Consciousness!!!

If there is one thing that always eluded both scientists and philosophers alike, its consciousness...many scientists and philosophers tried to explain it in their own way and a few even dragged quatumn mechanics into this...
so wuts this thingie exactly???

def: "Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment." --wikipedia.org


although the definition looks simple, there is no real test to conclude that something has consciousness (there are tests for certain aspects of it like Turing test, mirror test etc.,)
after all this hype, do u think I am gonna crack that!! that too in this lil blog :p
don't worry, here I am present my views on why consciousness could have evolved...
as usual I am not gonna use mystical things like god, spirit etc as my hypotheses...

to start with, everyone of us knew that we do certain things consciously and others unconsciously...
taking a look at our brain... It evolved in such a way tht we have 2 kinds of processes
one is unconscious way like animals (most animals don't have consciousness or atleast they did not pass the mirror and other tests and I am making an assumption that our brain is no more special than other animals except we have different count of neurons), and they are good at surviving... ('course we differ from them due to more neurons(per body weight) n connections and we have better computaional power like a better chip...)
but evolution somehow chose a second way of doing things (or controlling body)...
the conscious way... If doing things unconsciously is good enough why did we evolve consciousness in first place??

Conscious computation always does things by following the steps as u learned them... So while thinking consciously or taking decisions consciously, for eg. calculating 23 times 47 you always do the computation by reciting the steps u learned... So u calculate at the rate you speak!!! this is a limitation of conscious thinking... but definitely u can do better than that... there are living examples like savants who compute by seeing numbers (I remember a British savant doing that) and hence way faster than most of us...
moreover, our brain controls our conscious perception by allowing it to see a part of reality or sometimes distorted reality as in the case of seeing ghosts, god etc., so consciously we see wut we are allowed to see by our brain
clearly in the above 2 cases, conscious thinking is crippling our computational capacity...
this following your acts consciously to do a task is to mimic others and which is basic in humans

but there is something that dwarfened these.... It is the ability to learn frm others and to teach others
the techniques or knowledge we gained and this prevents us from reinventing the wheel. As we know tht neural networks can't give us the method/mechanism to solve but jus solves... Conscious thinking gives the method too, but at the price of our computational capacity and this ability is much more powerful than we can think of.
I think this is the reason why we more developed than other species... and so this property of consciousness evolved and survied...

In conclusion, I would like to quote my favourite person, Isaac Newton-"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." and that explains it all...


PS:Well... nobody really understood how brain works till now... though we know a few things abt brain, like its made up of neurons and they communicate by chemical transmitters etc.,
so this is a pure speculation of my own...

Beauty n the GOD

why do people enjoy nature?? for that matter why do we feel happy to see lush green pastures, hills or streams?
Wuts this thingie called GOD?? in atheists point of view, why does there have to be GOD and why do almost all humans no matter what background they come from have one??

i am tryin to find an answer based on the assumption that useless traits are not carried along with evolution... which is kinda valid
appreciating natural beauty seems to be coz of this... not long ago we were searching for food like our ancestral primates and running behind streams for water...lush green forests are always the source of good food either it be fruits or those small animals that eat them...
to appreciate that even today seems stupid to me... but i guess our definition of beauty changes...
may be after a few generations, those hills n streams dont make humans as merrier as the sight of restaurant or smthng, which became our source of food...

coming to god, people always like to be amused and want to believe in mysterious things...i gotta quote A.Einstein here-"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science."
there is a reason to it... our brain can be approximated as bayesian.( So, we try to presume things based on prior experiences rather than believe in what we see... infact our brain processes information and gives us substituted reality so that it fits in to what we know till then, phantom limbs being the best example...) so we assume things to a certain bit and any new predators or surprises are covered by our brain and are prevented from entering our conscious perception, unless they make a big impact so as to be accommodated in to our priors.
this led to selection of individuals who have affinity towards surprising/new changes/things in the environment (n apparently survived those changes/predators) ... so we are here, bound to pay attention to mysterious things which do not fit in our common sense...
coming to god, our ancestors observed patterns in environment but couldn't find proper reason as to why the world had to behave in a predictable way... they attributed it and everything which cant be explained to god... we do that even today!
this carved god as the conglomeration of mysteries and we are bound to pay so much of attention that we treat it as supreme power n all...
infact there is this thing called amygdala in our brain that some believe is responsible for such beliefs as god... also this part is resposible for our emotions like fear, pain, anxiety, pleasure etc., these emotions play a key role in deciding what memory is to be retained for long term... Interestingly enough, this region is responsible for learned fear!! does this give u any clue?? well... i think god is a kinda learned fear! its like a complex combination of mystery and fear... we are all addicted to it but we dont see it coz most of us r this way...

i dont wanna make anymore stmnts on god as its more of an emotional stuff to many...

i guess u got my point

Brave New World

these days everyone wants freedom...wtf! freedom won't feed u
but thank god...we are already moving in right direction...
we are specializing in certain skills but still its a weaker version of it...
a more stronger and better version would be like cells in multi-cellular organisms or insects in insect-colonies... in both these examples, an individual is more or less dumb n meaningless but as a colony they act intelligently and that strategy has proven to work... after all ants are here for millions of yrs... as described in BNW, why not make people specialists in more basic things like reproduction etc., this will not work in today's world coz ppl still think making someone deprived of so called freedom, sex etc., is cruel... may be it sounds like tht for u too..after all we are made to think like that... but wut if one day we can reduce testosterone n estrogen levels and make drones for work n these hormone rich individuals for procreation?? wut if we can engineer our preferences and make drones think they r the happiest creatures in the world?? why all this stupid struggle for mating n wasting time and money?? if we want to live n survive then why not do that more efficiently? i think this dream is not far way... once we reverse engineer brain, this can be possible...

Advances in neuroscience will one day make this utopian world a reality...
i am waiting for that day...
always remember...
'u can fight a lot of enemies and survive... but if u fight ur own biology or nature.. u will always lose'

PS:
I am pretty much disappointed to see BNW being categorized as dystopian!! it is in many ways similar to 1984 and i have no problem classifying 1984 as dystopian and i guess u can clearly see why...(in case u dint read 1984, it relies on forced methods and punishments to control people) but BNW doesnt force you but molds you and wuts the problem with that?
as long as people think they are happy doing something and its useful to society as a whole, it doesnt matter what they do and revolutions make no sense... who wants freedom with poverty and problems?
i think its an epitome of utopian society...

u knw why i hate this world?

i think u already guessed tht i am frustrated with this world... main reason being its not goin the way its meant to be... i know thts a bold stamnt to make but still... thts wut i feel
my assumptions/axioms in making tht stmnt are...belief in science ('course my personal rarely updated version)
i think that basic axiom itself kinda gives me the concept of 'evolution' which is inevitable...
i know tht inevitable part sounds a bit tricky but its like 'I think therfore I am'.... u cant really contradict tht stmnt, nor can u help but thinkin its trivial n stupid...
well, coming back to my point... evolution is like a searching algorithm which keeps lookin for optimal solution... but as we know successful life is such a complex equation.. it has many solutions...infact its the number of species ever lived... considering jus earth... and success in this case can be defined as being able to survive for long time... and yes bacteria n viruses won the battle already... their KISS strategy works... tht leaves us with complex life forms...
among these forms, ones with this gray fluffy substance are selected to survive...
yes, brain gives them a better chance of survival by increasin adaptability... brain initially developed due to predator-prey games... then the next kink came with social behavior... we can clearly see hw big this step is... otherwise do u think a bunch of monkeys can survive this long!! this kinda social behaviour is the best example of holism... in this case whole is a lot better than parts...
neways the point i wanna make is tht social behaviour n cooperation led to wut we r today...
and i am convinced that we can only survive collectively... now freeze this... now our domain for evolutionary change is limited to solution which survives together... and this reminds me of another analogous thing which is our body itself... note that all the cells are alive by themselves but still they live together and they played the game of life pretty successfully...
now comes the main stmnt i wanna make... takin tht analogy out to species... i make a bold conclusion that an optimal solution is when individuals specialize in certain things which are essential for survival of species... and i know tht this stmnt might remind u of Brave New World... well even i have tht in mind while writing this...

and individualism is the enemy of survival...

i have more stmnts to make... but this post is becoming tool long... hope i have this energy to continue this in my next post...

caffeine is next best thing to life...

I always wonder why caffeine is addictive... when I had my first cup, I thought I would never ever have another... well i was obviously wrong, otherwise i would'nt be writing this..
I recently came to know of some interesting facts abt coffee...

"Coffee is the second most commonly traded commodity in the world, trailing only petroleum"

"Goats actually discovered the coffee plant. Their shepherd noticed that they were getting very hyper; therefore, one day, he followed their every move, and found out that they were eating a strange berry that was keeping them awake all day and night."

"Recent research has uncovered additional stimulating effects of coffee which are not related to its caffeine content. Coffee contains an as yet unknown chemical agent which stimulates the production of cortisone and adrenaline, two stimulating hormones."

Coffee has infinite benefits... n 'course a few risks... but who cares... after all its the "GOD's Drink"

love... wuts tht?? wuteva....

Marazziti, prof of psych at univ of pisa, compared the lover's serotonin levels with those of a grp of ppl suffering from OCD(obsessive compulsive disorder) and another grp who were free from both passion and mental illness. Levels of serotonin in both the obsessive's blood and the lover's blood were 40% lower than those in her normal subjects. Translation: Love and OCD could have a similar chemical profile.
Translation: Love and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart.
Translation: Don't be a fool. Stay away.