A Renaissance?

I am perhaps in the laziest phase of my life. I sleep for about 9 hours a day (while holding on to a job which pays me quite a lot). I wake up just in time for work. I do not exercise and have no controls on what/how much I eat.

All this makes me feel a bit unsettled. I haven't been like this in life too many times before. There might have been the odd week or two where I've gladly chosen to be a potato. But this time, its been more than a couple of months since I was active.

A few things have changed for the better though. I get lots of sleep; deep sleep. I no longer suffer from the bouts of being half-asleep and things like that. My anxiety levels have reduced, I am not as jittery or fretful as I most times am.

But I need to change. The remorse about 'wasting' my time is hitting me hard these days. I really can do so much with the amount of leisure I get. Technically speaking, there is nothing that stops me from making better use of my time. It is just an efficiency problem.

A possible cause for this condition is that I am goal less now. I really am just going with the flow of life and so far, I have been contented with where it has taken me. To change this approach towards life, I need to think hard on multiple things.

Today, I had a project performance review meeting with my boss. And I was surprised with the ratings I got. I thought I had done poorly but in the end, the feedback wasn't that bad after all. This gave me a good feeling and a stronger sense of belief in my abilities.

During that discussion, I also realized how I have stopped being diligent. As I previously mentioned, I have started taking things lightly.

I need to think myself out of this and develop a strong work ethic. This 'Renaissance' might be a bit of going back to the drawing board and start planning things.

As a start, I am determined to make good use of this three day weekend. I have promised to read a book cover to cover - Orhan Pamuk's 'Istanbul' which I purchased today. Outside that, I also want to develop an plan, a set of specific things I will start doing in order to change my ways.

My investigation into the nature of true statements

Off late, I have been trying hard to understand the nature of knowledge and belief. Knowledge to me is a higher idea than belief. Knowledge is something that is true whereas beliefs needn't be. But this differentiation isn't as simple as one would expect; because claiming that something is 'true' is not an elementary task.

Perhaps understanding the nature of 'truth' is a good starting point. Once we know what 'truth' is, then we will have a clear way to differentiate between 'beliefs' that are 'knowledge' and 'beliefs' that are merely beliefs.

There are many tests for truth; or the criteria of truth. The primary and most relevant criteria are objectivity, and consistency. I wish to discuss consistency first; objectivity deserves a longer, more detailed discussion.

By consistency, I mean that a true statement should be be consistent with everything else that is accepted as true. This is a very basic condition; if a statement is true but it contradicts another truth then one of two things: the statement is not true or the earlier statement which was accepted as being true is not entirely so.

This is perhaps how science and human knowledge grows: by testing the consistency of propositions with the accepted truth. A classic example is the idea that the world is flat. This was considered a true statement until somebody's claim which was inconsistent with this, started getting attention.

The second and tougher criterion is that of objectivity. The criterion of objectivity requires that a true statement stands alone without dependence of opinions and feelings. An objective truth should be external to the mind; for the mind's lens is a subjective apparatus.

Once we bring in objectivity into the picture, our sample of possible true statements shrinks alarmingly. For example, Adam tells Eve. "Shem tells me that it is a very hot day today in Canaan. Is it true?" If objectivity is a criterion for truth and the word 'hot' is as understood as it currently is, Eve can only reply "The temperature today in Canaan was 40 degree Celsius".

Shem's opinion about the weather would have been true if our system of communication had defined 'hot' has 'a condition where the temperature is greater than 39 degree Celsius' or something like that. But as we use it, the word hot is an opinion, a judgement of a condition.

This brings me to the next step: the difference between factual statements and judgements. A fact is an objective statement (hence external to the mind) that need not necessarily be true when stated or proposed. In a way, a fact is a true statement whose consistency hasn't been tested yet. And by definition, a judgement can never be a true statement.

The statement 'this colour is blue' can be true under the assumption that that blue is understood to be a colour that corresponds to a certain wavelength of light. What if Adam tells Eve. "the water is blue in colour"? Is this a factual statement?

This statement might have been termed factual. But one fine day someone identified colour blindness as a possible human condition. Given this possibility, Adam's statement cannot be factual in the strict sense. Adam's perception of colour is something that is still subjective. If Adam said "the wavelength of light reflected by the water is xx Angstrom", this can be called a factual statement (assuming that Adam has the standard equipment to measure such details accurately and he makes this statement after the measurement).

Is the act of measurement objective? It certainly can be. Assume a machine which just correctly reads the light and displays the wavelength on a screen. Adam can just read off this screen and make a statement on the wavelength of the light. This statement by Adam is no doubt factual; but its truth will depend on Adam's ability to read correctly.

There are a lot of things I want to discuss regarding the consistency of true statements. I shall get to that some other time.

On the nature of happiness

If I were to name three books that have had the greatest influence in the way I think and lead life, one of them would surely be Fooled by randomness by Nassim Taleb. I have read the book one and a half times and have been fascinated by some of the stuff in the book. In some places, the book is extremely immodest but that is the author's style. Amidst all the positioning and holier-than-thou, there is a lot of sense in what he says.

I would like to bring to your attention a quote from the book: Solon's warning - 'The uncertain future has yet to come, with all variety of future; and him only to whom the divinity has guaranteed continued happiness until the end we may call happy'. Taleb builds on this in a way and combines the good and bad effects of randomness to bring about his views of success, luck, etc.

I do not agree to Solon's statement completely. Happiness to me is more a stock variable: at any given point of time, you can either be happy or you are not; and the argument ends there. The state of being happy can change quickly thanks to uncertainity of the future. But calling only those who enjoy perpetual happiness as being 'happy' isn't something I wouldn't agree with.

Here I am tempted to think along the lines of what constitutes happiness and whether it is an abosolute term at all. Does happiness derive from the change in one state to another (whereby happiness is a relative perception of the mind) or is happiness absolute and stand alone? My answer tends more towards the former than the latter.

My best effort would be to define happiness as a state of mind. A state of mind which can further be broken down into a specific mental chemical balance (do I love this line of reasoning or what!) To that extant, happiness is an absolute state. We can, in some form describe happiness as - 'a mind state where the subject has an endorphin concentration of xx gm/Litre'. Depending on how you are as a person, the value of xx will differ. But this is not the 'non-absoluteness' I want to talk about.

Happiness is derived from relative improvements in situations. Abolsute situations do not guarantee happiness. E. g. If you beat Usain Bolt in a 100m race, the first time you are happy. Your endorphine level shoots up to 10xx or something. The 100th time you beat him in a 100m race, the end state is still the same in an absolute sense but you don't feel half as happy.

Humans are greedy by nature. Our happiness circuits follow the law of diminishing returns. It's as if the gland releasing the happiness hormones says "I've seenenough of this. Show me something better!".

New beginnings

It is past eleven on a Sunday night and I am still up working on something. This time, my week begins early. I think working Sunday night is a good way to beat Monday blues.

As I was reading slide after slide, the idea suddenly came upon me that I should re-start blogging. Mind you, I have done this a half a dozen times. But for once, I got the blog address I was looking for in the first attempt. I do not like to claim myself to be a believer in superstition (I'm supposed to be a member of the Brights Society) But this time, maybe it just felt good to get the blog address of your choice.

I do not have a direction for this blog as of now. And I would be uncomfortable if I did have one in mind. I think direction stifles creativity. It is also that this early into this blog, I wouldn't want to take call on what I should write about. Something might come up as I progress.

Today, the world celebrates Valentine's day. I did too but that's besides the point. Celebrating Valentine's day is by no means universal. There are a few pre-requisites for it - love (obviously), people, freedom, smart marketers (yes, that is increasingly becoming true).

Among the things I listed, let me pick on freedom. You need a certain degree of freedom to celebrate it. The lack of freedom doesn't preclude Valentine's day but it certainly jeopardizes attempts to celebrate it.

There is an interesting episode of how a certain person chose this day to show hatred against someone, something on this day. For this certain person, someone and something, this day would denote a day of hatred. The day when the hatred began - to be precise. Hatred is as strong as love, and even in this case it outlived one of the people involved.

In many places in the world, there are some things which neither money nor MasterCard can buy.