thorn bush....

Have you noticed how when you are at a particular place, you recall all that happened there. Like when you visit a place from you past, an old home, a vacation spot, you school or college…the moment you are there, you remember everything (worth remembering at least) that happened there. You remember incidents, people and artefacts. You remember where the light switch is, where the dog breathe its last, where she sat and gave you that gift…

Now think the other way round, how difficult it is to remember where you saw a person, or where an incident happened. Have you every asked yourself  'where have I met this person?'. Or I have seen this, but don't remember where. Like when ur mum says tells you 'I found a lizard baby near the kitchen light switch' and it takes you forever to figure out where that was. And even to do that you have to actually imagine the kitchen and navigate your way to the light switch.

Same goes for movies…if someone tell you the name of a movie, you immediately remember everything about the movie, who starred in it, what the story was, particular dialogues, movie reviews, how it fared and so on. But if someone ever remembering the name of a movie from a particular dialogue, or actor is so difficult. Maybe that’s why dumb charades is such an interesting game.

So why does this happen. Well I have a theory. Our brains bunches stuff together and put a master tag to each bunch. And this tag is either the name of a place, or the name of a movie or anything of that sort. So if you know the name of the bunch, you know everything inside the bunch. The names are unique, but things inside the bunch may or may not be shared between bunches. Like an actor might have acted in many other movies.

And maybe that is why its difficult to guess the name of the bunch from one or more ingredients of that bunch. Its difficult to traverse up, simply because each ingredient might refer to multiple bunches.

Think of these bunches as thron bushes, where the top most tag is actually the root, so place is at the root of everything, and it gives rise to so many branches…each branch specifying some memory. And these memories intersect, and share common 'thorns' so as to speak.

Just a theory…now sure how it will be useful ever, but will flesh it out more, later…

theories...(made in complete sane state)

(this was published on my other blog, but this seems like a fitting place for this kinda crap as well!!!)

Here are some theories, a lot of them come from an interest in theoretical physics and Einstein and reading A brief history of time and watching Interstellar (and reading Kip's explanation of it all). These are just theories, there are no proofs now, and since I don't have the brains to prove them, the never shall be, at least by me. But here goes...

We (humans) are in the middle of the size scale, and so is every other ‘thing’ on the size scale. What this basically means is that the universe is infinite in both directions. On the size scale, there will always be something smaller than the smallest known ’thing', and on the other side, there will always be something larger than the largest known thing.

The above is true not just size in terms of the 3 dimensions, but also in terms of time. This basically means that every ‘thing’ has a lifecycle, every thing is born, matures and dies. Be it a cockroach, a human, a TV, a star or our entire universe, every ‘thing’ has its own lifecycle. They all form part of a something infinite, something which continues beyond each of these lifecycle, call it time maybe. 

The only limiting factor in understanding the above two is us and our current knowledge. The reason we cannot see the size and time continuum is because our view is limited. Take an example, the universe for a bacteria living on your palm is your palm, and its not aware of the rest of you. Look at it the other way, when you die, your universe doesn’t stop, similarly, when your universe dies - big bang to whatever ends it, there will be time, and other universes will continue. Scientists today call this concept of multiple universes as multiverse (not very creative I agree). 

As for space, our concept of space is the universe, but when your concept of space becomes the multiverse, you’d realise that there is no end to it. But thats on the how big is it, what about how small can it get. Well here again, think of the space dimensions as a funnel, which is infinitely long, on one end becoming bigger and bigger, on the other end smaller and smaller, tending to zero but never getting there.Think of the visualisation of a black hole in Interstellar (ah now you know where some of this originated). 

But as you think of interstellar, also wonder what would happen if that funnel is turned on itself. Remember those balloons, where when you first blow it, it is in a funnel shape, but then the balloon wala somehow manages to tie the two ends to each other, something of that sort. What if space doesn’t have any ends, it is like a big 3D loop. 

If you think that is abstract, there is more. We all know about big bang, the origin or our universe. What was there before big bang, no one knows, and we will never find out (remember the limits that I spoke about before) but scientists think there is the multiverse. Now imagine big bang like blowing off a matchstick, or a candle. What happens when you blow off the candle, there are wavy planes of smoke which arise, and which spread. They all originate from that one point, the candle wick, but they are always moving away from each other in wavy contorted planes. The moving away part is expansion of the universe. The contorted planes (and they might just have some thickness, but then compared to the length, the third dimension can be ignored and it can be considered as a plane) are maybe our known universe, at least the contorted plane that we live in. Now think about small carbon particles in those wavy planes, they are the stars, and planets and stuff like that. What if you could get form one such wavy plane to another, thats your wormhole. And what about the space between these wavy planes, I don’t know yet. There is the concept of dark matter, does that constitute this empty space, maybe. 

Well as long as we are on the concept of dark matters, heres one more theory. We all know of how one angry look from your dad or your wife send shivers down your spine. Or how one glance from the lady you love makes you all tingly. So how do you think that reaction of your lady love got transferred to you to react the way you did. There was no energy exchange for sure, they was not touch, there was no words spoken, no ripples in the air...

I believe, and this is very recent so might be completely wrong, but i’ll still go on a limb and say it, I believe that feelings are another paradigm, like energy. They can be transferred, they have cause and effect, and may have many laws associated with them. Some day we may even find a conversion formula between feelings and energy, but I think this is a completely different paradigm. Feelings might actually be a subset of what keeps us alive, soul, love and stuff like that. And at the base of it all could be dark matter. 

And now that you already think that I am high and doped up, let me just say that dreams are a way of connecting the two paradigms. Of connecting the dark matter to what is known. 

I shall stop here…make as much fun as you want. But its a theory. 

a blog after many years...well takes that long to come up with abstract bull like the one above. Einstein took 17 years, and that wasn't bull. Is this?

Bose

the need for instant social networks

So what happens when you are at a convention or at a party, and meet tens of new people. In the old era, you usually exchange business cards (which mostly lie around in your wallet or on your desk for eternity, after which they mostly get discarded into the bin during the periodical wallet purge or desk cleaning sessions.

In the new age, you usually ask for the twitter handle, or fb account name or phone number et al. And since we all have smart phones, we add the phone number or search (and add) the twitter handle or search and invite (and wait for approval) for the fb account.
Well its time taking and clumsy to say the least. There is no way you can get complete coverage, you meet a small percentage of people, and even out of those, you remember to add just a few.

Coming to coverage, what if you want to contact, stay in touch with people you haven't met at all. What if the scenario was a little different, what if it was really a one day classroom session that you were attending. We have all been there, the only networking time is during lunch times. But at the end of the day, you always think, oh what was that guys name, or did anyone get an answer to this. Here to usually you create a whatsapp group, or the instructor creates a google group or what not.

Another scenario, you went to see a movie in a theatre, and there are scores of people in the movie hall. Suddenly the screen goes blank, and you are just sitting in the theatre waiting...you'd want to shout, but

All of these scenario leads to one problem, how do you instantly get in (and maybe stay in) touch with people who are geographically co-located with you because of any reason - a class, a convention, a movie hall. How do you instantly create an adhoc social network based not that one social connection.

There should be a way to do this automatically.

Propagation methods

I have been wondering for quite some time of how 'how to survive best' gets propagated in us. To explain more, one being has a something which increases its chances of survival.  And so that’s something which 'might' increase others chances of survival as well. But how does this something get transferred to another being of the same kind?

Lets first categorize the 'something' here. It could be a physical feature or a behavioral trait. The second one is quite a broad term actually, because it includes not just behaviors but also any thing that a being knows. Lets just say anything which is not a physical feature. 

Well the physical features get inherited through genes. And the behavioral traits through learning. (that was my big aha moment btw). And both of these propagation methods don't have a lot of overlap. Lets analyse further:

Genetics	Learning
Propagates physical features	Propagates Behavioral aspects
Flows uni-directionally (parents to children)	Flows multi directionally : Whoever notices that aspect and thinks its useful, can learn it.
Slow mechanism. Since it only goes from parents to children, it will take atleast one generation for the mechanism to show up.	Very Fast mechanism : Can be adopted by many in the same generation.
Difficult to propagate across species, generations, ethnicities, age groups et al	Can propagate between different species (we learn a lot from animals), between different generations, ethnicities et al.
Difficult to mix and match, a very serial process. What this means is that mix of different features in a class of features happens over a generations, so a long period of time. Also features from different strains at the same time, so in a sense it’s a serial process. Try features inherited in one   generation, if works then persist and add to in another generation.	Mixing and matching happens all the time. In simple behaviors also, you learn micro behaviors from different individuals and try them out.
Unconscious method of propagation : The beings have no control over what gets propagated, so in essence this is a random method without any input from the being as such.	Conscious method : The being choses what behavioral aspect to adapt and persist.
Chances of bad features (which don't help in survival) persisting is very low.	Since the being consciously choses which behavior to keep, they can chose behaviors which are not good for survival. Like criminal activity which increases your chance of being shot.
Single objective, long term in its view. The only objective is survival.	Multiple short term objectives, like I want to make money today, want to relax tomorrow.
Course correction not possible.. And that’s why it can lead to extinction.	Course correction possible, and done very often.

As we look at the differences, it also becomes clear why there are two methods. Physical traits are difficult to implement, and less forgiving. If you are born with a wrong physical feature, which diminishes your chances of survival, there is not much you can do. But behavioral aspects can be changed. Also its easy to try out behavioral features and decide whether they are good or bad.

And so the physical traits have a more rigid, single focus, zero control propagation method. As there are chances of extinction,  the method is also slow and well measured. Only the best persists. But on the other hands learning and re-learning are a constant process. 

Maybe it might be right to say that genetics is natures way of safe guarding the species, where as learning is an individuals method of safe guarding. Itself.  

More on this later.