July 7, 2009

Death

What would it be like to be a dead man? : Death is one of the things that captured my imagination a lot since my high school. I was always fascinated by death. When we are alive, we associate ourselves with our brain/body. But when we die, we no longer are thinking anything. There is nothing. I always wondered at this scenario: I died and the world goes on.... I am not there...There is no more me....It gives me goosebumps, if it is the right word I need to use. It also shows how trivial our life is in this vast universe.

soul : I think even our ancients also saw this inevitable thing called death and they cannot believe it. They were so much attached to worldly feelings and importantly they loved themselves so much that they created this concept of soul or existence of life after death to convince themselves that all we do in our life span has some effect in this universe. If really there is a soul in every living thing, how do you explain the increasing population of all living things(not necessarily human)?

Doubt : People say our brain works(neurons keep firing signals) for 20 minutes even after one dies. What do they mean by this? Doesn't dying imply brain stopped working? Maybe, they mean that our heart stopped beating. But I guess we can give electric shock and make the heart beat again even it stopped for a few seconds,right? You do not say the person is dead those seconds and then came back to life. Then shouldn't we declare the person dead only after the neurons stopped firing?

Two beautiful stories

Here are two stories which I recently came across and which made me think a lot...The first one is about accepting the possibility of defeat.I think this is very important in every aspect of life.If we are not prepared for loss, it can take a heavy toll on us. The second story is quite philosophical and effective in its presentation.I liked it a lot...Hope you enjoy the two....
My castle:
Hot sun. Salty air. Rhythmic waves. A little boy is on his knees scooping and packing the sand with plastic shovels into a bright blue bucket. Then he upends the bucket on the surface and lifts it. And, to the delight of the little architect, a castle tower is created. All afternoon he will work. Spooning out the moat. Packing the walls. Bottle tops will be sentries. Popsicle sticks will be bridges. A sandcastle will be built. Big city. Busy streets. Rumbling traffic. A man is in his office. At his desk he shuffles papers into stacks and delegates assignments. He cradles the phone on his shoulder and punches the keyboard with his fingers. Numbers are juggled and contracts are signed and much to the delight of the man, a profit is made. All his life he will work. Formulating the plans. Forecasting the future. Annuities will be sentries. Capital gains will be bridges. An empire will be built. Two builders of two castles. They have much in common. They shape granules into grandeurs. They see nothing and make something. They are diligent and determined. And for both the tide will rise and the end will come. Yet that is where the similarities cease. For the boy sees the end while the man ignores it. Watch the boy as the dusk approaches. As the waves near, the wise child jumps to his feet and begins to clap. There is no sorrow. No fear. No regret. He knew this would happen. He is not surprised. And when the great breaker crashes into his castle and his masterpiece is sucked into the sea, he smiles. He smiles, picks up his tools, takes his father's hand, and goes home. The grownup, however, is not so wise. As the wave of years collapses on his castle he is terrified. He hovers over the sandy monument to protect it. He blocks the waves from the walls he has made. Salt-water soaked and shivering he snarls at the incoming tide. "It's my castle," he defies. The ocean need not respond. Both know to whom the sand belongs... I don't know much about sandcastles. But children do. Watch them and learn. Go ahead and build, but build with a child's heart. When the sun sets and the tides take - applaud. Salute the process of life and go home.

I particularly liked the lines- "It's my castle," he defies. The ocean need not respond. Both know to whom the sand belongs...


Life of an ant:
One morning I wasted nearly an hour watching a tiny ant carry a huge
feather cross my back terrace. Several times it was confronted by
obstacles in its path and after a momentary pause it would make the
necessary detour.

At one point the ant had to negotiate a crack in the concrete about 10mm wide. After brief contemplation the ant laid the feather over the
crack, walked across it and picked up the feather on the other side
then continued on its way. I was fascinated by the ingenuity of this
ant, one of God's smallest creatures. It served to reinforce the
miracle of creation. Here was a minute insect, lacking in size yet
equipped with a brain to reason, explore, discover and overcome. But
this ant, like the two-legged co-residents of this planet, also share
human failings.

After some time the ant finally reached its destination - a flower bed
at the end of the terrace and a small hole that was the entrance to
its underground home. And it was here that the ant finally met its
match. How could that large feather possibly fit down small hole

Of course it couldn't. so the ant, after all this trouble and
exercising great ingenuity, overcoming problems all along the way,
just abandoned the feather and went home.

The ant had not thought the problem through before it began its epic
journey and in the end the feather was nothing more than a burden.
Isn't life like that!

We worry about our family, we worry about money or the lack of it, we
worry about work, about where we live, about all sorts of things.
These are all burdens - the things we pick up along life's path and
lug them around the obstacles and over the crevasses that life will
bring, only to find that at the destination they are useless and we
can't take them with us...

April 10, 2009

History - Religion

Foreword: If you are a hardcore Theist, please don't get offended.
History: History has always been an intriguing subject to me. It is more interesting than science itself in some cases because the experimental results in science are authentic which is not true in the case of history as we only have an account of it written by someone resulting in it being limited by his/her sincerity. Further, science results can always be cross-checked by repeating the experiment. This is completely ruled out in the case of history.
Religion: Coming to religion, many educated modern people argue that religion was just a means of creating a feeling of safety in the common man and giving him some common guidelines to live so that all humans can co-exist. For a person to follow what scriptures say dumbly, he needs a lot of belief in it. This is done in the childhood(that beautiful stage in a human being's life when the wonderful quality of innocence is still there).
Many believe however that god is just a name given to the belief that brain is not the ultimate form of nature, that there is some other higher form of nature which is beyond our grasp.
I am not discussing all these ideas here. What I am presenting is my own version of relation between history and religion.
The theme: People say a lot of things about history.How far is it correct? No one knows what really happened back then,right? So,what if all the religious characters are just human beings from the past. What if Ramayana and Mahabharata are real stories of two great people called Rama and Krishna? Many do believe this is true. Maybe Rama was a great king very long ago. Valmiki wrote about his good deeds which over a period of 100's of years became legendary and people started calling him God. Maybe so are the works of Vyasa. It happens many times. When someone great is gone people tend to exaggerate his deeds and their stories, over the years become legends. Maybe that is the case with these persons. Maybe people started believing in those legends and elevated them to the highest position and called them Gods. And who knows someone across the timeline may have thought "why shouldn't I combine these two characters?" and gave the God a name, Vishnu and made these people, his incarnations. This is quite possible because the story of RAMA and KRISHNA occurred several thousands of years ago.
A Corollary: This leads to some interesting speculations. Who knows,maybe after several thousands of years, people may believe Gandhi as God. Maybe a new religion starts with Gandhi as god or who knows maybe he will be called another incarnation of Vishnu! Its just 60 years since he passed away and we already call him Mahatma. So, calling him God is quite possible in the future.
Note:Such a point was already made in a movie called "The man from the earth". It has an excellent plot. I was completely stunned by the movie. It deals with Christianity but I believe the idea is a generalised one. People who are highly religious may get offended by the movie but it really has strong point.
Just Joking: This maybe a bit too far fetched but on the lighter side what if people in the future believe Gandhi has actually comeback from life and even changed a bad man to his follower(Yes,I mean Munnabhai!!). In the movie the protagonist says Jesus did not die after he was Crossed. He escaped from there after 3 days. One of the followers saw him then and thought Jesus resurrected. What if this happens in the future in the case of Gandhi? Worse than all these what if there were no Rama or Krishna in the first place? What if Valmiki and Vyasa are just two writers who used to write novels about the ever standard "Good always triumphs over Evil"? They just wrote two series like say, LOTR and HP!!! They became famous and over the years the books might have become legendary elevating the protagonist's role to that of God!!! Too far-fetched huh? That's what I too thought. But why not give it a thought?
P.S: I just tried to compare religion and history. It is purely out of interest. I assure you I am not a strong supporter of atheism. I will be happy with any form of criticism on both my writing and my ideas!

January 26, 2009

Trying to define life

I once had a nice discussion with my friends on the definition of life or living thing. Our discussion went for more than an hour and we had to stop it because it is the closing time of mess.I would like to share that experience.
The main difference arose because some of us thought against calling plants as living things.I present a small part of the argument.I would like the readers to develop the argument.Some of you may say it is just the way you define life, after all anyone can define anything in anyway he wants to.But I just want you to think it beyond language barrier.You see,our argument went like this:
Person 1: We can call something as a living thing only if it can have feelings i.e., it should have sense of pain, at least.The bottom line is it should have brain. Now, everybody knows that a plant doesn't have brain.
Person 2: What you say is precisely correct but this need not be the basic need for life.The basic amazing thing about this phenomenon to give it a name, LIFE, is its ability to reproduce.The very thought of one identical thing coming out of another, I mean cell division, is so exciting and great that man called it Life.Infact, if you see, this is precisely why mother is given a special place and mother's love is considered to be the ultimate.
Person 1: See how you are coming back to a FEELING finally,love in this case. Why is cell division so important?Even if cell division is great it has no sense of existence unless there is thought,right?So, only a thing that has brain which is responsible for feelings should be considered as living.
Person 2: Ok, let me put it this way.What is the opposite of LIFE?
Person 1: DEATH.
Person 2: When do you say a man is dead?
Person 1: When his heart stops pumping blood i.e., it stops beating.
Person 2: Precisely! It is not when the brain stops working right?Infact, that is why we have seperate term braindead for that organ. You knew that after heart stops beating,the brain can still function for a few minutes, right? So similarly life is when a nervous system is there and reproduction is there.
Person 1: But still don't you think if you call cell division as life, we should also call any chemical reaction as life?
Person 2: Dude, here we are getting identical being.That is not the case with a chemical reaction.
Person 1: Ok, that was a wrong point but................................

It went on like this.Isn't it interesting?

How I tried to think about brain using my brain


I have always been attracted to the functioning of brain and the concept of Artificial Intelligence. Infact, my attraction to brain is what also led me into becoming a science student. I will try to put forward my own amateur views on AI/Brain. These are some ideas I developed or thought of when I had nothing to do.

I think Mankind has not understood the functioning of brain yet.It is a very interesting thing,this brain. It is made up of simple cells as any other organ in the body but have this remarkable quality of memory and thought process, particularly experience i.e., it not only has memory but analyses it and uses it in taking decisions in future, something like learning from experience.I think if we think of it in terms of known science,it has something like a feedback of memory. When we are supposed to make a decision, it has a number of options but it goes through our past experiences and tries to select one option.

The problem with AI as shown by various sci-fi movies is to have a machine think like a human.To make it possible,we should not only have virtually infinite memory for the machine but also a feedback system that will go through past memory(which I now call experience) and choose the best possible task from again virtually infinite options.Another problem here is, various brains choose various options which cant be achieved in machines(maybe given exactly the same bringing up from childhood may result in two persons making same decisions but it is never tested and subject to argument)Further, memory from brain's point of view can be a solid descreption of what happened to a very vague one like we sometimes say 'I think his name is rahul, or is it ramu?' Such a thing, I think, is not possible with a computer.It either knows what happened precisely or nothing at all.


When we see it from this point of view, we cannot stop ourselves from wondering at how marvellous the brain is!!How did some complex chemical reactions result in a thing which can not only THINK but also question the very existence of itself? We are trying to find out about brain using our own brains!I sometimes wonder if it is like trying to lift your own body which can definetely not happen.Maybe we have been mere spectators at the wonderous nature of brain and not able to find anything about how it is working because we are doing that using brain itself.Maybe we indeed are trying to lift ourselves...Maybe some other higher form of existence is required to explain the dilemma of brain..I hope that I understand it someday....