TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
This is the first time I am writing directly on the blog and not pasting it from a notepad draft. [perhaps because its 3 in morning here in Nancy and I might be a bit tired].
So, today was a strange day for me. I had realisations for my actions of last week, I had realisations about myselves and the best part of the day [Actually early morning of the next day] was my refreshing talk with Alexandre at 2 in morning on the road.
So, it all started with the irritating friends doing planning for the holidays of Toussants and the more irritating Skype. By the way, I noticed that the first person on your list is always highlighted in a group call. So, Skype makes him responsible for the White Noise. How Clever!! So, 8 hours of course in day and rain and chilling cold and the great above mentioned Amis.. And triggered by my actions of last week and the 'one thing' that had been on the back of my mind the whole week..
And the never shutting brain of mine.. Just yesterday I realised that my brain can shut also as I dint know when I slept and had a 'pure' dreamless night afterall . But the next day, Prof. Patney and Prof. SD Joshi came into my afternoon nap to remind me of the crimes I had participated in 2nd year..
And so, as the darkness of the night approached, I thought more and more and didn't know of what!!
So, here I go on the road at 1 in night to think of the things I was thinking.. So, I do the thinking walk which I had lost in college but well known at my home.. And I found many solutions [not exactly, but atleast categerosied the problems ] as the excuse I should give my professor why I didn't do the required thing in my project [that I dont agree with your Idea and I dont do things which I dint agree - lets hope I dare to say that!!] .. And how I tend to generalise things from single events and how this reflects well in forming my habits [because I dont try much] and also my project at LORIA .. But the thing at the back of the mind was still not satisfied..
And so, when I was trying to feel my fingers of legs to see if they are still hanging out there, I found this amazing stranger on the road 'which called himselves' (the direct translation of 'qui s'apple' ) Alexandre. He also was a distressed soul like me wandering on the lonely streets of Nancy. He was doing his PhD in BioChem (Why do I always find maggu people ??) from Strasbourg and he was here for his holidays at his parents. And the pradox - the guy wanted fresh air in 2 in morning in holidays - imagine his 'parents' !!.. Anyways, so we talked about many things .. from which french poodle he had .. to Why he should Visit India.
But the best thing happened when he asked, "Why are you here??" .. I said to 'Think' .. "And You?" .. He said, "Everything except thinking.." .. That's when I had this great realisation that I am not the only one in this crap-bag, but I am the only one who is not getting used to it.
And trust and hope that the best answer to the 'thing' at the back of mind would come only if I let time to give me the answer. Sometimes, you can't do anything about something but just leave it to take it's natural course.
So, with deep fresh air in my lungs and calmness of mind [And exitement to write this blog..] .. I left Alexandre without any contact whatsoever for future. Perhaps it was like the stories of Leo Tolstoy when god himself comes when you are lonely and deserted , or not.. But that guy was the same [functionally - [damn, ma tete]] , for me... I might not meet the guy again as it will soon be snow here and streets more lonely..
And so, with this, for my friends in IIT - "Enjoy the Rendezvous", for my friends in India, "Good Morning" , for the 'thing' at the back of my mind, "Hope you are sleeping well" ..and for me, "Bon Nuit!!"
PS: I hope this blog written live over the night is as revolutionary for me as was such a blog for Mark Zukerberg [the founder of Facebook, when he created an illegal site FaceMash] ..
Brain has always been a very interesting in difficult domain of Neurosciences and Biology. I currently chose a project course work on modelling the structure of Brain using the the currently proposed Re-inforced Driven Dimensionality Reduction (RDDR) model at LORIA-INRIA a computer science Research lab at Nancy, France.
So, while studying for the project, I realised one thing which the engineers are often not advised (i think) to do - reverse engineering. And this was exactly what I was doing. The brain given to me, a final functioning object (philosophically, created by Lord) was studied from different perspective to create a model of the thing and with the ultimate aim, of course, to replicate and improve it.
So, why this method?
We could have a more constructive approach. I mean, can we recreate the whole evolutionay history or simulate evolution? This way, starting from the different theories of origin of life, to the different theories of evolution and the development of brain, I can attack all the areas.
The main question is, but how do I model all this things?
So, there are three parties- the organism(s), the resources and the nature. And each have the Darwin's law which helps it function. The characterisitc of organisms is to have Variation and the motivation to produce 'plusiers' offsprings. The natural resources need to be limited and the nature has the respnsibility to do Natural selection by the survival of the fittest. But the characterisitcs which are transmitted to the next generation must be seen carefully so that it is not lamarkism (or even test lamarkism).
The main challenge is to define the above actors mathematically.
A world is defined with the initial natural resources.
An organism is a function that can sense, utilise, modify and produce natual resources (even fight wars!!) .
An organism (function) can reproduce other many (tendency to reproduce more) organisms (functions) with minor change in parameters (Variation) from which many functions will die young.
The growth function of organisms can also result in Variations.
The death function is executed by the nature (using Survival of the fittest).
The 'Competition' is realised by the nature by managing the resources which indirectly affect the organisms [Thats why people in developing world are 'better' than developed world].
This, I guess seems very similar to the Cellular Automata thing. So, can we make the cellular automata approach real world using parameters? And in this path, if we discover 'chaos' [by feeding in the numbers back like the MIT scientist in 1962], we need to change completely the nature we look at many parts of the world.
This is well, but what about the brain?
Well, one approach I think can be used is to reflect all the things at the level of brain and using the same 5 rules of evolution at different levels of brain (for example, between neurons to between brains) can we evolute brain?
We can have the resources for brain and the motivation is to aquire resources and expand itself and increase its population. The same for a neuron also. So, this is a two step thing - first decide the world for every level (world is the natural resouces and the acting nature at that level) and then give the laws of evolution to each of the actors of that level. And reflect this at all levels. This can be done for all the different systems, I guess.
Also, as there are cooperative and mutually benficiary groups forming in the nature, this thing can also be found at other levels , for example neurons where a group of neurons can combine to perform a particular function.
One assumption if of infinite computing power which I guess our computer scientists will be glad to give.
I hope we can solve many questions with this method of constructive analysis carrying onwards from the already done reverse engineering analysis (Darwin's laws and many other things). This is the way designers solve problem. Let's see if we have two world wars in this simulation also.
I found this video, I think it might be interesting to watch:
Here's another interesting link. The video is a bit long but after 17mins, the only thing you can say is: 'WOW'
So, this is the most I can be french in writing this thing. Alors, I have been in france for about three weeks now and without anything to do {except see you know who and do you know what..}.
And so I met the student junta here and started knowing them. And the first thing which comes to my mind whenever I meet a new person is- Please God, this person should be speaking English. But alas, I have been blessed very less.
This is how the scenario is - You find many (about 10-15 percent) Asian faces in the crowd and apart from the other 20 percent ERASMUS [the inter european exchange programme] and the other 10 percent from the other countries. Among other countries, one finds Brasilians, Turkish, etc and the countries which were once the colonies of france (from Africa). But where the hell are the Indians?
I think Indians just missed out this easy target.. Or the Indian ass is so lasy that they don't want to go out of the comforts of English or they have the Advantage of English and can always go to English speaking countries. Whatever the reason, the Indians are simply not here..
As french still have the Ego to survive in the modern globalised world without learning the language of the globe, they still dream of spreading their culture. So, they teach their language to the students from countries which does not use English at all. Voila, here are our friends Chineses and the brasilians and the kazaks and who knows. For them, learning French or the English is the same. They enter into industrialised academic system anyways. And here is where the closure starts, the intencive for learning french is less for English Colonised students and so, they never pursue the french language and the french education after that. Donc, applying the Hebbian rule [i got to know it just recently, so need to use it[the use is justified given my love for self similarity between society and neurons]] the relation between the france and the non english speaking countries increases and this time culturally and voluntarily. And so, the perception of the world for the french is the non english speaking counties a China and kazakh and turkey in Asia and Tunisia and Senegal and Morroco and Congo in Africa and Brrasiliaa in S of America. The unconventional love for the two induatrial non english speaking countries of Japan and France is also apparent.
And where is Uncle Sam and our Queen? Well, they have the whole world in their eyes as the non english speaking learn english as easily as they learn french.
And so who the real winner is?? Yes, it's of course China.. They are everywhere .. They learn English or french , they just evolved into different species some 30 years ago when the china started induatrialising..
And what about Bharat Mata? Yes, her children are undiversifying into english speaking parrots from the many Indian languages they used to speak. So, the gift of Britishers, the English is not a boon for Indians against Chinese as it has limited our Vision of the world to only English speaking nations..
Merci bcp for reading...
PS: If you don't believe me, just try to remember how much you know about the english speaking nations of the world and the non english speaking nations..
This is a very very very weird and useless reductionism.. but i thought it would be fun to share something like this..
This thought stuck to mind in my french class when some guys were trying to sell a 'time machine' ..
Off late, we have seen many movies like butterfly effect(s), and more in which the HERO tries to change how the course of events unrolled by going back in time and changing things like the decision taken, etc..
As far as I know, whenever we take a decision, we take another path in another parallel universe..
Donc, "to traverse accross the parallel universes, we just need to construct a time machine"..
First of all, the title has been stolen. Some days ago, I read an article in Scientific American about the 'Tipping point' in brain. The article was very enlightening and quite interesting. In a nutshell, it stated that there are instances when the regular communication between neurons [which is like every two people talking different things with each other in a crowd of many-many (really very large) people] is 'paused' and all the neurons synchronize (cohere) and are concerned with only one message. The voltage measured using electrode array increases. Also, the voltage at different parts of the brain increase and look similar - depicting that these regions are synchronized at that instant of time. This was compared to the idea of 'tipping point' wherein an idea requires an enough(critical) number of people to be spread to after which the idea just spreads like a BOOM. So, the author points out how society is also a pseudo-neuronal network.
Well, I felt this conclusion to be very cool. But is this speciality of similarity only between brain and society, or can it be between other groups of many objects that interact with their small subgroup of neighbours but also show peculiar wholesome characterstics. One example that I can think of is - lets take many atoms in a tube. So, the atoms interact with each other within a small region of influence. Now, if we have small pulses of synchronized motion, then if the motion is hard enough (enough speed and number of atoms) , then the pulses may become a trend - a tipping point effect, I guess. Who knows such tipping effects might be taking place at all levels and this is the ultimate scalability and self similarity of nature?
Also, as tipping effect, can we attach other characterisitcs that are similar to brain and society? One of the major puzzules is consiousness. People have always talked about the consciousness of a society - But it was always discussed in philosophical or economic way. We can now talk about consioussness in more scientific way after this 'Coherence' effect in brain.
Another nice but wierd analogy which could be found is the 6 degrees of freedom in the society. According to it, we know every other person on earth via 6 people in between on average. (Like A knows B, B knows C has 1 degree of freedom between A and C). So, is this true for brain? This could also explain why there was almost instant synchonisation between geographically distant parts of brain. This explanation could save the terms used by the author the article like 'long neurons'.
Another important doubt that arises in my mind is about the use of word 'pause' used in the article. What does it really mean? Does this mean that they revive their activities once the message has been processed? If the revival is not exact, does it mean that the message affected the talking between individual cells that was going on? So, if the talking between the cells was taken to be independent of message before it came, then where is that talking place now? If nowhere, then it means that independent talking only gave rise to the message. Dude, what the hell is happening up there?
One might have heard about artificial life created in Lab by The Craig Venter Institute. It was the first time that bases were assembled as wanted and a complete living organism was formed. And the mother of this organism : A computer!!
Well, what I liked most about the development was how the Quotes which were watermarked in the codon (To show the organism was really synthetic..) truly reflected the significance of the development. Here are the quotes and 'feel' them for yourself..
“TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” – James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man;
“SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”-A quote from an Oppenheimer biography, American Prometheus;
“WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.” – Richard Feynman.
I feel that what's true about dreams is that you have a nice one when you sleep at the most unexpected hour. I had an aWsome dream on sunday morning (well, it was 1'o clock but I hadn't had lunch so it was morning for me). I was reading a novel when I fell asleep on hostel reading room couch (Yes, the novel was that boring).
I remember that, I was worried that I had not been studying for the project and we had to meet the prof tommorow. But when Murari came to wake me up to go to insti lib for studying, I had a big smile on my face.. I think that was the most eleted I would have been in the summers yet. I dreamt that our hostel had got new residents like every year, but just that this time, they were girls!! Yes, gorgeous darlings and each one as awsome as the other. I also had a small fight with one of them (that was the most fun part).. Also, we had a cafe (you may call it a pub if you like) and again, beautiful creatures were hanging out there.. Then, I had to go back to hostel as I had to prepare for the french exam which was due at alliance and and I had already accepted that I am not going to learn any french as I had missed THE week. So, here I am back at hostel and I see this beautiful girl.. I just stare at her.. She did not resemble anyone I knew, but god, my imagination is so gooood.. But I had to run to insti gate to get a rickshaw (and I mean auto here... we tell them rikshaw back at home ) for the classes. This was the only bad part of the dream when I had to argue with the drivers for reducing the price (though, as always I didn't know the actual rate.. but definately the driver was telling much more).
And here comes Murari.
I was then wondering what did that sudden and unexpected dream mean? It reflected as my concerns lately, the hectic french classes, the irritating auto drives to alliance and my crush!! ... But why didn't I see the face of my crush? I felt all the qualities of crush in that girl.. Maybe, it's just that when my feelings are personified, they look like her.. But why didn't I see the face of my crush??
Also, what about my project?? Why didn't it become a part of my dream? There should have been some event like meeting Prof. Manish Sharma.. But Alas.. Je desu... Or is it that all those things that occupy enough of my consicouss mind just don't surface up when I let it loose.. Is it that my brain just keeps my subconsiouss thoughts in a safe vault and just that the tought is absent in subconsicouss mind when it's in consiouss mind.. Or was it that conciouss thoughts set the MOOD of the whole dream and the sub coniouss thoughts just was a special event just reinforcing the mood setup by the consioussmind...
GOD, this is a nice puzzle... I hope I have such dreams again and that I could look into my brain....
If the physical quantities are used to designate bits 0 & 1 because they are now understood to be quantised, can quantised distace be used in some way?.. Say, realising the good old 'ABACUS'....
Yeah, I really think this is gonna be the new paradigm. When I first discussed to project with murari, I thought it's just some sort of an extension or modification of the existing thing.. But then I learnt it was related to cellular automata that I had come accross like Comway's game of Life, thanx to stumble upon..
But then, I learnt about the ambitious ideas to implement it using the Quantum devices..That was when I got a 'feel' of how great a thing that it..
Just imagine a small, high speed and low power using device using the Quantum and classical mechanics so splendidly..
Yes, this might not be an end but this could be a quite elegant transition from classical mechanics used for computation, to a really quantum one..
Lets, see what cellular automata is -
It consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as "On" and "Off" . The neighbours determine the state of the cells in the next generation. And changing the generations and using simple rules helps in computation..
So, in quantum CA, we have blocks that have 1 or 0 determined by Quantum states. Also, the interaction between the cells is determined by laws of physics - but in this case, the interaction , in majority of cases confirms with our classical physics that is a bit more intuitive..
Hence, what we have got is quantum units that interact classically.. So, we can exploit the advantages of these units - like small size and power benifits, and at the same time not going away from our classical understandings and keeping our designs simple and intuitive..
As of now, we are able to arrange those blocks to make simple building blocks as wire, majority gates..
What we are working on is basically physical implementation of the building blocks and analysing it's error probabilities (it's quantum afterall, you can rely on it ..but only with a certain probability!!!!) ...
This weekend has been a terrible one for me so far. This was simply because there was too much of LOVE in my life - just being involved in it (neither giving and taking).
I have never felt this way ever before. It used to fell so sacred and pure just by thinking about it. But alas, it was all past - just one of my fantasies during adolescence.
Never before, I had given myself a doze of love so powerful. And the result? I got immuned to it. I just freakin' stopped 'feeling' things!! (I think this could develop into an immunization technique againt love).
So, for all those people who want to fill in their pockets with shining metal, here's the most fool proof technique..
On a extended weekend, just when you are all weary and tired, start watching this 'beautiful' movie - 'Sleepless in Seattle'. But Caution : Don't pre-read it's reviews. And as the title starts falling (this was the best translation of gujarati which I could make :( ), hold your breath and let the testosterone (i dunno if it's adrenaline or testosterone) flow gushing through your arteries and be prepared to be thrilled.
By the time you are finished watching the movie, you have learnt four things - 1.What bullshit?? 2. The child was so irritating .. and 3. Estrogen has dampened the spirits of Testosterone. 4. Who your next deaktop wallpaper is..
So, after wasting three hours of your precious sleep, you settle for 7 hours of sleep and wake up in the morning.
Again, you want to read a love novel (this time you have read the reviews - so you are cutting your arm yourselves) so that you repair the damage done (not by the movie - but you realise how much you have been damaged after the movie). So, you read the 'fiction' for 'self-help' . When you complete the novel, you have gone into a chronic depression (what does that even mean??)..Now is the time you do the thing that gives you 'real' pleasure.. Yes, that's what every single (and lucky!!) boy does -- you open up your laptop and start which occupies your computer's screen 70 percent of the time.. You start the best thing that works on your 'ancient' lappi - ROADRASH..
The final Conclusion Of the experiment : You killed the heart and the heart is happy!! .. QED..
PS : M going for filing this patent at the earliest..
