Authenticity of Information

In the pursuit of knowledge, and deeper understanding of life and the world around us, there comes many a times a situation where we need to stop and think about validity of things.

Whether it is a new scientific knowledge, or a philosophical viewpoint, or an explanation about certain events, the information that we get needs authentication. 

Laws of nature as discovered by scientists from time to time, create a stir in the minds of the curious. They are often validated through experiments and observations, and independently verified by many sources. 

Everything is made of Atoms. Speed of Light is constant. Some of angles within a triangle is 180 degrees. Fermat's Last Theorem. Godel's incompleteness Theorem. Theories, Theorems, Conjectures, proofs and disproofs. Often times we are never a direct participant in any of these. It is mostly hearsay. I have personally never seen an atom, whether through my nakes eye, nor through a cloud chamber, nor observed particles in a collider. 

The validity of most of the information seems to be from its use and application. We are able to do several things as a result of using these theories. Hence we conclude these must be true. As long as we have a framework in which we can test and validate information, we are comfortable, and with our faculty of thinking using Logic as its main tool we are able to navigate true and false in this ever changing world.

Then there are those strange situations, where we do not have the luxury of observation and experimentation. Where was I before I was born, what is death, where will I go after I die? We are stuck here.

Many theories exist, many religions have been created for this purpose, many texts, scriptures, philosophies.. but how do we authenticate such information? How do we travel those mysteries, if we get stuck at the very begin at this apparent inability to accept or reject?

This leads us to a very interesting process of finding out, what is Authentication? Does authenticity really exist? A deep questioning will reveal that we simply 'trust', 'believe' or 'accept' every single piece of information. No single piece of information can ever be authenticated to the absolute extent. All information is built one on top of the other, and as we go deeper and deeper, each begins to fall apart from the real of authenticity and move into assumptions, and belief. Be it the Atomic theory , or Gravitational Waves.

The only self evident truth being that 'I exist', all other information can never ever be verified. This startling revelation will allow us to travel thoughts and ideas which otherwise appear not to have the ability to be authenticated and probe this world deeper and ultimately realize the truth.  This liberates us from the need for authentication and also from the clutches of a single reality.

Information vs Knowledge

We undoubtedly live in an information era. All activities revolve around gathering and using information. This is an era of rapid communication, and connectivity driven by information. People around the world are becoming more and more informed. Getting information and understanding it seems to be very natural and at ease. This has been the culmination of a long evolution of intelligence, and ability to use logic to build information structures, one on top of the other.

We have reached a stage where we have an enormous amount of information as well as it being very complex in nature. Advances in science as well as any field of endeavor is presented for laymen and comprehended relatively easily. Analogies and pedagogical tools help us understand complex topics such as relativity and light year.

While our ability to gather and understand information has increased to a great extent, converting information to Knowledge is a different matter altogether. Knowledge is internalized information, where one begins to live life in sync with what one has understood.

For example, the information that 'Everything is made up of atoms' is reasonably understandable. Through logic , and primitive axioms, one can arrive at this information. But this stays as mere information. It stays at a intellectual level, and available for discussions and contemplations. Converting such a fundamental piece of information into Knowledge will liberate one from the miseries of life.

If everything is made of atoms,(here by atom we can mean the most fundamental particle, such as a Higgs-Boson) then whatever we see is made of atoms. A blade of grass, a cloud, a waterfall, a sun, dirt, food, our body, each and every organ in our body, and so on.. are all made of the exact same atom.

Atoms are clean, they are pristine. There are no ugly atoms, no dirty atoms, no good atoms, or bad ones. Even the cancer cell contains the very same atoms as  that of life giving oxygen. The irritating neighbor is made of the exact same atom as myself. If one searches the body all one finds is the atom. The individual self is never to be found. The identify claiming to be the self is not to be seen. only billions and billions of the very same atom. Everywhere. All over the Universe, the very same thing.

A deep and sustained contemplation on this fundamental idea becomes profound Knowledge. A world made entirely of atoms, without any idea of good or bad, likes and dislikes cannot be the cause of any kind of trouble. All emotions, thoughts, ideas and stories happen in an illusory layer over and above the atomic realm.That extra step to Knowing something from it being mere information transforms life, and in this case results in Joy.

If everything is made up of atoms and nothing but atoms, then it is indeed easy to 'Imagine'.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Thanks John Lennon for such a profound song.

Past or Present

It is amazing how sometimes the most mundane of things can be incredibly interesting. The other day I was watching the Sunrise on the shores of the ancient seaport of Mamallapuram. With the beautiful Shore Temple on my side, I was pondering how we are witnessing the past in the form of this timeless sixth Century wonder. A few moments later the Sun rose above the sea, a beautiful orange ball of fire, making the sea and the waves glow like fire.

As I kept watching the sea, the reflections , the waves, the people swimming and the fishing boats near the horizon, it dawned on me that the picture I was witnessing had multiple samples of time. The sea and the waves and the boat were from the present time. The shining Sun however was from the past. It was about eight and a half minutes old. I was witnessing the past and the present at the same time. An incredibly miraculous thing isn't it?  

A friend further elaborated me that in fact it was not just two, but infinitely many. Light from each of the objects reaches my eye at the same time, after bouncing off from them at different times. so it was an infinitely many continuous  frames from different times. All from the past.

Indeed you can only see the past!! time would have past however small between when it bounced from the object and hit your eye. So we can never really observe anything in the present! So what we seem to see never existed! the reality that we seem to think of is in fact an illusion. 

Parmenides and Zeno used the argument of the impossibility of movement to the same conclusion of the illusory nature of reality.

Realizing that nothing is real, and what we see is not  what you get, we can enjoy this absurdly inexplicable life.

25 Ideas that captivated me

Over time I had been introduced to various ideas, and some stand out. These were encountered over a long period of time, and each one of them was a turning point in my understanding of things. I was recollecting some that had a great impact and made me ponder over things, and question my understanding. Here are some such ideas in no particular order (except perhaps the last one). Someday I would like to write about each of them

Everything is made of Atoms

Light Year and the Scale of the Universe

Dictionary

Stereoscopic Vision

Grammar

Euclid's Elements

Non-Euclidean Geometry

Mathematics is Made up

Peano's  Axioms


Things that can think - Flip-Flop and Digital Electronics

Every problem is Mathematically a Search problem.

Abstract Algebra

Calculus

Algorithm

Mathematical Model of a Computer program

Recursion

Parsing

Bresenham's Line Drawing Algorithm

Fractals

Godel's incompleteness theorem

Double Split Experiment

The Difficulty of Defining/Understanding anything absolutely.

Artificial Intelligence

Immortality

Who is the Knower

Multiple truths and Higher dimensional space

As we evolve, we begin to seek. We seek to know. We seek to know about the phenomenal world, life, and our place in it. We seek to get answers. We try to explain. There are myriad approaches and a million explanations.

From infinitesimally small to the impossibly large, from the inanimate to the most dynamic, from non-living to highly evolved living beings, there is a vast range in the texture of life. What is totally insignificant to one plane is of utmost important to another.

Then there is something that seems rational, that seems to be beyond inconsistencies, and it tries to explain life, systematically. Sometimes we seem to get answers. sometimes not, and more importantly all questions are not answered. Then comes religion, which in itself comes in a million flavors. It helps us understand, but in a million ways. Here again at times we seem to get an answer.

Then there are philosophers, they seem to give us some glimpse of the truth. again the answers seem to be coming in trickles. Sometimes love and loss and emotions seem to give us an answer. Art seems to give us some clue.

As we observe the various such systems, there are definitely cases where we seem to get into a certain moment of truth. Where we emotionally and intellectually seem to have that moment of enlightenment. But that seems momentary. It has a certain space and time attached to it. It doesn't seem to last and we get back to our clueless state again. 

But this seemingly accidental brush with truth, has an analogy.

Space as we know is three dimensional. But it need not be absolute. If we were a single dimensional creature, living in a single dimensional world, we would live on a line. we move back and forth, and that's about it. But if the world were two dimensional, then we as single dimensional creatures would experience anomalies, such as some one disappearing in front of us and appearing behind us. This is a simple possibility in two dimensions. with a line traversing from the front and goes behind me.

The same can be extended to two dimensions, and also to the third dimension.Each dimension offers a certain view which is standard, and experiences an anomaly when the next higher dimension intersects. Also it becomes obvious that a higher order truth introduced into a lower order reality is bound to appear as an anomaly!

Just as these anomalies point to the existence of higher dimensions in space, the accidental glimpse of truth and moments of enlightenment points to the existence of a higher order truth. Seeking and reaching that results in a Joyful life.

Tasting your own Blood

The world is a place of entertainment,  experience and enjoyment. Myriad things form part of the place we call earth. Shopping malls, fast cars, Theater, Sports Arena, Sky scrapers, Cruise ships, ski resorts, Temples, Hospitals, Hospices and so many many other things. News keeps us entertained, new ideas keep us excited. Gadgets bring you delight. In this seemingly never ending sequence of events, there seems to be many sources for happiness.

A tiny little tale from the ancient lore, talks about a dog chewing on a dry bone, and as it keeps chewing, its gums begin to bleed, mistaking the blood to be coming from the bone, the dog chews even more enthusiastically, and tasting its own blood and feeling happy.

The happiness we derive out of objects and events and people and places, are compared to the happiness derived from the bone. The world in itself is like the dry bone and cannot provide happiness, it is the inherent happiness in our own self that gets expressed by engaging with the world. The wise understand this fallacy and give little importance to the events of the world.

There are two parts to this story, the first lets us know that the world is not the source of happiness, and hence we can care less about it and be blissful ourselves. This tells us that a fancy car, or a luxurious house is not essential for us to be happy. Though they provide us with comforts we need not crave for it mistaking for the source of happiness. 

The second part tells us that though the bone is not the source for the blood, and similarly the world is not the source for happiness, the bone does enable the dog to taste its own blood. Similarly the world enables us to reflect our own happiness on it and express itself. Similar to the Sun unable to see itself, can only see its very own light by being reflected by objects outside, the world and its events provides us with materials to reflect our own happiness.

Knowing this, and putting the world in its right place, liberates us from the cravings of specific events and possession of objects, titles and stuff and enables us lead a joyful life.

Perfect imperfection

We all are perfectionists at various levels. We need certain things in a certain way. We want people to obey traffic rules, our kids to listen to us, our neighbors to be friendly, a plastic free world, and our politicians to be corruption-free, well that desire we have overcome. Point is we have our set of things to be in a way we want them to be, and certain other things we learn to live with.

Our experiences are only interpretations of events. Events themselves lack the power to create an experience, its our faculty of interpretation that enables us to experience things. As we get to understand this, we learn to see the happenings of life, in a different manner. Be it day to day events, or life altering things. As we become more refined in this, and we begin taking things on our stride, life gets into a monotonic rhythm. 

Then out of the blue something happens that makes you go mad beyond your wildest dreams. Now how did that happen? In spite of our composure, and our complete understanding of the meaninglessness of life, and the fallacy of taking anything hard, some events do get us! This is the greatest feature of life! It keeps bringing up surprises, and makes you feel alive. You think you have got it all, and then this happens!

A totally desire less state will liberate us from the negativity of such situations, contemplating on the nature of reality, and beauty and depth of this creation, helps us stay at the right distance from life.

The world is an illusion, and the frameworks of likes and dislikes create endless structures for living. Realizing this, and staying in this knowledge, helps us get back on our feet after feeling the blow that life just gave. If you think about it, this life is indeed perfectly imperfect!