The Markovian Mind

In many ways, human engagement with information happens in such a manner that, with the accumulation of information over time, the dataset constructed out of the latest volume of information has the strongest relationship of any kind with the consecutively next dataset – a Markovian trait.

At any point of time, the future state of the dataset is determined solely by its present one. In other words, with a discrete understanding, its n^th state is dependant solely on its (n – i)^th state, where ‘i’ is a cardinal index. Upon a failure to quantify its (n + i)^th state, there is no certain state that we know the dataset will intend to assume.

At the same time, given its limited historic dependency, the past’s bearing on the state of the dataset is continuous but constantly depreciating (asymptotically tending to zero): the correlation index between the (n + i)^th state for increasing i with the (n – k)^th decreases for increasing k (for all k = i).*

Over time, if the information-dataset could be quantized through a set of state variables, S, then there will be a characteristic function, φ(n), which would describe the slope of the correlation index’s curve at (i, k). Essentially, the evolution of S will be as a Markov chain whereas φ(n) will be continuous, rendering (i, k) random and memoryless.

(*For k = i, (n - k) = (n - i). However, for a given set of state variables S, which evolve as a Markov chain, the devolution that k tracks and the evolution that i tracks will be asymmetric, necessitating two different indices to describe the two degrees of freedom.)

When must science give way to religion?

When I saw an article titled 'Sometimes science must give way to religion' in Nature on August 22, 2012, by Daniel Sarewitz, I had to read it. I am agnostic, and I try as much as I can to keep from attempting to proselyte anyone - through argument or reason (although I often fail at controlling myself). However, titled as it was, I had to read the piece, especially since it'd appeared in a publication I subscribe to for their hard-hitting science news, which I've always approached as Dawkins might: godlessly.

First mistake.

[caption id="attachment_23913" align="aligncenter" width="627"] Dr. Daniel Sarewitz[/caption]

At first, if anything, I hoped the article would treat the entity known as God as simply an encapsulation of the unknown rather than in the form of an icon or elemental to be worshiped. However, the lead paragraph was itself a disappointment - the article was going to be about something else, I understood.

Visitors to the Angkor temples in Cambodia can find themselves overwhelmed with awe. When I visited the temples last month, I found myself pondering the Higgs boson — and the similarities between religion and science.

The awe is architectural. When pilgrims visit a temple built like the Angkor, the same quantum of awe hits them as it does an architect who has entered a Pritzker-prize winning building. But then, this sort of "reasoning", upon closer observation or just an extra second of clear thought, is simply nitpicking. It implies that I'm just pissed that Nature decided to publish an article and disappoint ME. So, I continued to read on.

Until I stumbled upon this:

If you find the idea of a cosmic molasses that imparts mass to invisible elementary particles more convincing than a sea of milk that imparts immortality to the Hindu gods, then surely it’s not because one image is inherently more credible and more ‘scientific’ than the other. Both images sound a bit ridiculous. But people raised to believe that physicists are more reliable than Hindu priests will prefer molasses to milk. For those who cannot follow the mathematics, belief in the Higgs is an act of faith, not of rationality.

For a long time, I have understood that science and religion have a lot in common: they're both frameworks that are understood through some supposedly indisputable facts, the nuclear constituents of the experience born from believing in a world reality that we think is subject to the framework. Yes, circular logic, but how are we to escape it? The presence of only one sentient species on the planet means a uniform biology beyond whose involvement any experience is meaningless.

So how are we to judge which framework is more relevant, more meaningful? To me, subjectively, the answer is to be able to predict what will come, what will happen, what will transpire. For religion, these are eschatological and soteriological considerations. As Hinduism has it: "What goes around comes around!" For science, these are statistical and empirical considerations. Most commonly, scientists will try to spot patterns. If one is found, they will go about pinning the pattern's geometric whims down to mathematical dictations to yield a parametric function. And then, parameters will be pulled out of the future and plugged into the function to deliver a prediction.

Earlier, I would have been dismissive of religion's "ability" to predict the future. Let's face it, some of those predictions and prophecies are too far into the future to be of any use whatsoever, and some other claims are so ad hoc that they sound too convenient to be true... but I digress. Earlier, I would've been dismissive, but after Sarewitz's elucidation of the difference between rationality and faith, I am prompted to explain why, to me, it is more science than religion that makes the cut. Granted, both have their shortcomings: empiricism was smashed by Popper, while statistics and unpredictability are conjugate variables.

(One last point on this matter: If Sarewitz seems to suggest that the metaphorical stands in the way of faith evolving into becoming a conclusion of rationalism, then he also suggests lack of knowledge in one field of science merits a rejection of scientific rationality in that field. Consequently, are we to stand in eternal fear of the incomprehensible, blaming its incomprehensibility on its complexity? He seems to have failed to realize that a submission to the simpler must always be a struggle, never a surrender.)

Sarewitz ploughed on, and drew a comparison more germane and, unfortunately, more personal than logical.

By contrast, the Angkor temples demonstrate how religion can offer an authentic personal encounter with the unknown. At Angkor, the genius of a long-vanished civilization, expressed across the centuries through its monuments, allows visitors to connect with things that lie beyond their knowing in a way that no journalistic or popular scientific account of the Higgs boson can. Put another way, if, in a thousand years, someone visited the ruins of the Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs experiment was conducted, it is doubtful that they would get from the relics of the detectors and super­conducting magnets a sense of the subatomic world that its scientists say it revealed.

Granted, if a physicist were to visit the ruins of the LHC, he may be able to put two and two together at the sight of the large superconducting magnets, striated with the shadows of brittle wires and their cryostatic sleeves, and guess the nature of the prey. At the same time, an engagement with the unknown at the Angkor Wat (since I haven't been there, I'll extrapolate my experience at the Thillai Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram, South India, from a few years back) requires a need to engage with the unknown. A pilgrim visiting millennia-old temples will feel the same way a physicist does when he enters the chamber that houses the Tevatron! Are they not both pleasurable?

I think now that what Sarewitz is essentially arguing against is the incomparability of pleasures, of sensations, of entire worlds constructed on the basis two very different ideologies, rather requirements, and not against the impracticality of a world ruled by one faith, one science. This aspect came in earlier in this post, too, when I thought I was nitpicking when I surmised Sarewitz's awe upon entering a massive temple was unique: it may have been unique, but only in sensation, not in subject, I realize now.

(Also, I'm sure we have enough of those unknowns scattered around science; that said, Sarewitz seems to suggest that the memorability of his personal experiences in Cambodia are a basis for the foundation of every reader's objective truth. It isn't.)

The author finishes with a mention that he is an atheist. That doesn't give any value to or take away any value from the article. It could have been so were Sarewitz to pit the two worlds against each other, but in his highlighting their unification - their genesis in the human mind, an entity that continues to evade full explicability - he has left much to be desired, much to be yearned for in the form of clarification in the conflict of science with religion. If someday, we were able to fully explain the working and origin of the human mind, and if we find it has a fully scientific basis, then where will that put religion? And vice versa, too.

Until then, science will not give way for religion, nor religion for science, as both seem equipped to explain.

"God is a mathematician."

The more advanced the topics I deal with in physics, the more stark I observe the divergence from philosophy and mathematics to be. While one seems to drill right down to the bedrock of all things existential, the other assumes disturbingly abstract overtones, often requiring multiple interpretations to seem to possess any semblance of meaningfulness.

This is where the strength of the mind is tested: an ability to make sense of fundamental concepts in various contexts and to recall all of them at will so that complex associations don't remain complex but instead break down under the gaze of the mind's eye to numerous simple associations.

While computation theory would have us hold that a reasonable strength of any computing mechanism could be measured as the number of calculations it can perform per second, when it comes to high-energy physics, the strength lies with the quickness with which new associations are established where old ones existed. In other words, where unlearning is just as important as learning, we require adaptation and readjustment more than faster calculation.

In fact, the mathematics is such: at the fringe, unstable, flitting between virtuality and a reality that may or may not be this one.

One could contend that the definition of mathematics in its simplest form - number theory, fundamental theories of algebra, etc. - is antithetic to the kind of universe we seem to be unraveling. If we considered the example of physics, and the divergence of philosophy from theoretical physics, then my argument is unfortunately true.

However, at the same time, it seems to be outside the reach of human intelligence to conceive a new mathematical system that becomes simpler as we move closer to the truth and is ridiculously more complex as one strays from it toward simpler logic - not to mention outside the reach of reasoning! How would we then educate our children?

However, it is still unfortunate that only "greater" minds can comprehend the nature of the truth - what it comprises, what it necessitates, what it subsumes.

With this in mind: we also face the risk of submitting to broader and broader terms of explanation to make it simpler and simpler; we throw away important aspects of the nature of reality from our textbooks because people may not understand it, or may be disturbed by such clarity, and somehow result in the search seeming less relevant to daily life. Such an outcome we must keep from being precipitated by any activity in the name of and for the sake of science.

On Monday, I attended a short lecture by the eminent Indian particle physicist Dr. G. Rajasekaran, or Rajaji as he is referred to by his colleagues, on the Standard Model of high-energy physics and its future in the context of the CERN announcement on July 4, 2012. While his talk itself straightened a few important creases in my superficial understanding of the subject, two of its sections continues to nag at me.

The first was his attitude toward string theory, which was laudatory to say the least and stifling to say the most. When asked by a colleague of his from the Institute of Mathematical Science about constraints placed on string theory by theoretical physics, Rajaji dismissed it as a political "move" to discredit something as exotic as the mathematical framework that string theory introduced.

After a few short, stunted sniggers rippled through the audience, there was silence as everyone realised Rajaji was serious in his allegation: he had dismissed the question as some political comment! Upon some prodding by the questioner, Rajaji proceeded to answer in deliberately uncertain terms about the reasons for the supertheory's existence and its hypotheses.

Now, I must mention that earlier in his lecture, he had mentioned that researchers, especially of high-energy/particle physics, tended to dismiss new findings just as quickly as they were ready to defend their own propositions because the subject they worked with was such: a faceless foe, constantly shifting form, one moment yielding to one whim, one serendipity, and the next moment, to the other (ref: Kuhn's thesis). And here he was, living his words!

The second section was his conviction that the future of all kinds of physics lay in the hands of accelerator physics. That experimental proof was the sole arbiter for all things physical he summarised within a memorable statement:

God is a mathematician, but even he/she/it will wait for experimental proof before being right.

This observation arose when Rajaji decided to speculate aloud on the future of experimental particle physics, specially considering an observable proof of the existence of string theory.

He finished ruing that accelerator physics was an oft ignored subject in many research centres and universities; now that we had sufficiently explored the limits and capabilities of SM-physics, the physics to follow (SUSY, GUT, string theory, etc.) necessitated collision-energies of the order of 10¹⁹ GeV (the "upgraded" run of the LHC in early to July 2012 delivered a collision energy of 8,000 GeV).

These are energies well outside the ambit of current human capability. It may well be admitted at this point that an ultimate explanation of the universe and all it contains is not going to be simple, and definitely not elegant. Every step of the way, we seem to encounter two kinds of problems: one cardinal (particle-kinds and their properties) and metaphysical (why three families of particles and not two or four?).

While the mathematics is "reconfigured" to include such new findings, the philosophy acquires a rupture, a break in derivability, and implications become apparent ex post facto.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyPQbZFr38]

I read about this development about a week ago, and I still don't know what I think about it. As a feat of engineering it is beyond par-excellence, and that is where I stop to take a few breaths... The engineer's intentions may halt with attempting to understand how the heart beats, but in creating (or recreating?) something as relatively simple as a swimming silicone-jellyfish, he seems to have stumbled upon a nexus where the multiple wills of nature meet and participate without conflict in the fashion of a life-form.

An experiment in propositional calculus

Q: Are truths simply objective reasons whose truth-values may or may not be verifiable?

A:

This question seems to possess a native paradox, but that simply arises from a logical error in the semantics: we can’t address unverifiable statements as “truths”. Instead, they are logically contingent statements.

Even so: As Wittgenstein says in the preface of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “In order to draw a limit of thinking, we should have to think both sides of this limit.” Similarly, in order to establish the objectivity of a statement, its subjectivity must be conclusively denied as well as its independence of subjective considerations verified.

The attainment of these conditions can be explored through Sir Ayer’s verification principle, the tenets of which were established in his 1926 opus, Language, Truth and Logic. However, it must be noted that Ayer denied, reasonably, that unempirical hypotheses may be formed on the basis of empirical engagements with reality. By extension, there exists an inherent denial of any transcendent reality, which in turn eliminates the presence of any objective truths.

At the same time, however, there exist objective literal truths, which are closer to being tautologies than truths themselves simply because they are a repetition of meaning whose propositional variables are actually fixed and whose truth-value is also fixed.

During an argument, negation and affirmation are used to establish the value of a propositional formula. The formula could be any statement whose propositional variables can assume different values. For instance, the statement S has an unverified propositional value.

S: Smoking is disagreeable; drinking is agreeable.

To some, S will make sense while, to some others, S won’t make any sense at all. In order to establish the truth-value of S, we explore the existence of a logical system that is consistent with the value of S being both true and false. This is unlikely because it contradicts our logical framework itself. Then, the next step is to understand the structure of a logical system in which S is either true or false and such that the value of one propositional variable impacts the value of the second propositional variable directly.

In other words, we make S a formula with two variables, X and Y, and find out how the values of X and Y are consistent/inconsistent with each other while they exist in the framework of the same set of logical principles.

S: X • Y

If we now hypothesize that X cannot retain its value while Y’s value is held fixed, then we pursue the negation of this hypothesis in order to establish that S is true. If we affirm the hypothesis, then we will prove that S is false. In the course of either of these arguments, we repeatedly hypothesize and evaluate the truth-value of each, and proceed until we have with a hypothesis that corroborates or denies the parent hypothesis and so renders the statement as either true or false.

However, if a rhetorical tautology cannot be assumed to constitute a reason (because it is a repetition of meaning), and if Wittgenstein’s proposition that tautologies are statements deducible logically and therefore meaningless is true, then the tenets of propositional logic are neither tautologies nor analytic truths.

Moreover, no literal significance can be assigned to logically valid statements according to Sir Ayer! In this context, the existence of any literal significance of logically valid statements depends not on their analytic proposition but their synthetic proposition – as affirmed by Sir Ayer. (Here, according to George Berkeley: “esse est percipi”!)

A clock without a craftsman

Curiosity can be devastating on the pocket. Curiosity without complete awareness has the likelihood of turning fatal.

At first, for example, there was nothing. Then, there was a book called The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vol. 3) (Rs. 214) in class XII. Then, there was great interest centered on the man named Richard Feynman, and so, another book followed: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Rs. 346) By the time I'd finished reading it, I was introduced to that argumentative British coot named David Hume, whose Selected Essays (Rs. 425) sparked my initial wonderment on logical positivism as well as torpor-inducing verbosity (in these terms, his only peer is Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day, Rs. 800), and I often wonder why many call for his nomination for a Nobel Prize in literature. The Prize is awarded to good writers, right? Sure, he writes grandiose stuff and explores sensations and times abstract to everyone else with heart-warming clarity, but by god do you have to have a big attention span to digest it! In contrast: Vargas Llosa!).

I realized that if I had to follow what Hume had to say, and then Rawls, and then Sen (The Idea of Justice, Rs. 374) and Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Rs. 169 - the subject of my PG-diploma's thesis) and Kant, and then Schopenhauer, Berkeley and Wittgenstein, I'd either have to study philosophy after school and spend the rest of my days in penurate thought or I'd have to become rich and spend the rest of my days buying books while not focusing on work.

An optimum course of action presented itself. I had to specialize.

But how does one choose the title of that school of thought that one finds agreeable without perusing the doctrines of all the schools on offer? I was back to square one. Then, someone suggested reading The Story of Philosophy (Rs. 230) by Will Durant. When I picked up a copy at a roadside bookstore, I suspected its innards had been pirated, too: the book would have been more suited in the hands of one in need of a quick-reference tool; the book didn't think; the book wasn't the interlocutor I was hoping it would be.

I wanted dialogue, I wanted dialectic in the context of Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus' thesis (Systems of Speculative Ethics as translated by Alfred Edersheim, 1854 - corresponding to System of Speculative Philosophy by G.W.F. Hegel). I wanted the evolution of Plato (The Republic, Rs. 200), Aristotle (Poetics, Rs. 200), Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, Rs. 200). That was when I chanced upon George Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge (Rs.225) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Rs. 709). Epistemology began then to take shape; until that moment, however, it was difficult to understand the inherently understood element as anything but active-thought. It's ontology started to become clear - and not like it did in the context of The Architecture of Language by A. Noam Chomsky (Rs. 175), which, to me, still was the crowning glory of naturalist thought.

Where does the knowledge, "the truth", of law arise from? What is the modality within which it finds realization? Could there exist an epistemological variable (empirically speaking) the evaluation of which represents a difference between the cognitive value of a statement of truth and that of a statement of law? Are truths simply objective reasons whose truth-value may or may not be verifiable?

Upon the consumption of each book, a pattern became evident: all philosophers, and their every hypothesis, converged on some closely interrelated quantum mechanical concepts.

Are the mind and body one? Does there exist an absolute frame of reference? Is there a unified theory at all?

Around the same time, I came to the conclusion that advanced physics held the answers to most ontological questions - as I have come to understand it must. Somewhere-somewhen in the continuum, the observable and the unobservable have to converge, coalesce into a single proto-form, their constituents fuse in the environment afforded them to yield their proto-reactants. Otherwise, the first law of thermodynamics would stand violated!

However, keeping up with quantum mechanics would be difficult for one very obvious reason: I was a rookie, and it was a contemporary area of intense research. To solve for this, I started with studying the subject's most pragmatic parts: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Powell & Crasemann (Rs. 220), Solid State Physics by Ashcroft & Mermin (Rs. 420), Quantum Electrodynamics by Richard Feynman (Rs. 266), and Electromagnetic Systems and Radiating Waves by Jordan & Balmain (Rs. 207) were handy viaducts. Not like there weren't any terrors in between, such as Lecture Notes on Elementary Topology and Geometry by Singer & Thorpe.

At the same time, exotic discoveries were being made: at particle colliders, optical research facilities, within deep space by ground-based interstellar probes, within the minds of souls more curious than mine. Good for me, the literature corresponding to all these discoveries was to be found in one place: the arXiv pre-print servers (the access to which costs all of nothing). These discoveries included quantum teleportation, room-temperature superconductivity, supercomputers, metamaterials, and advancements in ferromagnetic storage systems.

(I also was responsible for discovering some phenomena exotic purely to me in this period: cellular automata and computation theory - which I experimented with using Golly and Mirek's Cellebration, and fuzzy logic systems and their application in robotics - experimented with using the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.)

What did these discoveries have to do with Hume's positivism? That I could stuff 1 gigabyte's worth of data within an inch-long row of particles championed empiricism, I suppose, but beyond that, the concepts' marriage seemed to demand the inception of a swath of interdisciplinary thought. I could not go back, however, so I ploughed on.

[caption id="attachment_23735" align="aligncenter" width="600"] I was trapped in the spaces between books, between different moments in history, in time, a totalistic cellular automaton whose different avatars were simply different degrees of doubt.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_23736" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Because of reality's denial of accommodation to manifestations of tautologies and contradictions, so was I trapped within the shortcomings of all men and women.[/caption]

A Brief History of Time (Rs. 245) did not help - Hawking succeeded splendidly in leaving me with more questions than answers - (Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity by Steven Weinberg (Rs. 525) answered some of them), The Language Instinct by Harvard-boy Steven Pinker (Rs. 450) charted the better courses of rationality into sociology and anthropology (whereas my intuition that Arundhati Roy would reward governance with a similar fashion of rational unknotting was proved expensively very right: Algebra of Infinite Justice, at Rs. 302, lays bare all the paradoxes that make India India).

For literature, of course, there were Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco, Lord Tennyson and Sylvia Plath, de Beauvoir, le Guin and Abbott (My Name is Red (Rs. ... Whatever, it doesn't matter!), The Name of the Rose, and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana are to be cherished, especially the last for its non-linear narration and the strange parallels waiting to be drawn with hermeneutics, such as one delineated on by E.H. Carr in his What Is History?) to fall in love with (Plath's works, of course, were an excursion into the unexplored... in a manner of speaking, just as le Guin's imagination and Abbott's commentary are labours unto the familiar).

Learn to like ebooks. Or turn poor.

Ultimately, that was all that I learnt. Quite romantic though that being an autodidact may sound, the assumption of its mantle involves the Herculean task of braiding all that one learns into a single spine of knowledge. The more you learn, the farther you are from where you started, the even more you have learnt, the more ambitious you get... I cannot foresee an end.

Currently, I am reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Soviet-era exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn (war-time dystopian fiction became a favourite along the way after reading a history of firearms in Russia, a history of science and technology in Islam, How Things Work gifted to me by my father when I was 11, and Science and Civilisation in China by Needham & Gwei-Djen (Rs. 6,374 - OK, now it matters)) and Current Trends in Science: Platinum Jubilee Edition - Indian Academy of Sciences, lent to me by Dr. G. Baskaran. At each stage, a lesson to be learnt about the universe is learnt, a minuscule piece told in the guise of one author's experiences and deductions to fit into a supermassive framework of information that has to be used by another's intelligence. A daunting task.

No wonder it doesn't come cheap.

Or does it?

Pi as art

Incorrigible, indeterminable, the stately constant walks alone: there are none to surmount her prevalence, none in whose company she may sit and chat and sip some tea. Of course, there was e, but e was a few worlds away at 2.71. She was truly by herself, a severe face of changelessness to poets and adventurers, a reassuring one of constancy to mathematicians and thinkers, a staid figure in an arena of labouring laws.

According to those loyal to her, however, the most beautiful of the daughters of Nature.

Pi. 3.14159...

Today is World Pi Approximation Day. It's a day celebrating the value 22/7, which is as close as a crass fraction can get to beauty, a purveyor of simulacra, vile manufacturer of nostalgia, of polyurethane histories and plastic memories. Pi... cannot ever be fully understood, and isn't meant to be. She walks in quiet grace, abandoning perfect arcs meandering in her wake, and it is there that mere mortals such as ourselves discover her shadow seeping into the infinite omnipotence.

Making money

An experimental "democratic" revenue model for news publications new to the internet (that are reluctant to change their delivery styles)



 

The philosophies in physics

As a big week for physics comes up–a July 4 update by CERN on the search for the Higgs boson followed by ICHEP '12 at Melbourne–I feel really anxious as a small-time proto-journalist and particle-physics-enthusiast. If CERN announces the discovery of evidence that rules out the existence of such a thing as the Higgs particle, not much will be lost apart from years of theoretical groundwork set in place for the post-Higgs universe. Physicists obeying the Standard Model will, to think the snowclone, scramble to their boards and come up with another hypothesis that explains mass-formation in quantum-mechanical terms.

For me... I don't know what it means. Sure, I will have to unlearn the Higgs mechanism, which does make a lot of sense, and scour through the outpouring of scientific literature that will definitely follow to keep track of new directions and, more fascinatingly, new thought. The competing supertheories–loop quantum gravity (LQG) and string theory–will have to have their innards adjusted to make up for the change in the mechanism of mass-formation. Even then, their principle bone of contention will remain unchanged: whether there exists an absolute frame of reference. All this while, the universe, however, will have continued to witness the rise and fall of stars, galaxies and matter.



It is easier to consider the non-existence of the Higgs boson than its proven existence: the post-Higgs world is dark, riddled with problems more complex and, unsurprisingly, more philosophical. The two theories that dominated the first half of the previous century, quantum mechanics and special relativity, will still have to be reconciled. While special relativity holds causality and locality close to its heart, quantum mechanics' tendency to violate the latter made it disagreeable at the philosophical level to A. Einstein (in a humorous and ironical turn, his attempts to illustrate this "anomaly" numerically opened up the field that further made acceptable the implications of quantum mechanics).

The theories' impudent bickering continues with mathematical terms as well. While one prohibits travel at the speed of light, the other allows for the conclusive demonstration of superluminal communication. While one keeps all objects nailed to one place in space and time, the other allows for the occupation of multiple regions of space at a time. While one operates in a universe wherein gods don't play with dice, the other can exist at all only if there are unseen powers that gamble on a secondly basis. If you ask me, I'd prefer one with no gods; I also have a strange feeling that that's not a physics problem.

Speaking of causality, physicists of the Standard Model believe that the four fundamental forces–nuclear, weak, gravitational, and electromagnetic–cause everything that happens in this universe. However, they are at a loss to explain why the weak force is 10³²-times stronger than the gravitational force (even the finding of the Higgs boson won't fix this–assuming the boson exists). An attempt to explain this anomaly exists in the name of supersymmetry (SUSY) or, together with the Standard Model, MSSM. If an entity in the (hypothetical) likeness of the Higgs boson cannot exist, then MSSM will also fall with it.

Taunting physicists everywhere all the way through this mesh of intense speculation, Werner Heisenberg's tragic formulation remains indefatigable. In a universe in which the scale at which physics is born is only hypothetical, in which energy in its fundamental form is thought to be a result of probabilistic fluctuations in a quantum field, determinism plays a dominant role in determining the future as well as, in some ways, contradicting it. The quantum field, counter-intuitively, is antecedent to human intervention: Heisenberg postulated that physical quantities such as position and particle spin come in conjugate quantities, and that making a measurement of one quantity makes the other indeterminable. In other words, one cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle, or the spins of a particle around two different axes.

To me, this seems like a problem of scale: humans are macroscopic in the sense that they can manipulate objects using the laws of classical mechanics and not the laws of quantum mechanics. However, a sense of scale is rendered incontextualizable when it is known that the dynamics of quantum mechanics affect the entire universe through a principle called the collapse postulate (i.e., collapse of the state vector): if I measure an observable physical property of a system that is in a particular state, I subject the entire system to collapse into a state that is described by the observable's eigenstate. Even further, there exist many eigenstates for collapsing into; which eigenstate is "chosen" depends on its observation (this is an awfully close analogue to the anthropic principle).

[caption id="attachment_23523" align="aligncenter" width="600"] xkcd #45[/caption]

That reminds me. The greatest unsolved question in my opinion is whether the universe houses the brain or if the brain houses the universe. To be honest, I started writing this post without knowing how it would end: there were multiple eigenstates it could "collapse" into. That it would collapse into this particular one was unknown to me, too, and, in hindsight, there was no way I could have known about any aspect of its destiny. Having said that, the nature of the universe–and the brain/universe protogenesis problem–with the knowledge of deterministic causality and mensural antecedence, if the universe conceived the brain, the brain must inherit the characteristics of the universe, and therefore must not allow for freewill.

Now, I'm faintly depressed. And yes, this eigenstate did exist in the possibility-space.

Eigenstates of the human mind

1. Would a mind's computing strength be determined by its ability to make sense of counter-intuitive principles (Type I) or by its ability to solve an increasing number of simple problems in a second (Type II)?


2. Would Type I and Type II strengths translate into the same computing strength?


3. Does either Type I or Type II metric possess a local inconsistency that prevents its state-function from being continuous at all points?


4. Does either Type I or Type II metric possess an inconsistency that manifests as probabilistic eigenstates?

On quantum entanglement and teleportation (part II)

(The introductory text can be read here.)

Apparatus

Imagine two devices separated by a large distance (any distance large enough to nullify quantum mechanical effects). These are devices that receive inputs and yield results. There are two modes in which an input may be received: classical and quantum-mechanical. Moreover, the input is generated by the same source and is delivered simultaneously.



Procedure

1. A set of inputs is generated at the source.


2. Each input may instruct the device to yield a result ‘x’ or ‘y’.


3. Device A reads the instructions and yields a result, A’


4. Device B reads the instructions and yields a result, B’

(A’ and B’ are now the states of the instructions after they have been measured by A and B, respectively)

Observations

1. If A’ and B’ are in the same state – i.e., if they are the result {x, x} or {y, y} – then they may be said to be entangled. To have achieved this, A and B must have communicated in some way to yield the same results arising from the input or must be in possession of some information that enabled them to yield the same result.


2. If it so happened that A and B communicated instantaneously – i.e., at faster than the speed of light – then they may be said to be quantum entangled. (Note that, in a quantum mechanical context, the results are found to be identical only upon observation, which means the act of observing the result is also a participant in the measurement process.)

Inferences

[caption id="attachment_23229" align="alignleft" width="115"] John Stewart Bell[/caption]

#1 If we assume the observations are being made on particles instead of some arbitrary “inputs”, then Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle kicks in. When we make the measurement, we are changing the value of some state variable of the particle, and it is the final state that we end up observing. John Stewart Bell, a Scottish physicist, was the first to make this observation, and added that the act of observation was somehow tied in with quantum entanglement (i.e., that the results were quantum-entangled in some way owed itself in part to the act of observing).

#2 The act of observing is a classical phenomenon because the devices A and B that enable the measurement are classical devices. That said, J.S. Bell argued that this is where the line between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics blurred.

Theoretical physicists live in a classical world, looking out into a quantum-mechanical world. The latter we describe only subjectively, in terms of procedures and results in our classical domain. (…) Now nobody knows just where the boundary between the classical and the quantum domain is situated. (…) More plausible to me is that we will find that there is no boundary. The wave functions would prove to be a provisional or incomplete description of the quantum-mechanical part. It is this possibility, of a homogeneous account of the world, which is for me the chief motivation of the study of the so-called "hidden variable" possibility.

- J.S. Bell

#3 The EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox is aimed at refuting quantum mechanics by leveling itself against the possibility of quantum entanglement. Since entanglement occurred only on conjugate entities – particles that are somehow but definitely paired – then the measurement of one of the A’-state variables should render indeterminate that state variable in B’ (Heisenberg uncertainty prin.). However, entanglement has already been observed. This means that either the two particles should have communicated or that the information necessary to generate the same outcome was already present in the two particles.

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The physicists preferred the latter explanation, asserting that some “hidden local variable” was responsible for controlling the outcome of the act of observing. Of course, they made two assumptions in reaching this conclusion: locality and realism. (Note that this is a classical explanation of a perceived quantum mechanical effect.)

#4 In 1964, Bell came out with his famous theorem that refuted EPR’s preferred explanation. He observed that any local realist theories are incompatible with quantum mechanics. Essentially, this means that since a great number of experiments agree with the predictions of quantum mechanical theory, and since many of the results are greater than to be explicable by local hidden variables, either locality or realism is in conflict with quantum mechanics.

The principle of locality states that an object is affected directly only by its immediate surroundings, not by an event that is occurring simultaneously a large distance away. Realism, or counterfactual definiteness (CFD), is the ability to assume the existence of objects and parameters even when they have not been observed – or, to believe that constitutionally present particles shape the properties of the object at all levels. Bell posited that locality had been violated, and that superluminal communication was happening.

[caption id="attachment_23242" align="alignleft" width="114"] David Bohm[/caption]

#5 Bell’s hypothesis was based on the de Broglie-Bohm theory, which interpreted quantum mechanical effects as being caused by an encoding function (called the wave function) that did not let the particles that it guided feedback into itself. The interpretation also assumed that the velocities of the particles depended solely on the wave function, and that the wave function depended on the whole configuration of the universe. That's a contradiction of locality right there.

What does this have to do with teleportation?

Teleportation, by definition, is an instance of non-locality because it implies instantaneous communication. If two particles can communicate faster than at the speed of light to replicate quantum mechanical effects, then perhaps complex objects can someday be replicated instantaneously across large distances by simultaneously reproducing the quantum states of the particles associated with the object.

Of course, such a possibility is hinged on Bell’s theorem being true, on the EPR paradox’s implied existence of locality being false. To date, numerous experiments have been conducted that have neither conclusively validated nor invalidated Bell’s theorem. The difficulty lies in what Bell's theorem implied for the real world: it made quantum mechanics and local realism mutually exclusive. Either quantum mechanics fell short of explaining some physical parameters, or superluminal information communication was occurring (see Lorentz covariance).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zQHNmz0gU]

Anumana, Drstam and Samkhya

For someone who prioritises knowledge (and its obtainment) over everything else, managing different streams of information to maximise learning is like trying to swim in a particular direction during a flood. It won't happen unless there's excellent clarity, a very good image of the big picture available at all times. Essentially, that translates to knowing - at all points of time - what I want to know and what I will be able to accomplish with it, which is simply impractical.

The first response to such a dilemma would be to segregate the incoming information based on some logic. For example, the logic could be medium, and audio and visual objects of evidence could be saved in a set distinct from another that contains no information that can be heard or seen. However, there are too many such "logics" up for grabs. Even if information is separated on the basis of how it is perceived, our faculties of perception come under the scanner. If a video has both great audio and stunning imagery, do I save the file in both categories or in just one category where I think it belongs more? If I save it in both categories, it's going to be redundant half the time. If I save it in just the one, I'm effectively passing judgment that I classified it now and that's how it will always stay classified. Once a thief, always a thief.

However, a classification based on the pathways of perception (Drstam) is indispensable, perhaps more so than a classification based on the pathways of cognition (Anumana) is.  The difference between the two is that the former expresses the sentiment "how we see it" and the latter, the sentiment "what we see it for". As is obvious, the two are closely related. In fact, they are coincidental until some intrinsic aspect about them has been projected strongly.

[caption id="attachment_23102" align="aligncenter" width="312"] The principles of visual gestalt essentially deal with Anumana and Drstam. If we look at the picture to see a duck, we see a duck. If we look at the picture to see a rabbit, we see a rabbit. If, however, we don't know what we are looking for, then what is the parameter that guides us to what we will eventually see?[/caption]

For instance, if I interpret inexplicable noises in the dark to be evidence for the presence of ghosts, then what I am seeing - though improbable - coincides perfectly with what I'm seeing it for. Until I find the source of the noise, I will continue to believe in ghosts in that scenario. When I find the source, however, I will empirically conclude that what I saw didn't coincide with what I saw it for. The link between the two will have stood broken when the truth of the observation would have been discovered, thereby making it a projection of fact deemed strong because of its implications for my internal logic.

[caption id="attachment_23107" align="aligncenter" width="446"] When symmetry breaks...[/caption]

Therefore, there are two reasons to introduce a symmetry-breaker parameter:

1. To differentiate between Anumana and Drstam when they seem to coincide


2. To eliminate the "what we see it for" because determinism can only be incommensurate with an indeterminable scenario within which we are trying to maximise knowledge-gain

This symmetry-breaker is Samkhya. In Hindu philosophy, from which I derive (a part of) these logics, Samkhya declares God as being unprovable. In the information-segregation scenario, consequently, the absence of a controlling external entity enforces the presence of an internal logical consistency (brought about by the strong projection of some fact). Otherwise, the external observer  won't be able to make any sense of the information. Because we have assumed that the influx of information is already disordered, the only logical conclusion is that Anumana - the "what we see it for" - and the capacity of logical inference it betokens are necessary.

This hints at an uncertainty principle much alike the one in particle physics:

1. I can know what I want at all points of time but not have access to all there is to be known, or


2. I can access a pool of infinite knowledge but not be certain about what I want to know.

To break this, either Samkhya could be redefined or the "how" and the "what for" be separated using some other parameter. In this case, the enforcement of internal logical consistency was the introduced parameter; the introduction only precipitated an uncertainty. If Samkhya were to be replaced, then the replacement will also have the issue of logical consistency to deal with. How, then, are we to resolve this issue?

Determinism, superfluously.

Not being able to move around within the dimension of change - known otherwise as "time" - makes us perplexed about what it really us. We can move in three dimensions of space, create and destroy entities within it, and even measure time from within it. However, these degrees of freedom wouldn't be possible without being able to experience change. If time stood still, there could be no movement, no progress, evolution or degeneracy of any kind: everything would be as it was when it was first conceived. Without time, birth and death would coincide.

Because there's time, we want to "slow down" or "speed up" different events. Because of our inability to look ahead in time, we're just not aware of the outcome of our actions, and that gives us both pertinent and illusory freedoms. There's no way to know if the outcome of every action has already been planned out or if we exercise the capacity to make decisions that give rise to alternate universes every time they're made. We hope then that by being deterministic ourselves—by modeling our behaviour on orderliness—we stand a chance of some aspects of future-events being ordered themselves. In other words, we expect the nature of the future to inherit the nature of the present.

#

Of course, there are no guarantees. Chaos is not ordered, and if it is to exist in the future of an ordered present, it must have been introduced randomly, in an unpredictable and irreversible way. That means we have no means of knowing when and how it will be introduced while we languish in the present. Moreover, there's no way to discount the interference of ordered uncertainties, either: planning for a game tomorrow and an unanticipated shower leaving it abandoned is a very real sequence of events. Therefore, beyond the construction of determinism by behaving in an orderly manner, we also hope that nothing gets in the way of our plans.

#

Apart from the "quality" of time, there's also the quantity—rather, the quantification. Time is understood to be linear. There is no moving sideways in time, just forward or backward. And because moving backward in time is impossible for various reasons, time could be imagined to be a two-dimensional vector in some higher-order complex space, a subset of which is our space. To put it simply, time is a degree-of-freedom that is associated not with individual objects in 3D space but 3D space itself. If time chooses not to lend its support to the behaviour of 3D-space, then omnipotent stagnation would be the official party line.

Within such a quantification of time, imagine the existence of alternate realities: because of time, A's 3D-space could be constructed differently than B's 3D-space. A can be deterministic to the point of hoping the future will inherit his present to a greater extent than it will inherit B's present.

At the same time, A's actions would be different according to whether or not he's aware of B's existence. If A didn't know B existed and was constructing an alternate reality, A's actions will not contain any elements of deterrence, for instance. Accounting thus for the billions of self-aware people on this planet, it's so close to impossible to actually be impossible to assume that individual actions are deterministic in any measure on an individual scale.

Simultaneously, even if we assume that determinism takes shape only within a democratic framework, it must be impossible to make individual decisions. The only reasonable conclusion is that each future of a particular present must be constructed differently. Otherwise, if they were coincidental, the two thinkers would occupy the same quantum state, per se.

Wouldn't they?

#

In an infinite universe—one that has unlimited time and space to exist (but not necessarily with the same laws of existence)—there will come a time when determinism will break down. Even if the aspired philosophical scope tends toward absolutism, the idea itself has been created within the context of the extant laws of physics. Someday, these laws will break down. The universe will have expanded, cooled, stars will have died, nebulae will have run out of gas, and the last light will be fading from all space. Only Boltzmann brains will think.

Degeneracy of the fantastic

Video games and fantasy-fiction movies these days show an increasing propensity amongst producers to veer toward the technologically rich fantastic. Of course, that's nothing to complain about (I honestly can't wait for the release of Battleship). At the same time, these visually tech-abundant entertainment options are gradually homing in toward stuff that could actually be possible. This could be an indication of our advancement in real-life, too, but still, the credit goes to the visionaries and dreamers who thought up the future all those years ago when they first conceived these ideas.

Is the future here, then? The future is never here by definition, so that's ruled out. What, then, is the future? In the 1960s-1980s, a critical mass of fiction writers sat down in the Golden Age of science fiction and thought up a world in which the problems of their time didn't exist, a world in which the capacity for human goodness stood exacerbated by the development of technology immensely advanced but not yet radical. Where are such writers now? Going around the web looking for answers to these questions, it looks as if futurism has evolved into a less materialistic and more scientific school of thought.

Thinking about it, it'll quickly become evident that the Golden Age could actually have ended with the start of the digital revolution in the late 1980s. With the advent of channels dedicated simply to the distribution of knowledge, the enthralling unknowability that fascinated and invited the mid-late 20th century writers was being disintegrated bit by bit. Back then, it was much easier to be fantastic even though a lot of the science known today was known then as well: people were not connected as they are now, and were therefore more welcome to new ideas, perhaps some of which they could use to make better sense of the world.

Today, even as the price of being unique has gone up, so also has the ease with which uniqueness is to be found - original thinking has become really hard with the development of influences (which has always been happening) and their pervasiveness (which is a product of the revolution). There has been more and more to know about, to learn, and that learning eroded at the base of what was left to speculate about. This doesn't mean the solution is to limit learning: learning takes priority over writers inventing the future any day. This only means something unfortunate has happened that has quelled a once widely popular interest.

The shift toward more localized and less operatic fiction shows in the sci-fi books that have been hitting the shelves these days. Earlier, there was greater focus on alternative timelines, spaceflight, aliens and humanoids, teleportation, etc. These days, the focus seems to lie with the near-future, time travel and faster-than-light travel, telepathy, etc. There is a shrinkage of domains and it only seems like a natural conclusion given how the times have changed. However, with the dearth of such broad-domain thinking, who are the inventors of the future today? At least, inventive enough in comparison with Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein?

A nerd’s guide to making the perfect pot of perfect tea

Making the perfect pot of tea isn’t easy. In fact, the task requires such focus and skill that Douglas Adams decided it should be one deserving of a space-computer’s attention. In further fact, the International Standardization Organization even awards an ISO 3103 standard to he who can brew the perfect cup – one it has defined to painful precision as a series of 10 steps (for a larger variant of pot).

The first step is a requirement: that the pot should be glazed earthenware. When a receptacle fashioned out of clay is fired to about 1,000-1,150 degrees Celsius, in a process generally referred to as bisque-firing, it retains its porosity and makes it unsuitable to hold fluids. The watertight quality is imparted to it by applying a patina of powdered glass to the pot’s surface and firing it to between 950-1,050 degrees Celsius, a technique called glazing.

When producing pottery that is eventually going to be used to hold liquids, potters ensure that the bisque-firing temperature is higher than the glaze-temperature. If the glazing temperature is increased, then gases trapped in the pores of the pot begin to expand even as the powdered glass begins to fuse and become a liquid. Just before it solidifies into a hard shell, however, the expanding gases cause it to bloat. This distorts the overall appearance as well as ruins the functional purpose of the glaze.

There’s another problem before we get to make the tea itself. The substrate – or the material on which glazing is performed, in this case the pot – shouldn’t melt during glazing for any reasons (or, like in most cases, the presence of impurities like large grains). This means it’s advantageous if the glass powder melts and becomes a shell as fast as it can, and to make this happen, a ceramic flux is mixed with it. Lead silicate is the most commonly used flux material. During the heating in the kiln, it promotes the quick formation of a small amount of glass that holds neighbouring crystalline formations in the molecular lattice together.

Just one last thing. Apart from holding the water, water will also have to be boiled in the pot. As the water heats up, gas trapped in the water also heats up, and must be released. Yes, the lid is on loose, but the imprisoned hot air must annex into bubbles first, rise up, and escape as part of the steam. If the insides of the pot are smooth, then bubble-formation is not encouraged because no appreciable turbulence is introduced into the system. Without turbulence, there is no entropy – or chaos – infused to promote bubbling. As a result, the boiled water exists in the superheated state, and when it is poured, there’s a good chance it will fall back to the heated state by violently burping out the heat and splashing out. So, keep the insides rough.

OK, we can make tea now… if all this time we’ve ensured that the pot weighs anything between 190 and 210 grams and can hold anywhere between 302 and 318 millilitres of water. You have? Good for you. Now, carefully measure out between 1.96 and 2.04 grams of tea, and add as many such quanta per 100 millilitres of water you’re going to pour into the pot. Next, carefully pour freshly boiling water in but only up to 4-6 millimetres of the brim. Anymore and you risk losing the prestigious 3103 standard. And if you haven’t noticed yet, the tricky part is to figure out how much water the pot currently holds (so you can go back in time and get the grams-of-tea bit right).

Let the water cool for 20 seconds before the 6-minute long brewing process commences. During brewing, a naturally-occurring class of compounds with a large and complex chemical composition is extracted from the tea: the phenols. A phenol is any molecule that possesses a hydroxyl ion (OH^-), and lends its name to alcohol for the same reason. A type of phenol called flavonoids, and a sub-type of flavonoids called catechins, is found in sizeable amounts in crushed tea leaves and is retained through the entire processing period. These flavonoids are anti-oxidants (oxygen-liberating), and present suggestive anti-allergic, anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory behaviours, too.

Once these flavonoids are dissolved in the water, the brewing is said to be done and the tea is ready for the drinking. If you like milk in your tea, however, there are a couple more steps. First, transfer the tea to a larger glazed earthenware bowl (because the ISO thinks you might not figure out that pouring the milk makes the tea overflow in the smaller bowl). This second bowl must weigh between 180 and 220 grams and have a volume of 380 millilitres. Once the tea has been transferred, add 5 millilitres of milk at a temperature of 65-80 degrees Celsius. If milk any colder or warmer is added, an important thermal equilibrium becomes distorted.

The equilibrium is significant for two reasons. The first reason has to do with the fact that when consuming a hot liquid, the chance of making a “vulgar” slurping sound increases while sipping if the liquid is hotter (again, to do with bubble formation). This means that the resulting solution of milk and tea must be sufficiently cool as to not present any opportunities for an uptight gentleman to make farting noises from his lips. At the same time, the solution should also be warm enough for the two liquids to mix uniformly. This precariously fine balance of temperatures is established by keeping the milk between 65 and 80 degrees Celsius.

Now, you may drink the tea while basking in the glory of your having beaten a computer designed to fly spaceships at the ends of universes along with the assistance the computer derived from an infinitely smart but neurotically depressed robot.

Tea is an elixir whose experience begins in fires and ends in the soul. Even brushing its valuable health benefits aside: the precision that brewing a great pot of tea demands can only be a measure of its improbable finesse and fragilely supported assortment of flavour, warmth, sensation, energy, and satisfaction. And where precision is concerned, you can always count on the nerd.

Kurt the penguin and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem

Here, let me try and illustrate Gödel’s incompleteness theorems using crude set-mappings.

Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem

Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.

Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem

For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent.

*

Kurt the Penguin

Kurt was a talking penguin aware of its special existence.

Rules of the Clock

#1: When the clock behind Kurt struck 12, he'd yell, "I'm a penguin!" [T₁₂, K_P] → t

#2: When the clock didn't strike 1, he'd not yell, "I'm a penguin!" [NT₁, NK_P] → t

#3: When the clock struck 6, he'd yell "I'm a penguin!" twice. [T₆, {K_P, K_P}] → t

#4: When the clock didn't strike 7, he'd not yell, "I'm a penguin!" twice. [NT₇, N{K_P, K_P}] → t

The clock strikes!

Once, on a fine Tuesday, the clock struck 7. [T₇]

Either Kurt didn't yell "I'm a penguin!" twice [N{K_P, K_P}] or Kurt yelled "I'm a penguin!" twice [K_P, K_P].

If Kurt yelled "I'm a penguin!" twice, then Kurt has not broken none of the Rules of the Clock. [T₇, {K_P, K_P} → Nf]

If Kurt didn't yell "I'm a penguin!" twice, then Kurt has broken one of the Rules of the Clock. [T₇, N{K_P, K_P} → f]

What’s up with Kurt?

Therefore, if Kurt always speaks the truth, there are some truths that Kurt doesn’t speak.

And Kurt sometimes speaks the untruth.

Kurtlogic

#1: [T₁₂, K_P] → t

#2: [NT₁, NK_P] → t

#3: [T₆, {K_P, K_P}] → t

#4: [NT₇, N{K_P, K_P}] → t

If Kurt yelled "I'm a penguin!" twice: [T₇, {K_P, K_P} → Nf]

If Kurt didn't yell "I'm a penguin!" twice: [T₇, N{K_P, K_P} → f]

Where,

[T₇, {K_P, K_P} → Nf] ≡ “if Kurt always speaks the truth, there are some truths that Kurt doesn’t speak”

[T₇, N{K_P, K_P} → f] ≡ “Kurt sometimes speaks the untruth”

The dualism of determinism

At the centre of scientific inquiry lies enshrined the deterministic proclivity of empiricists: by understanding the Universe, we no longer remain completely at "its mercy" but, with the knowledge accrued through methodological investigation, become capable to extend our influence to include nature itself. Through understanding, it is that we may finally assume the seat of the charioteer. It is not so much a fear of any absent measure of control over our own lives so much as it is the want for all that control upon discovering that such is possible. In that regard, would that empiricism be the most accessible medium of inquiry and epistemological pursuit, its ontology then finds purchase in the basis of determinism—social and otherwise.

On the polar-opposite of this weltanschauungen lies the god-believer, whose belief in a supernatural being is a reflection of his or her surrender to the summa of indeterminable entities. The being itself, however, is one of human construction and, thus, the truism of its influence is incalculable. As opposed to the case of the atheist/"moral autodidact", the case of religion is one of the fear of want of all that control and not its absence. Given its foundations in ontological and soteriological bases, religion in its current form and denomination serves to discipline more than explain. However, be that as it may.

Even if not for the sake of this argument, consider: for as long as the positivist argument cannot defy its contradiction by the argument of universal negation, science, too—as a construction of constructivist empiricism—cannot lay claim to assisting with the "process of determination" because it remains just as much a construction as is religion. Does that not mean that they partake in equal measure of the doubts of the thinker? Does he not dispute that one—probably science—is assuredly deterministic while the other is not when it is so clear that the privilege of proving a tautology rests with neither side?

Flight of the magus

In the beginning, there was a Universe, lush and abundant, a paradise inhabited by the opportunities of boundaries and ragged pathways and winds that blew this way and that without giving pause, a world where a man could understand wakefulness and fatigue both, satisfaction and deprivation both, because it was a world that put his will to the test again and again. With the assistance of a memory that moved forward whilst its head remained turned to the past all the time, men knew where they did fall and where they did sprint under the light of dispassionate stars, and within the strange bounds of disappointment and elation men understood who they were, as if they had looked into mirrors and seen faces, as if they knew what the world knew of them.

A time came when the world began to fade, when the ground was no longer what those who still walked upon it had known it to be, when lay dust was picked up by the raging winds and whipped into the skies above, when ultimately the moon was red and bleeding. Trees began to be stripped off their leaves and rivers flowed far from their courses, gouging valleys and gorges out of the world's floor, and before long, mountains lay prostrate on the ground, flattened into a dismal stretch of boulders and soil that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the ugliness they had boasted of before. Men were beginning to lose direction, walking in search of what they knew was dying and dying in their presence and yet, both knowing and unknowing what lay beyond the horizons once guarded by an old face of nature: they strayed into unknown territories that contained no borders, no sense of progress but the moon and the sun that traversed the skies for ever and on.

The unwillingness to embrace fatigue against the threat of permanent change, the hopelessness that consumed victory each time they looked behind their shoulders to a world they knew had once been, men kept walking. It was akin to toil, nay, it was toil itself, but the memory of the world's knowledge moved them into newer lands. The Universe was closing in around them, bringing them closer and closer to their brothers; they constantly found themselves in each other's company whether they turned north toward the cold or south toward the warmth. And when hope and will began to walk together, to take measure of the treacherous plains stretching before all their eyes, they were one in murdering an identity that had once existed, that had once known walls. Where did the walls go? Who pulled them down? Why did the world have to fade at all?

The answers lay in the hidden memories of their feet, beneath their leathery, distance-worn soles, in the pedestrian muscularity of their shins and knees, which could still recall the thousands upon thousands of miles that had been tread: the world had changed to change man with it, and significantly yet, had changed because it knew the face of man thoroughly and withdrew its restraints and laws, its pervading sense of order, to a womb within itself, so they may gestate their until the day came when man would be lost again, so that the face he had befriended would fade and recall the Universe to its original duty, to a preternatural body that would nature nature. It was a cycle that lasted for days one time and centuries on another, but the cycle moved through space, time and the mind, where everything else took proper shape.

Almost forgotten between these two entities, perpetually depressed under the burden of their strange purposes, lay a span of time incredibly short and hungry, as if a fold that had been fighting a tenuous battle against whatever held it there, be it hope, be it will, or be it a memory of ice. What lay there, so, was a monster, a beast brought to lay dormant until a moment was upon some chosen ones by an expedient force from history, burgeoning with power and, therefore, open intentions toward dissonance, it resounded like echoes from the future, seeping into the present through impudent doubts. Some called it the Oldness, others the First Form, the aging skein of the first mountain that man had clomb, impugned within its soul the first evening they had spent together, man and nature, loss and possession, light and shadow, a memory upon which was founded a necessary darkness that sought to steal faces.

There was no way it could resurface and survive; its place was within the earth whence it had first come, and it had returned, awaiting the return of a friend, so that, once more, they may know the embrace of the earth.

The fall of the Apollonian

The following is an account fictitious in most parts.

--

I wouldn't be far from the truth if I said beauty's long past retired from the larger things of this world, would I?

It's gone from the argent moon, it's gone from the amber sun, it's gone from the clouds, the sky and the rains, and it's gone from this good Earth. Now, beauty just resides in the small things, the things that can afford to harbour it without drawing too much attention to themselves, things that won't become less beautiful any time soon.

Now, beauty just resides in a woman's legs. Everything else about her is the subject of contention — apparently, she's either moving toward a image or away from one, and if neither, then she's an exception. Anyway, I don't have time for that; I've had enough of gender studies for a lifetime. What I'm here to talk about are a specific woman's legs.

I watched her as she walked around, looking for something or the other, every edge and vertex of her tapering legs outlined in those tight jeans. From beneath my bedsheet and under the dazzlingly bright tubelight, the unceasing journey of her legs was just the balm for the high fever I was running.

From the moment she stepped into my room, she'd sucked up all the beauty in it. The secure and infallible quadrangularity of these walls, the three chairs by the foot of the bed, the two recessions by the window lined symmetrically with cosmetic necessities, the rows of books by the table on my left, all was lost. They'd become droll syntax when, with one leg propped up on my waist, she bent down and whispered into my ear, "Can I get you anything?"

All the while, I stared at those delightful pinions, my mouth clamped shut with melancholic distress. Moving from her ass and down, the skin of her pants confluenced into her knee in a smooth streamline, free of all disconcerting turbulence. Thereon, her powerful calves became evident in the way she occasionally cocked her foot up, standing absentmindedly in the corner, her fingers grazing her lips.

The world was what it was when it was anything between her legs. When she walked, the cracks in the wall behind them seemed like black rivers that I was watching from outer space. When she leaned against the table, the drawer's keyhole seemed to be gazing at her hips, all steely malice. When she started to clean my room, everything that stood on shelves seemed to fall to the floor just so I could look at them from between her slender thighs. Then, the fallen would know recognition.

That bastard Nabokov got it just right. "The light of my life. The fire of..." No. She's not the fire of my loins. She's something else, although nothing so crude or abject. She's a retreating cumulonimbus, a floating shadow riddled with mortality and demise, all for the single purchase of perfection. One day, her legs will become frail and she will sit down on the rocking chair.

On that day, I will see into her eyes for the first time and try and understand what she's been thinking about all this while. Whether she saw me as the same object I always saw her as but refused to concede it in argument. I hope she did, I hope she did because I will then stand vindicated. That will make this very moment a Carthaginian orgy or, better yet, a Dionysian one.

The Spielberg-Kafka Impasse

The following are afterthoughts - as seems to have become the norm - concerning a good lecture by Prof. R. Radhakrishnan at the Asian College of Journalism on the 1st day of August, 2011.

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Professionalism

I profess skill. Therefore, I join a profession. Do I therefore incur the responsibilities dictated by professionalism? Before we discuss the source of values, before we seek to include the mechanism of ethics in our discussion, it's important to address the basic conflict in the form of professionalism on the one hand and simply fulfilling responsibilities on the other.

Disregard the context for a minute: where do values come from? They are always self-imposed because they are the consequences of subjective evaluations of our reality by ourselves (they do not arise out of the context itself and, thus, the loss of context does not matter in understanding the nature of our values). When different people espouse different values, the institution no longer remains in a position to enjoin what those values are but still is able to hire or fire those it deems compatible with its goals.

Are values a priori? No. Are they necessary? They seem to be. Why? I've addressed this question earlier: the system of values that we deem necessary is a matter of personal choice; however, it is neither mandated nor forbidden. Are they the principle definitions of a general ethical code of conduct?

Possibly: the "goodness" quotient of the outcome of my actions is evaluated against the requirements of my profession together with certain humanistic unavoidables. In that light, my system of values - if any - is going to be influenced by the safeguarding of my interests and perhaps those of the organization, too. Values, I believe, are strictly a posteriori.

Freedom

Say what you will, freedom is a conversational piece. A flosculation. Perhaps its most palpable forms as such have all been macropolitical. In the micropolitical sense, however, it's a modality that gets diffused in various field logics, perhaps as a result of attempts by the freedom-seeker to contextualize it.

Reality itself has been undeniably victimized by such things as inflation and globalization: the "bigger picture" as I choose to see it does not step beyond the confines of my laptop. Consequently, my freedom is limited to the choices I will have a right to access and/or make, and so my freedom is to customize my Facebook profile, my freedom is my right to privacy on the web, and so forth.

There comes a difference when the macropolitical and the micropolitical engage, whereby a mitigating mediating force becomes apparent. When Gandhi asked those seeking to "do good" to consider what good they would do for the common man, did philanthropists and samaritans scurry to seek out the necessities of the common person? Or did they surmise the nature of the common man's micropolitical environment and scaled down the relevance of their ambitions?

In the name of what?

What am I speaking for? (Too many people go on at ACJ about how they've asked themselves this very question so many times - so what? I've asked myself the question many times, too, and I don't get the implied significance - are things all that ambivalent?).

Whether or not a collective is involved is irrelevant to me: as long as I am being representational, I will represent only that face of the collective that embodies all that is necessary for the representation to be accurate, i.e., like an individual who is the summa of all that the collective wishes communicated.

A minor reference to historicity becomes necessary (or, as Prof. Radhakrishnan chose to call it, temporality): to do something "in the name of an event that has become a part of history and acquired a political, social, cultural or economic flavour because of its eventual outcome."

(Say a man approaches a crossroads at which his friend awaits. The man says to his friend, "My cause is X." The friend replies, "I endorse your cause. Now, go forth." Presented with three options, the man picks the path straight ahead. He walks it, and its end he finds he has emerged a supporter of cause Y. Now, can the man's friend be said to endorse cause Y?)

What's your dharma?

Does idealism have its price in a world that constantly debates its pertinence? Is it fair to consistently toe the line as a matter of principle? Am I going to talk about just what shouldn't be talked about? It's the whole professionalism versus fundamentalism argument once more (I mean "fundamentalist" in its original sense).

Dharma is a perception of the self when between objective reality and subjective reality, and as such the former's existence is a matter of debate. However, irrespective of the conflict between a way of thinking and a way of practising, my dharma is a mechanism constituted by my experiences to model them (i.e., the ways).

However, there is some abrasion in the form of my individual autonomy. When extant in some reality, is it possible for me to not precipitate the antecedence of reality to my intervention? In other words, can I act without being acted upon, perhaps without reality having been presumptuous of my actions?

It wouldn't be right, I conclude, that the truth, per se, exists independent of my existence and so constitutes an independent reality with the employ of which I can reflect myself. Reality will always be antecedent of my intervention because I am involved in the constitution of that reality, and when I act, I can only do so in spaces that have room for the outcome/effect.

The truth is a negotiated simplification because I exist relative to a totality. (This reminds me of a post I wrote quite some time ago on the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis in linguistic theory.)

The simulacrum

When moving from being real to being intelligible, we move away from the objective existence of reality and toward the subjective counterpart (as if they're distinct!), and in the process attempt to include our understanding of reality. This "understanding" is encapsulated by the production of intelligibility (tied in with, but different from, the production of meaning).

So, what does it mean to have a point of view?

Just as in the previous statements, intelligibility also suffers from the marriage of existence and subjectivity: the question of a universally extant intelligibility is mired with the likelihood of the creation of new frames of knowledge in order to create such understanding. Just like the notion of freedom is extra-political, the moment we put something into words in order to understand it, we suffuse it with the persisting symbolism in language: a mediator rises like a snake on the bosom.

Ultimately, all of this condenses into the nature of the posthuman subject: just like Abhinavagupta's Shaivite position held that the individual consciousness is an individuation of the universal consciousness that is God, the posthuman is an individuation of the unified human entity. Being in possession of an emergent ontology, only the posthuman subject is capable of self-reflexivity, i.e., to avail the option of defying norms, etc., simply by availing the tools with which to study his reflection.

If you've read Edwin Abbott's Flatland (1884), the nature of self-reflexivity (as in social theories) can be explained by the inability of the two-dimensional objects to understand the real nature of the three-dimensional sphere. Going another way, it can also be analogized to the sphere's ability to view Flatland in its entirety while the lines and shapes can't.

And that brings us to...

The Spielberg-Kafka Impasse

Steven Spielberg must never adapt Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis for the silver-screen. Kafka's insectoid captured perhaps the uncapturable aspect of change and of displacement, and its now-Kafkaesque surrealism is befitting because it leaves ample space for interpretation.

If Spielberg made a movie out of it, the imagery would become set in stone, its changeable nature lost to the mass of readers who find solace in Kafka's consideration of such emotions. The posthuman would settle down back into the human entity, no longer capable of assuming different identities at will, the mediating ghosts would turn into phantoms, in their wake leaving a world incapable of change.