Dakshinya

A local news channel did a small programme on an institute for the mentally handicapped. True to its name, "Dakshiya" institute for the mentally handicapped is providing a cool shade of love and compassion to the unfortunate left to feel terribly insufficient in today's competent society. It was started by a father whose daughters were both mentally handicapped, who infact are no more! It sparked in him an urge to reach out to scores of kids with similar fate, which finally took the shape of Dakshinya. It feels really good to know that such humanity still survives in today's ego-bitten selfish wreck called society! Hats off to Mr. T. V. Rao!

How does brain simulate future?

10 Unsolved Mysteries of the Brain is a nice article I chanced upon through digg...am sure there are many more than that..I found the fourth of them all pretty interesting...is kinda related to my previous post. It says that brain identifies/tries to identify rules/patterns governing various objects of concern. How else can it simulate any realistic possibility. Infact, the realm of possibilities is strictly limited by the set of rules to be obeyed!. In fact, this makes me wonder if the rules are only in our head. Even further, does the brain come up with rules that are deterministic or that are probabilistic. If the rules are probabilistic, then uncertainty is built in!

Whatever....we are perhaps carrying the most sophisticated super computer in our skulls...a computer that is not a turing m/c!

God - An artifact of evolution?

Some movies can make one feel detached from reality. I just finished watching "The Reaping (2007)", a horror/thriller with a story line centered around the ten biblical plagues. Definitely not a bad movie, to say the least. Acting was good, so was the screenplay, not to mention a decent CGI. The movie made me wonder what makes people so readily believe in miracles. In fact, isn't a solid belief in miracles equivalent to believing in the presence of an omnipotent? In fact, why does anyone believe in God? With the understanding that the word/concept "God" is used to refer to the presence of an almighty doer. What is the source of this belief? Is is because the working of nature/universe is overwhelming to most. Strictly speaking, it ceases to be so only when all its secrets are unravelled, which presently not being the case, it is not incorrect to say that almost everybody is overwhelmed by it at some level! So, why isn't everybody fervently god fearing, or is it so? Does man inherently have a sense of uncertainty about his future which finds expression in different ways, one of which is the concept of the omnipotent? Is it evolution's answer to fill the logical gaps in man's inherent urge to put everything within a pattern? Is it just the tool evolution gave man to fill holes in the coherent logical framework that explains all of nature? As the pieces of the puzzle come together, each gap is refilled with elements of logic. This is what has been happening ever since the dawn of humanity. The question remains if we'll ever be able to put ALL the pieces of this majestic puzzle together!