Think Science .

Fallibility and robustness are important for a ‘good’ theory. A ‘good’ theory should have scope for tests to verify it’s hypotheses and moreover shouldn’t be ambiguous to throw many feasible ’solutions’ from which a convenient one can be chosen without any rationale. Another important criteria for a good theory is universality. It should conform to all the events of the universe. A ‘better’ theory also predicts some unobserved yet verifiable events whose discovery would further strengthen the theory. ( Lee Smolin has a lot to say on this in the first few chapters of ‘The trouble with physics’)

I don’t want to digress but I am not convinced with David Deutsch’s view on epistemology. When totally discarding empiricism, is he accounting for abstraction, a powerful tool which human brain possesses? We don’t see mathematical formula in mountain but we have the power to abstract certain properties which can be mapped to a mathematical model, or at least that’s what I feel. It’s true that all observations are theory-laden and one can say that knowledge is conjectural but how are the conjectures arrived at? My feeling is by applying our tool of abstraction to the observations made. Moreover if some(or all) knowledge is innate, the question is how did we get those innate knowledge?

I don’t swear too often, but I have no hesitation in saying the following:
Dan Brown is foolish for comparing religious doctrine to mathematical formalism. As far as I’m concerned, unless he can prove that he has any substantial sort of background in mathematical theory and/or practice — and I don’t mean his childhood puzzle-solving, thank you very much — he can keep his religious apologism way the hell away from philosophy of mathematics.

If Catholic theology has any mathematical equivalent, it’s the ramblings of quacks on internet fora who believe that they can “disprove the real line” or some such nonsense, who may occasionally with their techniques accidentally prove theorems which agree with standard mathematics.

Put another way: in terms of their role as tools to accomplish cryptanalysis/physics/etc versus ethical guidelines, mathematics is to catholic theology as a beautiful baroque cathedral is to a ramshackle hut that some guy can make in his back yard from spare materials. Both are forms of shelter, and both do work to some extent, but it’s insulting in the extreme to say that they are equivalent.

Even the most brilliant of catholic theologians spent much of their time writing things which were nonsense, or callously inhumane.

I cannot stress this too much: the argument made there is either deeply ignorant, or deeply intellectually dishonest. Of course, Dan is counting on the readers being deeply ignorant of mathematics, as this is par for the course — he’s looking for a ‘knowing’ chuckle from the idea of the extremely unfortunately named “imaginary numbers”, would wager. One cannot blame his audience for ignorance of complex numbers, of course; even in a more numerate society, they simply aren’t very important. But it is nonetheless ignorance that he is looking to exploit. Whether he’s also ignorant in the same way — or whether he is actually deeply dishonest in how he persues his apologetics — is mostly irrelevant; he should keep his trap shut in either case.

I just completed reading paulo cohelo’s book brida. So thought of writing review for the book. If you’re interested then read on. The story revolves around the a woman called Brida who is aware of some special gift which God has given her. She feels that she’s the right person to learn about the supernatural powers and become a witch. She wants to trail in the past, present and future. And thus so, with her strong determination, she succeeds in getting these powers. In the process, she meets the Magus and Wicca. The Magus was her male teacher who was supposed to teach her the Tradition of Sun. While Wicca impressively teaches Brida the true power to become a witch.

But in the process, the Magus finds the bright illuminating point on the left shoulder of Brida, which indicates the she’s his Soul-mate. She finds the same on his right shoulder. But Brida is already in love with another man, Lorens, who loved her from bottom of his heart. Brida finds herself in a pickle because with the knowledge of these supernatural powers, she was in love with two men in her life.

Paulo Coelho did succeed in bringing the magic of the supernatural powers to a forefront and how some people can achieve it with true dedication. Somewhere, in the middle of the book, I got really bored with story. But at the end it speeds up with a rather emotional climax. I’ll rate this book as 7/10.

Some beautiful lines from the book:
Accept what life offers to you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.
You can only know a good wine if you’ve first tasted a bad one.

How can we judge the degree of complexity in the universe to be too much, too little or just right ? What are we comparing it too ? If we are comparing it to the complexity perceived by us in the problems of our day to day lives, then I argue that it must appear complex to us. This is why.

Evolution equips creatures to handle their given circumstances best with minimal resources. That is why tigers cannot run ten times faster than gazelles, which would have upset the predator-prey cycle too much. Tigers and gazelles have evolved together to achieve running speeds which form an equilibrium of sorts. Man too has evolved in a manner which has sharpened his mental abilities enough to tackle problems he faces in his day to day life, but not enough to solve the Schrodinger equation for all the particles in a glass of water, mentally. His circumstances have not necessitated that acumen, and thus he has not developed it.

Thus, it is inevitable that a species would find itself in a position where it’s skills are sufficient to survive with a fair chance, but not advanced enough to outdo all problems it can conceive of. So, while the universe might seem extremely complex to us, and we may wonder how “so much” complexity could have come into being, this notion of “so much” complexity is more a result of the bounds of our comprehension than a feature of the universe itself.

I’ve already covered so many posts on evolution. So i decided to cover some fitness in evolution. Fitness, in evolutionary terms, is the ability of an individual organism within a population to pass its genes to future generations. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. Thus, if a particular variation (long beak or long legs or being faster or slower or more colorful) enables a particular INDIVIDUAL (organism) within a population to reproduce more (thus passing on its genetic structure) it is more fit.
So, if more women want my babies than yours I am the most fit assuming I have no problems with reproducing.

Survival has nothing to do with it. A peacocks bright and showy feathers are deleterious to its survival. However, a peahen will not mate with a bland male. Thus, you could be the last male peacock within a population - surviving because your feathers are less showy and bright. However, if the peahens won’t mate with you your fitness is zero.