A Missing Film

There is a film between Inception and Interstellar that few can claim to have watched. It begins near the end of the first film and gives another perspective on the whole of the second. The story goes like this. Cobb, having observed his totem, realises that he was wrong all the way. While he was going "down" a level, he was actually going "up" one. He also learns not to brand events as dreams and reality. Not one level alone can claim any more realism than others. After this, he decides to do what he always thought he was doing: to go "down". Difference in time works the other way in that case. If one chooses wisely and goes down enough levels, one can be as close to immortality as one wants. For example, in one second spent on a level deep enough, an entire galaxy, with all its planets, civilisations and languages can be materialised, thrived and gone on some level above.

Eventually, he acquires the ability to be conscious simultaneously on all levels, without the need of medication and kicks to get in and out of them.

On one of the levels he sees a dying earth with humans unable to escape it. He decides to help them by getting one of them, named Cooper, go down a few levels and acquire some data and come back. Note that extraction was Cobb's speciality before he found he could do inception. In Cobb's trade, this data helps to bend reality at will by an expert architect. In Cooper's this is called quantum data and it helps to get humans away from their earth.

An architect in Cobb's trade bending reality on a level is equivalent to a physicist in Cooper's solving some equations. Different trades, different jargon.

Cobb selects Cooper because he has first-hand experience of what a father could endure to reunite with his children. The mission, to someone with a background in science like Cooper, looks like being led to field after field of greater gravitation. To Cobb, he is moving from level after level of greater depth. That is, towards immortality. Unnatural difference in ageing between Cooper and his daughter may be noted at this point. He has been to some deeper levels while she never left their common level.  Cooper is yet to learn that the name of "the bulk being from the fifth-dimension" is, simply, Cobb.

From Point A to Point B

If science, with its own army of space probes, electron microscopes and particle accelerators, is trying to move from the point of absolute ignorance to the point of omniscience, why is it ignoring some other aspects of knowledge, say, history? Or humanities? Or more importantly, epistemology? Is it so determined that it does not accept some forms of knowledge? Or is it not about knowledge at all?

An Old Passage

S. Radhakrishnan writes something which resembles the text here.

The general impression that this requires world denial is not quite correct.
They insist on a spirit of detachment, which is not indifference to the world.
It is not abandonment of objects but non-attachment to them.
We do not raise ourselves above the world by contempt for the world.
It is the spirit of equanimity which is insisted on.
To be tranquil is to envy no man, including Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, to have no possession that another can take from us, to fear none.
When the thinkers ask us to adopt relinquishment of home and possessions, to accept the three great renunciations consecrated in the three vows, evangelical counsels of poverty, obedience and chastity,

they point to  self-denial  as the root of spiritual life.

 One should try to read the whole. Who knows what Ambi has done with the original.

Two Running Fish

We two were fish.
We used to live in a pond.
One day, he screamed to me:
"Dude, our tails are on fire"
I asked:
"What do we do?"
He screamed again:
"Run"
So we ran.
We ran a lot.
While running I asked:
"Are not we supposed to swim?"
He said:
"Nobody knows how to swim. Run"
So we ran.
We ran a lot.
While running I asked:
"How is it possible that fire can burn in water?"
He said:
"To hell with your science. Run, you idiot"
So we ran.
We ran a lot.
While running I asked:
"I do not remember me having a tail. Are you sure I have one?"
He said:
"That does not matter. Just run"
So we ran.
We ran a lot.
While running I asked:
"Dude, I really doubt if I am a fish."
He said:
"Run, run, run. Fire is burning."
So we ran.
We ran a lot.
I stopped asking.
At the end of the run, we shared a laugh and agreed that it was a great run.

Understanding Infinity

Ambi was born on 13th October 1989, as per many of his certificates, which may be expressed as 13101989
There is a number in mathematics called pi, which has infinitely many digits, starting from 3.14159
Ambi was surprised to find that,

"the string 13101989 occurs at position 40,160,873 counting from the first digit after the decimal point."-according to Pi-Search

Screen capture of an MIT site.
As one might observe, the billionth digit has not yet been loaded into my computer.
The string 13101989 is highlighted. Click to enlarge.

 If there is a method of translating letters to digits, it is possible then, that:

• Full text of Merchants of Venice be found exactly.
• Full text of all of Shakespeare's works be found exactly.
• Full text of all of English literature till date be found exactly.
• All literature of all of the languages till date be found exactly, if there is a method of translating all human language to digits.
• All spoken, written, printed and displayed word till date be found.
• All spoken, written, printed and displayed word in the past and the future be found.
• Instructions to become a billionaire be found. Not those self-help-books-kind-of instructions, but computer-algorithms-kind-of instructions, with details like how many grams of toothpaste should one use today.
• This blog post be found.
• DNAs of all creatures be found.
• Co-ordinates of each electron in the universe at any time be found.
• Tomorrow's stock prices be found.
• First billion digits of pi be found a billion times.
• Answers to all unanswered questions be found.
• Every-thing be found, including no-thing.

Only God would not be surprised by all these. If one is not surprised, they better get a check up done. They might turn out to be God. Just kidding.

Holograms and Pi

Built a simple device today which can project three-dimensional images to space from a surface.

The device has shape of a truncated square pyramid with transparent faces.

Place it at the centre of a display and play a video made specially for it.

It gives the effect of a free-floating object.

A 3-D video of a jellyfish being played on the device from a flat display.

It can give four different views of the object, if looked from the sides of the pyramid. We could see front, back, left and right of an object. But not any other view. It lacks a continuous 3-D feel as we expect with real objects. That is, if one slightly changes her point of view, the image remains the same, it does not rotate.

If, instead of a four faced pyramid and four images to project on them, one could use a shape with infinitely many faces and enough images to reflect on those faces, one might create a real looking object inside it. That is what I think.

Such a shape might look like a sphere. And I have a strong feeling that we are sitting inside a giant sphere.

That makes more sense when I find pi, the irrational number, in the most unlikeliest of places!

As if God placed it there so that we do not forget where we are and get lost!

Good idea mate! Thank you.

Map or Place?

I am at a place.
I have a map of the place.
I take out the map and spread it on a table.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between points on the map and points on the place.
For example, I can find a point corresponding to north-east corner of the table on the map.
But these two points are distinct.
One is on the place and the other is on the map.

Photograph taken from Richard's Photostream. Thank you.

Question:
If I am marking a point on the map, am I marking a point on the place or a point on the map?
The map is a part of the place.
Or is the place a part of the map?

Sympathy

The idea that a four-dimensional being would take care of three-dimensional beings is like that of a three-dimensional human child being sympathetic about characters in his two-dimensional crayon painting.

All is Here

I've been working on a solid modeling software for some time. The software does not care about on which scale you are working. I can model a nanometer-scale cantilever and a kilometer-scale bridge with the same package. But problems arise when I give more detail to any model I create. As amount of detail builds up, it takes more computational effort to handle the model. I know it is too much of detail when the machine takes too long to respond to my commands. With my limited computational ability, I guess I have an upper limit to the amount of detail I can give.

There is a limit also to the amount of information a biological system can receive at a time. The amount of detail one can receive is the same when she looks at a single cell of E. coli or vastness of the Crab nebula. It is a fallacy then, that we need to look too close or too far to see exciting things.

But if you get bored here, you are free to go to these places. After all, we are all born to go places and see things, aren't we?

No. I have to complete my mini-project on refurbishment of compressors by this week. Bye.

The Complete Model

It all started with an attempt to predict the outcome of coin-tossing. A complex model was developed. Give air conditions, mood and geometry of hand of tosser, the model could predict whether it would be a head or a tail. Accuracy was improved as years passed.
Now someone came up with this: why don't we enlarge this model to cover all of the world? A model was developed. A big computer contained algorithms of the model. It was a preliminary model. It needed a large amount of data to begin the process and accuracy was not very impressive. But both of the problems were getting solved as more resource flew into the project. The computer was getting bigger. Initial data requirement was coming down. Accuracy was improving. Computer getting bigger was a problem. So compact machines were developed, with greater complexity.
As time passed, beauty of the model set fire to men's hearts. At one point of time the model became indistinguishable from the world it was created to predict. And people never bothered to go back.

Cause and Effect

"Newton found that gravity is the cause of falling of an apple."
Is it true?
Saying gravity is the cause of falling of an apple is not true. Gravity alone cannot make any apple to fall. Presence of a gravitational field does not guarantee that an apple would fall.
If a cause cannot  individually and consistently produce an effect, then the cause is not a cause of the effect at all.
Can we say gravity is a cause among many other causes? No. If occurrence of many number of causes guarantees an effect, then the world is a completely predictable place. If we assume that the world is not predictable, then an effect cannot have a single cause or many causes.
For example,

1. There is an apple tree.
2. There is at least one ripe apple on it.
3. A wind is rocking the branches.
4. The tree is in a gravitational field.
5. There is a ground beneath.
6. There is enough light to see.
7. There is a man to report the fall.
8. The man is honest.
9. He knows English.
10. All the above are true.

Even with all these apparent causes if you are not confident enough that an apple would fall, then you have some idea about the working of the world. None of these individually or collectively guarantee anything. In other words, they do not cause anything, including the fall of an apple. So the word 'cause' does not mean what we mean by that word.

The Common Place

.
One walnut and one supernova are hardly the same.
But, see the magic, zero walnut and zero supernova are exactly the same.

..

None has seen or achieved:

1. a state of zero pressure. Absolute vacuum.
2. absolute zero temperature. 0 kelvin.

It does not seem that these are two different states at all. There is only one zero.
...
It does not exist outside human mind.
If zero exists then it is a fallacy to refer it as zero!
Isn't it?

Are We 'Tick Tick' or 'Booo'?

A computer has no idea what is going on during the time interval between two successive pulses of its clock. It does not have a continuous sense of time. The argument that advanced computers can rival humans in future can only progress by knowing whether or not humans have, unlike machines, a continuous sense of time. The difference between continuity and pulsation is of the scale of God and Eniac.

Convergence of Train and Time

Once Ambi was waiting for his train. An LED screen displayed 1244, which was the number of the next train to be arrived. A guy sitting nearby looked at the number and asked: "The time is quarter to one, right?"
Ambi looked at it and replied to him, smiling: "Brother, that thing does not show time."
He asked, feeling a little hurt:" Then what is it showing?"
"It is showing the train number.", Ambi explained.
"Oho", he showed a villager's embarrassment.
A little later, recovering from it, he asked: "What is the time, then?"
As there was no watch, Ambi looked at another LED display, which was actually showing time.

What Ambi saw is this: 12:45

This incident would later contribute heavily to Ambi's theory regarding convergence of train numbers and time at noon.
What kind of theory is that?

Thin and Poor Second Hand

Ambi was always confused with this: What exactly is the duration of one second of time?

The Ajanta Quartz clock on the wall sparked this doubt.
It was Ambi's father who bought that clock. The first clock at home. Neighbor's small timepiece used to power the concept of time to at least two households till this clock arrived. Most of Ambi's friends at school could not tell time from a clock, because they had none.

The second hand of the clock moved from one marking on the dial to the next, stayed there for some time, then moved to the next. There are two kinds of markings on the dial: 12 big and 60 small.

Is one second the time the second hand takes to move from one small marking to the next?

Or is it the time the second hand stays at one marking?

Ambi recently found an answer: Neither.

Look at the short and fat hour hand and ask it:"How long is an hour?"
It would say:"An hour is the time I take to move from one big marking to the next big marking."

If this applies to all other hands as well, then one second must be the time the second hand takes to move from one small marking to the next.

Then why on earth is it staying at each marking?

One second is the time of one movement plus one stay. The logic of hour hand does not apply to second hand. An ideal second hand would travel uniformly and continuously. With no stay and with same speed throughout.

But we never produced an ideal second hand. That is because, humans are incapable of producing uniform continuous movement.

I would laugh at it. We, the most advanced, incapable of such a simple thing. How can I type my laugh!

Where is My Pencil?

When I see a pencil, I see it from my own angle, one angle at a time.

I cannot see it from all the angles at a single moment. It will take a finite amount of time for me to see it from all the angles. At the most what I am possible to do is to capture the image of it from one angle in my eyes and memorize it, move to the next angle, repeat the same. In practice, I don't have to do it consciously, all is automatic. At the end, I will have a collection of images with associated time instances when each of them were captured.

I have no other way to see the whole of it. That is, I am bounded by the constraints of space and time. The constraint of space means I cannot look through all the angles simultaneously. That is because my eyes are of limited size and shape. The constraint of time means I cannot look at the whole of it at a single instant. That is because my body takes time for bringing my eyes from one viewpoint to the next.

By the same constraints of space and time, the images anyone else can memorize are different from mine. No two people can have exactly similar collection of images.

It is possible to extend this argument on eyes and images to other sense organs as well. All the senses are bound by the two constraints.

Now the question is, where is the actual pencil? Who has seen it? Does it exist at all?

God knows.

How do you know that God knows?

People say that all the time, you know.

Change We See

I have learned from a movie that when a particular kind of dinosaur comes to attack you, you should not run. You stay as steady as possible, even if you are close enough to get its breath on your face. Because that kind of dinosaurs can only detect things that move with respect to their surroundings. I think there are animals with that primitive kind of vision in our age too. Frogs are such a folk, I remember reading it somewhere.

The problem is that we, the latest organisms on the earth, suffer from a similar kind of handicap. But at a different level. We sense only those things that changes with respect to time. Eyes are the sense organs that can detect changes in electric and magnetic fields, within some range. Light is a combination of electromagnetic waves, I have studied. Ears can hear only the changes in the surrounding air pressure, again, within some range. I don't know the mechanisms behind smell and taste. But I strongly feel that chemical changes are involved in them. About touch, if your skin in contact with the thing you are touching has absolutely no movement about that thing, you won't feel anything. That's my belief. And that can be wrong. Sometimes, right too.

Now the question I have is, what is beyond all these changes. Can we never see anything that does not change? My questions get very complicated when I approach this unchanging thing. 

Why was I not taught about it in schools? May be it is too complicated. But it is very fundamental too. Perhaps the most fundamental.

I have seen people with these queries. Or I am reiterating their questions here. Many have died. Some answers have survived here and there.

May be we will know things better one day.

Connected through Time

Ringworm, many websites say, is a fungal disease. Fungus, I imagine, must be a miniatured form of mushrooms. But mushrooms are commonly found on inanimate things like decaying trees, not on animals. I had ringworm on my right foot. And biologically I am a member of the species, homo sapiens, which is an animal species.

I was looking for a cure for this skin disease. I found some home remedies, among which I liked this one: apply the paste of Neem (Azadirachta indica, scientific name) or Babul to the affected area. There are a lot of Neem trees in our street. Neem, I guess from its scientific name, must have originated in India. And it must have originated a long time ago, tens of thousands of years, may be, I don't know exactly.

I got out to get some Neem leaves. There was a tree just in front of the house, but its branches were chopped a week before in the fear that in rain it would fall on another house nearby. I moved a few steps towards the temple where there were three or four more trees. I plucked a few leaves and came back. I was thinking, who planted those trees? May be someone knew that it can cure diseases like mine and planted them. May be.

How this Neem paste is going to cure my disease? The paste must have, among other things, some chemical compounds in it which may be lethal to the disease-causing fungus. And why should the Neem tree store these chemical compounds in its leaves? Because it also wants to defend itself against fungi; similar to the fungus on my skin or other. We two face similar threats.

But this simple tree has the means to fight a dangerous microbe, and a member of the most advanced species on the earth, I, do not. Why is it so? May be because I can go to that tree and pluck some leaves, whenever I want, without asking permission or even a "thank you".

Allopathic medicines for the disease may be containing these or other chemical compounds to kill the fungus. Such medicines are prepared after a lot of research and testing, I have heard.

When did the tree do research and testing? This happened over tens of thousands of years before this tree was born. This tree received the results of that process when it was still attached to its mother/father, when it was a seed. Now this tree whispers to the trees of its kind yet to be born, attached to it, among many other things, that: "this particular chemical compound is effective against this particular fungus".

And a human like me will come again to the next tree seeking relief, and pluck its leaves. That is a continuity.

May be. I don't know.