry the domain of their respective school. The move is intended to promote the Windows Live suite of services, and also establish continuing loyalty. Although the Live services are traditionally advertiser supported, Live@edu accounts would not show ads to users while they are in school. Microsoft does, however, reserve the right to turn on the ads after they graduate. The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live. They would likely create a Windows Live Messenger account, start a blog and organize their favorites under this e-mail account -- especially if they plan to continue using it, Microsoft says. Google recently announced a similar program for its Gmail service, serving students of San Jose City College in California. Microsoft touts its service as better, as it provides much more control to the IT administrator than Google's option. Also, the infrastructure to provide the Live@edu is already present, which means there is little cost associated in offering it. But although there has been a rapid uptake of the service, the company says it still meets resistance and skepticism. In return, Microsoft has been assuring education institutions that its only motivation is to get students using Windows Live, promising there are no ulterior plans.

Selling themselves to schools is fine, but what I have a problem with is that the only browser the support is IE6, and they don't support POP, IMAP, or email forwarding. I mean this is just nothing but a MSTrap! I would think it's self-demeaning on MSFT's behalf, no?

I would have thought that by now people have started thinking that it's just not cool to use purely MSFT things and surrender any freedom of choice, I mean at least IT managers. And IMAP/POP allows you to use mail clients, and are such a huge step up from web-based email, as far as organising your mailbox/address book goes. That they refuse to let people do this really dirty business.

Anyway, thinking that targetting college is a way of catching students early might be naive: These days even the least technically savy HS student has an email address and probably uses some mail client.

I think, and hope, that this will be met with some resistance and displeasure by students. The computer/online life is, these days, such a huge part of our lives that it's crucial to educate oneself in this area, about the choices that exist and the advantages/disadvantages between them.

In the coming years our electronic lives will play a growing part in our human lives, and it's dangerous for everyone if this area is controlled by a single entity. There're even movies made about this sort of thing. We'll be living in a dictatorship, essentially.

Foremost I think it's important for governments to move to using information infrastructure that is not vended by a commercial party. Otherwise our governments themselves may come at the mercy of a commercial force.

One painless solution is for MSFT to be split up into a number of different corporations: one for IE; one for the OS; one for Office; etcetera. This would not even require the masses to learn something other than Windows, at the same time creating a less dangerous world.

Cell-Division Reversed!

From slashdot today: A scientist got the cell-division process to be reversed. This could have some wonderful implications on cancer treatment.

Thing is, this probably will only benefit my grandkids (I'm 24). I wish that scientific progress could hit the mainstream faster than it does.

Another thought: Say with this and other research in such areas, we reach a point where cancer is easily curable. Will that make people start smoking and what not much more?

Smokin' Averatec: DC Connector problem

I have an Averatec 3250, running Gentoo. A couple of weeks ago, the thing started smoking, that is, there was black smoke coming out of the back of it, while I was websurfing! And the thing didn't even shut off!

Well anyway, I found out that this not unusual for averatecs. The problem was with the DC power connector.

I had to open the whole damn thing up first (finding all the screws is terribly confusing, please, if you're gonna do this, email me or find out somehow where all the screws are before you try, this is a good source for instructions). Then I had to remove the DC connector, which is on the rear-right of the laptop. I unsoldered the stuff off of it, and I re-soldered it back together.

Again, this site has pretty good, clear instructions on how to do this.

Greenness in a city

Just read this article. It's terribly written, but the point is nice. I think Bombay should be careful not to completely de-green-ify itself. After all, no one wants to live in an ugly place. If no one wants to live there, then who's gonna invest, right?

I'm sure this idea could use more development. I'd love to read any comments.

I'm on facebook!

Yes it's true. I've finally been convinced, against my own free will, to get a facebook account. So now all you losers that use that shit can contact me!!

Do me a favor and write on my wall, so it at least looks like I have some friends.

My profile is right here

Just found this on the net!!

Click here and scroll down to the section titled "Students with a PERFECT SCORE".

Yeh, that's me ;-D

Can we CREATE LIFE???

This is yesterday's news (literally), but I thought it was worth mention.

These guys simulated an entire lifeform (virus) on a digital computer. That is, they actually simulated every single atom in a virus, and a surrounding drop of water, of a super computer. Now here's why I think this is some real food for thought:

Say we define life in a way that makes it separate from its medium. That is, say we call ourselves the interactions and contained information in each of the particles that make us up, and we call our medium the physical particles that do make us up. This way, life is separate from the medium on that it exists.

In that case, what these guys did could actually be seen as creating life... right? Or no? I mean all the interactions and information are there, only the medium is different.

And say we think that we have souls, emotions, a conciousness, whatever we want to call it; then would a lifeform that's simulated on a digital computer also have these things? SOUL? EMOTIONS? CONCIOUSNESS? WHATEVER?

Another question, even more important: If turn off the computer or end the process on which the lifeform is being simulated, then are we killing something that was alive?

And the last, less important, question: Can we think of ourselves as simulations?

My new Apple-like notebook desktop

I just modified my desktop to look like Apple OSX by following these instructions. I'm running Gentoo with KDE 3.4.1 (waiting for 3.5.x to get marked stable).

Query-by-HUMMING Song Database!!

AWESOME!!

IIT-B Digital Audio Processing Lab (DAPLab) has a song database that is queried by HUMMING a tune! A god-send for music enthusiasts with a bad memory, like myself.

I wonder how this could be extended...? What if you could just say a few words that appear in a song you somewhat remember, without a tune, and it could retreive all songs that have those words in it? The database should not have to contain lyrics to all songs though. When adding a song into the database, you just upload the audio. The system 'listens' to it and extracts a few key words and phrases, and when it's queried, returns those matching songs. Wouldn't that be cool?

Anyway, I think what they've done up till now is cool enough.

Keyboards are Disgusting

Disgusting

From Slashdot today:

A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC För alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter." Also note that unless you read Swedish, you still have plausible deniability when asked to windex yours.

I guess that's gross, but think about it: how often do you clean your toilet seat? How often do you clean your keyboard?

Therefore, I'm sure that the toilet seat is cleaner than many things like the telephone, the surface of your desk, arm rests, on your office chair, your mouse, and what not. Don't worry, humans have a pretty good immune system.

New US-Air-Force Mission Statement

From Slashdot today, from the flying-to-high department:

"The US Air Force has released its new mission statement, which reads 'The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.' With the recent rows over US Internet governance, what do you think is the impact of a US government overtly practicing cyberspace warfare? And what are the US's legal limitations?"

And a comment from a slashdot reader:

I was going to enlist, but my screen name was taken.

Now all they have to do is figure out what exactly 'flying and fighting in cyberspace' exactly is.

Filesystem corruption, FIXED

4-5 days ago, I was listening to music on my laptop (Gentoo), and I had forgotten to plug it in. The battery ran out and the laptop died. (I'd neglected to set up the ACPI events so that it shuts down on low battery)

When I tried to restart, X wasn't comming up. I tracked the problem to some important X file that had been corrupted when power went out to my hard disk (reiserfs). The journal didn't catch the problem, and neither could fsck fix it.

I had to run reiserfsck --rebuild-tree. I read that I should always back up my data before doing this, but I didn't.

reiserfsck fixed the corruption when it rebuilt the tree, and when I rebooted, everything was working as it was before!

I'd like to see Windows fix filesystem corruption that painlessly. Not to mention, Linux filesystems are way more robust than NTFS.

Man do I love my Gentoo.

At the end of the day, business tactics always LOSE to better technology, I HOPE

Intel released their own Dual-Core chip a couple of weeks back. The chip has been benchmarked by GamePC, as reported in Slashdot today. AMD's Opteron Dual Core indeed "thrashed" Intel's new chip in the benchmarks, on I think every single criterion.

Obviously this was a despirate move by Intel to have it's own competition with AMD, and was clearly motivated by business tactics. I hope that the stock prices reflect the vast difference in technology.

FYI: the guy that made Pentium is the cheif techonologist for AMD, I believe. He left after he made the Pentium, and Intel hasn't made any really drastic changes to its architecture since. AMD, on the other hand, has taken the x86 platform to a new height with Hyper Transport technology.

Again, I hope that the vast difference in technology is reflected both in the financial markets, as well as the PC market, in that the larger OEMs like IBM, DELL, and, hey, maybe even Apple, start looking toward the AMD chips.

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Concerns about the origin of the Indian national anthem

I just read something about India's national anthem (a forwarded email; yes, sometimes I do actually open them). Here it is:

Facts about "Jana Gana Mana" - Just a thought for the National Anthem!

How well do you know about it?

I have always wondered who/what is the "adhinayak" and "bharat hagya vidhata", whose praise are we singing. I thought might be the Motherland India – our Mahan Bharat! Our current National Anthem "Jana Gana Mana" is sung throughout the country.

Did you know the following about our National Anthem; well, I didn't: -

To begin with, our National Anthem, Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honor of King George V and the Queen of England when they visited India in 1919. To honor their visit Pandit Motilal Nehru had the five stanzas included, which are in praise of the King and the Queen. (And most of us think it is in the praise of our great motherland!!!

In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha etc. were mentioned. None of the then princely states which are now an integral part of India, like Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore or Kerala find any place! Also neither the Indian Ocean nor the Arabian Sea were included since they were directly under Portuguese rule at that time.

The Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka implies that King George V is the lord of the masses and Bharata Bhagya Vidhata is "the bestower of good fortune". Following is a translation of the five stanzas that glorify the King:

First stanza: (Indian) People wake up remembering your good name and ask for your blessings and they sing your glories. (Tava shubha name jaage;tava shubha aashish maage, gaaye tava jaya gaatha)

Second stanza: Around your throne people of all religions come and give their love and anxiously wait to hear your kind words.

Third stanza: Praise to the King for being the charioteer, for leading the ancient travelers beyond misery.

Fourth stanza: Drowned in the deep ignorance and suffering, poverty-stricken, unconscious country? Waiting for the wink of your eye and your mother's (the Queen's) true protection.

Fifth stanza: In your compassionate plans, the sleeping Bharat (India) will wake up. We bow down to your feet O' Queen, and glory to Rajeshwara (the King).

This whole poem does not indicate any love for the Motherland but depicts a bleak picture. When you sing Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, whom are you glorifying? Certainly not the Motherland. Is it God? The poem does not indicate that. It is time now to understand the original purpose and the implication of this, rather than blindly sing as has been done over the past fifty years.

Nehru chose the present national anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play!!! It was an absurd reason but Today for that matter bands have advanced and they can very well play any music. So they can as well play Vande Mataram, which is a far better composition in praise of our dear Motherland - India.Wake up, it's high time!

Shouldn't Vande Mataram be our National Anthem????????

Personally, I've always loved our national anthem; not just because of patriotism, but because I always found it to be a beautiful composition, as far as the melody goes. I also love the way the language sounds (I'm somewhat of a linguist). This, however, is shocking to me, and I still haven't fully digested the new information about our song. One argument against the complaint presented above is that whatever it may be for which the song may have been originally composed, today that purpose is no more. Today, the words "jana gaNa mana adhinaayaka jaya hae | bhaarata bhaagya vidhaataa ||" incite strong patriotic emotions in the heart of those with whom the above is concerned. Though the song itself may not have been meant to praise bhaarata (India), the act of singing it does indeed, through what is felt in the heart.

I'd like to hear someone else's comments on this matter though.

Got my TV!!

Yup! Finally got my TV in my apartment! And I get a lot of channels from my cable wire for free!
So it turns out, I get a lot of channels for free (probably by mistake), and I can catch someone else's wireless internet, which is also free. This is gonna save me atleast 50 bucks a month. Pretty decent deal eh? Anyway, I still gotta post up some pics of the place. Will do that soon.

Apartment set-up progress

I've brought my TV, some clothes, and books from home, in my van, to load into my new apartment. Problem is, I need someone's help to bring up the TV, cause it's too damn heavy. Once the TV is set up in there, the apartment's gonna be phat, can't wait. I'll post some photos soon!

Where's the Innovation? surely not with Microsoft!

I'd like to qualify my complaint to the open source developers with one really big complement: OSS is the only place keeping innovation in computing alive. Microsoft has had the same damn interface design since Windows95. Apple has shown awesome innovation, but not so much on the usability front, more so in sexiness. Definately Apple is number one for having the most user-friendly interface, but more than that, it's sexy, cool, sleek, &c. But still Apple doesn't have all of the productivity features that KDE does:

• fully utilised 3 mouse buttons;
• multiple desktops fully integrated with the window manager (MacOS can have multiple desktops with Desktop Manager, but it's somewhat buggy, and doesn't feel as integrated with the DE as in KDE; Windows has never heard of it, well, the mods I found for XP were pretty dysfunctional);
• kioslaves (check out ipod://);
• complete customisability of the panels &c.;
• configuration of window behavior on different types of mouse clicks (activation, raise, &c.);
• Awesome amounts of customizable eye candy;

• SuperKaramba!

  with which you can do incredible things. Check out the GMail applet, and Liquid Weather

  ;
• Kompose, which is basically Expose for KDE. This is a tool that immensely improves productivity, but MSFT?, never heard of it;
• Kat (similar to Spotlight on Tiger);
• Cool translucencey effects built into kwin, if you have a decent gfx card, or a decent processor
• much more that I'm missing here...

The only problem, that is, if you don't want to spend a week or so molding everything to your liking, is that the DEFAULT configuration hasn't been given enough thought, so most users can't take advantage of most of these things. But things are changing! It looks like KDE4 will be awesome (and probably released before Vista), just check out Appeal. As far as Vista goes, unless you have a superfast gfx card, you probably won't notice the difference between it and XP. Wake up Microsoft!

Just read this post on Jonathan Schwartz's weblob . It basically talks about the openning up of the software world, away from MSFT and towards open source, open standards, and network- (internet-) based software. He gives examples such as Limewire, Google Earth, Skype. What a wonderful world it would be, no? Anyone staying somewhat up to date with the computing world has surely seen a huge amount of these same oppinions lately. I think that one of the main underlying themes being expressed with these oppinions is a desire, in people who are enthusiastic about information and computing technologies, is evolving past MSFT. I don't know if anything I've seen, as far as products or services go, can really encroach onto MSFT's domain, which is the OS and the office applications. Yes, yes, I hear you: what about LINUX?? HELLO?? No, I'm not a Microsoftie, I only use Linux on both my desktop and laptop, and I, also, proudly hate MSFT. But the bottom line is this: I can't put Linux on my mom's Thinkpad, and provide her the ease of use that she would get from Windows, and no it's not cause she knows Windows and doesn't know Linux, she knows nothing about either. Trust me, I tried, for a month, to get a Gentoo system that suspends, hibernates, and wakes back up on lid-open lid-close. I just couldn't do it! I'm not even new to Gentoo; I've been running it for 2 years on my machines (and no, I still haven't gotten swsusp2 working). I tried to sell it to her by based on all the incredible added functionality: little things like middle-click pasting, complete customizability, stability (yes, Linux is surely more stable), speed, blah blah blah. She even tried it for a month. But the sad truth is that she, along with 99.9% of the rest of the world doesn't care about all that crap, the don't care too much about translucency in X, tabs in their browsers, open document formats, waiting for 2 less seconds for each of their web pages to render, or having a system optimized for SSE2 on a P4. MOST, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of computer users, just want a simple mail program, a simple browser, and a word processor that can make documents that everyone else can open, and can open everyone elses documents. I use OOo, it's better than Word, but it still doesn't have completely transparent compatibility with what EVERYONE uses: *.doc. What happened in Mass. is a great symbolic step for mankind, sure, but it's not gonna do anything to MSFT for atleast the next decade. DECADE. Firefox is cool, but there are still SOME pages for which I gotta open up IE. IE renders everything. I always have to click a few more times to select the Mozilla plugin, than I would if I were using IE. Konqueror? Konqueror doesn't even get it's own plugins, you have to tell it where to find the Mozilla or Netscape ones. I'm not trying to undermine the efforts of these developers, I personally would rather avoid the webpage than switch to IE, but I'm just gulping down the hard reality. I hate MSFT more than anyone I know, nor do I use any of it's products more than once in a blue moon, but I wouldn't subject my mom, or anyone else who doesn't have it on the life's agenda to be a computer guru, to use Linux (I'm talking about Gentoo, I've never used anything else), atleast not on a laptop. And another reality is that everyone wants a laptop now, the desktop era is gone and done with, point blank. Internet PC's, computers that are just terminals to storage and application space kept somewhere else, if one ever came out that was developed fully, marketted well, and supported well, might infact change all of this, but only if they're cheap enough. You can get a computer these days for 200 bucks. Even if they were selling Internet PC's for 150, I'd rather pay 50 bucks more for something for which I don't have to rely on a high-speed connection to operate (because most people in the world don't have one). Anyway, If someone would just show me a Linux distro that I can install onto a LAPTOP in less than a day, and that will suspend to RAM when I close the lid, and suspend to disk when I tap the power button, I will be the happiest guy on the planet, and will PAY them for it!

Restated...

. . . quitessentially c o o l

Created this blog -- my first -- just now. May it be blessed with stimulating and fruitful discussions. Sarasvatibhyah Namah