Ramblings

Rainy Day
In that moment time stood still,
Her beauty washed over me,
She was in front of me, within me, and all around me,
Born anew, glistening in the moonlight

-- Me

Religion, stupidity and the news

I try to, but it's hard to avoid talking about religion. A few weeks back, gay sex was finally allowed in India, and the debates happening on TV, were real fun to watch. I actually felt a bit of pity for the people defending the religious viewpoints, because they were so easy to prove wrong. A big problem with relgion is that they're atleast 500 years old or more, which makes their teachings hard to associate with today's world. The weird part is, the more they get out of sync with today, the more fiercely some people fight to keept them in place. If you think I'm referring to Islam, you're sadly mistaken. I've seen zealotry displayed by Hindus, Muslims, and Christians alike, and other relgions too, so no side really has a high moral ground here.

The interesting part about seeing such debates and arguments is the examples and similarities given in the debates. I've seen people compare gay sex to sex with animals, among other things. I remember only this example because of this funny pic I saw on this page, about sodomy. The weird desire of people to control others' lives astounds me even today, I mean, let people do whatever they want, it's not like they're going to stop because you tell them to, it's simply going to push these activities under the radar. The other weird fact is how sometimes these are not even arguments or debates, they're simply shouting matches. This, weirdly, is most apparent in USA. Switch on a news channel, and all you will see is opinion shows. Every channel seems to have taken a side, and they will bash up the other side, and glorify theirs, no matter the issue, no matter the incident. Common sense things get pushed back, and I'm almost left to wonder, where is the so called difference with the Indian government that everyone keeps talking about. All democracies seem to be crippled by people pulling strings from behind the scenes, by using corruption, and god knows what other means (pun unintended :) ). At least, in India, I can switch on a news channel, and see news, a report of what is happening, unblemished in most cases, by personal opinion. Also, if something is clearly wrong, all channels will uniformly portray this. Weirdly enough, the best news I get in the USA, is from news comedies on Comedy Central, they atleast uniformly bash everyone, or from print agencies.

Coming back, the odd fact that I realised is that, people are more or less the same everywhere. You'll always have your share of the ignorant, who are manipulated by those in power, and those who are immune to it to a certain extent, or atleast feel they are. Why you do not see this always, is marketing, the media likes to highlight the ignorant of other countries, and the sensible (and ignorant) of your own. All religions can be equally stupid at times as well. It's interesting, and mostly futile to argue that a prophet or a god, who had an opinion a few hundred or thousand years ago, might not have changed now. Such an argument can never stick, especially since it's an opinion someone says the gods have, and unless religious leaders acknowledge that, or atleast concede this much that they are simply interpreters and not gods themselves, they cannot win over all of the population. Somehow, I feel that this divide will remain, and if people are still educated free from religion and purely by science, they will always protest against it. But, everyone is never educated, it hasn't happened in 2000 years, and there's no reason to believe it's going to happen anytime soon. The sad part is, there are some really nice parts to religion too, and they tend to get lost in all of the brouhaha over the controversial ones. I'm not particularly religious, mostly superstitious, but still like some aspects of religion, particularly the inspirational stories that encourage you to do good. I do hope all the nonsense ends someday, but I'm not holding my breath.

Arguments & Marketing

It's been a while since I last posted anything on this blog, and that fact is not lost on me. The simple reason is, that either I've been happily enjoying my summer 'vacation', or have been neck deep in work. Oddly enough, before this, more work has usually implied an increased frequency of posting, so either I'm running out of ideas to write about, or I've finally managed to hit levels of work that make it impossible for me to find time. Both are very disturbing thoughts, so I'd rather ignore them. So getting back, this is a return from the longest sabbatical of my posting history (of more than an year, I'm glad to say), so here goes.

Anyone who knows me, knows how I like to get into almost pointless arguments. I know I defend some viewpoints even though I myself am against them. Part of the reason for doing that is that I don't like lopsided discussions, unless I hate the thing or person we're talking about. The other bigger part is, that arguments are an interesting way to understand what and why you think something. If you've never seen the movie Thank you for Smoking, you probably won't understand this, and I cannot stress enough how big an experience you're missing having not watched the movie. The movie made an interesting point that it rarely ever matters what's right or wrong, all that does matter is how well you can argue it. In essence marketing, is the core of all we do. Anyone willing to disagree on that is welcome to counter, but I'm pretty sure I can find that hidden marketing aspect of your work and show it to you. Why? because the root of all we do is money, and since someone is paying that money, you need to sell your idea, or yourself, to them.

The best thing about an argument is that it doesn't really need to be based on facts. A smart person can probably prove you wrong, even though you're right. To highlight this, let me recount a small story I once read somewhere. There were once 2 warring kingdoms in the hills of a region. Ever so often, they used to descend to the valley to wage war, and in the process, a small peaceful tribe always faced the brunt of this. Tired and frustrated, they sent an emissary to go to each of the kingdoms and explain their side, and make them stop. When he got to each of them, he was told a wonderful story on how their side was right, and they were avenging the many wrongs done against them etc. etc. etc. When, this emissary finally returned home, all he could remember was that the 2 kingdoms were right, nothing else. That's the thing about arguments, they're powerful tools to beat others when used in the right manner. Even more so, arguments help you understand the whys. As a kid, there was a reason you were pushed to debate stuff, trying to make an argument to defend your point makes you understand why you believe it's right, or makes you understand why it may be wrong sometimes. To me, arguments done for the sole sake of beating the other person are just wrong. But, the simple fact is, arguments rile you up, exposing the true you, beneath all the layers of politeness you may be hiding under. That said, arguments are also easily defeated. All one needs to do is to not listen to you, and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it. I don't consider myself particularly good at arguing anything, I know atleast 2 people who could beat me at a few points, they know who they are.

The reason I talk about all this, is what I realised while making the presentations, videos etc. for my research work. All we do, in the end is, a small part research, and a lot of marketing. Researchers like to believe that everything's scientific in it, but take a look at the way papers are published, and the pains authors have to go through, and you'll change your mind pretty quickly. So argumentational skills are useful, even in places you may not have imagined. So the next time you think you're not marketing something, think again, you probably are.

Syntax and Semantics

I studied 2 courses from a professor at IIT Delhi, who was also my advisor. People familiar with the CS department know him as SAK, a short form for his name. Apart from being one of the best teachers I have come across, he always put forth the importance of correct syntax and semantics. For the un-initiated, syntax is simply the words and structure of language that you use for any communication, including programming. For example the sentence structure used in english is its syntax. Semantics, on the other hand, means what is meant by the syntax. So even though you will have detailed rules about syntax, it is very hard to do the same for semantics. Semantics is dependent on more than the syntax used to express it, it depends on the history of the communication, the context, the emotion and tonality of the means of expression, and foremost, our prior knowledge and prejudices. I've gone on about interpretation and the subjectiveness of the whole process so I won't go there.

The reason for this discussion is a conversation I had with my friends a few weeks back. They were mentioning a conversation with a person who lives in the same community as us, and asked one of them about his caste. She's not an Indian, but probably interested in the whole shebang, I really don't know, quite frankly. But my friend certainly didn't like it, which is understandable, and somewhat expected. Remnants of the past should be left where they belong. The more interesting thing is how the specific castes, even though as words don't mean much, have come to imply so many things. Which is why I made the distinction about syntax and semantics. When we hear a word, we immediately think of the semantics, so much so that the word itself becomes a placeholder for the meaning. Not that there's anything wrong with it, that's what learning is meant to do. But the issue is that we should not confuse the syntax and semantics. The problem is that the actual evil of the concept lies in the semantics and what they imply, not quite with the syntax. To explain, the problem is with the caste system, not the actual names of the castes, is it? If the names of our castes were not to cause any prejudice, and were something simply innocuous, like our names, it wouldn't be a problem. But the issue still exists that you cannot separate the semantics from the word. It is somewhat similar to a chicken and egg problem. Ergo, it would seem sensible to try to 'ban' the offending word from popular usage. Herein lies the problem. Banning the word doesn't really achieve anything, as I've said earlier about racism and many other things. It simply pushes the person to use a more sophisticated workaround to express the same feeling. The problem lies herein with the semantics, they haven't gone away, people will still find new ways of expressing them. If we are to solve the problem, we need to remove the semantics of what the caste system stands for in the current world, rather than just remove the labels. On the other hand, shouting out those labels and trying to coerce people to shout out the equality of castes is unlikely to help either. This isn't a bitter cough medicine. You need to condition entire generations to not be concerned about the concept, and that can only come about by pure and simple nonchalance to the whole concept. If you can discuss the caste of two people without really caring, and I mean truly without caring, then you've probably erased the semantics from your memory, and you can assign a new meaning to that word, or maybe, none at all. Though I'm using the example of the caste system, the same concept can extend to just about any current evils of society, be it any kind of discrimination, racial, sexual or otherwise. The major problems of such discriminations arise because of the lack of context in which they were established. The caste system was simply a worker classification system to begin with, it didn't become a problem till it became hereditary and assumed the role of a social class system.

I don't claim to know the solution to these problems, but in my experience, nothing kills anything like indifference. It may be worth a try, when everyone is harping about reservations for everyone. For that let me propose a parallel. Of all the songs I love, the ones I love the most, I love for reasons completely independent of the song itself. To me, they serve as reminders of some other memory. If and when I forget that, the song doesn't sound the same anymore. So if we can't remember the reasons for something, it's hard to justify doing it. It may not be the panacea for all that ails us, but it's worth a try. Like the famous saying goes, time is the best healer. I think it is because it makes us OK with whatever is troubling us, we understand that it is best that we make our peace and move on.

Stories, Mirrors, and space

Today I watched a movie I'd been planning to watch for some time, but for some reason or the other, kept putting off, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I've planned to watch it ever since my sister recommended it to me. To use her words, it's a beautiful story about how love can overcome obstacles of any magnitude. Atleast that's how I remember it. In addition, I've been reading this novel for some time, and was wondering about this fact from a numerical computing course I took. That's quite a bit to start with, so let me begin from humble origins.

While watching a movie, reading a book, don't we always get to that point of 'eureka', when you can feel yourself as one with it, when you know the crux of the whole story is at hand. To borrow a line from the matrix, "everything you have done, has led to this". This kind of phenomenon has parallels, if you somewhat stretch the definition of parallel. One is resonance, the irritating thing we study in physics, it just means 2 bodies vibrating at the same frequency. But a simpler definition also exists, which basically means having a very good rapport with someone or something. Then the question comes that if there is this one resonant moment, what's the point of the rest of the story? That's simple, the story led you to this point. In the spirit of the stuff I learnt in the numerical computing class, lets try a more mathematical approach. The crux is simply a point in space, and the story is then simply the location of this point. As the story unfolds, a map unfolds with it, guiding you to this point. But, we know that different people experience different things with the same story, the same work of art. And this experience gives us some new insight, it changes us ever so slightly. At the risk of losing you, this is somewhat like the action of a matrix on a vector. I love SVD, and it explains the action of the matrix as follows. The vector or point is first written in the right coordinates, then we can describe easily how the matrix will change it. Once that is done, we can try to write the point back in the old coordinate system.

What I'm trying to say is, that the story is your map, it gets you to the crux, the crux then transforms you to a certain extent, and the falloff of the story tries to get you back to your own world, the key being 'tries'. To look at the actual transformation, I'm reminded of those contorted mirrors in which you look fat or short. Stories are interesting, but most of all, I think the ones you like are the ones you relate to, ones in which you see a bit of yourself, or what you would like yourself to be. In so doing, they are like contorted mirrors, they focus on a certain aspect of us, that is usually hidden from us. With that focus, we can probably get a better insight into who we are. Which would explain why people who love reading books claim it helps in character development. But some stories are simpler, they do what some of those contorted mirrors do, show us thinner or taller. What I mean is, to experience a moment of grandeur, that exquisite and exciting life we do not have in real life. A simple escape from reality which lots of other things provide as well, games, alcohol, basically any addiction. But then you might say, aren't you discounting the whole aspect of what a good writer can do? not really. A good writer is like a good map maker, but he's one better, he can make a map which can make people get to different places by following the same directions, good places at that! That's his second power, how well can he/she affect the people once they get there. The best stories leave you there, to find your way back, or to wherever you may want to go. The feeble may get lost, probably they were not meant to go there unsupervised in the first place, or they may not realise where they are. But most find a moment of clarity, and that moment is the whole point of the story for me. To put it in the best possible way, I quote : life is not the number of breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away. An apt, if somewhat cheesy conclusion.

Love, admiration and illusions

I was reading this article on why marriages which last, do. They made an interesting claim, that marriages which go the distance rely on illusions. The people who stay married tend to do so by creating an illusion which lets them overlook their partner's faults. It was an interesting conclusion coming close on the heels of how distraction helps your will power(see previous post). It reinforced a view I've held for a long time, that your mind works by simplifying your surroundings. Your mind is very practical, but your concious cannot possibly take care of all the parameters involved in everything. Your subconcious tends to do some, lets say background work, to help you cope. Maybe these distractions and illusions are examples of our subconcious at work, it's way of telling us that the positives outweight the costs.

Which brings us to love. Interesting thing, most stated cheezy opinions about it tend to say that it makes us do somewhat unfathomable things, things no sane person would do. Applying the aforementioned conclusions, it would seem that love makes us work the same illusions that married people supposed have, illusions to distract us from all that might be negative. That is, obviously discounting the massive chemical and biological things that might underly all this. It seems to be fair to question the logic a mind would have for this. A mind is fairly practical, everyone weighs the pros and cons of everything before deciding, so there's no reason to believe our minds wouldn't either. So, under it all, to love someone, we would have to see some extreme positives to help us develop a justification for masking all the bad things. And this justification, heightened by hormones, would still have to be fairly superlative. But if you look at love in general, not just puppy love, I mean people you like and love for a long time, like family, you'll notice you can see these justifications quite simply. You'll see that one or more thing that make you admire the people you love. Even the people you're friends with, you'll find qualities in them that you admire, qualities you wish you had. And so it doesn't seem too forgone a conclusion that admiration is a cause and justification, if not the cause. Which would explain much of a leader's charm, admiration, it seems, can lead pretty easily to love, or maybe lust too. And it would also explain the reason why people break up. The admiration which lead them to love in the first place, is gone, or probably was not as superlative to begin with, but simply heightened by, well lets call it chemistry.

I like to believe that behind every face, there is this cold practicality, dealing in reasons we may not be aware of. Like when you meet people the first time, you make up your mind pretty quickly whether you're going to like that person or not, first impressions. It seems plausible, and this research suggests, that we look for clues to whether this person has something that would be useful to us, something that we like, and then we create conditions for that logic to prosper, which would make these people amenable to us, and us amenable to them.

Of Goals & fantasy worlds

We all love fantasy, at least to a certain extent. Movies, books, music, all are a certain way to escape the dreariness that engulfs our life sometimes. They're great stress busters too. I recently read about a study of will power, on kids who were left in a room with no supervision with cookies, and told they'd get 2 if they waited till the supervisor came back. Interestingly, the ones that held out, distracted themselves, or simply kept reminding themselves of what all wrong could happen if they gave in.

Children are good subjects, as they're not muddled by accessory concerns that tend to clog the adult mind. The best part about the study, I found, was the power of distraction. Distraction isn't always a bad thing, even studies of children with attention deficit disorder have revealed that the constant fidgeting actually helps the children concentrate, even though it may not seem that way to you. I, myself, have never studied without a distraction like TV or music since the past so many years. So what does this have to do with the title, you may ask. Well, we all love our fantasy worlds. Everyone has one, also known as their "happy place", and by numerous other synonyms. Fantasy worlds are our way of escape, simply moving into another dimension where you aren't worried about anything, nothing can happen to you, and you can passively enjoy the interesting twists of another's life. We need that quite simply like children need it to avoid cookies. Except, we're not trying to distract ourselves from anything good, well, mostly not, but something bad. If you've seen Coupling, you probably know about the examples of something good too. Everyone in life has certain goals, expressed in a multitude of ways, be it wanting to be an astronaut or a doctor as a kid, your wonderful "where do you see yourself in 5 years" type crappy questions, or simply a desire to achieve something. Life has a way of kicking you in all the wrong places, atleast sometimes. You have your good moments, you have your bad ones. The thing is, all these tend to remain with you, and your wonderous brain keeps dishing them out to you when you least expect. Fantasy worlds let us escape that. In this world, you can be the lord and master, people at your beck and call, where you are adored and fawned over etc. etc. To some, this escape is through books, to some like me, through movies, to others, through other forms of art. What I like about movies is the means to experience something you would probably never experience in your own life, in a way that's safe and side-effect free (see my previous post). You get transported into worlds beyond imagination, or atleast beyond anything we'll see. That is one of the big reasons I like graphics, because it gives you the power to bring things and worlds to life, that are otherwise lost, or were never there to begin with.

For all it's wonders, fantasies are simply like any other addiction. Like booze, cigarettes and the like, they offer an easy quickfix, and consistent usage eventually tends to start affecting your life. You are but one person, and can only live fully in one world. You can extend bits of yourself into other worlds, but the demands of each can make you withdraw from some to cut your losses. That's one of the reasons I don't like games like The Sims, or Second Life. The first life you have, and the people in it have the biggest priority from you, in my opinion. The draw of these other worlds is nice, to escape everything. To some it may seem like the only option, or maybe the better option. I myself am the social hara-kiri expert :) . Movies are my guilty measure, I have probably watched more movies than the average person, even crap most people would kill themselves halfway through. And I somehow never get bored. Ever since I watched a Hindi movie called "Junoon"(A werewolf or rather were-tiger movie), at the tender age of 4, which scared me shitless, I've been able to watch any movie with aplomb and ease. I have mine, and others have theirs. I guess the key to it all is moderation, till I become that guy who does everything sitting on a couch, I'm ok. As they say, even a little bit of poison is good for you.