Vanity

People of often tell me that the dynamics of social interaction are the signs of true intelligence. That, it is unique to the human nature and that it is what makes us tick.

I think this. Behaviors exhibited by life in society is not a sign of intelligence. Rather it is an illusion. Emotional Quotient is just crap. It is just a buzzword to account for our inability to be efficient.

I have heard of a certain species of birds. The males make the nests. The female visits the nest and picks the one that it finds adequate, lives with the male who made it, mates, lays eggs…and so on. This remarkable behavior is no sign of the “true intelligence” that the people tell me. Such behaviors appear ingenious because we see the system as a whole with the final outcome so seemingly optimized.

Look at the birds in the sky! They don’t plant or harvest. They don’t even store grain in barns. Yet your Father in heaven takes care of them. Aren’t you worth more than birds? – Mathew 6:26 Contemporary English Version (CEV)

Assume a group of two accomplices in crime questioned in two different rooms. They are told to confess that “both of them” did the crime, and the confessor could go free, while the other would be punished. They cannot communicate. If both of them blame each other, both will suffer a long jail sentence (say 5 years). If both of them remain silent both of them would recieve a smaller sentence (say 1 day). But the temptation to go free, would make them want to betray each other and consequently recieve a higher sentence.

Consider that, the above scenario is iterated many times. Even if the accomplises are not intelligent enough to observe an emerging pattern, and are just driven by the greedy, carnal desire to minimize their punishment, they would inexorably(may take a million years of social evolution) realize that each of them recieve minimum punishment when both of them remain silent most of the time. i.e. when they cooperate most of the time. This is a classical, simple case where cooperation emerges out bloody die hard competition.

I could go on about how a pair of cooperaters fair better than a pair of competitors when competing against each other. You can read about that in the previous posts. But the bottomline is: cooperation, which could exaggerated to be synonymous to amicability or even karma, is just the obvious clockwork solution of a greedy life to maximize its gains. (Digression: Why does a capitalist state become a welfare state but communist state does not?) And is no real sign of “true intelligence”.

What is intelligence? If one needs to preserve the divinity of intelligence; it could be described as every unexplored process of a mind. There is no single priciple or an agnostic truth that defines it. It is simply a more set of optimized tricks. One such trick that is repeatedly seen is the ability to come up with the simplest program regenrate a set of random events (Digression:Consider the previous statement as Occam’s Razor on steroids. Data Compression is the closest analogue to intelligence). So even IQ is just crap. Like Stephen Hawking once said:

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

More Digression: Am I denying the existence of God? Definitely no! Infact, I could be aiding a rational possibility for divine intervention in the existence of everything. Considering the fact that every rational thought (including this post of mine) seems logical just because of complex but deterministic processes in the mind; could imply existences of truths that cannot be explored just because of the simple and sheer inability of the mind to do it. Sort of like being in a cage of logic. Who decides logic? Who decides reason? It is simply the illusion created by these causal processes of the mind. Infact most of the scientific community agrees that it is impossible to verify or disprove the existence of a divine being with the tools of knowledge and logic.
I think bible says it best:

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. – 1 Corinthians 3:19 (King James Version)

പരീക്ഷ അടുക്കുമ് ബോള്

ആദ് യ മായി മലയാളത്തില് പോസ് ട് ചെ യ് യാം എന്നു കരുതി. പക് ഷെ യുണീകോടി൯ടെ മലയാള ലിപി ഉണ് ടാക്കിയ ***൯മാ൪ അതു വലിയ ഒരു തലേവദനയാക്കി. പരീക്ഷ അടുക്കുമ് ബോള് തോന്നുന്ന ചില പരീക്ഷണങള്. അലലാെത ഇതിനു എ൯താണു പറയുക.

Bayes’ Theorem

Bayes’ Theorem is one of the most elegant theorems in probability. It can be viewed in many ways. With reference to the previous post, it is a way of expressing the likelihood that the pen lands on the triangle A given that it will land on rectangle B in terms of the likelihood that the pen lands on the rectangle B given that it will land on the triangle A, the probability that the pen will land on triangle A and the probability that the pen lands on the rectangle B.

The magic of this theorem is not felt unless one considers its application in spam filtering. Think of it: you can express the probability that an email is spam, given that it has vulgar words in it, in terms of the probability of finding those vulgar words in spam email, the probability that any email is spam and the probability of finding those words in any email.

The derivation is simply some airthemetic:

The actual philosophical derivation and a more verbal description of the counter-intuitive nature of this theorem (which by the way, guides the clock work behind the human mind) can be found here.

Conditional Probabilty

Conditional Probability used to be a tough thing for me at school. I was told that P(A|B) = P(A∩B)/P(B). But I had no idea what those words meant. It was beyond intuition. We were made to do many problems, and yet it never rang any bells. Here are some diagrams that describe conditional probability.Consider this sample space which has an intersection of a rectangle B and a triangle A. Assume that you are blindfolded and made to hold a pen on top of the diagram. You will put the pen down and we would like to probability of various events. Note that there is some esoteric mechanism to ensure that “miracles” don’t happen, e.g. the pen goes outside the sample space or a newly designed weapon of mass destruction leaves me petrified. For simplicity let us also there is another esoteric mechanism to ensure that the chance of me putting down the pen across the sample space is evenly distributed. So what follows is the list of events whose likelihood of occurrence we would like to investigate.

Probability of landing my pen on the triangle A is the ratio of area of triangle by the area of the sample space. This is obvious: the bigger the triangle it is more likely that the pen lands on the triangle. If we rewrite that using cool little math symbols which are each worth a hundred words: P(A) = |A|/|∅| (∅ is the symbol for sample space). Same goes for the rectangle B: P(B) = |B|/|∅|. Same goes for the intersection P(A∩B) = |A∩B|/|∅|.

But what if we are told that there is some esoteric mechanism to ensure that the pen falls in the rectangle B. And we are asked to find the likelihood of the pen falling in A which by the way is only possible if the pen falls in the intersection. Note that this dramatically affects the size of the sample space. Now we are guaranteed that the pen will land in the rectangle B.The diagram tells it all. The likelihood of the pen falling in the intersection is now the ratio of the area of the intersection to the area of the the rectangle B. If we divide the numerator and denominator by the area of the sample space we can express the probability of the pen landing on A given that it will land on B as the ratio of the probability of pen landing on the intersection to probability of the pen landing on the rectangle. Same goes for the likelihood of the pen landing on B given that it will land on the triangle A:

Notes to Myself

By repeatedly posting criticisms about India and everyone else on this blog, I have made sure that no one reads it unless they are invited. My other tactics also proved to working, which have made me; out of my own will, reclusive and un noted in the society. I do this so as to enable free thinking beyond the normal. Following this post, you will find the thoughts of a freed mind – which may be free from grammar and focus of topic. My over inclusive thoughts will make you want to classify me as a schizophernic. But I am not. I am perfecty sane.

Why do I write this then? Human mind can store just 1GB, and it appears to compress information to the limits found by Shannon. There are times I spent after the monthly migraine attack when I have this spur of productivity then when truths are just so clear and fascinating. I have this fear, and I have even experienced it often that I forget my conclusions from those times. I need some form to store my own idiosyncrasies and itermediary foolish thoughts, in my own way, so that I don’t have to re-derive them everytime.

Why don’t I want you to read this blog anymore? So that it wil enable me to express myself freely without any fear of being observed. Thank you in advance.

Iran Holocaust Cartoons & Revisionist History

Education subjects such as mathematics, science, literature, and others differ from the subject of history in that their principle teachings rarely change. History, as time passes, can change drastically. With each generation, new discoveries, interpretations, and facts arise that can greatly alter what was previously considered to be ‘history’. Certain historical facts do not change. 1492 will always be the year that Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Washington will always be the 1st President of the United States. And until recently, the fact that over 10,000,000 people (including 6,000,000 Jews) were killed at the hand of the Nazis was rarely disputed.

Recently, the leaders of Iran have launched an all out campaign calling into question whether the holocaust actually happened. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has even called for a summit of nations to discuss the topic. For the record, Tony Blair and many other leaders were offended by the invitation. However, the latest and most ‘in-the-news’ campaign comes from the Iranian national press.

When a Danish newspaper recently printed a political cartoon displaying the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb as a turban, the Muslim world was outraged. Even though this cartoon was printed in a Danish newspaper, the leaders of Iran somehow placed the blame on Israel and Jews, at large. In response, the national print newspaper launched the Iran holocaust cartoons contest. Putting aside the fact that anti-semetic cartoons are an almost daily occurrence in Iranian newspapers, there was absolutely no connection to Israel or Judaism in the original Danish cartoon in the first place. How did they come up with an Iran holocaust cartoons contest in response to a cartoon created and printed in Denmark?

This type of revisionist history by a leader of Iran is hard to comprehend. When Israel was settled after the holocaust, Iran was actually one of their biggest allies in the Muslim world. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, only a generation removed from this time, appears to have a different idea of his country’s past and seems to also have different plans for its future.

Many believe that things such as the Iran holocaust cartoons contest are mere distractions being put in place to divert attention away from the ongoing nuclear activity that Iran insists on continuing, despite overwhelming world opinion that they are violating past agreements. Again, perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fails to remember that part of the past as well.

We must always remember, or we will most certainly forget.

For more information about Iran Holocaust Cartoons visit these resources:
Israel News Agency
Al Jazeera
Washington Post

Spoon Fed

I don’t know what will be the future of the Indian society. Kids are given everything they need. They stay with their parents till their 30s (some even more). Parents do laundry, cooking and housekeeping. When these kids finish education, they get “placed” in software companies with good salaries. When they are 20-something parents find them their life partners.

I like to think that the new Indian generation has no experience handling real life scenarios as most of them are their “mama’s boys” till they are in their middle ages. They wouldn’t want to take risks, venture out and pursue their dreams as it is safer to do what everybody does.

It will make an economy with conflicting ideologies. On one side there is the fall of the License Raj where everything is increasingly capitalistic. But pure capitalism expects everyone to risk a lot and have a “Mission Impossible”,entreprenial attitude. These will oppose each other, but the strong social traditions and pseudo- morality will prevail.

I need to believe that all this will result in a great economic and social catastrophe in the near future. I don’t know exactly how this will happen, but it will for sure because in a Democracy – people get what they deserve. And a democratic society always tries to correct itself.

I really wish to see an economic catastrophe where there is fall in the number of jobs and a fall in the value of currency. People will suffocate till they are near dead (metaphorically speaking), but they will realize – hey, why don’t we work together, and venture out to do what each one likes and what is great? That will bring about the new India that everyone is talking about.

Alteregos

The best thing about the world is that they have a MATLAB filter for everything these days.