The Mitr

Genetics and human nature

Usually, in the discussion regarding human nature, there is a group of academics who would like to put all the differences amongst humans to non-genetic components. That is to say, the cultural heritage plays a much more important or the only important role in the transfer of characteristics. In the case of education, this is one of the most contested topics. The nature-nurture debate as it is known goes to the heart of many theories of human behaviour, learning and cognition. The behaviourist school was very strong until the mid 20th century. This school strongly believed that the entirety of human learning is dependent only on the environment with the genes or (traits inherited from the parents) playing little or no role. This view was seriously challenged on multiple fronts with attacks from at least six fields of academic inquiry: linguists, psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, anthropology, and neuroscience. The advances in these fields and the results of the studies strongly countered the core aspects of behaviourism. Though the main thrust of the behaviourist ideas seems to be lost, but the spirit still persists.  This is in the form of academics who still deny any role for genes, or even shun at the possibility of genes having any effect on human behaviour. They say it is all the “environment” or nurture as they name it. Any attempt to study the genetic effects are immediately classified as fascist, Nazi or equated to social Darwinism and eugenics. But over several decades now, studies which look at these aspects have given us a mounting mountain of evidence to lay the idea to rest. The genes do play a definitive role and what we are learning is that the home environment may not be playing any role at all or a very little role in determining how we turn out. Estimates range from 0 to 10%. The genes, on the other hand, have been found to have about 50% estimate, the rest 40% being attributed to a “unique”  environment that the individual experiences.   Though typically, some of the individuals in academia argue strongly against the use of genetics or even mention of the word associated with education or any other parameters related to education. But this has to do more with their ideological positions, which they do not want to change, than actual science. This is Kuhnian drama of a changing science at work. The old scientists do not want to give up on their pet theories even in the case of evidence against them. This is not a unique case, the history of science is full of such episodes.
Arthur Jensen, was one of the pioneers of studying the effect of genetic heritability in learning. And he lived through the behaviourist and the strong nurture phases of it. This quote of his summarises his stand very well.

Racism and social elitism fundamentally arise from identification of individuals with their genetic ancestry; they ignore individuality in favor of group characteristics; they emphasize pride in group characteristics, not individual accomplishment; they are more concerned with who belongs to what, and with head-counting and percentages and quotas than with respecting the characteristics of individuals in their own right. This kind of thinking is contradicted by genetics; it is anti-Mendelian. And even if you profess to abhor racism and social elitism and are joined in battle against them, you can only remain in a miserable quandary if at the same time you continue to think, explicitly or implicitly, in terms of non-genetic or antigenetic theories of human differences. Wrong theories exact their own penalties from those who believe them. Unfortunately, among many of my critics and among many students I repeatedly encounter lines of argument which reveal disturbing thought-blocks to distinguishing individuals from statistical characteristics (usually the mean) of the groups with which they are historically or socially identified.
–  Arthur Jensen, Educability and Group Differences 1973

As the highlighted sentence in the quote remarks, the theories which are wrong or are proven to be wrong do certainly exact penalties from their believers. One case from history of science being the rise and rise of Lysenkoism in the erstwhile USSR. The current bunch of academics who strongly deny any involvement of genes in the theories of human learning are no different.

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Asimov on science literacy

Science literacy does not have a unique definition. Depending on what your ideas about science are, the meaning of science literacy will change. But being scientifically literate, is usually taken as a sign of being informed, being rational in decisions. Here is what the great science and science-fiction writer Issac Asimov had to say about its importance.

A public that does not understand how science works can, all too easily, fall prey to those ignoramuses … who make fun of what they do not understand, or
to the sloganeers who proclaim scientists to be the mercenary warriors of today, and the tools of the military. The difference … between … understanding and not understanding . . . is also the difference between respect and admiration on the one side, and hate and fear on the other.
– Isaac Asimov

 

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Why philosophy is so important in science education

This is a nice article whicH I have reposted from AEON…

Each semester, I teach courses on the philosophy of science to undergraduates at the University of New Hampshire. Most of the students take my courses to satisfy general education requirements, and most of them have never taken a philosophy class before.
On the first day of the semester, I try to give them an impression of what the philosophy of science is about. I begin by explaining to them that philosophy addresses issues that can’t be settled by facts alone, and that the philosophy of science is the application of this approach to the domain of science. After this, I explain some concepts that will be central to the course: induction, evidence, and method in scientific enquiry. I tell them that science proceeds by induction, the practices of drawing on past observations to make general claims about what has not yet been observed, but that philosophers see induction as inadequately justified, and therefore problematic for science. I then touch on the difficulty of deciding which evidence fits which hypothesis uniquely, and why getting this right is vital for any scientific research. I let them know that ‘the scientific method’ is not singular and straightforward, and that there are basic disputes about what scientific methodology should look like. Lastly, I stress that although these issues are ‘philosophical’, they nevertheless have real consequences for how science is done.
At this point, I’m often asked questions such as: ‘What are your qualifications?’ ‘Which school did you attend?’ and ‘Are you a scientist?’
Perhaps they ask these questions because, as a female philosopher of Jamaican extraction, I embody an unfamiliar cluster of identities, and they are curious about me. I’m sure that’s partly right, but I think that there’s more to it, because I’ve observed a similar pattern in a philosophy of science course taught by a more stereotypical professor. As a graduate student at Cornell University in New York, I served as a teaching assistant for a course on human nature and evolution. The professor who taught it made a very different physical impression than I do. He was white, male, bearded and in his 60s – the very image of academic authority. But students were skeptical of his views about science, because, as some said, disapprovingly: ‘He isn’t a scientist.’
I think that these responses have to do with concerns about the value of philosophy compared with that of science. It is no wonder that some of my students are doubtful that philosophers have anything useful to say about science. They are aware that prominent scientists have stated publicly that philosophy is irrelevant to science, if not utterly worthless and anachronistic. They know that STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education is accorded vastly greater importance than anything that the humanities have to offer.
Many of the young people who attend my classes think that philosophy is a fuzzy discipline that’s concerned only with matters of opinion, whereas science is in the business of discovering facts, delivering proofs, and disseminating objective truths. Furthermore, many of them believe that scientists can answer philosophical questions, but philosophers have no business weighing in on scientific ones.
Why do college students so often treat philosophy as wholly distinct from and subordinate to science? In my experience, four reasons stand out.
One has to do with a lack of historical awareness. College students tend to think that departmental divisions mirror sharp divisions in the world, and so they cannot appreciate that philosophy and science, as well as the purported divide between them, are dynamic human creations. Some of the subjects that are now labelled ‘science’ once fell under different headings. Physics, the most secure of the sciences, was once the purview of ‘natural philosophy’. And music was once at home in the faculty of mathematics. The scope of science has both narrowed and broadened, depending on the time and place and cultural contexts where it was practised.
Another reason has to do with concrete results. Science solves real-world problems. It gives us technology: things that we can touch, see and use. It gives us vaccines, GMO crops, and painkillers. Philosophy doesn’t seem, to the students, to have any tangibles to show. But, to the contrary, philosophical tangibles are many: Albert Einstein’s philosophical thought experiments made Cassini possible. Aristotle’s logic is the basis for computer science, which gave us laptops and smartphones. And philosophers’ work on the mind-body problem set the stage for the emergence of neuropsychology and therefore brain-imagining technology. Philosophy has always been quietly at work in the background of science.
A third reason has to do with concerns about truth, objectivity and bias. Science, students insist, is purely objective, and anyone who challenges that view must be misguided. A person is not deemed to be objective if she approaches her research with a set of background assumptions. Instead, she’s ‘ideological’. But all of us are ‘biased’ and our biases fuel the creative work of science. This issue can be difficult to address, because a naive conception of objectivity is so ingrained in the popular image of what science is. To approach it, I invite students to look at something nearby without any presuppositions. I then ask them to tell me what they see. They pause… and then recognise that they can’t interpret their experiences without drawing on prior ideas. Once they notice this, the idea that it can be appropriate to ask questions about objectivity in science ceases to be so strange.
The fourth source of students’ discomfort comes from what they take science education to be. One gets the impression that they think of science as mainly itemising the things that exist – ‘the facts’ – and of science education as teaching them what these facts are. I don’t conform to these expectations. But as a philosopher, I am mainly concerned with how these facts get selected and interpreted, why some are regarded as more significant than others, the ways in which facts are infused with presuppositions, and so on.
Students often respond to these concerns by stating impatiently that facts are facts. But to say that a thing is identical to itself is not to say anything interesting about it. What students mean to say by ‘facts are facts’ is that once we have ‘the facts’ there is no room for interpretation or disagreement.
Why do they think this way? It’s not because this is the way that science is practised but rather, because this is how science is normally taught. There are a daunting number of facts and procedures that students must master if they are to become scientifically literate, and they have only a limited amount of time in which to learn them. Scientists must design their courses to keep up with rapidly expanding empirical knowledge, and they do not have the leisure of devoting hours of class-time to questions that they probably are not trained to address. The unintended consequence is that students often come away from their classes without being aware that philosophical questions are relevant to scientific theory and practice.
But things don’t have to be this way. If the right educational platform is laid, philosophers like me will not have to work against the wind to convince our students that we have something important to say about science. For this we need assistance from our scientist colleagues, whom students see as the only legitimate purveyors of scientific knowledge. I propose an explicit division of labour. Our scientist colleagues should continue to teach the fundamentals of science, but they can help by making clear to their students that science brims with important conceptual, interpretative, methodological and ethical issues that philosophers are uniquely situated to address, and that far from being irrelevant to science, philosophical matters lie at its heart.Aeon counter – do not remove

 
Subrena E Smith
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

The Mitr

The cuckoo Cuckoo

When I was living in Pune, the window of my room opened near a hedge. The hedge was lush green and had many trees. The tree closest to my window was that of a fig, (umber, उंबर in Marathi). Now throughout the day and the night, a variety of fauna visited the tree. Avians, insects, mammals all of them benefitted from the tree.
During the prime of the fruiting season, one would get an aroma of ripe fruits in the middle of the night. The closest smell I can think of is that of a very sweet and ripe apple. Nothing else comes close. I would wonder why does this smell manifest in the middle of the night. Then I discovered that there would be fruit bats munching on these delicious fruits, and the tearing of the fruits would give this aroma. During the day, various other birds including crows, cuckoos, mynahs, some times hornbills too, along with the resident squirrels. So this tree was full of life. A couple of crows used to sit on the tree for hours, caressing each other. Some love couple it was.
But the reason I am writing this post is because of a cuckoo the Asian koel (Eudynamys scolopaceus), a cuckoo who was a cuckoo. Now, as a noun, the cuckoo refers to the bird, but as an adjective, it refers to someone who is mad. Now, what does a cuckoo mean? It means a mad cuckoo. Now one would hear the cucu of the cuckoo during their mating season at the start of the summer, we find nothing odd. In fact, the call of the cuckoo signifies the season change, and for rest of the year, the cuckoo stays relatively silent.

Being familiar birds with loud calls, references to them are common in folklore, myth and poetry. It is traditionally held in high regard for its song … Wiki

And mostly one would hear the cuckoo only during the day. All this being said, I come to the protagonist of the post.
This one cuckoo was mad. I would say this because it would sit on this fig tree and sing in the harshest possible way, much higher notes than usual melodious tone, in the middle of the night. At 1 AM, at 3 AM at any time in the night. The cuckoo would sit right next to the branch of the tree which was closest to my window and sound the alarm. When I first heard it, I woke up thinking that the world is coming to an end or some epic disaster has occurred. The cuckoo from hell. I looked at it from the window, hoping that its eyes are glowing red with hellfire. I could not make sense of what was happening. The intensity and the harshness of the vocalization were like a shock given to me. Once woken, I could not sleep due to the continuous assault on my auditory senses. That night I slept, uneasily, after a few hours almost at the start of the dawn.
This event repeated over many other days.  But over many episodes, I got used to this. It was like my internal cognitive mechanisms created filters for ignoring this. Only on an occasional off day, I would be awakened by the calls. Some of my friends, who had the misfortune to visit me during those days would get the jolt to be woken in the middle of the night.
I don’t know whether this was normal behaviour of the cuckoo. I am sure avian experts would be able to put more light on this, but for me, it was cuckoo who had gone cuckoo.
 

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Envious (Machiavelian!?) Mediocrity

There are mediocre people all around us. But the thing is, that some of them actually turn their mediocrity into a kind of weapon, and are able to actually advance much ahead in life. They achieve this by various means and modes.
The idea is that you make up for your mediocrity in the field of work by using other skills that you have. For example, if you are mediocre at coding, then you make sure that you don’t get the work that you may not be able to handle. In case you do, you beg-burrow-steal from your peers to help in that and present it with a face that is calm and take the credit. This happens more often than you think.

Mediocrity is like a viral disease. Once a mediocre is firmly established, it is difficult to remove. Mediocrity attracts mediocrity. Mediocre’s find company between mediocre’s.

The problem comes when mediocre people reach positions of power. They become insecure about their position and work. Time and experience teach them to climb on the top, slowly but steadily, mostly without working what they are meant to. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t work. They do, diligently work their way up. They use devious ways to butter up the seniors, licking them in all ways possible. (pun intended) So you will find such people always close to people with power. They are like fruit flies (no offence to Drosophila) whenever there is a person of power, they will be around. They are obsequious: obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree. They will make sure that the powerful ones are looked after, their needs are taken care of. They will enquire socially and keep track of who and where their family members are. This is kept in the long term memory; next meeting they will know everything about the powerful person. Their likes and dislikes, how their children are faring. This takes great dedication and effort to do it. It is almost a fulltime job. I know a few people who will dedicate their working hours to do this. It is no surprise they such sycophantic people are well connected. They will know all the important people and who’s who in the field, and more importantly, these people will also know them, even if fleetingly. And they know how to make use of these connections. Someone needs some help, they will know whom to contact. Mind you this might not be strictly related to their field.
I mean I won’t do it perhaps (strictly metaphorically) even if my life depended on doing it. When someone like me, who doesn’t like this see it – cringe level 10,000. They are toadyish: attempting to win favour from influential people by flattery  Every time I see this happening I cannot help myself to feel disgusted, I want to take that slimy person and give them a mouthful, and perhaps a handful too. Sometimes, such people are merrily talking to you in a social event. Suddenly, someone with a huge position comes in sight and poof the sycophant vanishes and behave in a way as if they don’t know you.
Most people are prone to flattery. I mean, each one will have a different thing to be flattered about, but they know what is to be done. A sycophant will get there. They are fawning: try to gain favour by cringing or flattering. It is human nature to feel good if someone does good things for you, says good things to you. And it is exactly this nature is what is exploited.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”  – Wilde

The sycophant will imitate the powerful person: in the way they dress, in the way they talk and in the way they behave. The sycophant will pick up the vocabulary to raise themselves to the level of the powerful. Though they may not understand it, they will use it. Over time it becomes a habit to them to utter such words. A new person who is not aware of these will assume that the sycophant is knowledgeable. 
Continuing in this manner, before you know, they are already the aides-de-camp for the powerful. They will keep them updated about every little thing that happens to them and around them. It is as if they have a mandate for doing this. By calling on powerful people on a daily basis, they become the eyes and ears of the powerful people. What will you do when you are day in and day out harangued by a slimy person. Eventually, perhaps you will start to feel pity for them. The powerful people listen to them every day and eventually become influenced by them. When this starts to happen, their bigger game unfolds. Such is the tact of the obsequious person.

ENVY – Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

The bigger game is to dislodge any competition that they might get for the actual work they are supposed to do. For this, anyone who is deemed to be a threat is categorically targetted. The threat here can be defined as anyone who will perform better than or is better than the sycophant. And this is what the title of the post is about. Envy sets in. They cannot outdo the threat in a traditional manner, but they are envious nonetheless.  To overcome this they will use all their wits and dirty tricks to outsmart the threat. They will over time, with opportune moments make the threat disesteemed in the opinion of the powerful person. They will create communication gaps, which are filled by maliciously spread gossip which is detrimental to the threat. They will accuse, complain, whine, cavil, bitch, nitpick about the threat and their work. Slowly but surely they gain control. Such is the control that they will slowly, but surely turn opinion about the threat towards being low value or even worse nuisance. And the targetted person is in the bad books. This is especially hurtful if the targetted person is not outspoken or introvert. In the next level, the sycophant is not only eyes and ears but also becomes (Wo)Man Friday. They will become executioners also.  Their proximity earns them the favour of positions with a lot of power and lesser work at the same time. They become managers in a sense. They manage the affairs of the powerful. 
When a team is to be hired sycophants will never ever take people who are better than them. They will hire people who are mirror images of them. Perhaps this is the reason that great institution builders are people who get good people in the institute and are not insecure about their position and work.
I am surprised that I am surprised even after all these years I cannot let the cringe go away. After all these years, with so many experiences of sycophantic behaviour, I should come to terms with it. But I can’t, perhaps I never will. 
Edit: Sometime back I received the following couplets which reflect very well the emotions that I had while writing this post. Was going to add these couplets in the original post, but somehow forgot. Here they are
तरक़्क़ी  की फ़सल, हम भी काट लेते,
थोड़े से तलवे, अगर हम भी चाट लेते…
बस मेरे लिहाज़ में जी हुज़ूर न था,
इसके अलावा, मेरा कोई क़सूर न था,
अगर पल भर को भी, मैं बे-ज़मीर हो जाता,
यक़ीन मानिए, मैं कब का आमिर हो जाता…
Don’t know the author, any information on the poet would be appreciated.

The Mitr

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: A review

 The semi-autobiographical book is an interesting take on the effect of war on soldiers. The book starts with the desire of the author to write a book about his experience of the war. He consults a friend for the same and we have the result. This novella set during the Second World War describes the journey of one American soldier Billy Pilgrim by one of his fellows.  Billy is an optometrist, a trade he inherits from his father-in-law. He is enlisted during the war. Post war Billy claims he was abducted by aliens. These aliens called, Tralfamadorians, have a very different concept of time. They can see all time, past and future at the same instant, time travel. Once with them, Billy is able too do time travel too, post an experience during this 18th anniversary. Hence in the book he goes off to different timelines and places, which others see as him hallucinating. He switches between his childhood, his youth, his war years and his old age.

> And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

> There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects.

Due to this the book has a highly non-linear timeline. It goes from hospitals to war theatre and hospital to his office. So it goes.

Billy already knows things that will happen to him and others. For example, he already knows about  the plane crash, in which he and a co-pilot are the only survivors. At other times even in case of hig distress situations he keeps his calm. So it goes.

> He was so snug in there that he was able to pretend that he was safe at home, having survived the war, and that he was telling his parents and his sister a true war story—whereas the true war story was still going on.

The Tralfamadorian philosophy is completely deterministic in a sense.

> “He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.”

The book starts the story with capture of Billy by the Germans. They are temporarily stationed at a PoW camp with Russians and the British soldiers. The American soldiers are seen as the worst of the lot, and are deemed to be no good soldiers at all. The British soldiers are a class apart from the ragged Americans. The Brits have maintained themselves well, and have huge stocks of food and other items which were sent to them by a clerical mistake. They are eating the best food, arguably in all of Germany. Billy finds his attire in the form of a azure toga and shoes. He looks distinct and clownish. The Americans are subsequently transferred to Dresden, the only German city, which has been spared of aerial bombardment as it does not have any industries of repute. So it goes.

In Dresden, most of the daily routines are unaffected by the war. The city itself is in all its glory. The Americans are stationed in Slaughter House Five.

> “ Their address was this: “Schlachthof-fünf.” Schlachthof meant slaughterhouse. Fun/was good old five.”

The Slaughter house was empty, as most of the animals were already eaten. The Americans are guarded by a motley group of Germans who seem to be masquerading as soldiers. They are either too young, or too old or too unfit to be soldiers in the real sense. Almost everyone has lost their sense of belonging and are like lost souls. Then one night, bombing does happen. They go into a deep bomb shelter, while rest of Dresden is destroyed. The group comes out in the noon next day to see the entire city in rubble. They say it is moon, as ashes and stones are everywhere. Afterwards the Americans are made to dig bodies from under the debris. Till finally they are released at the end of the European theatre of war.

> One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

There are a few characters worth mentioning in the book. One is the sci-fi writer named Kilgore Trout.

> He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.

An episode witnessed by Trout at Billy’s 18th wedding anniversary leads to all his theories about the Tralfamadorians. Thereafter it is a downward slide for Billy. Another character is the actress named Montana Wildhack. She is a famous actress and is abducted to give Billy company during his stay at Tralfamador. They copulate and have a baby, and their act is a crowd puller for the Tralfamadorians. She comes in Billy’s time travel episodes often.

Overall the non-linearity of story line and the brutal senselessness of war and violence are interesting to read. The simplicity of Billy, whether from a bit of dementia or due to his contact with Tralfamadorians is truly hilarious.

The Mitr

Monsoons and Mumbai

 
Every year towards the end of May, the city of Mumbai begins to change. People start to prepare for the coming of the Monsoon, which is itself derived from the word “mausam” in Arabic which roughly translates as a season. Perhaps in no other place than Mumbai, the might of monsoon is felt by such a large and varied section of people. All the residents, in all the areas of Mumbai, irrespective of their class do prepare for the annual coming of the monsoon. In Mumbai, everywhere you would see temporary structures being erected, plastic sheets of many colours and the most prominent blue tarpaulins being used to cover myriad of houses. It seems that the city itself is getting ready to greet the incoming monsoon. The various preparations done by people of all classes reminds one of festive preparation that families do. Some buy waterproofing for their bodies, some for their homes and shops and some for their vehicles. Some, who are very rich, even buy waterproofing for their pets. Government bodies like the BMC clean up the gutters and nallahs, which were freshwater rivers once, hard to believe when you look at their present states. You can see piles of cleaned up garbage and debris stacked neatly alongside the gutters manholes and nallahs. They say it helps in preventing floods. So, every year, like a seasonal change, you will see people cleaning them, and stacking the filth accumulated in these water bodies, both above the ground and underground in neat stacks.
Business establishments erect skeletons of bamboos and timber around the areas which are not covered. This happens in the case of hotels which have open-air seating areas. Then on these skeletons, they apply sheaths of water-proofing materials. At the end of it, the area is ready for use even in the heaviest rains. Shops which would sell, clothes and other stuff in other seasons, have umbrellas in their display. Even the street and traffic signal vendors start selling them. The umbrellas come in a variety of sizes, colours and designs. Males mostly carry black ones, while the females carry ones with a variety of colours. The umbrella is the protection of the commons against the rain. In the crowded local trains and buses, it is not seen kindly if you wear a raincoat and enter and transfer your wetness to others in the process. Umbrellas, on the other hand, can be folded and kept inside your bag. These are the kind of umbrellas, which are compact are the ones which are most common. The price range generally indicates the number of seasons that an umbrella will last. Also, the cobblers, who double up as umbrella repairers can be seen fixing broken ribs, handles and mechanisms of old umbrellas. Then there are the large ones, which you need to carry in hand, for they are larger than any bags you would usually carry. I myself carry one of the largest sizes available. Because when it really pours, the compact ones, though easy to pack and carry, aren’t going to protect you from getting wet in the Mumbai monsoon.
Then there is the rain footwear. The idea is that in the rains leather (even faux leather) will get damaged. Hence one should wear something made of rubber or plastic which is not affected by the rains. All the branded footwear companies have a stock of rainwear, which people buy as a preparation for the rain. But this is not for the real elite, they will wear their suedes even in the rains. From the by-lanes of Kurla, there emerge cheap replicas of the designer rainwear which are sold at less than 10th of the prices of the originals. They are sold outside the stations, on the streets, and in the shops. Each year, the designs, patterns and colours change depending on what is in vogue in the market.
People also buy protection for their mobile phones and wallets. Just before the rains pavement sellers, who sell a plethora of mobile trinkets and accessories, also start with selling waterproofing for the mobiles. Same is the case with the bags that working people and school children carry. Those not well off use covers of plastic to cover the valuables inside their bags. Good quality plastics are always in demand for such things. But now with the ban, we don’t know what will happen. Others purchase rain covers for their bags. Even with all these precautions mobiles and stuff inside the bags do get wet. And they get damaged.
They say when you are already anticipating something, the shock value isn’t that much as you would expect. But in the case of Mumbai rains, it is not so. Amongst the places I have lived in, the longest has been in Mumbai. Even then, I consider myself alien to this city, an outsider. I have seen and explored parts of it, yet I do not consider myself as a Mumbaikar. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that even though after staying for more than a decade, I don’t use public transport for my daily commute. Neither the train nor the bus I use regularly. The two major forms of transport in Mumbai. So far, I have not stayed very far away from my place of work. Hence I do not have to suffer [safar?] daily travel. The other reason is that I have not yet made myself at home with the rains. It is not that I do not enjoy the rains, I do, but only for the first few weeks. Then it becomes torture. A melancholy if you will. The sunless skies for weeks on end are depressing enough, and then you have to prepare for the wetness. No matter how hard you try, the rains will get you. There hasn’t been a season where I haven’t got completely drenched. I have given up.
In case, I am caught unawares, without umbrella or any other protection. I just let the rain do its thing. I don’t fight it. But the city itself is fully prepared for it. Unless it is a literal flood, the city continues its routine as if, nothing has happened. All the supply lines will be working as they are supposed to. Waterlogging will produce delays in traffic and trains, but that is about it. If half the amount of rain that lashes Mumbai every season pours into any other metro it will come to a standstill. But Mumbai has made sure that the services operate despite this amount of rain. It is because of anticipation and will of the people to work.
The area of Mumbai is about 600 \, km^{2}, and the average rainfall in Mumbai is about 2200 \,mm. This essentially means that we have rainfall equivalent to about 2.2 \, m water present on the entire surface of about 600 \, km^{2}. So the total volume of water that Mumbai receives each year is
V_{Rain} = 600 \times 10^{6} \, m^{2} \cdot 2.2 \, m = 1.3 \times 10^{9} \, m^{3}
As a first approximation we can consider the rain drops to be of uniform size, and the diameter of the drop is about 1 \,mm = 10^{-3} m. So the volume of the drop is about
V_{Drop} = \frac{4}{3} \,\pi \,(0.5 \times 10^{-3} m)^{3} = 5.2 \times 10^{-10} \,m^{3}
Hence in each year the number of raindrops on Mumbai would be
N = \frac{V_{Rain}}{V_{Drop}} = 2.5 \times 10^{18}
As a better approximation we can take into account the fact that not all raindrops have the same size. We can then make a distribution of the raindrops according to their size. We can have a distribution of the raindrops according to their size as follows:

Type of
Shower		 Diameter
of drops
(mm)		 Percentage Volume m^{3}
Drizzle 0.5 15 6.5 \times 10 ^{-11}
Normal 1 70 5.2 \times 10 ^{-10}
Thunder 3 15 8.1\times 10 ^{-9}

So the total volume of our rail gets distributed according to the above table. Now we calculate the number of drops for each type of shower:
V_{Drizzle} = \frac{15}{100} \times 1.3 \times 10^{9} \, m^{3} = 1.9 \times 10^{8} \, m^{3}
Hence the number of drops in drizzle are:
N_{Drizzle} = \frac{1.9 \times 10^{8} \, m^{3} }{6.5 \times 10 ^{-11}} = 2.9\times 10^{18}
Similarly for normal shower we get
V_{Normal} = \frac{70}{100} \times 1.3 \times 10^{9} \, m^{3} = 9.1 \times 10^{8} \, m^{3}
Hence the number of drops in normal shower are:
N_{Normal} = \frac{9.1 \times 10^{8} \, m^{3} }{5.2 \times 10 ^{-10}} = 1.75\times 10^{18}
Similarly for thunder shower we get
V_{Thunder} = \frac{15}{100} \times 1.3 \times 10^{9} \, m^{3} = 1.9 \times 10^{8} \, m^{3}
Hence the number of drops in normal shower are:
N_{Thunder} = \frac{9.1 \times 10^{8} \, m^{3} }{8.1 \times 10 ^{-9}} = 1.1\times 10^{17}
So if we add all these up we get the total number of drops:
N = N_{Thunder} + N_{Normal} + N_{Drizzle} = 1.1\times 10^{17}+ 1.75\times 10^{18}+ 2.9\times 10^{18} = 4.7\times 10^{18}
This is not very different from our first rough estimate.

The Mitr

Liberals and conservatives

Usually, a liberal is considered to be with a “free thought” trying out new things and conservatives the exact opposite. But a little contemplation will tell us that these two words are indeed relative. The moral, social and political positioning one takes can be different depending on who is looking at you and from where. There is the proverbial LEFT POLE and the RIGHT POLE. Just like any direction away from the North pole is South, any opinion away from the Left pole is right inclined and any opinion away from Right pole is left inclined. Steven Pinker makes a good point about these relative positions:

The meanings of the words are of no help. Marxists in the Soviet Union and its aftermath were called conservatives; Reagan and Thatcher were called revolutionaries. Liberals are liberal about sexual behavior but not about business practices; conservatives want to conserve communities and traditions but they also favor the free market economy that subverts them. People who call themselves “classical liberals” are likely to be called “conservatives” by adherents of the version of leftism known as political correctness.
Nor can most contemporary liberals and conservatives articulate the cores of their belief systems. Liberals think that conservatives are just amoral plutocrats, and conservatives think that if you are not a liberal before you are twenty you have no heart but if you are a liberal after you are twenty you have no brain (attributed variously to Georges Clemenceau, Dean Inge, Benjamin Disraeli, and Maurice Maeterlinck). Strategic alliances-such as the religious fundamentalists and free-market technocrats on the right, or the identity politicians and civil libertarians on the left-may frustrate the search for any intellectual common denominator. Everyday political debates, such as whether tax rates should be exactly what they are or a few points higher or lower, are just as uninformative.

– Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate p. 286-287

The Mitr

Review of His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem

 

The book is an autobiographical tale by one of the mathematician-scientist who looks at a mysterious signal from the cosmos. The title is from the title given to the top secret project which tries to decipher this signal. The signal in the form of a neutrino stream is discovered accidentally and is hidden well in the general noise of neutrino signal. Only if you know where to tune in to is the signal readable/recordable/visible. The signal is attacked upon by a team of experts from different domains like physics, chemistry, biology, language, mathematics. They are able to know that the signal has an “alphabet” but are not able to crack the code as a whole. Though they discover some properties of the signal to interact with matter. For example, they discover that this letter from cosmos has a positive effect on the formation and consolidation of large protein molecules. They also discover a “recipe” for building a substance which is dubbed as “Frog Eggs” and “Lord of the flies”. This substance with a consistency of frog eggs can absorb energy from radioactive fission within itself and has some peculiar properties.

even though, receiving the message from the stars, we did with it no more than a savage who, warming himself by a fire of burning books, the writings of the wisest men, believes that he has drawn tremendous benefit from his find!

That not withstanding, the entire operation is under government supervision and there are plots and counter-plots of bureaucracy enmeshed within the narrative. This also includes an effect termed as “TX” in which a small nuclear detonation can have its energy transmitted to another place. But large scale implementation fails as the energy is dissipated over a very large area rendering any weapons created from them unusable. After these initial success, there is not further “code-breaking” possible and things come to a standstill

We are proceeding like a man who looks for a lost thing not everywhere, but only beneath a lighted street lamp, because there it is bright.

They also discover there is another parallel team working on the same problem but under the command of the military. Finally, the two units are merged.

At this point, various theories are put forth which try to explain the origin of the “letter”. Doubts are even raised to know if the signal is “natural” or “artificial”.  One of the military members uses the oscillating universe model to suggest that the neutrino signal is information from the past universe, from a ‘fissure” in between the universes, to the current one. One more hypothesis is given in the form that the frog eggs naturally evolved and the neutrino signal is just a by-product and the “organisms” do not know if this signal is being sent. A closer example of this is plants doing photosynthesis, they are not aware that their photosynthetic activity is helping other organisms grow, they do it nonetheless.

And surely it was unintentional on the part of the grass to give us the opportunity to exist!

While the author genuinely believes that the signal is from a very old and highly evolved “civilisation”, and we are at a stage such that we cannot understand the letter fully. We are not meant to, not at this stage of our technological evolution. The signal has been there for billions of years, and it takes an enormous amount of power (at least by our standards) to send it, so whoever (or whatever)  is sending it must have a purpose, just that we don’t know ( and perhaps will never know) what the purpose is.

 We will make it undecipherable for all who are not yet ready; but we must go further in our caution — so that even a false reading will not be able to supply them with any of the things that they seek but that should be denied them.

The book is an interesting take on the status of technological progress and its ramification for civilisation as a whole. Some of the themes that one can identify is the survival of the species and not of a particular nation. The concerns expressed over the “TX” discovery make the smaller group privy to this very anxious as we would then have a weapon which at the speed of light can deliver an atomic explosion anywhere. Some of the musings about the senders of the signal and the kind of evolution the civilisation that must have are interesting to read.

The Mitr

Undead Texts

These are the Undead Texts. Their ambition and success inevitably made these works targets of specialist rebuttals. There is probably not a single claim they make that subsequent scholarship has not queried, criticized, or refuted. Yet these texts refuse to die. Novices and experts alike remain susceptible to the spell they cast. – source