The truth about thinking, its implications and remedy

Posted on by usshurt

Here is the truth about thinking: It’s not your conscious mind where thoughts originate. They all originate in your “sub-conscious” mind. Even those thoughts which you think about actively. For example, while reading this text some thoughts would have arisen in your mind like — “What the hell he is talking about, I don’t believe its true”. I am contesting that even these thoughts have origins in your subconscious mind. And as pretty much all thoughts fall in above (active thinking) category, in other words I am saying that “All thoughts originate in your subconscious mind”. Continue to read where I elaborate this.

First we need to understand the thinking process in bit more detail. So let’s try to understand the parts involved in thinking.

Part 1 : Trigger for thinking and origin of thought

All thoughts have beginning (and of course end). But most of the time we don’t see them. In fact we don’t see them as individual thoughts. It’s more like a constant flow of thoughts. And this process of creating and perceiving this chain of thoughts is called thinking. But the bottom line is that, there are individual thought involved in thinking and each thought has a beginning. And to begin a thought you need a trigger. There always is a trigger.

Best way to know if this is true, is to do — experiment. Try to not think about anything for a moment. Close your eyes if you want. What happens? One thing could be that, you don’t manage to stop thinking at all. In that case I suggest you try again. Other thing could be that you actually managed to stop thinking for very brief time. If you could do so, try to remember what was the thing which interrupted your state of being thoughtless. In many cases it would be some physical stimulus like a sound, an itch, pain, smell etc. Let’s call this stimulus as the Object. That object attracted your attention and then your subconscious mind fetched something related to the object from your past (It doesn’t have to be old past. It could be as recent past as last minute or second). For example, if the objects was a sound of a dog barking, your subconscious mind compared that sound to all the sounds stored in your memory and told you its “Barking of the dog”. If it is a sound that you have never heard before, your subconscious mind would not find it your database and will come up with a question (a thought) “Strange sound. I wonder what’s making that sound”. In other words your subconscious mind “created” a thought based on a trigger.

So far so good. What happens next? Well, what happens is that the thought becomes the trigger for next thought and the same process is repeated again. In this case, once you identified it’s barking of a dog, that thought acts as a trigger and your subconscious mind would fetch another thought based on your past experiences. If you are afraid of dogs, it would cause a thought something like “I hope that dog is chained”. If you like dogs, it would perhaps understand and empathize and tell your “The dog sounds hungry. Maybe I should find him and see if he is fine.” Notice that the thoughts being generated are completely dependent on your past. There can be variety of thoughts generated for the same stimulus. And now this thought acts as a trigger and your subconscious mind pulls up another thought and so on.

Part 2 : Perception of the thought

So far we have discussed only subconscious mind. What about the conscious mind? Well here it plays it’s part in the process of thinking. Subconscious mind brings you the thought but the essence of thought is perceived by conscious mind (Or more correctly the consciousness. But for simplicity I will use the term conscious mind). The reason, you feel as if you are thinking a thought is because, you (conscious mind) are involved in “perceiving” the thought and not because you created the thought. It’s similar to when you are looking at a red ball. Your eyes process that light reflected from the surface of the ball and create an image. But the perception of the “redness” and “ballness” of the object occurs in the conscious mind. Similarly, subconscious mind creates thoughts but they are perceived by conscious mind. When conscious mind perceives the object, subconscious mind starts working in the background and pulling up memories, thoughts, emotions from the past related to the object. And again, your conscious mind perceives the object. This process happens so fast, that we (conscious mind) are under the illusion that we are both creating and perceiving the thoughts.

In general when we think about thinking process, we mean creation of thoughts rather than perceiving of the thoughts. And if that is the general definition of thinking then, in a sense we don’t think at all. The subconscious mind (over which we don’t have control) does the thinking. We just perceive the thoughts generated by subconscious mind.

Implications of the above truth about thinking

  1. Living in a dream

In the dream our subconscious mind creates the world including the images, sounds and of course thoughts in the dream. And the conscious mind perceives these objects. Yes, conscious mind is very much active in the dream. If it was not there, there would be no one to experience the dream. When we wake up we don’t remember the dream. Or if we remember it, we realize the logical faults with the events in the dream and hence discard it or not take it seriously. But important thing is, that someone had the experience of the dream. That someone — is the conscious mind.

As we have seen earlier, this description of dream state is very similar to what is happening when we are awake and thinking. Only difference is that in dream state, subconscious mind takes over all aspects of the perception. While in awake state, the other senses like vision, sound exist by themselves and thoughts are created by subconscious mind. But since, when are awake, we are thinking constantly, it means that our interaction with the real world keeps on getting interrupted by the thoughts. And conscious mind ends up spending a lot of time in perceiving this virtual reality created by subconscious mind in the form of thoughts.

So, we define dreaming as perceiving objects created by subconscious mind then, in the so called awakened state, we are dreaming (except for brief moments when thinking stops). This is the reason, why those people who transcend the thinking and perceive the world directly are called “awakened”.

2. No free will

We have seen that, the thoughts which arise in your subconscious mind are outcome of your past experiences, memories, ideas stored in your mind. Whenever a trigger is perceived, your subconscious mind comes up with a thought consistent with your past. But since your past is already happened, freez-ed, it follows that the thought your subconscious mind comes up with is in a sense predetermined. In other words, your subconscious mind is responding to the current moment based on the heuristics data stored in the memory. There is no scope for dynamism. Of course, the conscious mind doesn’t know it. It believes that it is doing the thinking and therefore its dynamic. But that’s not the case. And as all our actions are eventually outcome of our thoughts, our actions too become predetermined. In that sense there is no free will in our ordinary life.

But then is that the final truth? That our lives are predetermined? Well, that’s not completely true either. As mentioned before, even though thinking is predominant part of our existence, there are times lapses (less than seconds) where our conscious mind gets directly involved in perceiving the reality. In that brief moment, we are not bound by our past. There we are dynamic. Unfortunately, this moment lasts too short. So we oscillate between freewill and pre determinism all the time. This is the reason, why those people who transcend the thinking and perceive the world directly are called “liberated”. They are not bound by past.

The Remedy

What I discussed above are the “academic implications” of truth about thinking process. But then there are many other issues of constant, incessant thinking like — anxiety, depression etc. I am not going to elaborate on how these issues arise due to over thinking. Rather I want to point you towards the possible remedy.

The simple (and the only) remedy is to “Stop thinking” or at least “Stop thinking when not required”. This is indeed a simple solution. But simple and easy are not the same thing. It requires tremendous efforts over long time to gain control over your thinking. Meditation is one way. Other ways are “being aware of what’s happening in present moment” or “moment to moment awareness of present moment”. These are some of the techniques, which can help you to create “gaps” in thinking. This (ability to control thinking) is also one of the basic aspects of Spirituality. Spirituality is a very deep subject and I am not qualified enough to define or explain it. So I am not going to even attempt that. However, based on the material I have read in last couple of years, I can say that many of the Spiritual traditions give this message that when you are perceiving the world without interpretation of your subconscious mind, that’s that time when you are really in touch with the truth. That’s when you are living in a meaningful way.

[Origin of this blog post: My search for quick-fix self-help books eventually introduced me to the world of spirituality. And have only begun my journey. So far, I have spent time in understanding the concepts by reading books and by little experimenting. I have had glimpses of what it feels to be in thoughtless state. It feels peaceful. But unfortunately, I cannot hold on to that state for more than a second. But I plan to practice and be better at it. Meanwhile I thought, I will share what I have found, understood with others, hoping that it reaches those who are ready. If you want to find out more about this topic and spirituality in general I recommend following books: The Power Of Now by Ekhart Tolle, The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer]

Soul Exchange

Posted on by usshurt

I am sure at some point in your life of you would have come across the idea of “soul exchange”. Very likely, you would have either seen it in movies or TV shows or read it in a fantasy/sci-fi novel. The idea is something like this. There are two people, in many cases of opposite sex and due to some supernatural activity (mostly accidentally) they end up having their souls (or bodies, depending upon how you look at it) exchanged. So man’s soul is now inside woman’s body and vice-versa. And then all sorts of funny things start happening. As a young boy, when I had come across this idea, I found it very interesting and entertaining. However when I was bit older, I realized that their is yet another way (or more appropriately level) in which soul exchange can happen. And this is what I am going to share with you here.

Before we get to the idea, we need to develop understanding about following thing first. The soul exchange ideas mentioned above are based on the assumption that the “souls have memory”. So when the soul of a man enters woman’s body, all his memories, experiences, opinions, idiosyncrasies etc too enter woman’s body. However if you think logically, this is very unlikely. All things that we experience, are through our body and they are stored in our body (the memory cells in the brain). Even our thoughts, intelligence are function of our brain. We can be only as intelligent as our brain would allow us to be. We may observe that there is a particular pattern of thoughts that is associated with our identity (a thought like one day I want to become a rich person). These are the thoughts that we think very often and in a way, we start identifying ourselves with them and hence we may think that those thought patterns are us . Part of our souls. However, the fact is that even those thought patterns are ultimately stored in your brain. And everyday when you think about them, based on some external (or internal) triggers they come to the fore and you think about them. The point is that those thoughts are part of your body!

Now that you are aware of basic rules, let’s see what happens now. To make experiment more interesting, let’s consider the two people involved to be — an old physics professor and an infant child. So, professor’s soul enters infant’s body and infant’s soul enters professor’s body. Now, what happens? Does professor starts crying and whining like a baby? Or does the infant suddenly starts stating Einstein’s equations? Well, as you would have guessed, nothing of this sort would happen. The professor would act like professor and infant like infant. But then what about the exchange? What exactly happened when the souls were exchanged? Well it’s just that the “entity” that was experiencing the infant body (and thoughts) will now experience the the body and thoughts of the professor. Since all professor’s experiences, memories, intelligence were already in professor’s body this new entity would not experience any break, oddness, weirdness. It would think that it was always a professor and it is now… a professor. And same would be the case with the infant. No change would be visible to an outsider (to infant’s mother or professor’s wife). No change would be visible to the infant or professor! They would not know, that their souls were ever exchanged. At the heart of all this, only one thing really happened. The “core experiencer” just switched the body and with that the earlier infant “became” professor and erstwhile professor “became” infant, in “every sense of the term”.

(I know this is a lot to take, if you are not into thinking such things. And some of the things may sound either nonsensical or too obvious. I will suggest please read again if required.)

Before I end, I want throw yet another card. What if this is happening already? With us. What if every night when we sleep, our soul is taken out of out current body and put into another. And another soul is installed in our body. When we would wake up, would we notice anything different? Of course Not. Whichever body we wakeup into, we would have full access to that person’s memory, experience, intelligence. We would remember what he/she did last night (or rather we did last night, as we are him/her now). Where he/she was last year. Everything he/she ever experienced.

And by now, you might have also deduced that, if it (soul-exchange) has to happen, it does not have to be only in the sleep. It can happen anytime. It might be happening all the time. It might be happening right now as you read this. Who knows, “I” might be reading this “through you” this moment!

[Background: In the recent past I have read few self-help books. In some of them, I have come across this idea that “you are not your body, you are not your thoughts, your are not your emotions, your are the experiencer of all these things”. And there I realised that the soul-exchange idea that I had thought of in my younger days is exactly on those lines. So, now that I found some validation of my idea, I thought I can share it through my blog (I am not the only one to think about such stuff). And hence here it is.]

Unique Quentin Tarantino

Posted on by usshurt

Few weeks back I watched Death Proof. “The worst movie I have ever done…”, Quentin Tarantino (QT) had once said about it. Perhaps yes. But actually it wasn’t that bad. If watched from right perspective (it being a tribute to B grade grind-house exploitation cinema) you can enjoy it. Anyway, having watched it, I have now watched all the feature length movies written and directed by QT and hence I feel it is a good time to write about QT.

There are many things which I like about his movies. And some of them are trademark QT. Be it the retro soundtracks, abundant pop culture references, graphic violence, juxtaposition of violence and humour, Mexican standoffs, profuse profanity or non-linear chapters. And these are the things people have come to appreciate and associate with QT. When asked about what do you like about QT movies, most people will mention above things. But there are things which I personally like more and are seldom mentioned the popular discourse about QT, so I am attempting to write them down in this blog.

And here are those things:

1. Originality:
Given that the every other Hollywood movie that is released these days is a adaptation of a novel, it looks like the screen writers have just abdicated their duty. Rest of the movies are either based on biography of a famous people, or based on some real world incident. I don’t have problem with such movies as long as they are made in the right manner. Only thing is it is not 100% original.
Rest of the movies are just newer versions of age old themes like alien invasion, man vs machine, virus outbreak, end of the world, psycho killer etc. There is very acute lack of originality. And here QT scores.
Agreed, that his work is heavily influenced by works of other great directors, movies that inspire him. But the end product always has something original. He takes the usual genre or themes and shakes them up with mix of interesting characters, dialogues and subplots, and it becomes a colourful strong flavoured feature. In fact, in the name of originality he would not hesitate to change the course of history where Hitler gets killed in the movie theatre by Jews and ending the World War 2 few years before it actually did! I am not saying he is the only one original but certainly he belongs to the handful ones of this kind.

2. Development of a scene:
While most of the movies are just a collection of hundreds (or thousands) of small scenes (ranging from few seconds to at the max 2-3 minutes), what QT gives you is 7-8 chapters. Each scene or chapter lasts for good 15-30 mins. While in other movies characters just say 1-2 sentences to take the story forward (or so the director thinks), QT develops the scene gradually. It starts casually with chit-chat about normal things which have no relation to the movies main plot (royale with cheese). This goes on for a while and before you know the lines which really matter for the main plot are delivered, sometimes very subtly. And then (in most of the cases) towards the end, the situation takes completely unexpected turn and the scene ends with a bang! I like this style very much. It is as if you are watching a play in a movie format! This gives depth to the characters and make them believable and likeable. And it certainly works for me.

3. Movie Movie experience:
QT had said in an interview that “..never while watching Kill-Bill you will think that you are not watching a movie. While watching the Bride take bloody revenge you are aware at the back of your mind that this is not possible in real world, it is just a movie…” He says things that happen in such movies take place not in real world but in “the movie movie universe”. In another words he defines his movie movie universe as “…when Vincent and Jules go and watch a movie, they watch Kill Bill“. But I feel that all his movies take place in the movie movie universe (including Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained).
And that, in fact is a good thing. I will tell you how. Once you know that what happens in the movie is not going to happen in real world, it becomes a sort of fantasy. And the good thing about fantasy (and the reason why they are so popular) is that the viewer can detach himself from the day-to-day mediocrity and enjoy it. Even if there is something bad, dark, bloody, violent in the fantasy, the viewer knows that it cannot hurt him and so he can enjoy even the darker parts of the movie. Contrast that with the movies which are realistic or based on real events which are dark, sad, horror. Such movies will affect you. Like “Million Dollar Baby” was so tragic that I could not watch the last one third of the movie. Not that I despise or look down upon such movies. Sometimes you as a viewer want to experience such emotions and we need such movies too. What I am saying however is that, once you detach yourself from (especially the negative things in) the movie, it becomes pure entertainment. This is why I enjoy QT movies no matter how many times I have previously seen them. It becomes sort of a folklore fantasy with characters which are like regular people.

I know that, when we talk about QT or his movies, it evokes very extreme emotions. There are some people for whom he is perhaps the best thing happened to movie making industry. And there are some others, for whom he is not only a bad director but perhaps the most over rated one. Well, wherever you find yourself on that spectrum between the two extremes, one thing sure, that you can like him or hate him but can’t ignore him.

I hope that he continues to entertain us and I am definitely looking forward to his next “The Hateful Eight”.

Revisiting the “Rolling wheel problem”

Posted on by usshurt

More than four years back I had posed (through a (blog) post) a question. The basic question was when you try to make a wheel (with a very narrow width) stand it falls, as it cannot balance itself. However when you roll it, it is able to balance itself as long as it has certain speed. Now, how does the rolling wheel intelligently maintains its standing posture when it is motion? You can go through the detailed post here.The reason I am now coming back to this question is that I think I have found the answer.

I was reading Fritjof Capra’s “The Web of Life” and there, I came across a completely different way of thinking about physical universe.

The classical (Newtonian/Laplacian) view of the universe has been that, if we find out exact location and position of all fundamental particles of the universe, then with the help of laws of physics, we can at least in principle, predict the exact future state of the universe. In other words the universe is “completely deterministic” (and hence there is only one future and free will is an illusion etc). With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, the we started dealing with probabilities (at subatomic level) and universe became “probabilistically deterministic”. However the basic approach to physics remained the same. We tried to find out more and more fundamental particles and the laws governing them and we thought that by explaining these microscopic interactions we can explain all the macroscopic phenomena. The basic philosophy has been that – understand the “part” and then “sum it up” to understand the “whole”. This is formally known as the “reductionism”.

In Capra’s book, I was introduced to a new way of thinking which rejects reductionism. This new way of thinking is formally called as the “System thinking” (well, System thinking is more than just a rejection of reductionism, but for our purpose this simplistic definition would suffice). The basic philosophy here is that “the whole is more than sum of its parts”. When you gradually “zoom out” from the microscopic world, certain properties which cannot be explained in terms of the internal composition, suddenly emerge. These are called “emergent properties”. One example could be that of heat. We all know what heat is from our every day experience. But at the atomic or subatomic level there is no such thing as heat (electrons are not hot or cold). At microscopic level, heat means kinetic energy of individual particles. Faster they move, hotter the macroscopic object. In this example as we zoom out, at one point we would cease to see the movement of particles and we would start experiencing the heat. Heat or temperature is the “emergent property” here.

Taking this thread forward, Capra explains that under certain conditions, spontaneous properties and patterns emerge which cannot be explained just by the matter constituting those objects. Further, he says that under right conditions (i.e. Correct inflow of matter and energy) these structures may end up creating “feedback loops” with which the structure may attain additional sophistication automatically. He has given the example of “sinkhole vortex”, where under right conditions, a spontaneous vortex of water may appear in the sinkhole. It’s “self-stability” cannot be explained in terms of physical laws. I mean, it (obviously) follows the laws of physics, but those laws cannot add up to the seemingly stable shape and state acquired by the vortex. Once the flow of matter (water molecules) and energy (kinetic energy of the water) stops (or falls below optimal value), it collapses.

I think my problem involving rolling wheel, can be explained with this theory (based on system thinking). Similar to the vortex example, there is a wheel, which when supplied enough energy (by giving it a push) will be able to maintain its posture (up) and through “feedback loops” it will balance itself automatically, as long as there is energy inflow. When the energy is lost (due to friction), it will lose its posture. Note that when the wheel is moving the system has not achieved the “equilibrium”. The system would be in equilibrium, when after having lost all the energy in friction the wheel topples and comes to rest. When it is rolling, it is stable but in non equilibrium state. Basically these radical concepts of emergent properties, feedback loops, self-organisation were the ones which gave the rolling wheel system its intelligent character (which had puzzled me for at least few years). So, the basic takeaway is that you need more that laws of physics to explain the universe.

Three closing remarks.
1. Even though my intention was to cover my rolling wheel problem, I have ended up giving synopsis of Capra’s book, which I haven’t finished it yet and is quite interesting but at the same time is laden with heavy words and sometimes difficult to follow.

2. After watching Inception, I realize that I could have used “spinning top” in my blog instead of “rolling wheel” . The same principles apply to the spinning top. On lighter note, in my dream I could use “rolling wheel” as my totem. In a dream, the wheel will never stop or lose its balance and hence I would know it is a dream. Although that would mean to test it, I would need long enough road (or table or whatever), which is slightly inconvenient compared to spinning top, but then in dream our mind is limitless so I can still manage to get long enough road.

3. And yet again, I have found that, the philosophical and physical (related to physics) problems that I allow myself to indulge in are in fact the problems that great physicists/philosopher actually ponder over. Which means that (kahi na kahi) I am a physicist/philosopher material. Maybe in some parallel universe, I am one.

Classical explanation of “Double-Slit experiment with electron beam”

Posted on by usshurt

With this blog-post I am hoping to explain the famous two-slit experiment, which in a way established one of the weirdest Quantum Mechanics idea – the wave-particle duality. But there is small twist. I am planning to explain it in the “Classical way”!

I don’t claim that my explanation is scientifically correct. It is very much possible that there are some serious errors, but when I was struck with this idea, I found it so interesting that I felt like genuinely sharing it, even if it turns out to be wrong.

So here it is. (People familiar with the experiment and its Quantum Mechanical explanation can directly jump to Classical Explanation)

The Double-Slit Experiment:

One of the most famous and important experiment in Physics is the Young’s two slit experiment. In its simplest form when you pass a monochromatic light on two parallel slits which are closely placed, what you see on screen is the pattern of alternate dark and bright bands, with the middle one being the most bright and the side ones gradually decreasing in intensity. This can be explained by assuming that the light is an electromagnetic “wave”. When the light-wave passes through two slits, each slit becomes the source of a wave, giving existence to two waves. And when these waves interfere, they produce the “interference pattern”.

So far so good.

Now when physicists carried out this experiment with a beam of electron, they were expecting to see only two bright bands, as electrons are tiny particles (particles after all!). But instead they observed the same interference patterned. They concluded that perhaps, when they fire a stream of electrons, two electrons passing through two slits simultaneously somehow interfere with each other and produce the pattern. So they modified the experiment and fired one electron at a time. They assumed that with this, as they have eliminated the possibility of one electron interfering with another, they would now get two simple bands. But to their surprise after repeating the experiment many times over (to let the electron built up happen on screen) they still observed the interference pattern. Now this was really puzzling! How could a single electron interfere with itself ?

Enter the weird world of Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanical Explanations:

One explanation, as per one of the interpretations of the quantum mechanics (The Copenhagen Interpretation) was that, electron is both particle and wave. When electron leaves the (electron) gun it mysteriously becomes “wave”, it passes through both the slits (being a wave it can do that) and then just before it is to reach the screen, it again mysteriously becomes “particle”. In other words, certain objects such as these tiny matter particle can exhibit both wavelike and particle-like characteristics and can transform from one form to another.

This is the “wave-particle” duality.

As per another interpretation – the Many Worlds Interpretations (I like this one the most of all the interpretations of Quantum Mechanics for obvious reasons), what happens is that, since there are two possible outcomes at quantum level, when the electron is about to pass through the slits, the world (or more correctly the universe) “splits” into two worlds. In “one world” the electron passes through one slit and in “another world” it passes through another slit. And then somehow these “two” electrons “interfere” with each other and produce the pattern. (This is cool explanation, as it provides possibility of parallel universes and with that a number of other cool things like “Quantum Immortality” become possible. Is there any surprise then that many people are fans of this interpretation? But let’s not divert). Ok, so single electron can interfere with itself by splitting the world, however how does it create the wavelike pattern is not clear to me. Perhaps, in addition to splitting of the worlds we still need some sort of “particle to wave” transformation similar to the Copenhagen Interpretation.

In short, we can see that though there are these explanations, they are somehow incomplete as they do not explain how the “transformation” happens. Also as we analyze further (deeper) into these interpretations, we encounter still weirder postulates (eg Schrodinger’s Cat, Role of the Observer, Infinite number of parallel universe, Anything-that-can-happen-will-happen etc). So physicist are still working hard to find the “inner working” of these phenomenon and possibly come up with single theory which explains EVERYTHING! The Grand Unifying Theory(GUT) or Theory Of Everything(TOE).

And while physicists are chasing the elusive GUT/TOE, I think I have found a way to explain the outcome in purely classical way. (As said already there could be flaws in this explanation as well, but at least there is another explanation)

Classical Explanation (– by me):

When the electron moves with the speed of light, it creates ripples in the electromagnetic field in along the space it moves (just like a Supersonic Jet creates shockwave by moving too fast). This ripple is “self-propagatory” in nature and hence it becomes a wave. The electron now “surfs” the wave. In the similar manner as the surfer surfs the ocean waves. The water in ocean does not move but the disturbance (or wave) does. And along with it moves the surfer who is riding those waves.

When the single electron is fired at the two-slits, the electron is riding the wave. Since electron is a particle, it can pass through either slit-1 or slit-2 but the wave it has created is after all a wave. So the electromagnetic wave passes through both the slits and then causes interference pattern. The electron which was initially surfing on the simple wave, has to now surf on the “interference” pattern after passing through one of the slits. Depending on which slits it actually went through and where “exactly” it finds itself after emerging out the slit, it will ride one of the “maxima”. That is, it will surf on one of the many crests or troughs which were created by adding up of the two waves. This way the original trajectory of the electron will change and it will be detected on screen at a place where we observe the maxima of waves. If this experiment is repeated many times, depending on slight variations in the position of electron when it emerges out of the slit and the slit it passes through, there will happen a built up of electron at the places where the maxima of the interference is achieved.  We would eventually see the classic interference pattern even with electron.

And this is how we can explain that even single electron is capable of producing interference pattern.

If this explanation is true, it means that the light itself can be thought of as a particle – the photon. And when it is traveling with speed of light, it creates electromagnetic waves and it rides that wave. This theory can actually merge both “particle theory of light” and “wave theory of light”, in a way becoming the Grand Unifying Theory of Light (TGUTOL)!

Any takers ?

The nature of time and of time-travel

Posted on by usshurt

After my last blog-post about time travel (by reversing the entropy), I kept coming back to the subject. Even after I had published it, my mind would drift back to that novel idea of time-travel. I somehow felt that there is more to it. So after thinking hard (or so I thought) here I present the “more”.

Nature of Time (What is time)

The question was – What is TIME ? This is perhaps one of the oldest questions and though everyone has some idea about what time is, nobody quite knows what it is. There are philosophical aspects about the question (and answers), but I am interested in the physical aspect of it.
Entropy as we know is the measure of chaos, disorder in the given system. And 2nd law of thermodynamics tells us that the entropy of the closed system always increases or remains constant under the thermodynamic equilibrium. And it is this entity which gives direction to the time (also known as the “arrow of time”). Entropy always increases and time always moves forward. But is that all that is there between time and entropy ? A thought experiment at this time would be useful.

Suppose that at time t1 the entropy of the universe is e1. At some later time t2, it is e2. Since the universe has not reached the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, we can say that e2 > e1. And of course t2 > t1 (it’s our premise). And there is an observer – a certain physicist Mr. X, who is carrying out this experiment and recording all the values. Now suppose at a (still) later time t3 he records the entropy value as e3. But to his surprise this value comes out to be same as e2! What it means is that, from t2 to t3 entropy of the universe did not change. This means that universe kind of froze between time t2 and t3. All processes of subatomic, microscopic, macroscopic, galactic proportion simply froze. If one could take snapshot of the universe at t2 and t3, the snapshots would be exactly same. So could the observation by Mr X be correct ? Could e2 be equal to e3 ?

Well the answer is NO. No, if Mr. X could take the observation e3. If he could, it means that what changed between t2 and t3 is that Mr. X now knows the value of e3 (in addition to the value of e2). But this cannot happen without increasing the entropy. If the universe truly froze (including Mr. X) from t2 to t3 and when universe unfreezes again, only then the entropy would remain same as e2. But in that case Mr. X would have no experience or memory that the time is actually t3 and not t2. There is no experiment that will tell Mr X time that universe had frozen between t2 and t3 and the current time is t3. For all practical (and physical) reasons it is t2 for him.

In short we can never record two entropy values as same, at two different points in time. And if the entropy values at two different times are indeed same, we would not notice difference between the two times. One thing must be emphasized at this point is that, this self consistent paradox exists not because there is any technical problem with our instruments, procedure, accuracy of the experiment. But because that’s how it is (like the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle).
The point is time is entropy!

Entropy increases, time moves forward.
Entropy does not increase, time freezes.
Entropy decreases, time moves backward.

Nature of Time Travel

We are all traveling through time. From past to future. From t1 to t2 to t3 and so on. And the entropy is increasing from e1 to e2 to e3 and so on. But what if time also traveled from t3 to t2 ? Well, even if it is possible and even if it is happening, we wouldn’t know it. Because while traveling from t3 to t2 we would have been stripped of our memories, experiences of the time between t2 to t3. Even if in this scheme of things it was possible to travel back in time (assuming that, universal entropy can be decreased), it is quite useless. This is not the kind of time travel we want. When we want is to go back in time, we want to go back with our current memories, knowledge, experience etc. But if want to return with all this baggage, we know (thanks to our thought experience with Mr. X) that we cannot achieve this without increasing universal entropy. So I am led to believe that the meaningful time-travel would to necessarily increase the overall entropy of the universe and it would involve reversing of entropy of selective closed system (as I mentioned the earlier blog-post). So anyone looking forward to building a time-machine should start finding ways of reversing the entropy.

Tackling the question from other end

Well there is (yet) another way of time-travel. (This one is less dramatic but also more practical.) If we cannot decrease entropy, can we at least not increase it? Consider a large room, with certain entropy. We isolate it from all external influences by protecting it against the Sun, wind, rain etc. Inside the room we don’t put anything perishable (in other words anything living). Probably it’s a room with vacuum or inert gas. For years the room remains perfectly isolated – a closed system. It has reached thermodynamic equilibrium and it has reached an entropy level that no longer increase. If someone enters the room now, for all practical purpose he would be entering the room that existed years before. Exactly the same. As far as the room is concerned, the past and future are same. So one might as well say that one is entering into the past of the room. Not metaphorically, but physically. I agree, there will be practical difficulties in building such a room, but at least there is the idea.

Interestingly this idea it not un-tried, un-tested. Not only does this idea exist,  but is also in implementation (though not to that high level of perfection). This is the idea at works in museums, historical palaces, forts etc. We try to preserve these monuments. In other words try to ensure that entropys of these things don’t increase much. We try to keep the past preserved. We try to save the past (in pockets) alive in these artifacts , monuments. Is it then surprising that when we enter such places, we feel (however momentarily though) as if we are in that old times ? Next time you feel this when you visit an old temple, palace, fort you will know the reason.

New way of TIME-TRAVEL

Posted on by usshurt

It might be difficult for people to visualize the time-machine in terms of its appearance and all. And people may not have slightest idea about how can such machine be created and how would it operate. But everyone knows what it is supposed to do. It would allow you travel back in past or in future, just like you walk back and forth on road. The physicist are pondering over whether it is theoretical possibility at all ? And if it is, which of the modern theories would accommodate such a possibility. Two well known theoretical methods that allow time travel are 1)Faster-than-light travel 2)Through wormholes.

1) In the first case, as per Einstein’s special theory of relativity, if an object breaks speed barrier and travels faster than light, then it would actually be travelling back in time. But then there are other extreme consequences like the mass of the object would become infinite and the length would become zero (or even an imaginary number).

2) In the other method, they talk about existence of wormholes which are like a shortcuts in the “spacetime”. They are the connector of two different parts of space-time. And they connect instantaneously. So if you are lucky enough to find a wormhole which connects different time of same space, it can transport yo from one point to another “in no time”. Now the problem with wormholes is that they are very small in dimensions and extremely unstable and a real wormhole has not been detected yet. So it will be very difficult to cross them.
[You can find more (and more accurate) info on these two methods on internet].

…And now I think I discovered the third method for possible time travel.

The idea in brief is not about actual time-travel but “reversing the arrow of time”. It is based on the 2nd law of thermodynamics which essentially states that “entropy of a closed system always increases or remains constant”. Basically it is the entropy which gives the time a direction. Without it, things could have happened both ways and perhaps time itself would not have had any meaning. If we consider entire universe (or rather our universe, since there can be others which have different laws of physics) as closed system then as per 2nd law, there is no going back. But if we consider smaller things, such as “domino effect” – which is in itself is an irreversible process, things can get interesting. By employing an “external” energy we can make domino effect happen in the opposite direction. This way, as far as this “domino setup” is concerned, it went “in past” since it went back to initial stage. Now if we apply this idea that we somehow master the entropy on much larger scale, such as reversing the biological ageing, then we can make a person grow younger and younger. From that person’s point of view, he would have traveled ‘forward in future’ (since he will be born again in “later time” than original). And from rest of the world’s point of view we would be seeing his past (we could see his younger self).

Now this is not what a typical time machine (or time travel) offers, so you might feel there is some disconnect. I mean the thing is, when you mean time travel, you go back in time and that is quite different from seeing person grow younger. Now, here is how you can achieve that in my scheme of things. if you want to go back in time on earth, “all you have to do” is to reverse all the processes that have happened on earth (and possibly in solar system and make sure you remain detached from the process) till your desired point is “reached”. When earth with all her ecology, atmosphere, biology, animals, humans, history have been reverse to your desired point by reversing the entropy, you could reach the “past time on earth”. I agree, overall the time still moved forward (and entropy did grew), but as far as you are concerned, you are practically in the past!

Now again, this is still a very difficult way of time-travel. Just imagine the amount of energy required to reverse the solar system! It would require reversing zillions of small irreversible processes (like reducing a monstrous cyclone in the Bay of Bengal to flapping of wings by an innocuous butterfly in Brazil) So practically speaking, it could be as impossible as other methods of time travel. But at least it is easy for layman to conceive it. And it does not require any mathematical equation to explain!

Natural Justice : An Illusion ?

Posted on by usshurt

As a child as far as I recall I never really believed that god exists. As I grew older, my non-belief in god kept reinforcing and now I can surely call myself to be an atheist. And I also believe that there are many more atheists today than ever (or at least since man started practicing religion). Many of my friends don’t believe in god and openly confess that. And I think as more and more people become rational and scientific in their outlook – thanks to education, the number of atheists will go up and religion and god will become less and less relevant. The point I want to raise here however is not about atheism or religion or God. It is applicable universally – to both believers and non- believers.

Most of the people including atheists like the religious people believe in the existence some universal laws, universal principles which imply justice even if such laws don’t really exist. The laws, principles I am talking about are unlike the laws of physics which are real laws in the sense they are enforced and followed by the universe itself. The laws of physics are …well physical. But the laws, principles that I want to talk about here dwell in the territory of morality, ethics and justice. We seem to think that these laws are there and they exist and even prove that they exist like the laws of physics. Believers believe that it is God who enforces these laws, while atheists may not believe in God but that does not prevent them from believing in these laws themselves. To make things little elaborate lets take an example. Most of the people believe in idioms like “hard work always pays” or “what you sow is what you reap” or “what you do comes back to you… good or bad” etc. A religious person will say “if you do good work God will reward you”. An atheist will say “if you do good work you will be rewarded”. The point is most of the atheists will just remove the reference of God from the such seemingly just principles and would still believe in it. Instead of rationality, the sense of justice that these principles seem to imply is what appeals more to most of the people. What I mean is that in the principle for example “hard work always pays”, instead of looking at it, as getting rewarded for doing hard work is the most likely outcome (thinking in terms of probability), we tend to associate moral dimension to it and look at it as law. This is because we want to believe that something like “natural justice” exists event if there is no God to enforce it. Well honestly, even I used to believe in the existence of natural justice. But not any longer!

Let’s take an example of the idiom : “what you sow is what you reap”. It means if you do good to others, you will receive good. If you have done bad things, you will have to pay for it. Even if – let’s assume, that there is no universal justice or law to strictly enforce it, we see that – well in most of the cases this is true. Not all but many of the people who work hard, succeed in their lives. While bad guys who have brought pain and suffering to others, never lead happy life. Why is there this bias ? If this is not a strict law, then why are there just a few exceptions ?

The answer lies in rationality and reciprocity. Most of the people are rational. Over the period of time people have become rational. So without reason they won’t do bad or legally wrong things. People who might do such things without any reason would most like to have some mental problem. By and large it is in the interest of all people to live in harmony, help each other in difficult times, face the adversities together etc. So even though we live in the world of uncertainty and chaos, rationality brings in some order. Second thing, if you do someone a favor, it is very likely that he will return it. People reciprocate. And they reciprocate both ways. Again not because they are bound by some law or principle but because, in the given situation that is the most logical thing to do. But rationality does not mean that there would be no conflict of interest. Mere rationality can’t prevent confrontations. Therefore when one gets in the way of other, the other too will reciprocate… negatively.

So what we see is that because of these two things rationality and reciprocity, if not in all cases but in many cases principle like “what you sow is what you reap” appears to be true. My point is it is not because the existence of universal justice or universal law, it is just because it serves common interest. The idea of justice did not exist inherently in the universe. The rational action and its most likely, logical outcome lead us to believe that certain actions should always yield certain outcome. We then ended up adding moral, ethical dimension to it and it eventually emerged as law and we started believing that it always existed and we just discovered it. My point is that there is not such thing as “natural justice”. Like God it never existed. And it does not exist. It is an illusion, an extrapolation of high probability outcomes of any action.

If you agree with me, chances are the world might appears more chaotic, insecure and uncertain. As the last pillar (especially for the atheists) – existence of justice, where human mind could have sought refuge is gone, we are left without any universal moral or ethical support. In the absence of justice, we can hesitate to do something good to other as it may not do good to us in return. It all depends on the other people and also on innumerable variables like luck, whether my well intended action brings back good to me or not. We cannot be sure of the outcome of our actions. Odds of the outcome might be favorable to us depending on the probability but we can’t be 100 percent sure. (We may do good work all our lives and still end up in Hell!).

After having thought through all this, the meaning of the famous verse from the Geeta has become clearer to me (maybe I misinterpreted it all along) which says “You must act without the anticipation of the result”. I knew this quote and I used to interpret it like this “You must act without the anticipation of the result because you need not worry about the result. The result will be taken care of by God or Universal justice. So if you do good things, be assured that the reward awaits you. Right now just concentrate on your action”. But now I draw different interpretation : “You must act without the anticipation of the result, for the simple reason result could be anything – good or bad. You must act in accordance with your conscience, and not care about the result because what matters is not the eventual result but the fact that you did what you considered was right. There is no universal justice. You have to judge things with your rationality, your understanding of right and wrong and stand by your judgment and actions”.

I started with calling my self an atheist and ended with a verse from the Geeta, Could the paradox have been more conspicuous ?

The Problem of Distribution

Posted on by usshurt

There are certain things which are so common in practice that we tend to consider them to be natural. They look so normal that we never feel the need to take a closer look at them, analyze them. I am going to talk about one such thing here. It’s the about the way distribution of a utility – be it a material thing as food item or an intangible entity like education, happens when there is scarcity of the utility.

The scarcity arises when there is more demand than supply. If we had infinite amount resources, then the problem of distribution would not have arisen. In that case everybody would have been able to satisfy their needs and there would have been no contention. So what happens when the there is scarcity of some utility, say onions ? The price of onion goes up. What does this mean to the poor and the rich ? While both of them need to pay more for the onions, certainly the poor is at disadvantage. In fact it may not affect the rich at all. But poor will definitely suffer. He will not be able to buy the onion. But all this development, does it look odd ? No. This is what happens. This is the natural outcome of the situation where the prices go up and those who are better placed to handle this situation – the rich – gets the item while poor does not. I am not suggesting that the rich necessarily are in favor of prices going up. No one wants to pay more. I am only saying that despite little discomfort the rich is still able to own the item.

If we take a closer look we can see that this – paying more for same utility – is a way of solving the problem of distribution when things are short on supply. What we fail to see is that this not the only way to solve the problem, that there could be other possible ways of solving this problem. When supply is less than the demand, then one thing is clear that the demand of all the people cannot be fulfilled. So naturally there is going to be the contention for the resource. And hence we need to find the possible solution to resolve the contention. One solution is to let the strongest person get the access to the item. This can be called as the some form of the ‘survival of the fittest’ principle. This what happens when there is emergency situations – like flood, wars or general absence of law and order. People fight for the food, water. And the physically stronger amongst them gains the access. The other possible solution is to distribute the utility to the most needy person. This is what we see happening when ambulance is given privileged access to road when there is traffic on the road. The ambulance needs the resource – road the most. But the most common way to resolve this problem is to let the rich have access to it by increasing the price. When price goes up, what is actually happening is that the privilege is given to the rich people to own the utility. It is an indirect way to give an advantage to the rich people to own the item, at the cost of the poor. The elegance of this scheme is such that we don’t even realize that resource is being made available to rich. We have been living in a system where this real mechanism of distribution of resource is not only kept disguised but also we are made to believe that this is natural and even just.

So if this (the current system based on inflation) is just one way of solving the problem and as we have seen there could be other ways of solving this problem, what is the best way to solve this problem of distribution? Well there is not universal answer to this question. Depending on the situation one need to use one way or the other. But the idealistic answer would be to distribute the resource to the most needy person, because this is the only right, just way of distribution given demands of all cannot be satisfied. The problem with trying to adopt this way for distribution is that it is not always very easy to identify the most needy. There are ways to work around it and the process of identifying the real needy might consume considerable time and effort. In other words there are practical limitation which we may not be able to overcome to make this really work. Communism is the system which promises to make the distribution based on the need rather than based on the ability of the person to gain access to the utility. But this easier said than done. There are other important things where communism assumes too much of the good nature of human behavior and ignores some real practical issues.  Though I personally do not out rightly discard communism as a system, I do believe that it cannot survive in its purest form and the best system (which is right and practical)  could only be a combination of communism and capitalism.

The current mechanism of increasing the price might be the easiest, universal and to some extent logical method to handle the distribution of resources, it is clearly not the just (in the sense of making justice) or right way.

So the point is that – given the fact that the current system of favoring the rich cannot be substituted completely by the other right system, we need not blindly accept the prevailing system. We should keep our eyes open and always keep thinking that in what way can the current system of distribution of a particular entity (as we cannot generalize the system for all the items) be made more just ? How can we identify the most needy person for the given particular utility and make it available to him ? And our efforts should be to apply the distribution based on the idea of justice, as far as possible. As we go ahead, there are going to be situations where we will face the scarcity of more and more items as some of the non-renewable resources are being indiscriminately used by man today. And my thinking is that this prevailing system based on the logic of inflation may not be able to sustain itself.