Self Confidence !!!

"What matters most is, how you see yourself.
Take a bottle of beer, you'll see you are the best in the whole world!!!
Beer improves your self confidence."

- Arya, Sandeep

The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion /
And the act / Falls the Shadow.

-T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

Boultbee's Criterion

"If the converse of a statement is absurd, the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and should never have been said."

Is it time when Occam’s razor invokes itself ...

"Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge." - Winston Churchill.

Whatever you may believe … Indeed there is no clear definition for pseudo- reality. Deliberate or not, every individual is steeped into it. And then we still have to answer what is Reality or truth independent of humanity. People call hallucinations (or distinct cousins of it like dreams and personal influence on space- time) of mind as pseudo-reality. But this pseudo-reality is still comprehensible to man. We can still theorise why it happens and tell whether someone is living in that world.

Descartes said, in perhaps the most famous quote in philosophy, “I think and hence I exist”, and hence began the PR. This PR stems from human mind which manifests itself through human actions and thoughts. We can call it perception, deliberate distortion, a system of deceit, but it definitely is a part of every one’s life. This is the PR which is dependent on human perception and choices, leading to personal truths (and negations) or personal realities. But is it the only aspect of PR wherein we deal with other human beings and conceptualize our life

One question which I asked, and Mudit didn’t talk about was, what is the reality (or pseudo-reality) which exists independent of human factor?

Tagore argues about the existence of a “Human Truth”, something of which science ( [Human] Scientific truth) is a subset and logic a tool (and ofcourse Occam’s razor) to determine it. “Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals, it is the impersonal human world of truths.”, and hence is beyond perception.

Einstein himself proved that, we can never define a system by being in the reference frame of the same system. So, he is only right when he says that he cannot prove what the reality of human life is. But unlike Beauty, which is nothing but just a human feeling, felt by human heart and mind when confronted by perfect harmony, “there is a reality independent of man, and hence there should also be a truth relative to this reality”.

Definitely, As long as we keep employing human organs (brain) and logic to find the truth, the truth will indeed be human. But there should be no refuting the fact that there is a world as a reality independent of the human factor.

We can argue to say that at times, science and logic are able to help us predict certain scientific theories which prove themselves later. Infact, Einstein’s relativity theory was verified much later than its formulation. This means that there should be some connection between human mind and the world as it exists. If human logic is different from the logic of the reality beyond humanity, the reality as conceived by humans won’t exist beyond humanity.

Is it that, what ever a human mind can deduce through human logic, exists? For logic, and science alike, is based on premises. If the premise is true the conclusion through logic should also be true. Which makes me believe there exists a world which is based on logic which the human mind is capable of dealing.

Will this reality collapse with fall of humanity? If all the humans would cease to exist without changing anything else in the current world by any external factor, will the non-living/non-human objects present in this reality, continue to exist. As, if they do, it will be proved that there is reality beyond humanity, and indeed human logic was nothing but a subset of universal logic (the part which was comprehensible to humans) and human scientific truth would prove to be universal. And if they don’t, it will mean that all this, which we call as universe, and send a satellite and set up space telescopes to look around it and the stars which we believe exist many light years away, and all other small and big things were nothing but a mass hallucination of human minds. What a terrible waste of time it will prove to be.

Is this the time when Occam’s razor invokes itself ...

Philosopher says...

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote of the day

"Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge."

- Winston Churchill.

Quote of the day..

the mathematician drowned at the deep end of the pool because it was only three feet deep on an average.

Occam's razor

“one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything” -William of Occam.

My memory is failing me …. But this is how the story goes. In one of the SKS’s Thursday night (“who wants to be the biggest intellectual” theme nights !!) discussion, somebody stated the principle of Occam’s razor to me for the first time. And then we were let loose to prove the existence of something which might never be proved, to find the utility, and bias of this principle. I’ll try to recall a brief introduction and then leave the stage for your subjective analysis (and your imagination for how to use it solve current objective).

Occam’s Razor is not a law, but a principle that makes sure what you are theorising on is accurately defined. At times one invokes it involuntarily while theorising. Occam’s Razor comes without a proof and it is said that Occam’s Razor will prove itself when the whole universe, with all its dimensions and times, is accurately determined. It is really absurd and its absurdity gets clearer when you invoke it. In another version (thanks to SKS), which I think I’ll be using in the present debate, the principle states:

“To explain a scientific theory, one must tend to minimise the number of parameters used to determine it”

To give a few example, to define absolute zero (-273 ◦C), the temperature at which no gas can exist, we use just the pressure (1 atmosphere) as a supporting parameter apart from the given temperature, what could be done is to also take into account the vessel the gases be in, sea level, time (as a dimension), effects of gravity, interactions of electrons to the nucleus, proximity of vessel to sun …and infinite amount of other bullshit. Similarly, we don’t find Newton’s laws holding there ground, we just add the point of reference (or reference frame) as one more parameter and never go into the quantum or relativity theory, the wind effects, temperature and pressure (both effecting volume and hence friction), uncertainty principle to define them. One can import the definitions of “science” and “human truth” from the Tagore-Einstein discussions support the given argument.

Another argument says, to discover all points of a system, if we can define the origin first and then a few points to define its boundary we can determine the whole system around it (Infact, exactly like the way calculus functions). Invoking Occam’s Razor is just the start of the process. Hence to determine the absolute truth, we invoke Occam’s Razor first, define space time and other aspects of coordinate system first and then try to determine reality by exploring the human truths.

The second conversation...

TAGORE: I was discussing with Dr. Mendel today the new mathematical discoveries which tell us that in the realm of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character.

EINSTEIN: The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say good-bye to causality.

TAGORE: Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organized universe.

EINSTEIN: One tries to understand in the higher plane how the order is. The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence, but in the minute elements this order is not perceptible.

TAGORE: Thus duality is in the depths of existence, the contradiction of free impulse and the directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly scheme of things.

EINSTEIN: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds look as one from a distance, but if you see them nearby, they show themselves as disorderly drops of water.

TAGORE: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?

EINSTEIN: Even the elements are not without statistical order; elements of radium will always maintain their specific order, now and ever onward, just as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the elements.
TAGORE: Otherwise, the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living.

EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.

EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition in music to guide the people's mind. In Europe, music has come too far away from popular art and popular feeling and has become something like a secret art with conventions and traditions of its own.

TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated music. In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret.

EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.

EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?

TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is fixed. In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but not with melody.

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?

TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the imposition of harmony?

EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony swallows up the melody altogether.

TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours. Japanese music also seems to be so.

TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that it is great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its composition. Our own music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical appeal. European music is epic in character; it has a broad background and is Gothic in its structure.

EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer, we are so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance and dissonance is natural, or a convention which we accept.

TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.

EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.

TAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some classical music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the piece.

EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.

First Conversation...

Einstein : Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?

Tagore : Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the truth of the Universe is human truth. I have taken a scientific fact to explain this. Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them, but matter may seem to be solid without the links in spaces which unify the individual electrons and protons. Similarly humanity is composed of individuals, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living unity to man's world. The entire universe is linked up with us, as individuals, in a similar manner - it is a human universe. I have pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man.

Einstein : There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe -the world as a unity dependent on humanity, and the world as a reality independent of the human factor.

Tagore : When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty.

Einstein : This is the purely human conception of the universe.

Tagore : There can be no other conception. This world is a human world - the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. Therefore, the world apart from us does not exist; it is a relative world, depending for its reality upon our consciousness. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences.

Einstein : This is a realization of the human entity.

Tagore : Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize it through our emotions and activities. We realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our limitations. Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals, it is the impersonal human world of truths. Religion realizes these truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to truth, and we know this truth as good through our own harmony with it.

Einstein : Truth, then, or beauty is not independent of man?

Tagore : No.

Einstein : If there would be no human beings any more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be beautiful.

Tagore : No!

Einstein : I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.

Tagore : Why not? Truth is realized through man.

Einstein : I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion.

Tagore : Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being, Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, - through our illumined consciousness - how, otherwise, can we know Truth?

Einstein : I cannot prove that scientific truth must be conceived as a truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a truth relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first engenders a negation of the existence of the latter.

Tagore : Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must essentially be human; otherwise whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth, at least the truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic, in other words, by an organ of thoughts which is human. According to Indian philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a truth cannot belong to science. The nature of truth which we are discussing is an appearance, that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called Maya or illusion.

Einstein : So according to your conception, which may be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of the individual but of humanity as a whole.

Tagore : In science we go through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus reach that comprehension of truth which is in the mind of the Universal Man.

Einstein : The problem begins whether truth is independent of our consciousness.

Tagore : What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man.

Einstein : Even in our everyday life, we feel compelled to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet that table remains where it is.

Tagore : Yes, it remains outside the individual mind but not the universal mind. The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess.

Einstein : Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack - no primitive beings even. We attribute to truth a superhuman objectivity, it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind - though we cannot say what it means.

Tagore : Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centres of electric force, also belongs to the human mind. In the apprehension of truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to humanity, then for us it is absolutely non-existing. It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which sequence of things happens not in space but only in time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for man's mind literature has a greater value of truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings.

Einstein : Then I am more religious than you are!

Tagore : My religion is in the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being. This has been the subject of my Hibbert Lectures, which I have called "The Religion of Man."

Source:
(Published in the January, 1931, issue of Modern Review)

Two great minds..

Tagore and Einstein met through a common friend, Dr. Mendel. Tagore visited Einstein at his residence at Kaputh in the suburbs of Berlin on July 14, 1930, and Einstein returned the call and visited Tagore at the Mendel home. Both conversations were recorded and I have tried to retrace them for you.

Einstein reserved the highest admiration for Tagore as well as Mahatma Gandhi, and they, in turn, recognized in him a kindred spirit. Despite the disparate life-focus of the three, their ecumenical thinking lavished its warmth and wisdom on humanity as a whole. They were profoundly united in their concern for the world's indigent, the state of the human condition a continual presence to their imagination.

Of the values that fuelled his rich life Einstein famously wrote: "The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth."

Tagore on Einstein: Einstein has often been called a lonely man. Insofar as the realm of the mathematical vision helps to liberate the mind from the crowded trivialities of daily life, I suppose he is a lonely man. His is what might be called transcendental materialism, which reaches the frontiers of metaphysics, where there can be utter detachment from the entangling world of self. To me both science and art are expressions of our spiritual nature, above our biological necessities and possessed of an ultimate value. Einstein is an excellent interrogator. We talked long and earnestly about my "religion of man." He punctuated my thoughts with terse remarks of his own, and by his questions I could measure the trend of his own thinking.

Einstein on Tagore: You are aware of the struggle of creatures that spring forth out of need and dark desires. You seek salvation in quiet contemplation and in the workings of beauty. Nursing these you have served mankind by a long fruitful life, spreading a mild spirit, as has been proclaimed by the wise men of your people. He has been for us the living symbol of the Spirit, of Light, and of Harmony - the great free bird which soars in the midst of tempests - the song of Eternity which Ariel strikes on his golden harp, rising above the sea of unloosened passions. But his art never remained indifferent to human misery and struggles. He is the 'Great Sentinel.' For all that we are and we have created have had their roots and their branches in that Great Ganges of Poetry and Love.

if ..

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream -
and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -
and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

- Rudyard kipling