Passionately Curious

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. "
-Albert Einstein


These days I am thinking a few things. And you know what? Today I've found that already some great men have thought about them!! So, here's a post with some quotations that will make it easy for me to express myself-


"Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone — and necessarily so — and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere.
I shake your hand in heartfelt comradeship, E."

He even spoke about 'paper whores'!
"Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications — a temptation to superficiality."

The most astonishing paragraph simply dumbfounded me. Because today after reading Newtons letter to the Royal Society I was thinking the exact same things!! Here it is,


"On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people."

 And finally something that really touched me at this point of space-time ,

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Source Wikiquote

neuro-symbolic

This afternoon I was seating under a tree on a very nice bench facing the sea. From where I sit one can actually see the little black islands in the middle of the vast blue water and all the ships and boats shining in the dying sunlight. The sky was transforming into purple from greenish sky-blue. And I had this pleasant and very interesting reading material in my hand, titled- 'A neuro-symbolic hybrid intelligent architecture with applications'. Suddenly a cicada started to 'crick' at a very high pitch! I looked up and there was this cuckoo hiding in a branch...

And I was thinking, 'isn't it great that they are actually paying me for all these!'
This was 'the definition' of happiness in my mind!!

The steaming coffee mug with all its warmth actually asked me, 'aren't you happy?'
'Yes I am...'
:)

Play Hard...

There are birds that fly many hundred miles without a halt. Someone mentioned this to the cicada and the wren, who agreed that such a thing was impossible. 'You and I know very well', they said, 'that the farthest one can ever get even by the most tremendous effort is that elm-tree; and even this one cannot be sure of reaching every time. Often one finds oneself dragged back to earth long before one gets there. All these stories about flying hundreds of miles at a stretch are sheer nonsense.'

Now, that was a classic story. What we learn from it, will be an exercise problem. But here I have a different story to tell. At Singapore all these Chinese type(Mongoloid-Asian) people they really walk very fast. Most of them simply run! Sometimes, when I go for the bust stop I find someone just running to the stoppage. At first I used to wonder 'Why is this moron running so fast? The bus is not even there’. So, after slowly reaching there I find him still panting, give him a smirk and when the bus arrives just get on it together. I win! (Or, do I?)

But then comes the revelation! Every now and then I find that I am just 30 paces behind; there comes the bus, the running guy gets on it and says me sayonara. He wins! And the rate is alarmingly around 2 out of 10.

So, now I stop and reflect. You see, even if I go running still I might lose a bus by being just 30 paces behind. But at least I could say, ‘I couldn’t have made it anyway. No regrets!’ But when I go slow, and the Japanese/Chinese guy says me sayonara. I actually start to regret! I say, ‘I wish I had started faster a bit early.’

Observation, the china man didn’t know whether there will be a bus just when he reaches the stoppage. Still he is not slowing down. And managing to win 20% of the time! And when I win (!), I actually be just equal to him (we get on the bus together). Given all the unbelievable things human being has achieved, 0.2 is a huge winning chance which you cannot just give away.

Moral of the story: Play Hard!

 

Exercise:
1.    What do you learn from the story of cicada and wren? Does it help?
2.    Is ‘sayonara’ a Japanese or Chinese word?
3.    This is a mathematically intriguing problem about the bus story. So follow carefully- As I don’t know when the bus will arrive, it is always possible that just 30 paces before reaching the stop the bus arrives and leaves me. I mean, if the distribution of bus arrival is same, no matter how first I am walking I will have the same number of hit and miss scenario. Then at the beginning why should I walk fast to bus stoppage?
4.    What is the thing that qualifies this blog to be included in this scientific blog listing?

The price to be paid...

One of the most impressive discoveries was the origin of the energy of the stars that makes them continue to burn. One of the men who discovered this was out with his girl friend the night after he realized that nuclear reactions must be going on in the stars in order to make them shine. She said "Look at how pretty the stars shine!" He said "Yes, and right now I am the only man in the world who knows why they shine." She merely laughed at him. She was not impressed with being out with the only man who, at that moment, knew why stars shine. Well, it is sad to be alone, but that is the way it is in this world. -Feynman

Scientific endeavor is a lonesome process. If you are not satisfied with the excitement of the probability of finding new things (yes, you might not find anything new! But of course you can learn new things) maybe you are at the wrong end of the world. You simply need to disregard a lot of social things. Those who are close must accept your inner loneliness.

Exercise:
1. What is the type of reaction in stars?
2. Do you really find mathematics beautiful? What makes math/science interesting to you?
3. If you have the same reaction from your girlfriend about the reaction in the stars what would be your reaction? [place yourself in that poor scientists position]
4. Do you feel that ‘you would rather be lonely than be around some fools’? If 'yes', why it is not ‘arrogant’? If 'no', why fools are important?

Mind Building

“Of course, there's only a finite rate at which material can be absorbed by human mind, yet we disregard that phenomenon, and in spite of it we go too fast. So, I think I'll just go along slowly, and see how far we get.” –Feynman

Today I looked back and found that, the very few things I remember are exactly those things which I have used to solve some problem!

Sometimes we need to learn in a huge volume. What we do is we put a substantial amount of effort to understand those things but spare the exercise! And that’s where we lose.

Look at the legend of Knuth. He has written ‘The Art of Computer Programming’ it is kind of a voluminous literature survey. But actually it is far more than that. If you look carefully you will see that each chapter contains exercises! Those exercises are mostly created by Knuth himself. Solved, rated, organized and solutions were appended at the end of the book.

Now, do you see how much there is to be done before even to say to yourself that ‘yes, I have learned it’. Same observation works for any other ‘Legendary Genius’. Gauss believed, what you cannot use to solve problems is useless. We can always argue about this for long time but look at the attitude of these great men.

Learn Thoroughly, Solve some exercise, Make some problem for your own, Try to contribute them to that book, and then say, ‘I can do it’.

The equation is simple,
You haven’t solved any problem = You have learned nothing. [It always works]

I mean I have gone through this Kama Sutra thing a few times. Frankly speaking I don't remember a single position except the very obvious ones. Same story for all the mathematics I have learned.

Exercise:
1. In what situation we actually need to cover a huge material in a very short time?
2. Do you think trying to create some practice problem for yourself would require a lot of creativity?
3. Name a few Kama Sutra positions.
4. Write down the most complicated mathematical formula(at least describe it) that you have actually used to solve some problem.

Simply Everything I wanted to be!

From Wikipedia-
"Stephen Wolfram (born 29 August 1959 in London) is a British physicist, software developer, mathematician, computer programmer, author and businessman, known for his work in theoretical particle physics, cosmology, cellular automata, complexity theory, computer algebra and the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine..."

Read More Here

Are you on the cutting-edge?

Think about the expert on analog computers who found his world was taken over by digital computers. Think about the electrical engineer with a PhD about vacuum tube technology at the verge of the invention of transistors! Yes, very soon the world will see another such change. Mark your position on it.