Didn't mean to hurt your feeling!

What is wrong with this statement?

Either you meant what you said or you are not able to say what you mean.
1) If you meant what you said then why being apologetic?
2) If you meant what you said and then felt guilty then you must admit it. Do it in an honest manner. Nothing hurts others as much as dishonesty. Nothing takes away from your social image more than dishonesty. People are very well equipped to detect dishonesty.
3) The second point applies also if you exactly meant what you said and you are not feeling guilty, but just trying to be a smart ass.
4) If you are unable to say what you mean then start by avoiding the expression "Didn't mean to hurt your feeling"! It's not going to help you. It's only going to affirm the state of a mutual indignation between you two. Thus, making both of you feel uneasy!

What to do? Make up for it by action and never try to resolve the issue on rational grounds. This are all assuming that you are not a fool to begin with!

Why truth did not prevail? The triple-F factor

Factuality: a necessary condition to stay truthful is to keep track of facts and stay faithful to them.

Fallibility: human beings make mistakes. Furthermore, they often find it more convenient to hide their fallibility from others, or rationalize their mistakes, or to blame others for their own wrong doings.

Friendliness: social life requires collaborating with others to achieve common goals or to compromise over incompatible objectives. Friendship by definition requires being biased with respect to certain individuals, thus, manipulating facts to their advantage. (1)

Looking at the state of affairs, evolution is telling us that there are other qualities that take precedence over truthfulness. These qualities equipped our ancestors to cope with the complications of living in groups.

So, why do we emphasize being truthful over being socially compatible? Is it simply a byproduct of the moral codes handed down to us by religion and philosophy? I have an alternative hypothesis: "Knowing that the other person is truthful helps us to lie better."

1) there is a 4th factor that I'm withholding from you. Is that considered not being truthful?

I have a quote on my Blog that goes like this: “If you wonder then ponder and never settle on the obvious the world will be a better place!” What I did not mention is what happens to you! The answer is that you go crazy, or at the very least you’ll find yourself belonging to a very tiny minority that is often being ostracized by the masses.

I really liked the Video and envy you guys for couple of reasons: Having a platform (videos) to express your ideals and aspirations is essential to coping with the contradictions that you encounter as a youth in today’s world. In addition, it seems like being in Vancouver also helps by being exposed to a wider range of people including (hopefully) more open minded .... That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to moving to Boston at the end of August; I'm being rotten in ...!

As far as the “harmony of science and religion” and the concept of “independent investigation of truth” are concerned, I have not yet figured them out! The first statement seems like a paradox if not an oxymoron! Religion is based on faith and science is never based on faith. The second statement concerns itself with “truth”, which in the context of religion means the “religious truth”. What if you conduct an “independent investigation of truth” and come at the conclusion that there is no absolute truth and religion is just man’s best attempt (as apposed to a divine intervention) to explain/mitigate the cause of his misery and ignorance? What if you conclude that having no religion is better for the mankind?

Maybe that’s the case, but you can’t go to a religious person and tell her on the face that he or she believes in superstition! That’s what I like about your video: it draws examples from science to educate people about tolerance and “independent investigation of truth”, and it does it in a non-invasive manner!

Best of luck!

A social networking fruit punch!

Like it or not many of us have become "habitual prisoners" of the social networking sites. Here, I use the term "prisoner" to emphasize the fact that we cannot leave them! Not only that but also the often neglected reality that we provide many of these sites with free labor by providing them with cheap content in the form of personal news, videos, etc. On the bright side, these sites provide us with effective tools for staying in touch with our friends, expressing ourselves, sharing, discussing, gossiping, flirting , and getting feedbacks (often that you are an idiot). So, it makes me think if it is possible to benefit from the services provided by these sites without being locked into any particular site. For instance, I wish to see the equivalent of the Gaim (the fruit punch of the instance massaging world) in the realm of social networking [1]. This is more of a challenge that needs to be addressed by the community of open source programmers. And I bet somebody somewhere has already thought about it! Let me know if you know of any such project.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29

Black Box Fantasy lyrics

The Facts of Life

Thou shalt forgive and update!

All empirical evidences point at the inevitability of disappointment even if realistic expectations are placed on individuals. This problem emerges due to an inherent difficulty in obtaining sufficient behavioral samples to construct an accurate model, as well as, our tendency to ignore, misinterpret, and forget empirical evidences as a consequence of emotional involvement with the subject.

So, the solution is not to forgive and forget, but to forgive and update the model!

All about me!

agor balipa mipor tamami sandogh fadime shod. kin habtal farkhond. man tar hamin finslok? fodler haml. sodigh baher lotern bashid. mihal ermin farem! in dar mian for kamal!!!

Science, religion, and the origin of authority:

During a recent GOP presidential debate 3 out of 10 republican candidates expressed skepticism (if not denial) towards Evolution. In particular, one of the candidates elaborated that he wasn’t there when the world was created, so he doesn’t know. Thus, he chosed to believe in the "words of God”!

I wondered if it’s fair to call such an individual ignorant! I asked myself if I believed in evolution after all. At first the answer came to me as a comforting yes! At the same time it stroked me as shallow and lacking rigour! Here is why: for instance, I’ve never seen a DNA. But, I believe in Genes and their rules in encoding proteins that construct the very fabric of my body. How does this leap of faith happen?! In what way my belief in Genes differs from a religious person’s belief in God? Since, in practice, the average person does not know (in concrete terms) any more about the evolution than he/she knows about the existence of God, the real question becomes why he/she chooses to believe in one or the other. Does it all boil down to an arbitrary submission to an arbitrary authority?

As it is evident, by inspection, our submissiveness (conformity) to a particular school of thought is not arbitrary after all. For instance, one’s upbringing, particular culture, or education might explain it. However, as intelligent adults, we should be able reexamine our prejudices and to reselect our authorities. So, the real question becomes why one should believe in a scientist or a science-based establishment rather than a priest or a particular church in the matters of the origin of life and the universe? If that is the case, then it is only through educating the public about the basic premise of the “scientific method” (see [1]) and the “origin of authority in science” that one can hope to resolve the evolution vs. creationism dilemma dividing the American society.

But, how faithful are scientists in adhering to the principles of scientific investigation? To what extend the urge to stay competitive and profitable is overshadowing the process of publication and peer-review (the most important tenets of the scientific method)?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Sonnet 138 - William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

-- William Shakespeare

Good-by a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good-by, proud world, I'm going home,
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine;
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam,
But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good-by to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace,
To upstart Wealth's averted eye,
To supple Office low and high,
To crowded halls, to court, and street,
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet,
To those who go, and those who come,
Good-by, proud world, I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearth-stone
Bosomed in yon green hills, alone,
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green the livelong day
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet.

CateGoRized

After spending two weeks in MIT I believe anybody who decides to come to this place invariably belongs to one of the following three categories:

1) Extremely passionate about science and engineering; such an individual will enjoy everyday of his stay and he/she will be stuck here for a long time.
2) Interested in politics and public policy making; for such a person the kth day of his/her sojourn in MIT is the (N-k)th count-down day, where N is the average time required for graduation. In other words, he/she might experience a thought time but will be one step ahead of many others in finding higher governmental/managerial positions.
3) A complete idiot!

Childhood origins of adult resistance to science

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5827/996

innocent man...

Human dignity is an intrinsic, intimate, and absolute sense of honor; the very sense that brought about such noble ideas as human rights and democracy. Listening to Billy Joel’s "Innocent Man":
"Some people live with the fear of a touch
And the anger of having been a fool
They will not listen to anyone
So nobody tells them a lie
…
I am an innocent man"

it reminds me of the bleared boarder between one’s sense of dignity and the fear of violation, betrayal, and humiliation. A friend of mine once said she prefers to be a first hand friend rather than a second hand concubine.
I‘m not motivated to carry on this line of thought! For the very reason that, in practice, one often is better off acting spontaneously and go with the flow! Could it be wrong?

Yet another cycle ...

Today John commented that the there is a generational cycle that starts with a child from a poor lower social class, choosing an engineering career, as a way of making a decent living and moving up the social ladder. Engineering turns out to be- in particular- a suitable choice. since it requires hard work and diligence; characters that a determined person can acquire through discipline.
The next generation generally ends up pursuing a career in medicine, law, or a number of other higher level social sciences.
Psychology, philosophy, and a number of other liberal arts areas dominate the career choice of the descendents of these lawyers and doctors, whose children end up experiencing a modest life style. And so the cycle continues …. Makes me think!

Oscar Wilde on Poetry

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets make a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.

Be Cool!

What does it take to be cool?
I'm preparing my presentation for my defense. I'm on a slide titled "Self-adjoint Operators Commuting with the Fourier Transform". A voice comes out of nowhere and tells me "be cool"! How rude! How true!

Life is the peace of contraries,
And Death is the proof of this war.

--Rumi

The age of Comformity

Most Americans want to be cultivated, but only comfortably cultivated. They dabble with the intellectual just enough to avoid being lowbrow and escape being highbrow. Middlebrowism looks like cultivation because it is so clearly superior to vulgarity, but to be satisfied with it is to make the good the enemy of the best. It merely dresses and domisticates the commonplace.

--The age of Comformity, Regnery

disconnected (firstcomet)

I’m all disconnected now
It wasn’t hard, like to know how?

You pull the plug from your gadgets
You leave you calendar unset

Then you put on your anti-noise headset
The rest is assisted by the upcoming sunset

If the music ain't up to your taste then pause it
If that didn’t quite work then just toss it!

I haven’t yet figured out the rest
But, I’ll try to do my best :-)