Thought Blog

Development:

1. Due to 16, 18, 19, 3 and 7, the best universities in the world are in the US and England; with the best faculty. In other words, the US and England are very strong in academic proficiency. (england is very small as compared to the US; so i am feeling lazy to type in England everytime, will just type US - representing both)

2. PROPERTY: Academic proficiency is related to better educated individuals, and therefore better development for the country in general. More ideas come out of educated individuals, more innovative products and technologies are launched, the economy is boosted. More income per capita, better standard for living, and more money available for research.

3. Better academic proficiency in the US (from 1) led to better development and more research money (from 2). This now helps 1 further.

4. PROPERTY: Talent attracts talent.

5. After 1 and 3, due to 1 and 4 and 8, the best students from all countries, attracted by the talented faculty, come to the US to study, increase their knowledge and increase their skills. Hence the students in the departments here in the US are very talented.

6. After 5, many of the students here who are very skilled academically and want to remain in the academia, realize that their talent now cannot be utilized in their home country, remain here in the US. Some go back. Rest go in the industry here and back. Now there is one peculiarity: the probablity of the going back of bright students is roughly directly proportional to their country's academic proficiency. (it makes sense)

7. After 6, the talented students who choose to remain here add to the faculty here, this results in sustainence of very talented faculty, strong and best. Reinforces 1.

8. After 7, the students who were good and had gone back tell the students there that the universities in the US are very good. And the students there see the accomplishments of the people here in the US (which happen due to 1). The US Universities market themselves using their accomplishments and strong faculty. This is one of the cause of 5.

9. After 8, slowly the students who decide to go back accumulate in other countries. The rate of accumulation is proportional to the country's academic proficiency, due to 6.

10. After 9, the accumulation mentioned in 9 causes their own schools in their country to begin to have strong departments with talented, skilled faculty. This first makes their undergraduate department strong at selected schools. Then other schools. Then the graduate departments at selected schools. Then other schools. This rate of development in academic proficiency is proportional to their current academic proficiency as mentioned in 6.

11. After 10, due to 10 and 2, the other countries start to develop. The development is proportional to their current development - from 2 and 6. As their academic proficiency increases, the number of people coming to the US to study decreases. At a point all the other countries develop to the "Developed" stage, in order of their current development state. The whole world becomes developed and academic proficient!

12. After 11, due to 11, the world stabilizes, except for minor flows of students hither-thither. For most part, students study in their own country.

13. After 12, due to 12, due to high academic proficiency all over the world, research projects collaborations include intellect from all over the world. Big things, big ideas and big projects can now be made and designed, which are very difficult today. Like a mission to the stars, method to eternal life, world peace, artificial humans, teleportation, etc. The rate of development speeds very quickly. Inhabitation of other planets to counter increasing population and demand for resources.

14. FACT: The British people have some special ability in their genes, which may be probably adventure and/or shrewdness and/or a business mind.

15. In ancient times (a few hundred years ago), when the means to travel were developed, the Britishers, due to 14, conquered almost all of the world, and ruled over it. At one point of time, a known fact was - "The sun never sets on the British Empire". Because the British Empire was all around the world!

16. After 15, due to 15, their economic development grew by obtaining financial and labor benefits from the colonies they had conquered. Hence England became economically developed and rich.

17. FACT: US won 2 big world wars. It ran democracy and capitalism, the innovative concepts US itself pioneered, for 2 centuries. Had access to large amount of resources as compared to the population...the whole of United States. Had the same genes as the British.

18. Due to 17, by 1900-1950, the United States has good economic development and is rich.

19. PROPERTY: Economic development leads to good research money, and therefore stronger research in the university departments. People get time to do research and develop their skills and knowledge. Students get good opportunities early on in life, and develop their in-born talents, and therefore really become "talented" and "intelligent". They become good teachers too. Hence the faculty in university departments become strong. In other words, the country with economic development develops high academic proficiency.

Note:
1. Many other important factors which play in these scenarios - like maybe trade, commerce, politics, internet education, wars, etc. have been ignored above.
2. This has no use at all, it is a senseless waste of time. Dont read it.

by Gaurang Khetan (http://gaurang.org)
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Posted by at 10:52 AM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview

I will complete the rants in my last post sometime later.

For now, I will pen one other flash of thought I have had -

Why is ability to have children related to social ability?

Why you need to have a good personality to impress others so that you can marry others...and then have children?

This will motivate the growth of people with strong social skills...rather than those with strong overall skills and evolutionary abilities....

This is horrendously wrong.

If a scientist is brilliant, and lets say he made contributions that had impact on the whole of humanity....but he is not good socially, and people dont like his company...then he will probably not have any children....his genes will be lost....they will not survive to continue to be in the human pool...they will vanish....

On the other hand, if you are good socially, and have a good personality then it is almost certain that you will marry, and have children, in fact, many children (2 or more). [ "Many" is important, since if you have just 1 child, then you are reducing your type of genes from 2 - you and your wife - to 1, so having 2 children is a must - having more increases population - so 2 is preferable - leave 3 or more children to the nobel laureates ].

People in the scientist/techy/philosophers (usually high IQ) group are brilliant and have lower social skills, so, on average, they tend to have 1 child or often none. So their genes are reducing rapidly.

End Result: Avg IQ of people is lowering.

The Indians (not red-indians, but from country India), in the ancient times, realized this (Indian civilization is very old - they had enough time to find this out), and then did a very ingenious thing to avoid this to happen.

I dont know how they achieved it....but they did it.

Whats that ingenious thing? That thing is this:

They sow the word into society, they made it a custom of society, a tradition, that parents should decide the girl their child has to marry. And they must do compulsory do it for them, at the age of around 25-30. So even if you are not liked by a girl enough that you marry, the parents will get you married anyway. And then they made having children almost compulsory for a married couple, as a societal tradition.

Now this results into a society where everybody ends up getting married whether they have good social skills - and then have children. (Note: those who are not capable of living upto their adolescence die anyway, and hence the gene pool gets rid of such people.)

This does not increase the average IQ, but this atleast works to make it relatively constant.

I have a feeling that one other thing they did worked towards increasing it. That thing is they sowed the culture of "untouchability". People were identified who were very incapable in terms of abilities, and they were termed untouchables, and made all "normal" people stay away from them. They had realized that the sons of incapable people will also be incapable, and so they effectively outcaste them and their children - thus their whole family - from the soceity. They ended up having less children. So effectively the average IQ increased. (Note: This untouchability concept has been abandoned in India in the past century or so)

In the United States, a free society exists, and this "decreasing average IQ effect", called as dysgenics, is prominant here - as compared to India, where it is almost non-existent.

The US must do something about this.

If you are a scientist or consider yourself more evolved, then please have children. :-). It will help the civilization.

Do checkout this related article on eugenics/dysgenics.

Comments welcome. I will shortly make a yahoogroup on this topic on who want to discuss the topic. I will edit this post then to include the name of that group.

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Posted by at 5:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Recommended

Well, mind frequently thinks about the best things that we experience in our lives.

Sometimes I feel that observing is one of the most interesting things to do... Observing people interactions, relationships, emotions, self-concepts, beauty of the complexity in society, evolution of technology, evolution of culture, evolution of science, evolution of knowledge, evolution of thought, evolution of life, philosophy behind life..........just Observing. Even in this passive state, one can obtain unbounded joy and satisfication - by just observing, trying to understand, and correctly or wrongly trying to form rules that govern these observations.

In fact, in a predominantly active life, I fear that one may fail to experience the joys that mere observation provides.

Both are a means of transfer of knowledge: actively communicating with people exchanges ideas, knowledge, cultural memes - we come to know, for example, whether we have a meeting today evening or there is an exam tomorrow; similarly, passivity may include activities such as observation of phenomenon, reading books, browsing the internet, thinking, meditating, writing something, etc, which are basically the gathering of new knowledge (learning) or finding new concepts to relate things (analysing/understanding) .

However there is one component, that is more prominant in one methodology, and close to absent in the other. Transfer of Emotions.

Active communication has good transfer of emotions, which is absent in the passive method. Not only does it transfer emotions, but also lets our brain unconsciouslessly form the "meanings" of such emotions when we observe them in other people.

After alll, many of our emotional meanings come out of distributed learning and behaviour.

(incomplete)

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Posted by at 3:20 AM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Recommended

I attended a Seminar on "Goal and Purpose of Life" by a Swamiji on campus yesterday. Though he was not that learned he reminded me of the logic present in the Hindi Spirituality Theory. I believe that Hindi Religion Minus the mythology leaves you with a good "spiritualistic" theory. This is a reasonably theory and might be claimed to be having some logical reasoning behind it.

This thing reminded me of philosophy. That there are so many mutually inconsistent but individually irrefutable philosophies that have been invented since centuries. The Hindu (Vedanta) Philosophy is one such philosophy out of thousands.

I felt I needed to learn more about philosophy.

I had a long debate after the Hindu talk with a fellow Indian at USC - Parikshit, he was on the side of Hindu religion, and I on the side the western society. Well, it was a fruitful debate. We both learned different perspectives. I now think that Hindi spiritualistic theory is a sound theory (of course, a theory among thousands - doesnt make it true - in fact, i dont think it is true, but just that it is sound enough to be a valid theory), but going deep into it requires reading a lot of books, which i dont have time for. I also brought from forgotten memories to conscious mind that Meditation is a thing worth looking at. More control over mind and thoughts? Useful for me!! In that debate with him, I told him that pre-marital, ex-marriage sex that is normal in the US (and a taboo in India - hence very low there), is not immoral, and does have some advantages, and no significant disadvantages. So its not bad. He, however, was of the view that it is bad, only marital sex is ok. I managed to convince him that ex-marital, pre-marital sex, if done in a controlled, "non-addictive" manner was not wrong.

Then today after the midterms, I attended a Philosophy Club meeting on Neitzsche, and was a pillar at the meeting with all the other attendees being philosophy majors, and I being the only know-nothing person (no background at all in philosophy!!). Most of what was said went above my head. However my going there was not a waste. I learnt the progress the American society has made -- they now have research going in philosophy at so many schools here -- now even when philosophy generates no money. In India, theres no thing as research - in any field. Conclusion: When you crave for money, the society benefits overall, even for things which dont have monetary benefits. (more in a later post) I also learnt from the meeting about the analytical thinking, individualism, independent thiniking, that is present in Americans, which is completely absent in Indians. These Americans had potential in them to do something in life, unlike many/most Indians. Living in such a materially prosperous society has lots of advantages!!!

There was one person in that meeting who particularly impressed me. He was simply brilliant. He was a philosophy grad student at our USC Philosophy Department, aged 29, and was able to speak at the level of the faculty member who was giving the talk. He was simply - in one word - brilliant. The way he talked, the way he argued, the way he analysed, the knowledge he had....I thought - oh America has so many great people - it will go very high, higher than it is today. The American system is great..

I came back to my lab, and tried to find his site -- now this person must have a great background - in everything. I found his site. I learnt a lot about him. His website was good. I liked it. That is, until I reached his life line page, where he mentions in detail the events that happenned in his life, chronologically.

Now this hit me badly and unexpectedly. Read that page. His life has been mostly only travel, sex, girls, datings, break-ups, drugs, etc etc. And no firm life. He has been mostly depressed because of his such a life - because of no parental love, no "one wife", too many break-ups, parent's divorce, etc etc.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Parikshit was right. After all, the "customs/traditions" in India of being close and loving to parents, and having sex only after marriage and only to one wife, divorce in the very difficult circumstances, a sound family, marrying before age of 25-26, ...does have some advantages.

But then, why is the Western society so prosperous and Indian society in such a bad shape....maybe there's some other reason for that....maybe Indian values do make sense.....

I am still thinking...........................

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Posted by at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Recommended

Well, I am using Redhat Linux 8.0 right now.

I like GNOME 2.0 that comes in RH 8.0 very much. When GNOME was at 1.2, we could have said that KDE 3.0 was much better than GNOME, but now with 2.0, there is not really much difference, and now it doesnt really matter which environment you choose.

However, the KDE they have provided with RH8 needs some improvement and bug removing - and also the menu hierarchy. I think RH8.1 release will be perfect! I am waiting for that!

Other software that I think are wonderful in the Unix/Linux world, includes (these are not the only ones....)

Gnome Pan - A cool Usenet NewsReader.
Galeon(,Mozilla) - a very cool browser, better than Mozilla in most respects, but there are a few caveats.....in which Mozilla is better.
Gaim - Instant messagner for all protocols
OpenOffice - do all your office work here!
X-Chat - IRC Client
Emacs - Wonderful and Extremely Powerful Text Editor
XMMS - WinAmp clone
GIMP - Wonderful Graphics Editing program, attempt to try to come close to Adobe Photoshop.
Evolution: An Outlook Express clone
gFTP: A CuteFTP Clone
GNU Chess: A powerful Chess Player
pilot-xfer: write "pilot-xfer -b d" on the screen and see your PDA getting synchornized. Can it get eaiser than this?
mplayer: A player of a similar capability as Windows Media Player. Its too good.
cscope, cbrowser: These 2 programs combine to form a very effective source browser. Useful.

...... and there are many more software.... which i cant remember right now. These are mainly all GUI applications. There are, however, thousands of brilliant commandline utilities that make Linux/Unix as great as it is today.

I will post some Redhat screenshots soon. BTW I also have to change my website soon.

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Posted by at 7:25 AM | Permalink
Posted to Tech