The Subjective Stance

I have been away from my blog for a few weeks now. Since I was blogging quite frequently before this break, I feel like I need to explain my absence. I went away to a conference in Kolkata, which I visited for the first time and during that period I wasn't able to access the internet apart from checking email. Since I was away from the blogging world for a week, the momentum that had built up before that period disappeared and was replaced by its opposite, i.e., an aversion to putting my thoughts to paper. You could say that this is a psychological law of inertia, i.e., you are likely to keep doing things the way you did them in the past few days and so if your routine gets upended for some external reason, its going to percolate into your life even when the intrusion disappears. I guess that explains why privacy is important for any kind of creative work because constant intrusions can upset your inertial state even when the offending person goes away (as opposed to self driven in...

A caricature (but in my opinion true in essence) of modern western scientific practice goes as follows. The scientist starts with sensory concepts, i.e., concepts that are entirely determined by their referents. The referents in turn, can be measured directly using an appropriate experimental apparatus. For example, the concept "frequency of light" would be used to denote the vibrational patterns of light as measured by an appropriate optical device. Sensory concepts are unproblematic as far as the scientist is concerned since they denote facts and as we know, facts are basic. There is nothing more certain in science than facts. There is no sense in which a fact can be doubted - a fact is a fact is a fact - which is reflected in the typical scientific response to a postmodern critique of scientific inquiry is to say that the speed of light is the speed of light independent of which culture you come from and what you think about light etc. And since real science (as oppos...

The November 11th issue of the British Medical Journal published a very interesting study: The authors report that out of 26 carefully chosen cases from the New England Journal of Medicine, a Google search using the symptoms was successful in making the right diagnosis in 15 cases. Makes me think that its only a matter of time before a new BPO industry comes into being- medical diagnosis. Lets call this fairy tale "One day in the life of Dr. Mahesh T. Google". Once upon a time, John Doe of Topeka, Kansas went to the local Acme Medical HMO complaining of a headache, blurry vision and a sharp pain in his spleen. Unfortunately for John, just that very month Acme had cut back on its roster of doctors by 25 percent because of increasing insurance costs. If it were not for the courage and quick thinking of Agnes Munchausen, an administrative assistant at Acme Medical, John would have been in a whole lot of trouble. The intrepid Agnes, realizing the gravity of the situation, imm...

The New York Times' Sunday Week in Review this week has an article asking whether Iraqi's are hankering for a strongman once again, to replace Saddam (who, if they execute as the intend to right now, they would have gotten rid of for ever). According to the article, " It is something ordinary Iraqis say with growing intensity, even as they agree on little else. Let there be a strongman, they say, not a relentless killer like Saddam Hussein but somebody who will take the hammer to the insurgents and the death squads and the kidnappers and the criminal gangs who have banished all pretense of civility from their lives ." How many times have I seen this form of liberal nonsense, bordering on racism? The reasoning goes as follows: (1) We came to your country and freed you of a dictator. Ok, we might even agree that the invasion itself was criminal, but we did get rid of your dictator and put a democratic government in its place. (2) You guys screwed it up by rebelling aga...

Not my usual topic, but the impossible has actually happened: Democrats have seized control of the House and are likely to take control of the Senate. Donald Rumsfeld has resigned. Nancy Pelosi is going to be the first female speaker of the House. Rick Santorum , the infamous Senator from Pennsylvania is out, and most likely, so is George Allen , the Senator from Virginia (who also became infamous for using a racial epithet against an Indian-American campaign worker for his opponent, Jim Webb ). We can only hope that this means better news for the American occupation of Iraq, better enforcement of environmental laws and an overall investigation of the various criminal acts of the Bush regime. I know there are people who think that the Democrats and the Republicans are the two wings of the American Corporate Party and while I might agree with them on many occasions, I still think that this is wonderful news, just as the Congress led UPA alliance victory was wonderful news two and ha...

On Saturday, I gave a talk at a Bangalore NGO, Environmental Support Group , at the invitation of my friends Leo and Bhargavi. The talk was about "concepts of nature", which is to say, the implicit presuppositions that we carry in our heads when we try to understand nature. While I wanted to talk about various concepts of nature, and then conclude with my cognitive scientist take on these concepts as a whole, I ended up concentrating mostly on the post-enlightenment European concept of nature, which has deeply influenced both the natural and social sciences. I am not trying to make a carefully argued point here, but the main claim I am making is the following: modern science models nature as pure form superimposed on matter. What do I mean by that? Suppose you are standing in front of the Taj Mahal. Of course, you cannot insert the Taj into your head, but the claim is that at least you can insert the shape of the Taj Mahal into your head. The shape of the Taj Mahal is its fo...