mind and learning – from trenches of science and buddhism

How does our mind/brains recognize objects?

Neuroscientists retrained monkey brains to blur the distinction between two objects — a Dalmatian dog image and a rhinoceros image – via the learning process temporal contiguity. The mind usually assumes that images appearing rapidly one after another belong to the same source/group/entity.

Science loves/attracts those with attachment to/obsessions for objects; Buddhism despises attachment/obsession.

As Saint Manora, 22nd patriarch of Zen Buddhism, said:

Mind turns along with myriad situations,
Its turning point is truly recondite,
When you recognize nature and accord with its flow,
There is no more elation,
And no more sorrow.

(tech) innovation stalls – what’s next?

There’s growing realization that value-added technology innovation stalls. How did ancients invent/innovate?

New York Times started its own Google-Labs-style innovation-driving initiative called beta620. A response to stalling news industry?

Recently, Google’s CFO acknowledged that every single day 15% of the queries Google handles are completely new/never seen before.

Also, many modern financial tools (cheques, stock-certificates, bills-of-exchange) have ancient roots.

Even Roman dictator’s post was an innovative response to demands/aspirations of the time, namely overcoming inter-fighting of magistrates. List of Roman inventions are must serve as examples for modern leaders aspiring to innovate.

Isn’t it time for 21st-century value-based innovations?

music, life and pan

Did you know that music can teach about life and history?

A native of Trinidad and Tobago, pan, was originally used for communication between enslaved Africans during the British colonial rule and acquired its modern form in the guise of used oil barrels made of steel.

To quote from the launching event of Pan Camp 2011 (during which participants were also taught spirituality and conflict management)

…learning pan… develops qualities of persistence and consistency… for achieving anything in life that is worthwhile.

P.S. Steel-pans are the only instruments in the world that follow the musical cycle of fourths-and-fifths calculated by Pythagoras.

life, gamification and emergence

What is life? Life is a game, emergent on simple rules – humans cannot pretend to know even a tiny part of those rules. But games are the best way to learn about general and specific aspects of life such as business, politics, music…

Watched Matrix? Played Matrix Online?

But why do we play games? Fun (easy/hard), different mental/intellectual states and people. In a word: a richer emotional/mental/social set of experiences our lives rarely grant us.

Games reflect complexity aspects of life. No better game than chess for us to learn more about life.

science fails – again and again

Science is the way we surprise God.

Indeed, our most significant way of surprising God.

LHC considers discarding the supersymmetry theory (last 20 years of one of the biggest science “investments” bites the dust).

Recently, NASA Glory satellite crashed – $424 million fail.

Science is trying – and failing – to find exhaustive answers to pressing matters it set out to tackle. Tetraneutrons, placebo effect, eocene enigma, hybrid sea-squirts, etc, etc.

Human curiosity and arrogance are well reflected in thoughts about future of science. Nanobot armies (physics), no aging (biology), virtual families (computing).

Keep dosing yourself with more b***shit.

time and world accelerated – what about humans?

A roadside dentist in China. By-the-hour hotels.

Everything is fast. Time is faster. We are faster.

World has accelerated from around 1989.

We now started running through time, but we misperceive it.

Running is one important factor that made humans dominating species on earth. We can run in conditions that other animals can’t.

Maybe we actually need to go faster, as it seems the Earth’s day length shortened (by 1.8 milliseconds) by the recent Japan earthquake.

By 2048, which world would we have?

Market World?
Fortress World?
Transformed World?

Time magazine predicts a more robotic future with functionally immortal humans after 2045.

what bee hives and ants can teach about democracy and common good

When spring comes, bee hives divide into two, one group staying in, the other looking for new home. It’s not the queen assigning “home-searching scouts” but older bees. Scouts fly off looking for places and announce their finds by special dance moves, describing routes to their finds – more dancing for better spots.

Similarly for ants. A leaderless, self-directing society that expands democratically and which communicates/transmits messages using pheromone.

Our politicians/businessmen can learn from bees/ants/…:

Don’t be die-hard/fanatic about your choices/finds
Focus on your responsibilities
Forget politics
Listen to/consider your peers
Let bygones be bygones

who rules the world?

9^th century Persian polymath Al-Khwārizmī needs credit. His treatise about linear equations was the most widely read in Europe during Middle Ages. “Algorithm” is a corruption of his name, referring to the decimal system from his book.

In 21^st century, algorithms shape the world: “game of life,” robot-cleaners, algorithmic trading which runs 70% of Wall-Street (screwing it in 2010, Flash-Crash), e-commerce (a book “Making of Fly” being 23 million on Amazon), rental (60% of Neflix’s rental run by an algorithm), even Hollywood (an algorithm deciding which movies to produce) and health.

We have little idea about how much algorithms know/can do…

creativity and bacon

One past extensive research about creativity asked the question “What are creative people like?” concluding, creative people:

work very hard;
are more disposed to setting their own agenda and taking independent action;
strive for originality;
show more flexibility;
don’t have higher IQs … No cognitive abilities have been identified which reliably distinguish between creative and non-creative people.

And to question “What cognitive factors are involved in creative acts?” research concludes:

Years of preparation essential for creative productivity;
Goal setting is critical in creative acts.

And what is creative perversity? It is cologne, salt, vodka, mayonnaise, gumballs – all made of bacon.

dictators, tyrants, despots and autocrats

We often blur lines between an autocrat, despot, dictator and tyrant. For many, they are different names of an oppressive, cruel and powerful person. But are they?

Despot (“my lord”) was originally the title given to the Byzantine Emperor, while tyrant was the title of a leader in ancient Greece called upon to bring internal/external political/economic stability.

Tyrants in business might have moderate success. Shaw and others expressed admiration for modern dictators/tyrants such as Mussolini, Stalin, …

Among top ten worst dictators, many can be nicely described by the dictators’ poem.

Lastly, check your innate dictatorship level by passing this test.