Reductionism

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"..

Kaisa laga yeh aarbitapa??

Tipping Point in the Brain

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?

Quotes iLike

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.

src: http://www.openculture.com/2010/05/james_joyce_encoded_in_artificial_life.html

What a dream!!

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....

All the quantised quantities and the bits...

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'....

What say??

Ahhhhh ?

Well, this is the best feeling that I have had in this week.. After all the those torturous french 5 hours per day

classes and all those escaping from the heat, this is the best reward that any person can get at the end...

All my prayers which I sincerely used to say every afternoon and every eveing while travelling for the classes for

the past one week [exactly, it's 5 days] have finally been adressed..

With the rains outside and the cool wind that this blowing outside, it's now easy to forget the past week ..and

gather courage for the next week... For the first time, I stood in the rains with full consiousness and realised

how much there is to Feel... How much there is out there which we pass on but never feel it.. Either we feel so

lame to feel those things or we just dont have time for it...

This is the best pleasure that any one can get with the minimum cost.. I just think if only a feel of a woman's

hair is as pure and delightful as the feeling of wind blowing accross the face with such moisture ..

Well, I dont want to sound crazy or conservative but just as I don't want these miracles of nature to change, I

even ont want the Indian villages to change... That day, just before coming back here, I was cycling along the

canals [which were dry, damn guj govt..].. but I had a similar feeling.. wind so warm and fresh was blowing over

the rice and wheat and tobacco and the coconut trees.. I stopped my linking park now making noise in my ears and

just stopped there for some time.. I saw a small girl playing with a calf and teenagers going to take milk from the

dairy [or going to give, I am not sure of that].. and all that CRAP which I used to memorise in school about the

villages.. But dome things were different.. But a Hut [if u tell a home having TV, kitchen, electricity, Tata Sky

but having asbestos roof and unpainted brick walls a hut ] had an old man coughing on a bed in the yard.. But then

I realised how wrong every one has been about development in the villages.. It is true that our villages are

developing and that too at a fast rate.. But the lifestyle of our villages and thanx to our village women, the

homes have not even changed a bit.. I mean, we, who live in mis sized towns gotta learn from these homes how to

welcome development and be the same person we were 10 years before.. And yes, to those who condemn development- our

villages are still very beautiful

On my return trip, I happened to pass slowly in front if the temple.. and saw grandpas and grandmoms with their

kids and groups of wives of societies followed by groups of their children and then groups of young high school-

college girls and groups of boys in bike.. I felt what NRIs feel when they come back.. Did I leave this world when

I shifted my home , or when I was shifted to 10th grade??.. Well, now I long to return to that world ..

I just hope I can return to that world again.. or just have glimses of it sometime later..

The QCA paradigm

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!!!!) ...

Lets hope we can Rock!!