How we lost to steam

I am sure man knew how to convert water into steam from the very beginnings of the civilizations or even earlier. A slight twist to a straight rod of metal makes what is called a crankshaft. Now, if you combine steam with a crankshaft – you get a steam engine! Now historically we know that the discovery of steam engine led to the industrial revolution in Europe, because the steam engine made work extremely easy. The industrial revolution led to production of goods for which the industrialized nations needed markets. This led to imperialism by countries like Britain and France. I admit imperialism existed before also when Portuguese and Spanish voyagers traveled the world in ships. But, never before was the imperialism so widespread. It was a direct consequence of the industrial revolution, which was kick-started by the steam engine. The world as we know was shaped by imperialism. Even the world wars were its consequence. Had India and China not lost to Europe, they may well have been first world countries.

 

India and China have a 4000 year old history. They have been known to predict solar and lunar eclipses. The Chinese even had the knowledge of predicting the direction of the epicenter of an earthquake. They had discovered porcelain, magnetic compass and what not. Before the industrial revolution, India and China were mass producers and exporters of cloth. The expanse of their trade was such that they even had a trading route called Silk Route. Indians were experts in metallurgy. We had very strong kingdoms during the period of Iron age civilizations – that of Mauryas and Guptas. Ashoka’s pillars are one example of India’s strength in metallurgy. But, why could not they combine steam with a crankshaft? How much innovation it takes to do it? Why did it take as long as 16^th century to design a steam engine? I just don’t understand the reasons, but we all know what were the consequences. How the ability to make a small connection between steam and the crankshaft defined our 300 years of past. And then I wonder, what else is still out there, just waiting to be exploited - that will cause the next butterfly effect? And how to be the first ones to see it? So that we do not lose the race this time.

Stationary solution of thought

Suppose person X acts in a certain way. Now, person Y gets to know about X’s action and interprets it in some way. Now if X understands how Y will interpret his action, then this will influence his actions. But, if Y also understands that X would know how the action will be interpreted by him, then he would interpret X’s action in a different way, under the conditioning of awareness of X. And, if this process goes on and on, we get a stationary or an equilibrium solution of thought, which decides how X will act eventually. But, if the state space is discrete, then the solution may be oscillatory. For example, suppose my brother and I have a comic book, which we both want to take to school for reading.  The comic can be either in a shelf or in a bag. But, the school bus leaves in a minute, and so my brother can search for the comic at only one place. Now, if I know where the comic is and he asks me about it. Then, no matter what my answer is, the stationary solution of his interpretation will be oscillatory in nature.

Brain

The brain fascinates me – different facets of it - which hardly get noticed because we are so used to it. Different inputs get treated differently, and it constantly works involuntarily on those. And, sometimes it generates its own inputs (dreams) which do not get stored in the memory, but sure have some importance which we do not understand. How is so much information packed in our genome? Or should I ask, how does the brain know what to do? I think it is the wrong question to ask. We never ask how a polymer molecule knows how to behave in a given environment. We simply say that if we know the density of states of the polymer, then we will know how it will behave based on the set of rules we have already figured out. The density of states does not need a large memory to be saved, but it defines the polymer completely. I am sure someday we will find the density of states of the brain. Ghosh! What will be the possibilities then!

शनिवार की सुबह

बिस्तर पर हूँ बैठा हुआ,
हाथ में है एक किताब,
पढ़ तो रहा हूँ अक्षर कुछ,
पर मन में है एक ख्वाब.
लैपटॉप है टेबल पर,
सिर्फ दो हाथ की दूरी पर,
फ़ोन भी है पास में,
पर कोई बहाना  नहीं है दिमाग में.
विज्ञानं ने साधन तो दिए हैं अनेक,
पर चूंक हो गयी है एक.
कुछ ऐसा बना, विज्ञानिक
की इस बहाने का न रहे अस्तित्व
अपने आप ही मेरे मन का प्रतिबिम्ब,
उसकी नज़र के सामने आ चले.

The Tea

I boiled some water,

to make my tea,

And looked around to see you there,

But, I am only imagining things,

and you are still not here.

O boy, I made an extra cup,

As if you will come over to share.

I take my tea and go to my room,

And hope you will magically appear.

What are the chances for you to come,

I picked a pen and did a sum,

the probability came out to be

Only point zero zero one

The tailing one shines in my eye,

And I won't let it die

Pointers to brain

I don’t know but something has led me to post more blogs these days. I used to maintain a diary during my undergrad years till quite recently, and in it I used to write my thoughts and ideas as is. With ‘as is’ I mean, that unlike writing a blog or a comment to a blog, which needs to be read again to make it sound coherent and flowing, my writings in the diary were exactly the words I used to think in. The ideas which were very clear in my mind, when written in a diary, used to come out as words totally abstract. The entries in my diary are so abstract that no one else can ever understand what I am trying to say there. But, when I read them again even now, I can recall the context, my mood and exactly what I was trying to say when I wrote those words. Its amazing how those simple English sentences are cryptic messages that only I can decode. They are like pointers to my brain analogous to pointers in C++. They store the address location of the idea that came to my mind some years back. As soon as my mind sees those seemingly vague sentences it goes to the address location that still stores that idea and every data point is available to the active memory! It is quite amazing actually. It also tells me that our brain’s storage capacity is enormous. To further elaborate on this, consider this – when we recall something that happened years back, we actually recall those instances the way our eyes had recorded them - as clear motion pictures of extremely high quality (not as text files). Considering how many things we remember and can recall when encountered with small pointers, it is amazing how much we store in our brain!

I think a diary should not become extinct because of blogging. Most of the texts we read or write – in books, internet or papers are carefully crafted collections of sentences. One idea flows from the previous one and everything falls into place. A diary is the only proper manifestation of the complicated way our brain works. It needs no revisions simply because a diary is for ourselves to be read again and a blog is for others. One motivation of writing this is a hope that other bloggers realize what I am trying to say and dig up their diaries to read them again – to discover what pointers to brain exist in them!

Convergence

In our society, a convergence is required, or a compromise is required. Or else, a better personality would do – someone who is not in the first standard deviation of the Gaussian distribution of the ideas of our society. Well, by this I mean on the positive half of the Gaussian of course. There are numerous examples to prove this, and the best one is how people have good idea that some things are bound to occur or understand well the causality of different events. Convergence as such may be very difficult to achieve. It requires a fine equilibrium – mental and social. It requires perseverance as well as patience. If the fine equilibrium of convergence is disturbed, the situation gets converted to an avalanche of ignorance, which gets intensified by perseverance, a simple effect of funnel shaped free energy landscape of the entire situation (the goal is to reach the bottom of the funnel together). The avalanche should be dealt with patience and a stable mind set. Since convergence is not an equilibrium situation, an avalanche is quite inevitable I believe. But the avalanche can be controlled. That’s the key – by moving up the free energy curve. But, that requires work. And yes, moving up the free energy curve requires thermal energy. Higher the thermal energy, better the chances of saving the avalanche. Confused? Its crystal clear to me!

I have to buy roller skates, have to publish. I will be going to California for a week in June and to Minneapolis for a weekend and Chicago for another. I have to buy a sudoku book, and have to buy tickets for going to India. Have to learn all atom simulations and single chain mean field. Statistical mechanics is now becoming tougher and tougher. Oh shit, tax forms! and, why r people being so mean to me?