Do you know how far is your office from home? Do you know how many square feet is your house? What is the time now? How heavy are you, did you lose or gain any recently?
Each and every question above seems like a very reasonable question. Distance, Weight, Time seem very measurable. But are they really that easy to measure? We'll come back to this one.
But did you ever wonder why are we not able to know the ultimate truth? There are dead ends to every lead that may attempt to explain the universe. Our scientists are studying new phenomena heads down, but will they ever make so much progress enough to answer it, is something we may not find out in this lifetime.
So I am going to pitch a theory that I want you to try and disprove:
Human beings are all Objects inside a video game program that a superior being has created. The characters have more intelligence than our average video game, obviously. Every video game imposes constraints on the players freedom. Just like, playing the latest version of Socom or Call of Duty, you cannot navigate beyond your war zone's perimeter, you cannot call off your mission in the middle etc. Similarly, there could be governing rules for humans:
1. They cannot leave Solar System
2. Everything outside of Solar system is probably only just an illusion and it is not there in reality.
3. Our life is short enough for us to never be able to decipher the governing code.
may be some more rules, but these are enough to do a lot of fun thinking.
So what is wrong with that, why can't that theory be true? I don't see why not. The illusion of certainity is what is confusing us. The theory of relativity rules out the possibility of simultaneous occurances. Not that it is not possible to have things happening simultaneously, but it is impossible to measure it.
Consider a little experiment, where you are standing in the middle of bus that is going from left to right. You place 2 peices of paper, one at the drivers seat and one at rear end. You have a laser lighting device that you turn on which sends laser towards both directions and you can tell that both the papers lit simultaneously, right? well, that depends. After lighting the peices of paper, the light ray that is coming from the rear end meets your eyes somewhere in the middle because the light is coming from Right to Left, whereas you are moving from left to right. And the light from paper near the driver's seat is racing to catch up with you while you are moving away from it. Therefore, you THINK that Paper at the rear end lit first compared to paper near front end.
But if you are standing on the road witnessing these 2 occurances and the laser was turned on the same way as above, you will see them in different orders depending on whether it is approaching or departing from you. This means the time difference between any given two events can be Simultaneous, Greater than zero and Lesser than zero all at the same time, depending on the relative position of the observer.
The theory expands a lot more and finally tells that that distance is not the same for all view points, time is not the same for all viewpoints and even weight is not the same! Weight increases with speed, and at velocity close to that of Light, it is close to infinity. This is proven mathematically. This means, you need infinite force to move even tiniest of masses to take it as fast as light, which you won't be able to generate anyway. But until you move with velocities comparable to light, you cannot travel in time, cannot go outside of solar system and live to tell the tale. With so many constraints - how the hell will we ever come out of this maze?
This ties into my theory of the governing rules of the super video game that we are all a part of. The video game character's life is simply not enough long to get to the bottom of this.
Coming back to our social scenario, we have a lot of issues to worry about in a day-to-day life. We have needs, things that seem equivaent to typical hurdles for players while crossing levels and accomplishing missions. You have rewards in real life just like those video games when you find a secret or cross a level.
aahh.. what's the use... this theory goes on forever... forget it! I am convinced that we are never going to get out of this Matrix - not without the help of some genius, going forward from where Einstien stopped.
-Sridhar
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
The never ending ladder...
My day began with yet another frustrating 7:30 am corporate meeting, which almost seems like a reminder of my helplessness - the voracious urge to cope with the challenge of an early morning rise to make it to the meeting on time, just for once in my life, but yet realize that even if I did wake up early, it is possible only for the previleged few who live in a 10 mile vicinity to our company's office building in Olympia, WA - unlike me who is atleast 45 miles away (well, I think it's 50, but I tell myself it is just 45 miles).
So having given up on the hope to be there in person, I called into the bridge line that I carefully made a note of in my PDA phone the previous night. My phone connected into the meeting, and I said "hello!". My voice got totally absorbed in the usual cacophony of the early morning meeting, lots of hungry stomachs and sleepless minds trying to ignore their problems by joining the steady noise like discussion, with a couple of very young children furiously playing with their Dads' cordless phones, one singing rhymes into it while the other was learning words. I think by the end of the meeting he even managed to say "papa" or something similar to that.
The meeting coordinator - the young project manager, finally broke through the shackles of hesitation and borderlining the boundaries of social courtesy, said out firmly but being as polite as he could, "If you are not talking in the meeting at the moment, and if you have a mute option on the phone, would you please use it because I am hearing all kinds of sounds?". It was received promptly by most of the people on the call with a cell phone, suddenly the noise fell by about 10 decibels. But there was this father of a young kid who did not have a mute button, but does not want to tell that he does not have it, because then everyone would know who it is to begin with. So he chose anonymity ....Understandable I guess.
There wasn't a lot for me in that meeting, so wasn't for some other participants - it was meant for project wide awareness, a typical corporate meeting during a project crisis. Then I started slipping into my thoughts everytime I detect an unfamiliar topic being spoken about. First thing that struck my mind, why the hell was I trying to be here in person? I am struggling to get some facetime, but seems impossible given the agenda. I like technical stuff, talk about network protocols, infrastructures and database solutions and I love to participate, but not so much about a project progress report out of a dully designed excel spreadsheet or even worse a Microsoft Project plan... I say "No, Thank you". But then the career path of a successful individual is up the corporate ladder, right? As we climb higher and higher, all we are left with is pretty much Excel spreadsheets and Project plans. I began to think if that is probably why they are generally paid better than the lower level technicians - to survive the pressure, routine, boredom and the resultant physical ailments like hypertension, diabetes etc.
But hey c'mon it's not all that bad... there is some good to it. You get to lead a few people, contribute for the bigger cause etc. "Bigger Cause", hmm.. what is it? What cause is so big, that it needs a huge team of people to work their asses off, put in days and nights and weekends, sacrifice any bit of personal lifes they have left, be subject to their spouse's wrath one too many times.... what is that "big cause". Oh, I know - that big cause is a major shareholder of the company making major profits. And the funny thing is, what I just said is not a big secret - every random Joe completely realizes this. Then, what is really the motivation for a person to work hard.
There are several theories about motivations, but I like this one the most. This is the theory of a famous psychologist called Maslow. He has developed a theory of heirarchical needs. It goes something like:
Actually, I observed my own level of happiness for sometime and I realized that when I get the next milestone accomplished in my life, I feel happy and stay happy for about a day at the maximum and then it doesn't mean much anymore. I am already looking forward to the next big thing that I can and invariably should accomplish to feel good. When I am working hard to get there, I am feeling good only because I am feeling closer to my next milestone. See where I am going with this? Happiness is not constantly there, but it's there only when something good happens to you. And then it gradually dies out.
So, does it matter how high you climb up the ladder? Does it really make you happier? Actually, I think it is the other way around. Meaning, when you are an important person, for you to be even slightly happy something big must have been accomplished. There won't be too many of those, compared to smaller and more easy achievements when you are a small time Developer, for example.
Not to be a total geek, but when I try to analyze my happiness pattern it appears like below:
The "equally happy" line means that you have steady supply of good things that are happening to you and so you are just as happy through out the timeline. You could have more and more good things happening for you (which is a bit unlikely for anyone) and then you would have the green ascending line pattern going for you and the other way around is to have less and less good things happening for you and that means you are less and less happy (very easy to happen if you take it easy for a briefl while). I think if you keep working hard, then there is a good chance of good things happening to you at a steady rate and which is why there are always those "hard workers" at every place.
So that is probably why some of us like to work hard, so as to stay happy at work place. But the real observation is that it won't make your life much more better just because you're at the top. Infact, you are giving enough rope to hang yourself doing that. But it does not seem very logical if you are not thinking with such a mathematical mindset.
What do you think?
:`)
-Sridhar
So having given up on the hope to be there in person, I called into the bridge line that I carefully made a note of in my PDA phone the previous night. My phone connected into the meeting, and I said "hello!". My voice got totally absorbed in the usual cacophony of the early morning meeting, lots of hungry stomachs and sleepless minds trying to ignore their problems by joining the steady noise like discussion, with a couple of very young children furiously playing with their Dads' cordless phones, one singing rhymes into it while the other was learning words. I think by the end of the meeting he even managed to say "papa" or something similar to that.
The meeting coordinator - the young project manager, finally broke through the shackles of hesitation and borderlining the boundaries of social courtesy, said out firmly but being as polite as he could, "If you are not talking in the meeting at the moment, and if you have a mute option on the phone, would you please use it because I am hearing all kinds of sounds?". It was received promptly by most of the people on the call with a cell phone, suddenly the noise fell by about 10 decibels. But there was this father of a young kid who did not have a mute button, but does not want to tell that he does not have it, because then everyone would know who it is to begin with. So he chose anonymity ....Understandable I guess.
There wasn't a lot for me in that meeting, so wasn't for some other participants - it was meant for project wide awareness, a typical corporate meeting during a project crisis. Then I started slipping into my thoughts everytime I detect an unfamiliar topic being spoken about. First thing that struck my mind, why the hell was I trying to be here in person? I am struggling to get some facetime, but seems impossible given the agenda. I like technical stuff, talk about network protocols, infrastructures and database solutions and I love to participate, but not so much about a project progress report out of a dully designed excel spreadsheet or even worse a Microsoft Project plan... I say "No, Thank you". But then the career path of a successful individual is up the corporate ladder, right? As we climb higher and higher, all we are left with is pretty much Excel spreadsheets and Project plans. I began to think if that is probably why they are generally paid better than the lower level technicians - to survive the pressure, routine, boredom and the resultant physical ailments like hypertension, diabetes etc.
But hey c'mon it's not all that bad... there is some good to it. You get to lead a few people, contribute for the bigger cause etc. "Bigger Cause", hmm.. what is it? What cause is so big, that it needs a huge team of people to work their asses off, put in days and nights and weekends, sacrifice any bit of personal lifes they have left, be subject to their spouse's wrath one too many times.... what is that "big cause". Oh, I know - that big cause is a major shareholder of the company making major profits. And the funny thing is, what I just said is not a big secret - every random Joe completely realizes this. Then, what is really the motivation for a person to work hard.
There are several theories about motivations, but I like this one the most. This is the theory of a famous psychologist called Maslow. He has developed a theory of heirarchical needs. It goes something like:
- Self-Actualization
- Esteem
- Love\Belonging
- Safety
- Physiological
Actually, I observed my own level of happiness for sometime and I realized that when I get the next milestone accomplished in my life, I feel happy and stay happy for about a day at the maximum and then it doesn't mean much anymore. I am already looking forward to the next big thing that I can and invariably should accomplish to feel good. When I am working hard to get there, I am feeling good only because I am feeling closer to my next milestone. See where I am going with this? Happiness is not constantly there, but it's there only when something good happens to you. And then it gradually dies out.
So, does it matter how high you climb up the ladder? Does it really make you happier? Actually, I think it is the other way around. Meaning, when you are an important person, for you to be even slightly happy something big must have been accomplished. There won't be too many of those, compared to smaller and more easy achievements when you are a small time Developer, for example.
Not to be a total geek, but when I try to analyze my happiness pattern it appears like below:
The "equally happy" line means that you have steady supply of good things that are happening to you and so you are just as happy through out the timeline. You could have more and more good things happening for you (which is a bit unlikely for anyone) and then you would have the green ascending line pattern going for you and the other way around is to have less and less good things happening for you and that means you are less and less happy (very easy to happen if you take it easy for a briefl while). I think if you keep working hard, then there is a good chance of good things happening to you at a steady rate and which is why there are always those "hard workers" at every place.
So that is probably why some of us like to work hard, so as to stay happy at work place. But the real observation is that it won't make your life much more better just because you're at the top. Infact, you are giving enough rope to hang yourself doing that. But it does not seem very logical if you are not thinking with such a mathematical mindset.
What do you think?
:`)
-Sridhar
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I sure am not talking about Clint Eastwood's wild west cowboy blockbuster. This is a concept that caught my interest, about how gradually we develop inveterated opinions about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly things in the world, while those are entirely relativistic terms and it seems almost impossible at the first thought to accept that the way we live may be totally unacceptable to some one else in this world.
You probably know what I mean when we consider arranged marriages, sexual orientations, laws, customs, traditions accross different parts of the world. But then who are we to question other's beliefs, right? Is there such a thing as an absolute Truth, absolute Right and Wrong?
I think not. I think anything and everything is relative. You can spend some time and come up with the most abominable thing you can think of and I am sure there is a way to justify it.
When I think more about it, then it occured to me that it is the majority's opinion about what is good or bad. In fact, even better description would be to say it is majority's convenience resulting out of your actions, most of the times. The society, over time, tried out all combinations of behaviours and the path that gives least trouble to everyone else is the "best" path. I guess it fits the purpose Man being a social animal and all.
So what happens to one's creativity when we take up the "best" path? I can't help but remember how my wife runs for the nearest peice of wood like the wood must be scared, whenever I say anything remotely connected to a bad omen like death etc. She touches it and says "touch wood". What's more she is making me touch the wood these days. That way she is naturally controlling my urge to discuss anything out-of-whack with her. I am still working on a plan to discuss our life insurance policies with her, which probably will only happen after our rates increase due to old age. But that's a digression we don't need now.
I fear that we will become products of a society that likes nothing to change. Change is dreaded by most of us, because change brings the unknown and we are scared of the unknown. We worship the unknown (which is also called God in a sense, read my other article "Is Atheism Logical" for more details) and pray that the unknown does not turn out bad for us.
I feel that Beliefs, Traditions, Customs, Orientations are knowledge hinderers. They constrain our thought process, kill our creativity and stunt out ability to ask the right questions. Right remains right and so does wrong, while everyone else is busy in keeping it that way. One may say it's a way-of-life, but why do you need a way of life - only because you don't want to rethink your priorities. Nothing wrong with that, but in the process, more often than not we end up inheriting priorities from the culture we are in. They are not YOUR priorities!
So what's wrong in living like that? Accepting everything and taking a guided tour through life? Why do we have to reinvent the wheel, when smarter people have already tried and are willing to share their experiences in the name of religion and laws and what not. Do I think I can do something that they could not? I don't feel that I know the answer to that question, but it seems very difficult to follow a rules book for some reason.
-Sridhar
You probably know what I mean when we consider arranged marriages, sexual orientations, laws, customs, traditions accross different parts of the world. But then who are we to question other's beliefs, right? Is there such a thing as an absolute Truth, absolute Right and Wrong?
I think not. I think anything and everything is relative. You can spend some time and come up with the most abominable thing you can think of and I am sure there is a way to justify it.
When I think more about it, then it occured to me that it is the majority's opinion about what is good or bad. In fact, even better description would be to say it is majority's convenience resulting out of your actions, most of the times. The society, over time, tried out all combinations of behaviours and the path that gives least trouble to everyone else is the "best" path. I guess it fits the purpose Man being a social animal and all.
So what happens to one's creativity when we take up the "best" path? I can't help but remember how my wife runs for the nearest peice of wood like the wood must be scared, whenever I say anything remotely connected to a bad omen like death etc. She touches it and says "touch wood". What's more she is making me touch the wood these days. That way she is naturally controlling my urge to discuss anything out-of-whack with her. I am still working on a plan to discuss our life insurance policies with her, which probably will only happen after our rates increase due to old age. But that's a digression we don't need now.
I fear that we will become products of a society that likes nothing to change. Change is dreaded by most of us, because change brings the unknown and we are scared of the unknown. We worship the unknown (which is also called God in a sense, read my other article "Is Atheism Logical" for more details) and pray that the unknown does not turn out bad for us.
I feel that Beliefs, Traditions, Customs, Orientations are knowledge hinderers. They constrain our thought process, kill our creativity and stunt out ability to ask the right questions. Right remains right and so does wrong, while everyone else is busy in keeping it that way. One may say it's a way-of-life, but why do you need a way of life - only because you don't want to rethink your priorities. Nothing wrong with that, but in the process, more often than not we end up inheriting priorities from the culture we are in. They are not YOUR priorities!
So what's wrong in living like that? Accepting everything and taking a guided tour through life? Why do we have to reinvent the wheel, when smarter people have already tried and are willing to share their experiences in the name of religion and laws and what not. Do I think I can do something that they could not? I don't feel that I know the answer to that question, but it seems very difficult to follow a rules book for some reason.
-Sridhar
Monday, October 29, 2007
Is Atheism Logical?
I think yes sometimes and no some other times, these days however my belief in an almighty is being heavily influenced by my wife furiously searching for the latest bollywood movie to go to on a saturday evening, exactly when I am settling down for an interesting history channel article with a glass of wine.
I can joke all I want, but the ultimate question is ultimately an unanswered question. Tell you the truth, it is designed in such a way that you will never get an answer. It feels terrible to live amidst of the vast set of unknowns with so little truth to any of the things that we actually claim we know.
I realize more on every passing thought, that "Life" can be described as a chemical reaction with it's own life cycle, with a definitive start and end points. But this is an interesting thought, I think, because then we can derive some mathematical theories about life.
Consider this one, for instance. We know that chemical reactions are very causal processes, meaning one thing leads to the other and everything can be traced back to it's cause. We are going to have to imagine access to some crazy computing paraphernalia here to make progress, after all, this is a thought experiment. So imagine a great computer that has unlimited storage and infinite processing power. Now have this computer store all the knowledge of the entire universe, like masses of celestial bodies, their compositions, their positions and relative movements and so on.
With all the data at hand, say we can project the next big event such as the "big bang" because it is nothing but a chemical reaction inside the Sun. Then we can project some more about when life begins on earth and extrapolating the super theory some more we can even project the human development. If we agree that Life is a chemical reaction, then the 'actions' performed by living organisms will be chemical reactions too, ofcourse smaller ones compared to the bigger reaction itself. But for any of these actions to occur, it is obviously a result of the environment in which the reaction is happening. If we can predict the environment's state at a given point in time, then it also means that we can predict the person's action at a given point in time.
Phew! there it is, I said it. The summary of the paragraph above is simply that there is no such thing as "free will". Anything that happens, will happen and could not have happened in any other way. I don't think any person can consciouly agree to that. Co-incidentally, this is along lines of what Bhagavad Gita already is saying for a long time, that there is no such thing as "free will". But I think of myself a modern philospher, not a classical one, so I won't go anymore into that than how much I already have.
I know my little thought experiment have many loose ends and doesn't jive with practical logic all that much, but if you think about it leaving out the logistics and details, at some level it does capture the point. Well, all said and done, what does this have anything to do with the title? There certainly is: to me,
God is nothing but the uncertainity that is created because of the lack of that super computer I talked about, it is the one that controls us and everything else in the universe. It seems random at first sight, but it is highly coordinated and closely controlled for everything we think and do is pre-determined and it could not have happened in any other way that it already did.
There are many places we could go from here. But here is one place I love. Having bought into my super theory, since everything is causal and pre-determined - do the terms Past, Present and Future mean anything? Our knoweldge is limited and our perceptions are a handful. We don't know what happened million years ago, we don't know what will happen tomorrow, all we know is NOW. But there is nothing different that's going to happen in the future that hasn't already happened, for it is pre-determined.
It gets me thinking of the concept of Einstien's time-space theory. All that happened in the past and all that is happening now and that will happen in future, are all joined end-to-end like one long deck of snapshots of the world at each infinitesimal moment world has ever seen. You could move back and forth along the "chemical reaction" and observe the different states, what happened and how it happened. So time travel don't seem that impossible now, does it? All you need is that super computer :)
The Theory of Relativity threw a monkey wrench into my thoughts that seem to have been based on classical physics, but after a lot of reading and pondering and reading some more, I am proud to say that I am no less ignorant than I was when I began. I end this article here, yet there is so much more to this rather profound concept than I can ever imagine.
Wish you good thinking!
-Sridhar
I can joke all I want, but the ultimate question is ultimately an unanswered question. Tell you the truth, it is designed in such a way that you will never get an answer. It feels terrible to live amidst of the vast set of unknowns with so little truth to any of the things that we actually claim we know.
I realize more on every passing thought, that "Life" can be described as a chemical reaction with it's own life cycle, with a definitive start and end points. But this is an interesting thought, I think, because then we can derive some mathematical theories about life.
Consider this one, for instance. We know that chemical reactions are very causal processes, meaning one thing leads to the other and everything can be traced back to it's cause. We are going to have to imagine access to some crazy computing paraphernalia here to make progress, after all, this is a thought experiment. So imagine a great computer that has unlimited storage and infinite processing power. Now have this computer store all the knowledge of the entire universe, like masses of celestial bodies, their compositions, their positions and relative movements and so on.
With all the data at hand, say we can project the next big event such as the "big bang" because it is nothing but a chemical reaction inside the Sun. Then we can project some more about when life begins on earth and extrapolating the super theory some more we can even project the human development. If we agree that Life is a chemical reaction, then the 'actions' performed by living organisms will be chemical reactions too, ofcourse smaller ones compared to the bigger reaction itself. But for any of these actions to occur, it is obviously a result of the environment in which the reaction is happening. If we can predict the environment's state at a given point in time, then it also means that we can predict the person's action at a given point in time.
Phew! there it is, I said it. The summary of the paragraph above is simply that there is no such thing as "free will". Anything that happens, will happen and could not have happened in any other way. I don't think any person can consciouly agree to that. Co-incidentally, this is along lines of what Bhagavad Gita already is saying for a long time, that there is no such thing as "free will". But I think of myself a modern philospher, not a classical one, so I won't go anymore into that than how much I already have.
I know my little thought experiment have many loose ends and doesn't jive with practical logic all that much, but if you think about it leaving out the logistics and details, at some level it does capture the point. Well, all said and done, what does this have anything to do with the title? There certainly is: to me,
God is nothing but the uncertainity that is created because of the lack of that super computer I talked about, it is the one that controls us and everything else in the universe. It seems random at first sight, but it is highly coordinated and closely controlled for everything we think and do is pre-determined and it could not have happened in any other way that it already did.
There are many places we could go from here. But here is one place I love. Having bought into my super theory, since everything is causal and pre-determined - do the terms Past, Present and Future mean anything? Our knoweldge is limited and our perceptions are a handful. We don't know what happened million years ago, we don't know what will happen tomorrow, all we know is NOW. But there is nothing different that's going to happen in the future that hasn't already happened, for it is pre-determined.
It gets me thinking of the concept of Einstien's time-space theory. All that happened in the past and all that is happening now and that will happen in future, are all joined end-to-end like one long deck of snapshots of the world at each infinitesimal moment world has ever seen. You could move back and forth along the "chemical reaction" and observe the different states, what happened and how it happened. So time travel don't seem that impossible now, does it? All you need is that super computer :)
The Theory of Relativity threw a monkey wrench into my thoughts that seem to have been based on classical physics, but after a lot of reading and pondering and reading some more, I am proud to say that I am no less ignorant than I was when I began. I end this article here, yet there is so much more to this rather profound concept than I can ever imagine.
Wish you good thinking!
-Sridhar
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