Tag: brain

  • Conscious choices

    I found this video shared by K (part of a series by Professor Russell Stannard) offering me a very interesting perspective on the free will vs determinism debate. (earlier post)

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8EI4obG5zM

    He starts with talking about the brain as a physical object which is governed by the physical/chemical/biological rules of nature – like a computer works within a  set of mechanical/electronic laws – and therefore predictable. So it should be possible to predict our choices. But it doesn’t work that way. Consciousness is different.

    He then talks about how some are trying to apply quantum theory to the free will – determinism debate. Apparently, at sub atomic level, the ‘future’ is not predictable with absolute certainty. It has a built-in uncertainty in it. What we can do, however, is predict the odds of various possible outcomes – the average behaviour of various items. So if this is applied to individual cells whose behaviour is unpredictable, it would be free will, say the proponents of this theory. But the prof refutes this, and says that this is one of the debates that can’t be solved to everyone’s satisfaction.

    [This prediction of group behaviour reminded me of Asimov’s Foundation series and specifically Hari Seldon‘s psychohistory, through which he predicts the future in probabilistic terms.]

    But more importantly, it made me think that if indeed, there is a creator, maybe he built the automaton inside our head to make us predictable. The automaton grows with us, making most of our decisions unconscious ones, based on baggage accumulated over time – conditioning. That could explain why those few who break out of it are able to attain a higher level of thinking in which they can bend the rules, predict the future and so on and the only advice they can give others is to be aware of every second.

    And when I think of predicting the odds of outcomes, I wonder if the results of all our free will choices are written, like a tree with infinite branches. And as we continue our journey of choices that is life, one by one the branches disappear, until on hindsight, they look like one straight line that was always meant to be that way.

     until next time, a predictable end

  • Moth-eaten

    The Mothman Prophecies, a 2002 film (based on a 1975 book, which is supposedly based on real events!) starring Richard Gere, is about a town that has several people experiencing paranormal events. Gere tries to get to the bottom of it, and as part of his research meets an expert on the subject. There is an interesting conversation between Gere’s character – John Klein, and the expert – Alexander Leek. The snips that interested me –

    Alexander Leek: If there was a car crash ten blocks away, that window washer up there could probably see it. Now, that doesn’t mean he’s God, or even smarter than we are. But from where he’s sitting, he can see a little further down the road.

    ………………….

    Alexander Leek: In the end it all came down to just one simple question. Which was more important – having proof, or being alive? Trust me. I turned away years ago, and I’ve never looked back.

    John Klein: Didn’t you need to know?

    Alexander Leek: We’re not allowed to know.

    …………………..

    Alexander Leek: Their motivations aren’t human.

    John Klein: Alright, then. What do they want?

    Alexander Leek: I have no idea. What you really want is to know… why you?

    …………………..

    John Klein: I think we can assume that these entities are more advanced than us. Why don’t they just come right out and tell us what’s on their minds?

    Alexander Leek: You’re more advanced than a cockroach, have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?

    …………………

    Now, I’m sure conversations similar in meaning to these have appeared in other movies or books, but that doesn’t make this any less interesting. Though in this context, the entity being discussed was more alien, the discussion could still apply to what we consider God, or for the sake of discussion here – a creator. (architect for Matrix fans) Humour me, and forget evolution for a while.

    Leek nailed it when he said the ‘Why me’ part. The search is that – ‘what am I doing here, really’ though the question manifests itself in many other ways – meaning, purpose, secrets of the universe, life and death etc. Sometimes the argument that one is not meant to know is quite compelling. I read an article a few days back in the TOI, coincidentally, written by one Jonathan Leake. To quote

    Some of the greatest mysteries of the universe may never be resolved because they are beyond human comprehension, according to Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society.
    Rees suggests that the inherent intellectual limitations of humanity mean we may never resolve questions such as the existence of parallel universes, the cause of the big bang, or the nature of our own consciousness.
    He even compares humanity to fish, which swim through the oceans without any idea of the properties of the water in which     they spend their lives.

    I wonder if that also applies to the ‘God’ question. But when the unexplainable happens, when I sit there awed by the stars in the night sky, when I pause for a moment and try to figure about where this is all going, and the inevitability of it all, it is frustrating not to find any answers.

    Meanwhile, I’m not sure how much of research has been done on the cockroach’s brain (can’t open this completely 😐 ). But sources on the net say that its brain is ‘spread around its body‘, and the question of whether it has emotions is unresolved. Unfortunately for us humans, it is known that we have an ego, and can’t understand why all of it can’t be explained to us. We’re the chosen ones, isn’t it? And we need closures, we’re uncomfortable otherwise. And so the search must continue, irrespective of the result.

    “Is it the gods who put this fire in our minds, or is it that each man’s relentless longing become a god in him?” ~ Virgil, Aeneid

    until next time, roach ka lafda 😉

  • Life…streaming

    I always wonder what the ‘hard disk’ capacity of the human brain is… maybe we’ve or will figure out ways to quantify it, but unlike the mechanical one, or even ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, it will be a long while before we can get to choose what the brain keeps and what it send to the recycle bin. Maybe, by that time, they will also figure out how to ‘upgrade’ the human brain’s capacity.

    In terms of memories, we’ve been doing it forever, from clay tablets to computers, the aim has always been to store information, though processing and artifical intelligence did get into the picture later. But having notepad and word documents with dates and activities seems a strange way of documenting life.

    Which, i am guessing, is the reasons I stick to Twitter, but am always on the lookout for lifestreaming tools, like the one I have installed here. Its quite twitter heavy but also pulls information from my blogs, and a few other online accounts. I am also hoping to add Facebook status messages to it soon, since that’s also a good chronicler of happenings. This one does that too, but I’m yet to find a way to integrate it here.

    In case you’re wondering why this fascination for lifestreaming, think about how you feel when you see an old photograph, hear an old song, meet an old friend.. there are so many associations it throws up.. I bet you can recollect most of these associations now – the dress you were wearing in the photo, where you got it from, where its journey with you ended, why were you looking happy or sad; where you heard that song first, the mood change it causes in you and why, what was generally happening in your life then; under what circumstances you became friends, the fun you used to have together, shared incidents and so on…. Well, I, for one, am not sure, how far back I will be able to remember, what I’ll be able to remember, and for how long… and these things are important to me because together they are what is known as my life.. and it’d be sad if I couldn’t remember the details of my own life, through my own mind or its accessories… thats the reason behind this fascination for lifestreams… maybe its to do with being a sucker for nostalgia..maybe its the way I am built…

    I think it would be quite soothing at a later date, to sit back and read up the stuff that brought me to where I’d be then.. to better understand who I was, and perhaps figure out why I did what I did, why things happened to me, and so on..in essence, hunting for a pattern in the chronicle of a human life…

    until next time, the sum of our lives….

  • Losing my religion

    Part 1 – Templates

    a few days back, someone excitedly brought his laptop over to me, and showed me a mail.it was a series of basic mathematic addition questions,which had to be answered as quickly as possible, but the last question was to name a color and a tool – i said ‘red hammer’… he scrolled down and the mail said “red hammer”. he had said red hammer too, we tried it on some more people, and around 90% said ‘red hammer’, which figured, coz the mail said around 90% inthe world would say ‘red hammer’.
    consider this- you go for a movie -second show. during the break, you go to the loo, in the next cubicle u see a friend and 90% of us would say “what are you doing here?”
    countless situations where we thought ‘i was about to say that’….the same music we like, the same tv shows, the same content in blogs, the feeling of deja vu in numerous situations… all what we call coincidences…
    and so, the hypothesis – templates, many in number, but yes, all of us templates nevertheless, programmed to respond in a certain way in a certain sitiuation… which is why there are only so many responses to any sitiuations, which is why inventions and discoveries arent exactly common…you think matrix, predictable :), so far maybe, but here’s where the hypothesis deviates because we are not having any ‘machine conspiracy’ around..
    lets deviate a little anyway, when you get back home today, try thinking about what you did for the last hour, not the easy response of a generic answer “i was travelling back from work”, but a minute by minute recall…you would find that most of the actions were on auto pilot, like changing gears in a car…and therefore you wouldnt remember…
    another lil experiment for you, on a regular working day,can you go without saying ‘hi’?.. you would perhaps remember not to say it for an hour, then ‘auto pilot’ would take over…back to the hypothesis, all of us have an auto pilot, all of us also have a higher being inside us, a being constantly ignored in favour of the easier ‘auto pilot’, but extremely important, nevertheless..why? that is for later parts.
    until next time, be unpredictable 🙂