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Monday, May 31, 2021

Covid-19 crisis has taught certain very valuable lessons

 

           This Covid-19 crisis has taught certain very valuable lessons.

1. No one is safe unless everyone is safe and no country can be safe unless every country is safe.

2. It has taught us that all life on the whole and all species are interrelated, interconnected, and interdependent.

3. Sometimes when we over emphasize everything we end up emphasizing nothing.

4. “In the end nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of anything at all”- William James

5.  “We live in a changing universe, and few things are changing faster than our conception of it”-Timothy Ferris

6. “There is no tomorrow. There is only a planet turning on its axis, and a creature given to optimistic fancies”-Robert Brault

7. “Evolution itself is an open ended and indeterminate process”… “Given the remarkable progress in our understanding of biochemistry, molecular biology, and evolution as a whole … we have failed to develop concepts, ideas, even a language that could capture the dance of this life” - Guy Murchie

8. It has given us real education that has injected the fact that the Universe is not earth centric; Earth is not human centric;

Humanity is not any specific or particular ideology centric (be it religious, political, economic, social, regional, linguistic etc.).

9. Leaders in most realms [religion, politics, academics] of all hues and colours along with a bunch of those who have appropriated certain terminologies like intellectuals, or to put it in short, the majority of those involved in social engineering and mass belief and opinion moulding businesses were humbled to realize the process of the varying degrees of ignorance like what Phenella wrote in ‘The Unwritten Comedy’, “To be ignorant of many things is expected. To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom. To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of   learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”

10. That there no panacea for life, hence we cannot defy or deny the importance of anything or anyone and we may not always end up getting the trade- off we expect. Life is lively and active, it is neither pass it on baton nor a pause button. Life is a dynamic jigsaw puzzle where even the figure of the puzzle is not predefined or may not be known through fixing the pieces but it may evolve through the pieces that emerge during the churning process of life and living.

 






Peer review

T​here was a debate on peer review put on a high pedestal and pushed the rest down. 

Everyone knows that academia is not immune to internal politics, rivalry, brand building exercises, mafia, lobbies etc.

But it becomes really a sorry state when the very vitals of scientific approach gets struck between the cleaver and butcher's block or chopping board

It all started with the video clip below:-

Then there were useful , thought provoking readings in several links, some took a revenge on me for sending more links than I do, but these are worth reading for aspiring research students and impartial analysts. 

Of course, the majority of these links are against peer reviewing which tells the insults that these select club of ' peers' like the ' aristocrats' of the past must have inflicted on the scientific community.

1. When reviewing goes wrong: the ugly side of peer review


2 . Let's stop pretending peer review works - Vox



3. The limitations to our understanding of peer review | Research Integrity and Peer Review 


4. Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals


5. Is the peer review process flawed for academic articles?


6. 6 Common Flaws To Look Out For in Peer Review


7. Where to Find Peer Reviewed Sources - Peer Review: An Introduction - LibGuides at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


8. How to Find Reliable Information on the Internet - People Development


9. 101 Free Online Journal and Research Databases for Academics | Scribendi

 
10.  How peer reviews are degrading the spirit of science







Sunday, May 23, 2021

Attitude and approach

 


At all levels there are cosy clubs with undue or disproportionate privileges.

 

In India, as in many other countries, they are sports persons of popular sports, film stars and politicians who don the roles as legally empowered ministers, social workers, rulers etc. We need to either become one or put up with them.

Take everything in the stride, internalize worthy matters, participate in interesting ones, ignore the irrelevant ones, value the important ones and use the useful ones with gratitude, reciprocation and adequate trade off.

 

 


While the world has been and is looking at more open , more inclusive growth taking along everyone and everything, there may be things very much to our liking and those that are not; things useful for society and those that are otherwise.

 

Showing our anger through sharing in social media gives them enough notoriety which can be misinterpreted or misconstrued as popularity and some are capable of even scrupulously trying to do so , as did some political parties do effectively.

 

It is not that crazy anomalies do not exist even in the much respected (or forced accept) international bodies like the UN where a landless country is a non state observer member and has diplomatic relationships with more than hundred other countries. It has two official citizens and more than 10 k members and 75k volunteers. Well, find out it is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, it was also a member of the club of 118 NAM. Its Prof. Guido de Marco, President Emeritus of the Republic of Malta, was the President of the 45th General Assembly of the United Nations in 1990.  There are permanent observer nations like Palestean and Vatican city.

 

 

"The spirit of Advaita is not to keep away from anything, but to keep in tune with everything." -  Swami Chinmayananda

 

“In the end nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of anything at all”- William James

 

 

Question about questions

 

It is all about a question about questions

Today’s 19th May 2021Times of India Chennai edition centre page is very interesting because it is imbued with the importance of questions:-

Starting with its Sacredspace quote,

"I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Rainer Maria Rilke. Followed by two articles:-

1. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/why-is-it-so-wrong-to-ask-questions/

2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/ask-tough-questions-learn-why-did-the-severity-of-indias-second-wave-take-modellers-by-surprise/

Subsequently, in its global page quote gives a subtle clue as to how the answer can emerge through this quote of Charles Baudelaire, Nothing can be done except little by little”.

 

We see the evolution of present trend from question-rich and answer poor environment to answer-rich and question poor environment.

Too many seem to be in the mould of Tom Stoppard, “My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers”, than that of James Thurber, “It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all of the answers” or think like Richie Norton, “Questions open a space in your mind that allow better answers to breathe”, or as Voltaire, “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”, or as Richard Feynman, “I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned”, or as Claude Levi-Strauss, “The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”

We need to question this trend as to why? How?

We need to try to answer them. As Susan Greenfield writes, “when you try and find an answer to a question, you are on a quest, a journey with a very clear goal: each step is sequentially linked in a linear path that eventually leads to a specific and different destination...This is how a thought process would differ from raw instantaneous feeling, through the sense of a narrative over time. It is this experience of the goal-directed passage of time that I have suggested gives each of us a unique life story and the events and people within it a unique meaning. As T.S. Eliot so eloquently described it in Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

This last line is the whole point, the original place is actually now somewhere different. The very effort we invest in the journey of discovery, in the time spent joining the dots and making connections across networks of neurons, gives an importance, a significance, to what we learn, so that we see things in a new way….we are in a reverse scenario,……where our brains are saturation bombed with answer but where it is not hard to be distracted not lose sight of what we wanted to know at the outset”.

Nicholas, D., Rowlands, I., Clark, D., & Williams in Google generation II: web behaviour experiments with the BBC. Aslib Proceedings conclude that “the propensity to rush, rely on point-and-click ,first-up-on google answers, along with the growing unwillingness to wrestle with nuances or uncertainties or inability to evaluate information, keeps the young especially struck on the surface of the ‘information’ age, too often sacrificing depth for breadth”.

Neil Postman, “Everything we know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings.”  Besides, as Mehmet Murat Ildan writes, “You don’t have to answer every question that comes to your mind because some questions are like ‘matryoshka’ dolls; once opened, new ones come out!”

The evolution of human answering mechanism has been from faith to fantasies to facts but have any of these helped the questioning mind to have real experience or experiential wisdom that could wipe away all our ignorance?

Phenella writes in “The Unwritten Comedy”,

“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”

Criss Jami, “Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.”-

As Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being writes, “Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”

Shannon L. Alder, “Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.”

As Vera Nazarian writes, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration “It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another. Ignorance is our deepest secret.  And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it. Here is a quick test:-
If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.
Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation. It will do both of you good.”

Everything that has ever existed and continue to exist or anything that has happened or continue to happen quiet often has its own inherent logic, principle, purpose, value, strength etc. In addition they are or act as some pieces to fit into the jigsaw puzzle of life.

 

These two important factors:-

1] Inherent logic and

2] Being part of the jigsaw puzzle of life which keeps moving in its evolutionary path are attributes of almost everything.  

 

Unfortunately the whole or complete picture of life is yet unknown to many of us [if we are honest and humble enough to accept] but not unknowable. This unknown mystery is so because of various factors of which the two most glaring are our chronologically limited mortal body frame and the limited abilities and perceptions of our mental frame and this prevents us from simultaneously perceiving many things at both the micro as well as macro level.

 

 

But despite the limited existence of our individual body and all the limitations of our mind, we as human beings have explored the unmapped atlas of life enjoying, experiencing and enlightening ourselves in the process. Life as whole has been constantly reciprocating us with both sweet melodies and bitter tragedies in the course of our explorations and experiences.

 

Life has manifested its splendor through the excellent contributions and developments leading humanity to the zenith of advancements and enhancement of living conditions as well as pushed humanity to the nadir of existence because of some destructive and decadent activities.

 

The destructive and decadent activities are not only the tangible material ones but also the psychological ones, social ones and so on.

 

“Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions” -Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, 1973

But asking oneself too many questions may indicate some complex. Miriam Toews says, “Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions”.

Asking obviously puerile questions connecting irrelevant factors must be avoided because at the outset they sound silly as Edsger Dijkstra gives a classic example, “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim”.


Question about questions 'Language was inv...- Mind Map (mindomo.com)


https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/question-about-questions-language-was-invented-to-ask-questions-answers-may-be-given-by-grunts-and-gestures-but-questions-must-be-spoken-humanness-came-of-age-when-man-asked-the-first-question-social-stagnation-results-not-from-a-lack-of-answers-but-a80e84e2b98526a2e0d3eaa665ce1214



Humanitarianism and cosmopolitan outlook

Thankless ungrateful attitude, sometimes even betrayal.



This makes one wonder what​​ use is all the philosophies which are sprinkled in every realm about the 'values' based on moral high ground? 


We take everything for granted but when granted and get it we brush it off as our entitlement and act as if we are doing a favor for being available to receive the bounties. This is there everywhere on one side and on the other side some act as privileged lord's who can throw their weight around by any means and get things done.


There are no basic human gestures of gratitude and appreciation , even if there is no recognition. 


We have developed a collective national psychology of criticizing and questioning everything except our own attitudes and contributions.


We don't value many simple and humane things which are more vital for cohabitation rather than elaborate rituals. I know people may get offended when I say this. I say it purposely, because Indians don't take care of the elders in their own family but will do all sorts of fanfare for funerals and post funeral rituals for years on and give lengthy discourse on that, this happens in most regions of many religions in India.


We can claim to be better evolved citizens only when we respect scientific approaches, exhibit rational attitude, manifest humanitarianism and adopt a cosmopolitan outlook which respects everyone's talents, time and trade-offs which cannot be compromised and taken for granted.

Talent, achievements and success

 We read, listen to, see and observe and through these means acquire knowledge, then use that knowledge to decipher , to grasp and to understand individuals, issues, ideas etc.

Then we apply  that understanding based on circumstances, contexts and resources to make choices and decisions. This may lead to some experience, sometimes enable us to achieve something and at times may lead to success as well.


Whether we get it through academic credentials or qualifications or other means of human intelligence is debatable.

Real learning may happen sometime in the whole process.

Academic credentials or qualifications are an attempt to provide some basic framework. We can neither dismiss them as totally useless nor glorify them as the best thing a person can have.

Talent, achievements and success are sometimes because of them and at times in spite of them. So, this gives us room for interpreting them according to our bias. 





 

Conditioning

 

Human beings all over the world are conditioned by some form of ideology or religious identity superimposing over the fundamental and intrinsic values of human beings as a species with certain unique faculties.

 

Conditioning, leading to some ideological identity, is it necessary?

Can we avoid or escape from it?

Can we deny or defy it?

In my opinion these are tough for various reasons.

 

 

This conditioning which is universally practiced by all religions, ideological political outfits, institutions of all hues and colors. As JK repeatedly says this condition creates a screen through which human beings observe the world.

Therefore, the very observation is not what is actually there. Then, based on this colored observation born out of conditioning, specific frames of realities are generated based on which we build the ABCD of life

 

Accommodate and Adjust,

Believe and Bind,

Chose and Classify,

Decide and Deliberate,

Express and Extrapolate,

Form faiths and Frames of references  

Grasp and Get along,

Harbor hospitality and Help habitations,

Intellectualize and Internalize,

Justify and Jump to conclusions,

Kindle our interests and Kindly deal with others,

Like or Love something or someone and Live along with it,

Manifest in many realms and Mark that conditioning in all of them,

Nurture habits and Nicely develop social networks,

Operationalize activities and Obsessively overrate them,

Prioritize preferences and Proclaim and parade them with pride,

Question social actions and Queue up to react,

React to issues and even Reason based on these identities;

Shape our sensitivities and Sense of significance

Tolerate and Take inside our ‘mind space [time]’ to synergize,

Understand and Use it [conditioning] to connect with the world

Validate various values systems and Vilify those not falling in line

Work our ways to Weave life patterns validated by these identities leading to

Xenial relationships and Xenophobic exclusions,

Yield to pressures of political correctness and Yonder into fantasized future,

Zealously engage in all hypocrisies and Zip file them for future conditioning.

 

If this conditioning and wearing an identity on us is universal and is an inevitable aspect of the social milieu wherein we human beings [as social animals] are born, then we cannot avoid it or escape it through hyper philosophizing it as a collective wisdom.

 

It is these identities which manifest in the majority of human activities and also glue societies together in various forms of regional/national traditions, cultures, languages, practices, customs as well as international interactions.

 

So, without all these human beings, culturally and psychologically will hover in suspended animation with ‘inane vagueness or vague inanity’ or take up counter or anti-conditioning camps.

 

Therefore, the best we can do is to avoid succumbing to it totally and not allow it to overpower us so much as to stifle our growth, freedom to frankly express and lead a life as we deem it correct or calm or conducive to cohabit.

 

Hence, those types of conditioning which are fundamentally having a very negative, harmful and violent impact on all the above listed activities must be made to reform and transform from within , failing which , everyone must have at least the freedom to withdraw to secure sanity for the sake of humanity.

 


 

Education misuse

It is unfortunate that 'education' has been made into a subject of complexity and controversies where subjective and relative claims are made to use innocent children and impressionable minds as guinea pigs to suit such claims.

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Statements scrutiny

Present day statements are subjected to scrutiny everything from microscope to telescope will be used find ​out whether ​opinions are  gender neutral, non racist and devoid of  the following :-political undercurrents, ideological overtones, hidden agenda, ulterior motives, lurking suspicions, simmering discontent, extrapolation of any 'ism', nudging in narratives etc.​.​

​​

That way definitions become too elaborate but ensure to avoid controversies, ambiguities​ and navigate through excessive scrutiny etc.

Definition are a must but they must not have hidden agenda based irrelevant extrapolations, they preferably must not avoid the intrinsic attribute of the thing or concept being defined or preferably embed it in the definition​ and everything must be calibrated to contextual relevance.​

ideological identities

We need a philosophical attitude ( to seek based on unbiased actual observation and question without inhibition), 

a scientific mindset, 

a rational analysis with contextual relevance imbued with humanitarian and 

environmental concerns. 

Life must not be confined to any ideological identities, conceptual cages or theoretical theatrics.

MSM superficiality

 The problem is modern day MSM reporters neither report facts nor listen to nor read fully as they are in a hurry to cherry pick and link s​omething to their preconceived narrative. Instead of where your father in law's latest residence is, they may say your latest father in law's residence.

Ideological identities can harm

​It is ​unfortunate ​that ideological identities are prioritized in relationships. Worse still viewed as eternal ( aftercall human life itself temporal) axiomatic truths/ wisdom. 

They are used as tools to extrapolate and interpret everything. 

We need philosophical attitude, scientific mindset, rational analysis with humanitarian and environmental concerns.

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Gratitude

 Yes this thankless ungrateful attitude, sometimes even betrayal.



This makes one wonder of what use is all the philosophies which are sprinkled in every realm about the 'values' based on moral high ground? 


We take everything for granted but when granted and get it we brush it off as our entitlement and act as if we are doing a favor for being available to receive the bounties. This is there everywhere on one side and on the other side some act as privileged lord's who can throw their weight around by any means and get things done.


There are no basic human gestures of gratitude and appreciation , even if there is no recognition. 


We have developed a collective national psychology of criticising and questioning everything except our own attitudes and contributions.


We don't value many simple and humane things which are more vital for cohabitation rather than elaborate rituals. I know people may get offended when I say this. I say it purposely, because Indians don't take care of the elders in their own family but will do all sorts of fanfare for funeral and post funeral rituals for years on and give lengthy discourse on that, this happens in most regions of many religions in India.


We can claim to be better evolved citizens only when we respect scientific approaches, exhibit rational attitude, manifest humanitarianism and adopt a cosmopolitan outlook which respects everyone's talents, time and trade-offs which cannot be compromised and taken for granted.

Morals, social discipline , ethics who must decide and why ?

Everyone knows the mantra in biology 'ontogeny reflects phylogeny' individual brain development reflects evolution.



Most institutions empowered with drafting morals and ethics ( mostly religiously prescribed and/or politically sanctioned through law till now) have not factored in and then,  balanced the following aspects:- humanitarianism, sensitivity to other species and environment, respect for science and fundamental normal rationalism with enough room for fun, enjoyment, adventure, explorative , imaginative, creative instincts  etc.

Unbridled license as freedom at too young an age ( though temporarily enjoyable) and excessive restrictions in the name of irrelevant disciplines ( though can produce stereotyped functioning robots) can harm the development of both the individual as well as the society. 

So, proper nuanced regulation of behaviour without hampering growth of a plasticity of the brain can happen when scientifically qualified neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and evolutionary biologists, social scientists frame the dos and don'ts, then it would factor in scientifically the plasticity of the brain and how human brain develops through the connections it makes and how it relates till it becomes stable as a crystallized one with all its accumulated knowledge and prejudices. 


In the absence of these we have prescriptions in the name of morals, each institution inserting and removing activities according to their versions of right and wrong and spills over everything from dress to the way one sits to the way one responds to natural physical and emotional issues etc.

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Learnings

In our enthusiasm to promote certain technological advancements let us not belittle human activities

 

Childhood's treasury of learnings 

 

Innocent curiosity, intense observations, playful imitations, delicious day dreams, incredible imaginations, far-fetched fantasies are  part of childhood's treasury of learnings which get any normal child's mind instantly involved, intensely internalized but everything without any obligation and hangover.

 

Learning meanders through these are we grow 

 

As one grows the acquired knowledge, accumulated thoughts, acquired or adopted biases, impulses, instincts, intuitions, various levels of understanding, experience gained through churning of life in all its actions, interactions, reactions and so on , most of these calibrated and lead to conditioning through the ideological, religious, political and socio-cultural milieu based influences and impacts. There are components of  Collaborative intelligence, Creative intelligence, Existential intelligence, Intrapersonal intelligence, Naturalistic intelligence, Emotional intelligence, Interpersonal intelligence, Musical intelligence, Body-kinaesthetic intelligence, Linguistic intelligence, Logical-mathematical intelligence, Scientific intelligence, Spiritual intelligence, Spatial intelligence, Predictive intelligence, Visualization intelligence, Conceptualizing intelligence, Philosophical enquiring intelligence to seek meanings and grasp the unknown and vaguely perceived aspects of life etc.  

 

In addition we have as part of all the above or existing besides all the above critical thinking, analysis and creativity all of which manifest in the process of learning, understanding and expressionsAll of these influence and impact our perceptions and perspectives; ideas, identity and interpretations; extrapolations and expressions; reasoning, excuses, justifications and our conceptualization of ideals.

 Almost all of these are parts of overall learning, understanding and thinking. Each one may manifest in various degrees at different times or in different topics and situations

 

So, human intelligence as a whole or even parts of it cannot be over simplified, over generalized and definitely not at all be homogenized. Hence, cannot be replaced through any short cut methods or means or tweaked through any of the much hyped technologies or software though they may help in speeding up lot of repetitive, routine, mundane tasks and manual work and spatially shrink expanse of area of monitoring etc.