When I was two feet tall
and held the hand above,
how could I know
how far that limping bond would go,
that finger-inch of love.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Thursday, January 02, 2014
We all have an intuitive sense of what "simplicity" means. In science, the word is often used as a term of praise. We expect that simple explanations are more natural, sounder, and more reliable than complicated ones. We abhor epicycles, or long lists of exceptions and special cases.But can we take a crucial step further, to refine our intuitions about simplicity into precise, scientific concepts? Is there a simple core to "simplicity"? Is simplicity something that we can quantify and measure?
When I think about big philosophical questions, which I probably do more than is good for me, one of my favorite techniques is to try and to frame the question in terms that could make sense to a computer. Usually it's a method of destruction: It forces you to be clear, and once you dissipate the fog, you discover that very little of your big philosophical question remains. Here, however, in coming to grips with the nature of simplicity, the technique proved creative, for it led me straight toward a (simple) profound idea in the mathematical theory of information - the idea of description length. The idea goes by several different names in scientific literature, including algorithmic entropy and Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Chaitin complexity. Naturally, I chose the simplest one.
Description length is actually a measure of complexity. This is just as good for us, since, we can define simplicity as the opposite.i.e, Simplicity is numerically, negative of complexity. To ask a computer how complex something is we have to present that something in the form the computer can deal with - as a data file, a string of 0s and 1s. That's hardly a crippling constraint: We know that data files can represent movies, for example, so we can ask about simplicity of anything we can present in a movie.
Interesting data files might be very big, of course. But big files need not be genuinely complex; for example a file containing trillions of 0s and 1s and nothing else isn't genuinely complex.
The idea of description length is, simply, that a file is only as complicated as it's simplest description. Or, to put it in terms a computer could relate to, a file is as complicated as the shortest program that can produce it from scratch. This defines a precise, widely applicable, numerical measure of simplicity.
An impressive virtue of this notion of simplicity is it connects other attractive, successful ideas. In theoretical physics, we try to summarize the results of a vast number of experiments and observations in terms of a few powerful laws. We strive to produce the shortest program that outputs the world. In that precise sense, theoretical physics is a quest for simplicity.
It's appropriate to add that symmetry - a central feature of physics laws - is a powerful simplicity enabler. If we work with laws that have symmetry under space and time - in other words laws that apply uniformly, everywhere and everywhen - then we don't need to spell out new laws for distant parts of space or different historical epochs, and we can keep our world program short.
Simplicity leads to depth. For a short program to unfold into rich consequences it must support long chains of logic and calculations which are the essence of depth.
Simplicity leads to elegance. Short programs will contain nothing gratuitous. Every bit will play a role for otherwise we could expunge it and make the program shorter. And the different parts will have to function smoothly together, in order to make a lot from a little.
Few processes are more elegant, i think, than the construction following the program of the DNA, of a baby from a fertilized egg.
Simplicity leads to beauty: For it leads as we have seen to symmetry which is an aspect of beauty. As for that matter are depth and elegance.
Thus, simplicity, properly understood, explains what it is that makes a good explanation deep, elegant and beautiful.
-- Frank Wilczek, MIT
When I think about big philosophical questions, which I probably do more than is good for me, one of my favorite techniques is to try and to frame the question in terms that could make sense to a computer. Usually it's a method of destruction: It forces you to be clear, and once you dissipate the fog, you discover that very little of your big philosophical question remains. Here, however, in coming to grips with the nature of simplicity, the technique proved creative, for it led me straight toward a (simple) profound idea in the mathematical theory of information - the idea of description length. The idea goes by several different names in scientific literature, including algorithmic entropy and Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Chaitin complexity. Naturally, I chose the simplest one.
Description length is actually a measure of complexity. This is just as good for us, since, we can define simplicity as the opposite.i.e, Simplicity is numerically, negative of complexity. To ask a computer how complex something is we have to present that something in the form the computer can deal with - as a data file, a string of 0s and 1s. That's hardly a crippling constraint: We know that data files can represent movies, for example, so we can ask about simplicity of anything we can present in a movie.
Interesting data files might be very big, of course. But big files need not be genuinely complex; for example a file containing trillions of 0s and 1s and nothing else isn't genuinely complex.
The idea of description length is, simply, that a file is only as complicated as it's simplest description. Or, to put it in terms a computer could relate to, a file is as complicated as the shortest program that can produce it from scratch. This defines a precise, widely applicable, numerical measure of simplicity.
An impressive virtue of this notion of simplicity is it connects other attractive, successful ideas. In theoretical physics, we try to summarize the results of a vast number of experiments and observations in terms of a few powerful laws. We strive to produce the shortest program that outputs the world. In that precise sense, theoretical physics is a quest for simplicity.
It's appropriate to add that symmetry - a central feature of physics laws - is a powerful simplicity enabler. If we work with laws that have symmetry under space and time - in other words laws that apply uniformly, everywhere and everywhen - then we don't need to spell out new laws for distant parts of space or different historical epochs, and we can keep our world program short.
Simplicity leads to depth. For a short program to unfold into rich consequences it must support long chains of logic and calculations which are the essence of depth.
Simplicity leads to elegance. Short programs will contain nothing gratuitous. Every bit will play a role for otherwise we could expunge it and make the program shorter. And the different parts will have to function smoothly together, in order to make a lot from a little.
Few processes are more elegant, i think, than the construction following the program of the DNA, of a baby from a fertilized egg.
Simplicity leads to beauty: For it leads as we have seen to symmetry which is an aspect of beauty. As for that matter are depth and elegance.
Thus, simplicity, properly understood, explains what it is that makes a good explanation deep, elegant and beautiful.
-- Frank Wilczek, MIT
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
i had written an email to my family about the idea of "do-ocracy" as opposed to all the other "crazies". i was extremely excited about where i found it and so sent this link to my family :
http://www.apache.org/
the message back from my sister was pure poetry, here it is :)
======================================================
I read it all, if only to find the link between the subject and the content
if only to see if there was a context for me....
Its gone clear over my head...but I'm happy
Happy its not a message about Politics
Happy its not about something I need to change in myself
(like Green revolution or save the environment)
or a toxin I might be consuming in micro quantities until it explodes inside me (insidious)
Happy its not something I'm doing that is affecting the Poor.
Happy its not a saying that I have to digest and consume.
Happy that I don't have to change the way I live....
Generally happy
Thank you for sending me a mail from which I could draw no sense
But it made me happy for all the unknown reasons...
======================================================
http://www.apache.org/
the message back from my sister was pure poetry, here it is :)
======================================================
I read it all, if only to find the link between the subject and the content
if only to see if there was a context for me....
Its gone clear over my head...but I'm happy
Happy its not a message about Politics
Happy its not about something I need to change in myself
(like Green revolution or save the environment)
or a toxin I might be consuming in micro quantities until it explodes inside me (insidious)
Happy its not something I'm doing that is affecting the Poor.
Happy its not a saying that I have to digest and consume.
Happy that I don't have to change the way I live....
Generally happy
Thank you for sending me a mail from which I could draw no sense
But it made me happy for all the unknown reasons...
======================================================
Monday, January 23, 2012
A poem that stirs my very "soul", if i ever have one ....
The Pale Blue Dot
[1] http://tinyurl.com/palebluedot
[2] "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it
everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,
every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate
of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions,
ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every
hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every
king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father,
hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every
corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every
saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote
of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the
rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in
glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a
fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the
inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely
distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent
their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we
have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this
point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great
enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there
is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from
ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is
nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could
migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment
the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building
experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of
human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it
underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another,
and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've
ever known."
-- Carl Sagan
[3]"Carl Sagan's poetry of earth came from viewing the planet from
outside as the pale blue dot that would be the last thing any of us
would see of it if we could ever leave our native parish and travel
outbound through the eternal cold.Read Sagan's words. Read them
again.Read them for that special kind of humility which only science
can give, the special kind of humility which we cannot afford to
forget"
-- Richard Dawkins
The Pale Blue Dot
[1] http://tinyurl.com/palebluedot
[2] "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it
everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,
every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate
of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions,
ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every
hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every
king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father,
hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every
corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every
saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote
of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the
rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in
glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a
fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the
inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely
distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent
their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we
have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this
point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great
enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there
is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from
ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is
nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could
migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment
the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building
experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of
human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it
underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another,
and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've
ever known."
-- Carl Sagan
[3]"Carl Sagan's poetry of earth came from viewing the planet from
outside as the pale blue dot that would be the last thing any of us
would see of it if we could ever leave our native parish and travel
outbound through the eternal cold.Read Sagan's words. Read them
again.Read them for that special kind of humility which only science
can give, the special kind of humility which we cannot afford to
forget"
-- Richard Dawkins
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Elders
Your heart is revealed in the way you treat the elders.
Like children, the elders are sometimes a burden. But unlike
children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and
an enucmbrance and a mirror of our own mortality.It takes a person
of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom elders
have to offer, and to serve them out the gratitude for the life
they have passed on us.
I hope you will be such a person.
It is not easy in this culture.We have lost a feel for our elders.
They are a sad, gray presence, hidden behind clumsy phrases like
"elderly", "senior citizens", "retired persons". They are tolerated
out of guilt, feared for the burden they represent, or shunted aside
into irrelevance.They are not loved and honored and sought out for the
wisdom that their ears have given them.
Chances are you will find yourself of two minds about elders.Some will
fascinate you, especially the ones who seem to carry their youth with
them into old age.Others will be frightening to you because of their
ugliness or nearness to death. Still others will bring you great pleasure
because they want so much to please you and demand so little of you.
But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch them carefully.
They were you and you will be them.You carry the seeds of your old age in you
at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time
they see you.
You will find that many old people are not pleasant.They are as filled with them-
selves and their own concerns as the very young are.They ask you to think about
them and their feelings with little or no concern for yours.
When you meet such elders you must not take them in the wrong way.Like young children,
old people are dependent on the world around them and they very often fear their own
loss of importance. They face the uncertainity of death and are often embittered that the
world they worked so hard to create is being discarded by the generations now in power.
Their bodies are giving out on them.They increasingly find themselves surrounded only by
people their own age, because they know that the young would rather be apart from them.
They often live in memories.
When you meet such elders you must not be blinded by their unpleasantness. When you are tired
or ill or full of anger and pain, you, too, may not be pleasant.For many elders, these are
the conditions of their lives. But beneath the surface of their actions is the a wisdom you
can gain nowhere else.
Even if theirs was the simplest, most limited, most ordinary of lives, they saw the world into
which you have come. No other past generation is as close to yours;no other life near so near in
time. Their stories have the blood of your life running through them.You will never be so close
to the world that gave birth to you as you are when speaking to them.For that and that alone you
should honor and revere them and give them your ear. You are bonded in time.
It is important that you avoid the pitfall of pity when dealing with elders.Too many people, under
the guise of caring , patronize and demean the very old by treating them like children.They speak
to them loudly, or as if they were simpletons. They intrepret the elder's concern for the minutiae
of life as a return to the infantile.In actions and manner they strip the elders of the very respect
they claim to be giving them.
These people are, in their own way, causing as much harm as those who ignore the elders.They are, through
their actions, holding up mirrors in which the elders must see their infirmity, not mirrors in which they
can see their humanity.True caring and respect serve the weakness, but mirror only the human and the
strength.Caring and respect listen, laugh and even challenge.They assume that words and actions of elders
are to be taken seriously.
You must remember that, even in their infirmity, elders seek and value their dignity.They want, above all
else, to feel that their lives are valued and that their life on earth has not been wasted. If you
can go to them with a pure heart, unblinded by notions of false reverence and unaffected by self-serving
feelings of pity, if you can value them and allow them to share the fruits of their experience, however,
simple those fruits might be, you will be performing the greatest act a heart can perform.
You will be loving them not serving them.
Your heart is revealed in the way you treat the elders.
Like children, the elders are sometimes a burden. But unlike
children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and
an enucmbrance and a mirror of our own mortality.It takes a person
of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom elders
have to offer, and to serve them out the gratitude for the life
they have passed on us.
I hope you will be such a person.
It is not easy in this culture.We have lost a feel for our elders.
They are a sad, gray presence, hidden behind clumsy phrases like
"elderly", "senior citizens", "retired persons". They are tolerated
out of guilt, feared for the burden they represent, or shunted aside
into irrelevance.They are not loved and honored and sought out for the
wisdom that their ears have given them.
Chances are you will find yourself of two minds about elders.Some will
fascinate you, especially the ones who seem to carry their youth with
them into old age.Others will be frightening to you because of their
ugliness or nearness to death. Still others will bring you great pleasure
because they want so much to please you and demand so little of you.
But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch them carefully.
They were you and you will be them.You carry the seeds of your old age in you
at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time
they see you.
You will find that many old people are not pleasant.They are as filled with them-
selves and their own concerns as the very young are.They ask you to think about
them and their feelings with little or no concern for yours.
When you meet such elders you must not take them in the wrong way.Like young children,
old people are dependent on the world around them and they very often fear their own
loss of importance. They face the uncertainity of death and are often embittered that the
world they worked so hard to create is being discarded by the generations now in power.
Their bodies are giving out on them.They increasingly find themselves surrounded only by
people their own age, because they know that the young would rather be apart from them.
They often live in memories.
When you meet such elders you must not be blinded by their unpleasantness. When you are tired
or ill or full of anger and pain, you, too, may not be pleasant.For many elders, these are
the conditions of their lives. But beneath the surface of their actions is the a wisdom you
can gain nowhere else.
Even if theirs was the simplest, most limited, most ordinary of lives, they saw the world into
which you have come. No other past generation is as close to yours;no other life near so near in
time. Their stories have the blood of your life running through them.You will never be so close
to the world that gave birth to you as you are when speaking to them.For that and that alone you
should honor and revere them and give them your ear. You are bonded in time.
It is important that you avoid the pitfall of pity when dealing with elders.Too many people, under
the guise of caring , patronize and demean the very old by treating them like children.They speak
to them loudly, or as if they were simpletons. They intrepret the elder's concern for the minutiae
of life as a return to the infantile.In actions and manner they strip the elders of the very respect
they claim to be giving them.
These people are, in their own way, causing as much harm as those who ignore the elders.They are, through
their actions, holding up mirrors in which the elders must see their infirmity, not mirrors in which they
can see their humanity.True caring and respect serve the weakness, but mirror only the human and the
strength.Caring and respect listen, laugh and even challenge.They assume that words and actions of elders
are to be taken seriously.
You must remember that, even in their infirmity, elders seek and value their dignity.They want, above all
else, to feel that their lives are valued and that their life on earth has not been wasted. If you
can go to them with a pure heart, unblinded by notions of false reverence and unaffected by self-serving
feelings of pity, if you can value them and allow them to share the fruits of their experience, however,
simple those fruits might be, you will be performing the greatest act a heart can perform.
You will be loving them not serving them.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
after moving to a new place i had to setup my home network. when i connected my first laptop to the comcast modem , everything was "hunky-dory". so , just before i connected the wireless router i tried to directly connect the other laptop. this lead to "limited or unavailable network connectivity".
i tried "ipconfig /all" on the XP cmd window. this responded with a strange looking 169 ip address.
being a techy i tried to ping this ip - it responded immediately with <1ms round trip time. so obviously there was a server locally , it wasn't going anywhere in the network.
opened the network connections and looked at the tcp/ip properties for the connection.on the "alternate configuration" found :"automatic private ip".
so- when DHCP is not available it goes to this "automatic private ip" that assigns the address 169.***
this lead me to believe that the modem(cable ->comcast in my case) caches entries of the computer it's just assigned an ip to!
the solution:
*disconnect power from modem
*disconnect power from router(if any)
*connect modem ( after at least 1 min of wait time)
*connect router ( a little after ,say another minute)
*connect computer
this will always solve the problem.
hope this helps.
i tried "ipconfig /all" on the XP cmd window. this responded with a strange looking 169 ip address.
being a techy i tried to ping this ip - it responded immediately with <1ms round trip time. so obviously there was a server locally , it wasn't going anywhere in the network.
opened the network connections and looked at the tcp/ip properties for the connection.on the "alternate configuration" found :"automatic private ip".
so- when DHCP is not available it goes to this "automatic private ip" that assigns the address 169.***
this lead me to believe that the modem(cable ->comcast in my case) caches entries of the computer it's just assigned an ip to!
the solution:
*disconnect power from modem
*disconnect power from router(if any)
*connect modem ( after at least 1 min of wait time)
*connect router ( a little after ,say another minute)
*connect computer
this will always solve the problem.
hope this helps.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
i have a dream
biological systems solve a lot of problems , every little slice of time. these systems must have both short and long term strategies. a strategy however is not sufficient to survive. the strategies formed must somehow evolve or accommodate tactics.
an example might be : sleep . when sleeping an organism must wake up before it is subsumed by another.in case of plants - the organism must learn to survive in the face of constant extinction.
in every case , it seems that simple goals create complex interactions.
my dream wonders if it's possible to plugin questions which emerge out of simple goals and find solutions as an end result of the emergent interactions?
for example : sight - the most complex problems need to be solved to interpret a pixel the size of 1x1. the details of such interaction is important and needs to be "real-time". latency and fuzziness will be punished. yet , if a conscious effort is made to solve this problem a limitation of experience seems to be the biggest determining factor to finding an adequate solution.
human beings playing chess solve many problems on a 8x8. is it not possible to use the crunched out calculations to solve "world hunger" (for example)? just like power produced by tread-mill runners is used to power a rice mill grinder, the brain output of high-intensity calculations might be useful in yet unknown ways.
biological systems solve a lot of problems , every little slice of time. these systems must have both short and long term strategies. a strategy however is not sufficient to survive. the strategies formed must somehow evolve or accommodate tactics.
an example might be : sleep . when sleeping an organism must wake up before it is subsumed by another.in case of plants - the organism must learn to survive in the face of constant extinction.
in every case , it seems that simple goals create complex interactions.
my dream wonders if it's possible to plugin questions which emerge out of simple goals and find solutions as an end result of the emergent interactions?
for example : sight - the most complex problems need to be solved to interpret a pixel the size of 1x1. the details of such interaction is important and needs to be "real-time". latency and fuzziness will be punished. yet , if a conscious effort is made to solve this problem a limitation of experience seems to be the biggest determining factor to finding an adequate solution.
human beings playing chess solve many problems on a 8x8. is it not possible to use the crunched out calculations to solve "world hunger" (for example)? just like power produced by tread-mill runners is used to power a rice mill grinder, the brain output of high-intensity calculations might be useful in yet unknown ways.
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