tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34002125296196313722024-03-19T08:12:41.913-04:00Maximus and MeBalaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.comBlogger8835125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-29603522890340165382024-03-17T21:26:00.006-04:002024-03-17T21:26:54.193-04:00Good Bye Frans de Waal <p>Steve M Wise few weeks ago. and now <a href="https://improbable.com/2024/03/16/sad-news-frans-de-waal-is-gone/" target="_blank">Frans de Waal</a>...</p><p>Giants who lead torch in reducing pain and suffering of non-human animals have passed away. </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>The man who brought humans and monkeys together</i></p><p><i>Frans de Waal died on Thursday evening US time at the age of 75 in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), as a result of metastatic stomach cancer, his family confirmed.</i></p><p><i>De Waal was the most famous Dutch primatologist for decades. With his calm speech, great knowledge and undeniable love for our fellow animals, he was also a well-known figure outside of science. Often shown on television, often quoted in debates.</i></p><p><i>De Waal rose to fame in the 1980s with his book Chimpanzee Politics (1982). This book was based on his observations of the power struggle in the chimpanzee colony of Burgers Zoo in Arnhem. The book offers a radical new view of ape leadership: it is not brute force and the direct application of power, but rather the mediation of conflicts and careful management of alliances that characterize the life of an ape leader. The monkey world suddenly became very human. So humane that conservative Republican Senator Newt Gingrich recommended the book in the 1990s as educational reading for young members of Congress.</i></p><p><b><i>This is a common thread in De Waal’s work: apes are much more like humans, and humans are much more like apes, than we think.</i> </b></p></blockquote><blockquote><p><i><b>As he said in a speech about his work in 2014: “I have moved the monkeys up a little and the people down a little.” …</b></i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p>We have a moral obligation to carry on their work. </p><p>Thank you sir. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIaJcZIfGWAxrroJJQ6wteDiolBNFeXX13pdg-vR6olvHF6ZpfJhIiuUwsuAMVRYpUTCnv5PZ9uLKg6mNxQCm6J4QxcfKWXxzg1-eJOnEXzxF0kIc8HDXmhf4Uzta9BP0JvWkQmmTymvn-PH9sGbr8T6VGOLxq7vcUZRmClO0-iICYYAVVZxKrlvCwkwI/s680/GI07vh1bEAA5t6r.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="680" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIaJcZIfGWAxrroJJQ6wteDiolBNFeXX13pdg-vR6olvHF6ZpfJhIiuUwsuAMVRYpUTCnv5PZ9uLKg6mNxQCm6J4QxcfKWXxzg1-eJOnEXzxF0kIc8HDXmhf4Uzta9BP0JvWkQmmTymvn-PH9sGbr8T6VGOLxq7vcUZRmClO0-iICYYAVVZxKrlvCwkwI/w400-h271/GI07vh1bEAA5t6r.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><blockquote>Frans de Waal has died. Below is a photograpgh of Frans' showing a male chimpanzee inviting another to reconcile after a fight with the invitation accepted a few minutes later. <a href="https://twitter.com/C4COMPUTATION/status/1769135928801722481" target="_blank">One of my all time favorite images. </a></blockquote><p> </p><a href="https://twitter.com/C4COMPUTATION/status/1769135928801722481" target="_blank"></a></i></div><br /><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-37119597006069643942024-03-17T10:26:00.002-04:002024-03-17T10:26:49.038-04:00Max's Gift - How to Live an Unregretting Life<p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i><b>The price we pay for being children of chance, born of a billion bright improbabilities that prevailed over the staggering odds of nothingness and eternal night, is the admission of our total cosmic helplessness. We have various coping mechanisms for it — prayer, violence, routine — and still we are powerless to keep the accidents from happening, the losses from lacerating, the galaxies from drifting apart.</b></i></p><p><i>Because our locus of choice is so narrow against the immensity of chance, nothing haunts human life more than the consequences of our choices, nothing pains more than the wistful wish to have chosen more wisely and more courageously — the chance untaken, the love unleapt, the unkind word in the time for tenderness. Regret — the fossilized fangs of should have sunk into the living flesh of is, sharp with sorrow, savage with self-blame — may be the supreme suffering of which we are capable. It poisons the entire system of being, for it feeds on the substance we are made of — time, entropic and irretrievable. It tugs at our yearning for, in James Baldwin’s perfect words, “reconciliation between oneself and all one’s pain and error” and stings with the reminder that eventually “one will oneself become as irrecoverable as all the days that have passed.”</i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p>- Maria Popova on <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/03/11/regret/" target="_blank">George Saunders</a></p><p>I was consumed by these thoughts all through my teens and twenties. I had no idea what to do nor how to tackle nor why it engulfed my life? </p><p>And then Max came. Poof !! all those thoughts were gone while Max taught me to live life in the present with an awareness as humanely as possible. </p><p>Plus what else I can ask from life when I had Max in my life? Everything else is just a bonus. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-26627001165542458982024-03-15T18:33:00.000-04:002024-03-15T18:33:36.221-04:00Meta Values - 24<div><div>Having Max inside me, how do I live amongst self centered humans with insatiable desires?</div><div><br /></div><div>Roughly, I bucket humans into three kinds. </div><div><br /></div><div>First kind dwells in their self centered world while dancing to the tunes of anthropomorphic societal music. I encounter these kinds most and I quietly observe them to understand mass humanity. In a quiet absorption mode, I try to perpetually understand human nature. </div><div><br /></div><div>The next two kinds are barbells or books. </div><div><br /></div><div>The second kind are like barbells to strengthen myself. These kinds are convinced they "know" and "understand" life. It is impossible for them to change their minds. I used to waste tons of time talking and arguing with them. Now, I use them as barbells. In other words, I use the weight of their rigid mind to understand how worse humans can perceive reality and most importantly, throw my mind at them and evaluate what comes back from the worst kind of humans. </div><div><br /></div><div>The third kind of people are books to me. In complete silence, they unleash so much wisdom. These are the wonderful beings who probably nudged me to bring Max home in my younger years. They help me make better judgments under radical uncertainty. They are the gods of my mind palace. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, there are some moments when people move between their kinds. I am still working towards being flexible, not rigidly putting them in buckets but being aware of those precious moments when people temporarily switch kinds. Those moments are when mere conversations sparks an insight which eventually might transform into wisdom. </div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-79515931747779297272024-03-11T18:58:00.004-04:002024-03-11T18:58:29.326-04:00Incarcerated Women & Buttery Redemption<p>One of the greatest failures of our generation is crime against incarcerated men and women. </p><p>There is nothing even remotely close to rehabilitation nor reformation for these people. Loss of complete life while living, disintegration of families, economic cost and worst perpetuating cycle of violence. </p><p>I am glad there is some hope with <a href="https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-butterfly-redemption/" target="_blank">this change</a>. No surprise, this is coming via our fellow sentient beings we share the planet with. This is just hope for incarcerated people but maybe a precursor to who we rewrite our economics and how we work. </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Heather wears her dark hair in braids. She’s also wearing a bright red sweater marked DOC for Department of Corrections, identifying her as an inmate of Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, a minimum security prison located near Belfair, Washington. Heather is not her real name. <b>She says she feels lucky to be participating in this work while she serves her sentence here. She shows me around with a proud, almost parental smile. Along with eight other incarcerated women, Heather is entrusted with the care and feeding of nearly 4,000 members of an endangered species, the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly. With this trust comes the privilege of working just beyond the razor-wire fence during the day before returning to life among the general prison population each night.</b></i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>Recognizing the need for urgent action, the Oregon Zoo began a captive breeding program for the species in 2003. In 2011, the zoo helped establish the breeding program at Mission Creek as part of The Evergreen State College and Washington State’s Sustainability in Prisons Project. Since then, the work undertaken by these incarcerated women has become one of the last best hopes for the species’ survival.</i></p><p><i>On this mid-March morning, the air inside the program’s two greenhouses is warm compared with the shade of the surrounding forest and the adjacent prison yard. Metal racks containing hundreds of identical plastic cups house hungry caterpillars waiting to be fed the leafy green plantain the women grow in a garden outside.</i></p><p><i>After spending six months in a hibernation-like state known as diapause, the caterpillars roused in late January and have been busy bulking up ever since. After they’re released, they will continue to eat and grow through mid-March to mid-April, after which they’ll pupate beneath dry wood and vegetation and undergo metamorphosis. Their chrysalises, with cream-and-gray bands alternating with orange and black dots, offer a pastel preview of the butterfly to come. Only a few chrysalises have been found in the wild. In April or May, they emerge as adults and take to the air on wings of vivid red or orange and white, outlined in black, calling to mind the brightly hued geometry of stained-glass windows. Their life as butterflies is fleeting—just one to 14 days—but they use that time to mate and lay clusters of approximately 100 bright yellow, quinoa-sized eggs that take on a maroon hue before hatching. A single butterfly can lay up to 1,000 eggs. From those eggs, new caterpillars will appear, fatten up, enter diapause in June or July, and then awaken in January or February to, hopefully, continue the cycle in the wild.</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>“When I told my family what I do,” Brooke explains, “they said, ‘we’re so proud of you, that you are doing something that has such a profound mission in the world.’” She finds the work meditative, and despite the “shocking” amount of data she must record, she says the work provides a feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day.</i></p><p><i>Heather agrees, and admits the job is also on her mind at night. “I literally have dreams about being able to sleep in these greenhouses.”</i></p><p><i>Over the course of about a week, most of the caterpillars are taken away for release in the wild. For the women who raised them, it’s surprisingly hard to let go.</i></p><p><i><b>“I just didn’t think you could form a bond with an insect like that,” Heather declares. “I cried yesterday, saying goodbye.”</b></i></p><p><i><b>Before they leave, she has a message for them: the fate of the species is riding on your shoulders. “You got this,” she says. </b></i></p></blockquote><p> </p><p><i></i></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-37204151319702251282024-03-10T10:18:00.002-04:002024-03-10T10:18:55.360-04:00The Myth Of The West<p>I am exhausted hearing people talking and writing about omnipotent and wise Greeks and Romans. </p><p>A delusion propagated for centuries that these ancients somehow "plucked" wisdom out of thin air. The reality was very different. </p><p>Few years ago, Gladwell wrote a brilliant piece titled "<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/14/the-tweaker" target="_blank">The Tweaker</a>" on Steve Jobs. </p><p>Greeks and Romans (as far as we know) were the best tweakers. They were exceptional at assimilating good ideas from other civilizations. In other words, these folks were open-minded, and integrated wisdom from other civilizations. </p><p>We need to understand this important and powerful trait and stop teaching "magic". </p><p><a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2024/02/the-myth-of-the-west" target="_blank">Review</a> of Josephine Quinn's new book <a href="https://amzn.to/3ItFzae" target="_blank">How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History</a>:</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>This book is written in opposition to “civilisational thinking”, which suggests that there is such a thing as “Western civilisation” existing independently of all others. To Quinn, the concept is not only a manifestation of arrogance on the part of the Westerners who promoted it (especially 19th-century imperialists): it is also a recipe for sterility. <b>Civilisation thrives on cross-pollination.</b></i></p><p><i>Quinn’s second big idea is that the notion of “influence”, suggesting that successor cultures are shaped by those that precede them, is misleading. A conventional narrative relates that the collective European mind was formed by the thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, with modifications by Christianity. On the contrary, says Quinn: the past is dead. It is the living who pick and choose the ingredients they will throw into the stew of their own culture. Peoples of the “West” cooked up their material and conceptual world using the wheel from the Central-Asian steppe, poetry from Persia, legal codes from Mesopotamia, mathematics from Babylon and India, Mongolian stirrups, gold from sub-Saharan Africa, maritime skills from the people of the Levant and the far north, and an Asian religion. <b>The founders of “Western civilisation” didn’t limit themselves to any hemisphere, geographically or intellectually, and without their interminglings the mongrel culture we have inherited would have been infinitely poorer and less dynamic.</b></i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i><b>She is more interested in trade than in conquest, less impressed by Alexander and Julius Caesar than by the Phoenician sailors who rounded the Cape of Good Hope in the sixth century BCE, nearly 2,000 years before the Renaissance explorer Bartolomeu Dias.</b> Readers are likely to seize upon old acquaintances, but she nods only briefly at Achilles and Abraham (whom she describes approvingly as a “travelling man”) and at William the Conqueror. Her project is to remind us that if these names are familiar, it is because the caprices of fate and propaganda have made them so. She prefers to dwell on less celebrated names and societies – not Rome but Etruria; not Sparta but Uruk; not the Egypt of the pharaohs and Cleopatra, but the Garamantes, who built a city that dominated trade across the Sahara for a thousand years, digging tunnels up to five kilometres long to bring water from underground lakes to irrigate their crops.</i></p><p><i>Her time-scale is immense, and she manages it in quick-quick-slow rhythm. An empire can rise and crumble, four centuries passing, in one sentence. Other times she slows right down to focus on a single encounter. Her geographical reach is equally large. Constantine is in York when he is proclaimed “Augustus” (a term Quinn prefers to “emperor”), and from there he crosses all Europe to establish his capital in the Greek town of Byzantium, on the Roman empire’s easternmost edge.</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i><b>Quinn is a professor of ancient history at Oxford, and year after year she reads applications from students saying dutifully that they want to study classics to familiarise themselves with the roots of Western culture. Wrong, she says. This book is a reminder of how much more widely they need to look.</b></i></p><p></p></blockquote><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-70771655935185115052024-03-08T17:51:00.000-05:002024-03-08T17:51:01.733-05:00The Hidden Language Between Flowers and Bees<p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>In short, the team discovered that bumblebees can sense a flower’s electrical field, distinguish between fields formed by different floral shapes, and tell whether another bee recently visited a flower.</i></p><p><i>See, both flowers and bees have electrical fields. As they fly, bees bump into charged particles, such as dust and other small molecules. The friction of these tiny collisions knocks electrons off the bee’s surface, leaving them with a positive charge.</i></p><p><i>Meanwhile, flowers usually have a negative charge, particularly during mild weather. A plant’s roots in the ground give it a slight negative electric charge. The higher the plant grows, the higher the electric charge it has because the air around the plant also has an electric charge that increases every meter above the ground. This creates a faint electric field around the plant.</i></p><p><i>Now for the fun part.</i></p><p><i><b>One interesting observation is that pollen will hop from the flower to the bee when a positively charged bee approaches the negatively charged flower. Robert told National Geographic:</b></i></p><p><i><b>“We found some videos showing that pollen literally jumps from the flower to the bee, as the bee approaches… even before it has landed.”</b></i></p><p><i>Further, the positively charged bees slightly increase the charge of any flower they land on beginning just before landing and lasts for just shy of two minutes — much longer than a bee usually spends visiting a flower. The team demonstrated that when a bee lands on the stem of a petunia, its electrical potential increases by approximately 25 millivolts.</i></p><p><i>Bees sense this slight change in a flower’s electrical field, which communicates that the flower has recently been visited and is likely low on nectar. It’s sort of like the flower is telling the bee, “I’m out of stock. Check back later.” Meanwhile, when a bee makes contact with a flower, it cancels out the single — which tells other bees, “I’m occupied.”</i></p><p><i>No one knows for sure how bees actually sense electrical fields. But Robert and others believe the electric fields affect part of a bee, like its antennas or the tiny hairs on its body. </i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>[---]</i></blockquote><p></p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>One of the best things about this knowledge is that you don’t have to travel or book a vacation to see it. From now on, you’ll know the miraculous interaction happens anytime you see a bee and flower interacting. You can watch the interaction and know there is an exchange between these two vastly different species, one we humans can only observe and not experience.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i><i><b>Not only does this knowledge make previous mundane observations more magical, but it’s also a humbling reminder that as brilliant as the human species can be, other animals experience the world wholly differently than we do and are capable of doing things we may never fully understand.</b></i></i></blockquote><p></p><p>- More <a href="https://medium.com/irrelevant-matters/the-hidden-language-between-flowers-and-bees-a5326a83c86c" target="_blank">Here</a></p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-56623481509676688172024-03-07T20:22:00.001-05:002024-03-07T20:22:45.313-05:00The Man Who Tricked Nazi Germany - Lessons From The Past On How To Beat Disinformation<p>Brilliant piece! </p><p>Adam Smith's insight of self interest matters most for human beings will be relevant as long as humans evolve into something else.</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>First, such media has to match the emotional power of authoritarians. Counter-propagandists need their own visceral dramas, YouTubers and the whole spectrum of today’s channels. They don’t need to hide their provenance like Der Chef, though they may have to give people the necessary “cover” to watch safely if in a dangerous dictatorship. But they do need to delve into the operating theatre of our darkest desires. Think of the difference between the cult leader and the therapist. Both dig into people’s unspoken fears and needs. The cult leader, like the authoritarian propagandist, uses that insight to make people dependent on their power. The therapist helps them to become more empowered and self-aware.</i></p><p><i>Second, we need to be much more attuned to the needs of audiences – think of media less as dispensing information and more as a social service. We are, by the looks of it, going to be in a long struggle with Russia. Now is the time to start investing in media that engage the parts of society that are critical to their war effort: workers in munitions factories or, most obviously, soldiers. It’s much easier than in Delmer’s time to obtain evidence of what they care about. Last month there was, for example, a large leak of documents from Russia’s military that showed how the leadership lies about losses on the front. The aim is not to make these people, who are often involved in war crimes, “good” – it’s to help win the war by getting them to disobey their orders.</i></p><p><i>Third, such media need to nurture a sense of community, especially in polarised democracies where there is still a chance of displacing malign propaganda before it reaches total dominance, and where there are audiences up for grabs. Instead of experiencing power through a strongman, this community needs to empower people to act for themselves. There are many small initiatives that already pioneer this. Hearken, for example, is an online platform where users can help media choose which topics they should focus on, taking power away from aloof editors and grounding it in local needs. vTaiwan is another platform whose algorithm helps people find solutions to polarising issues by identifying common ground on which to build policies. Such examples are tiny and experimental, and need to be scaled massively.</i></p><p><i>Sefton Delmer had as many bad lessons for us as good. But the most fundamental one is related to his sense that all social roles are somehow performed. We have a choice. We can either play the role prescribed by propagandists – which makes us dependent on them. Or we can invent media that welcome people into a relationship where they become active players.</i></p><p><i><b>You can’t shove “the truth” down people’s throats if they don’t want to hear it, but you can inspire them to have the motivation to care about facts in the first place.</b></i></p></blockquote><p><b><i></i></b></p><p>- <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/02/the-man-who-tricked-nazi-germany-lessons-from-the-past-on-how-to-beat-disinformation" target="_blank">Lessons from Sefton Delmer</a></p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-39863313913043565302024-03-03T19:19:00.004-05:002024-03-03T19:19:52.236-05:00Benefits Of Forgetting<p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Far from signifying failure, forgetting may be the brain’s frontline strategy in processing incoming information. <b>Forgetting is essential, some researchers now argue, because the biological goal of the brain’s memory apparatus is not preserving information, but rather helping the brain make sound decisions. </b>Understanding how the brain forgets may offer clues to enhancing mental performance in healthy brains while also providing insights into the mechanisms underlying a variety of mental disorders.</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>“An overly precise memory is maybe not really what we want in the long term, because it prevents us from using our memories to generalize them to new situations,” she said in San Diego at a recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. <b>“If our memories are too precise and overfitted, then we can’t actually use them to … make predictions about future situations.”</b></i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i><b>Getting just the gist is especially helpful in changing environments, where loss of some memories improves decision making in several ways. For one thing, forgetting can eliminate outdated information that would hamper sound judgment. And memories that reproduce the past too faithfully can impair the ability to imagine differing futures, making behavior too inflexible to cope with changing conditions. Failure to forget can result in the persistence of unwanted or debilitating memories, as with post-traumatic stress disorder.</b></i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p>- <a href="https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2019/why-we-forget" target="_blank">Why forgetting may make your mind more efficient</a></p><div><br /></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-82097303196825397922024-03-02T11:06:00.001-05:002024-03-02T11:06:34.887-05:00Jon Stewart Remembers His Best Boy, Dipper<p><i><b></b></i></p><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><i><b> Boy! My wish for you is to find that one dog. </b></i></blockquote><p><i><b> </b></i></p><p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jJ_A2BKCNDs?si=nuTqR4qQw_peXbbV" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><br />
<div><br /></div><div>I got more than I dreamt for in this life from Max. People don't understand that unique oneness which transcends everything I know as a human being. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am blessed because of you Max. </div><div><br /></div><div>I miss you and miss me in you my love. </div><div><br /></div><div>But I have you in me which keeps me going.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-15660136278300559562024-03-02T08:54:00.000-05:002024-03-02T08:54:50.350-05:00Why We Remember<p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Memory does not work like a recording device, preserving everything we have heard, seen, said, and done. Not remembering names or exact dates; having no recollection of the details of a conversation; being unable to recall where you left your glasses or your keys; or watching movies you saw in the past as if you are seeing them for the first time — these are not the symptoms of a failing brain.</i></p><p><i>They are, on the contrary, signs that your brain is doing just what it was designed to do: prioritize and store important information and let nonessential facts and details slip away, a function that was essential to survival for our evolutionary ancestors. That task has become substantially more difficult with the steady bombardment of email, texts, social media, pop-up ads, and 24-hour news that most people contend with on a daily basis, and as a result, much more extraneous information is forgotten. Even a president might forget a thing or two.</i></p><p><i>But that doesn’t mean something is wrong. <b>“The problem isn’t your memory, it’s that we have the wrong expectations for what memory is for in the first place,”</b> Ranganath writes in his introduction, a theme that he returns to throughout the book. “Severe memory loss is undoubtedly debilitating, but our most typical complaints and worries around everyday forgetting are largely driven by deeply rooted misconceptions.”</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>Far from being static, Ranganath writes, memory, like the brain itself, is malleable, and constantly being updated. It can be shaped by where we are, what we are feeling, what other people say and do, and whether it is a negative or positive memory we are trying to recall. <b>And though people often think about memory as having to do only with the past, Ranganath holds that this is misconceived: Memory also is intimately intertwined with the present and with the future.</b></i></p><p><i>“Only when we start to peek behind the veil of the ‘remembering self,’’ he writes, “do we get a glimpse of the pervasive role memory plays in every aspect of human experience and recognize it as a powerful force that can shape everything from our perceptions of reality to the choices and plans we make, to the people we interact with, and even to our identity.”</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>Yet Ranganath is the first to admit that what scientists know about memory pales in comparison to what is yet to be learned. <b>“Science is not about having all the answers,” he writes. “It’s about asking better and more revealing questions. There is always going to be a missing piece of the puzzle. But searching for an answer forces us to see the world in new ways, challenging our most stubborn assumptions about who we are.”</b></i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p>- <a href="https://undark.org/2024/03/01/book-review-why-we-remember/" target="_blank">Review</a> of the book <a href="https://amzn.to/49UAX8Z" target="_blank">Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters</a> by Charan Ranganath</p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-28125103932049748912024-03-01T15:32:00.001-05:002024-03-01T15:32:17.720-05:00Why I like Hitchens<p style="text-align: center;"><b><i></i></b></p><blockquote><b><i>His nimbleness of mind allowed him to see threats brewing that dawned too late for many.</i></b></blockquote><p></p><p>- <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-hitch-still-matters-on-christopher-hitchenss-a-hitch-in-time/" target="_blank">Why Hitch Still Matters</a>: On Christopher Hitchens’s “<a href="https://amzn.to/3Tc0STZ" target="_blank">A Hitch in Time</a>”</p><p>And he is one of the few people I know who had immense skin in the game plus was never afraid to say he was wrong. </p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-83540964431727831362024-02-26T16:12:00.000-05:002024-02-26T16:12:37.566-05:00Observe, Observe, Observe Perpetually - 0<p>The greatest of all gifts from Max. He knew so much about his surroundings without a single word spoken. It blew my mind way. </p><p>I became his disciple to learn that skill. I got better than I was before Max was born. The onus was on me to hone it constantly. I tried and will try as humanly as possible until my last breath. </p><p>What are some of my observations which most miss?</p><p>I will capture those here as long as I can. </p><p>Every cell in my body tells me these observations are accurate but who knows? I might be wrong - prove it to me outside of anomalous cherry picking. </p><p>These are statistically relevant not by sheer number of data points. They are relevant for a single person to observe data points in first person and second hand by reading. Most importantly, I have observed these consistently over decades and kind of have a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect" target="_blank">Lindy Effec</a>t. </p><p>I will also add most likely causal reasons behind those observations. The observations and causal reasons are separate entities. I am more likely to be wrong in my causal inference than observations. </p><p>In machine learning, there is a concept called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_learning" target="_blank">Transfer Learning</a>. When there is not enough data to learn for one task, the model can learn from another task. Most humans suck at transfer learning. This problem is grossly underrated. </p><p>Humans overfit or under fit constantly. </p><p>I wrote <a href="https://maximusandme.blogspot.com/2020/01/memento-mori-stoic-exercise-2-of-3.html">this</a> within four weeks of Max passing away:</p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>No one is capable of thinking about death constantly. I see Memento Mori as a struggle between virtue and vanity. </b></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>How to be virtuous when we all know its all vain and how to sprinkle vanity when the body feels strong and virtuous (or more complicated term for this is "catalepsis" which was coined by Martha Nussbaum - "a condition of certainty and confidence from which nothing can dislodge us.”). </b></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Some days the former take the forefront and somedays the latter but most days, I hope to get a balance between both.</b></i></p><p style="text-align: left;">The trick is to have a healthy balance between virtue and vanity every moment without too much effort. </p><p>Everything I write might be wrong & that gives me something new to learn.</p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-66987201344266743672024-02-25T08:20:00.006-05:002024-02-25T08:20:50.365-05:00Meta Value - 23I never even dreamt that an academic paper would not only make it my value system. Plus, I think about this paper almost every time I interact with a human. <div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/why-do-humans-reason-arguments-for-an-argumentative-theory/53E3F3180014E80E8BE9FB7A2DD44049" target="_blank">Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory</a> by Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber have definitely reduced my probability of dying soon because of high blood pressure. </div><div><br /></div><div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>Abstract</i> </div></blockquote><blockquote><div><i>Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought.</i> </div></blockquote><blockquote><div><i><b>Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions.</b></i> </div></blockquote><blockquote><div><i>Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.</i></div></blockquote><div><i></i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Along the similar lines, Clay Christensen's wise words helped me understand humanity better: </div><div><blockquote style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.</blockquote><p>The value is not to waste time arguing and reasoning with humans. </p><p>For example, I don't talk to adults about eating non-human animal dead bodies for pleasure and causing immense pain and suffering. There is no way on earth they will change their mind. </p><p>Instead, I focus on kids. They are more open minded, they have unanswered questions in their mind. If they change their mind, then an entire generation to come via them can stop killing animals. </p><p>As far as adults, they will not kill animals only after they die. Sad but that is the reality. </p></div><div><br /></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-68794218066430057642024-02-19T19:48:00.007-05:002024-02-19T19:48:48.719-05:00Meta Values - 22<span id="docs-internal-guid-51fbf6b0-7fff-946a-fb35-b9ae58831092"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I am not special. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I am equal to any living being on this planet. No less nor more. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">My life isn't so special that my non-human animal brothers and sisters such as rats, pigs, monkeys, dogs, or cats are experimented on and suffer immensely just to save me someday so that I get extra time. Nor kill them for my gastro intestinal pleasures. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">My life is not special in any unique way when compared to all other living beings. And more importantly, I cannot exist without them - in a literal sense. Humans would have never existed without other living beings.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The possibility of life in any universe is so rare and impossible that all lives on this planet are special.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Max lived his life for 13 years. The same goes for me. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I will bid adieu someday in future with immense gratitude for this opportunity to share time and place with other living beings. </span></p><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div></span>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-87731327630625443982024-02-19T10:20:00.000-05:002024-02-19T10:20:23.181-05:00Very Good Sentence On Cooking & Eating Vegetables<div style="text-align: left;"><i>There were so many things I didn’t think about Chinese food until I read it in Fuchsia Dunlop. Her new book <a href="https://amzn.to/3OOZTGH" target="_blank">Invitation to Banquet</a> is organized around 30 dishes to explain every aspect of Chinese cuisine:</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b>Cantonese sashimi, for example, to discuss knifework; and Mapo tofu to talk about the intense flavors that comes from fermenting the bean. </b></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b><br />Fuchsia raises the questions I have: “Where is the creativity, where the delight, in simply roasting a chunk of meat and serving it with bald potatoes and carrots, as the English like to do?” </b></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b><br />And I feel like she is speaking for me when she is lamenting the poor use of leafy vegetables in western cuisine: “either overcooked or served brutally raw as some strange kind of virtue,” compared to the Chinese greens, which are “more generously portioned than the apologetic little dishes of spinach served on the side… and cooked as carefully as anything else.” </b></i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b></b></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br />I wish that there was a book like this for every cuisine to introduce techniques and traditions through personal stories.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i>- Dan Wang's <a href="https://danwang.co/2023-letter/" target="_blank">2023 Letter</a></div><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-35684690368704121732024-02-18T08:30:00.001-05:002024-02-18T08:30:50.453-05:00The Tiny Ant and the Mighty Lion<p>Talk about complex systems and inter-connectedness of all living beings in this beautiful planet! </p><p>Read <a href="https://nautil.us/the-tiny-ant-and-the-mighty-lion-512340" target="_blank">this</a> and train your organs to be humble and not hurt any living being.</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>This real-life fable begins with the iconic umbrella-shaped acacia tree, also known as the whistling thorn tree. Graceful and resilient, the acacia tree dominates the savannah landscape and often provides most of the tree cover for thousands of square miles. Hidden in the branches of this tree are great numbers of tiny acacia ants, which make their home there and act as protectors. With their painful stings and bites, the ants ward off large herbivores such as elephants and giraffes, and allow the trees to thrive.</i></p><p><i>But lately, the trees have come under the growing influence of a globe-trotting intruder: the big-headed ant. Named for its large heart-shaped head and thought to have originated on the island nation of Mauritius, this aggressive ant has quickly spread across the savannah over the past 20 years, outnumbering and, in some places, eradicating the acacia ant. </i></p><p><i>Here’s where the lion comes in. As an ambush predator, the lion is heavily reliant on the cover provided by the acacia trees. The trees’ branches and foliage serve as a hiding place from which the lion can sneak up on its favored prey, the zebra. Without the acacia ant, the acacia trees are susceptible to hungry passersby. When elephants extract the nutrients in the bark and roots with their trunks, the acacia trees are stripped and often left broken. As more and more of these trees are consumed, the landscape has radically changed, becoming open and bare.</i></p><p><i>Conservationists, noticing the change in tree cover, have worried lions might struggle to capture their prey and feed themselves and begin to die. With nowhere to hide, how would they get their dinner?</i></p><p><i>Recently, an international team of biologists set out to answer this question. They collected data about ant invasions; tree cover; zebra, elephant, and giraffe populations; and the behavior of lions and their prey across the 300-square-kilometer Ol Pejeta Conservancy in northern Kenya. What they found surprised them, says Douglas Kamaru, a University of Wyoming Ph.D. student and the lead author of a new paper about their study. </i></p><p><i>Kamaru and his colleagues expected lions to starve and their populations to shrink, but that’s not what happened. “The lion population was stable,” says Kamaru. <b>In areas invaded by big-headed ants, the lions simply changed their diets, swapping out zebras for African buffalo. The buffalo aren’t as skittish as the zebras, so the lions are less reliant on stealth and surprise.</b></i></p><p><i>In 2020, zebra kill occurrence was nearly three times lower in areas invaded by big-headed ants. Zebras also accounted for less than half of total prey kills that year, down from about two-thirds in 2003, while buffalo accounted for 42 percent of all prey kills, up from zero. These changes were unrelated to zebra or buffalo densities, which remained unchanged from 2014 to 2020.</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i><b>The ant and the lion offer a dramatic example of the ripple effect—how a seemingly diminutive change in a web of relationships can fundamentally alter an entire ecosystem. The tiniest creature can upset the mightiest beast on the land.</b></i></p><p></p></blockquote><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-35503864372123979052024-02-17T07:57:00.000-05:002024-02-17T07:57:09.189-05:00Meta Values - 21<p>A powerful writing has a wonderful awakening power to change one's life for good. Ever since I read these lines, I try to evaluate myself everyday and try to change myself with time. </p><p>And this happened yesterday. For 18 years I was always home for Max's birthday on March 21st. This year, I am scheduled to travel for work on his birthday. </p><p>I can refuse to go and follow the pattern for the rest of my life. But I need to change with the situation. </p><p>I have become Max and he has become me. Where it starts and where it ends is blurry to say the least. </p><p>Home is where Max is and I am Max. </p><p>So for the first time in 18 years, I will not be home for his birthday and I will treat my mind as a river. </p><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i></i></b></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Mind as a River</i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this "friction": the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to the current circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be....</i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or successes), and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving; stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency in the mind.</i></b><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div></blockquote><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><b>- The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene</b></div></blockquote><p> </p><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i></i></b></div></div><div><br /></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-13176122296630584602024-02-16T14:56:00.003-05:002024-02-16T14:56:51.196-05:00Good Bye Steven M. Wise<p>Steven, founder of Non-Human Rights Project <a href="https://everloved.com/life-of/steven-wise/" target="_blank">passed away.</a> </p><p>You have done the foundational work for future animals to be free from human animal. Thank you sir.</p><p>You have made a huge impact on how I live rest of my life. </p><p>From NhRP email: </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>We’re heartbroken to share the news that Steven M. Wise–our founder, president, and friend–passed away yesterday. </i></p><p><i><b>No words will be sufficient to describe the immense sadness and sense of loss we feel with his passing. Steve inspired us every day with his relentlessly cheerful determination in the face of any and all obstacles, his fearlessness, his utter clarity on the injustices nonhuman animals endure, and his vision for a world where nonhuman rights are recognized alongside human rights. Steve spent almost every waking hour for the last four decades thinking about the struggle for nonhuman rights. Among lawyers and legal scholars, he was one of the greats–a true visionary, pursuing fundamental change with an awe-inspiring breadth of knowledge of law, history, science, and social justice. </b></i></p><p><i>Whether walking into court together, digging into a court decision with the team on Zoom, or just checking in at the end of a long, difficult workday, working with Steve was always energizing because everything he said and did was infused with his unfailing optimism and his total commitment to the Nonhuman Rights Project. <b>In our fight against human tyranny over nonhuman animals, he also brought a self-deprecating sense of humor and a deep sense of care for the individual well-being of our staff–knowing, from his years of experience, that we’d need both in order to stay strong and keep going. </b></i></p><p><i><b>As a result, our small, close-knit team has a sense of purpose and solidarity we know will carry us through this extraordinarily difficult moment. </b></i></p><p><i>Steve, we will miss you. We’re grateful beyond words for everything you did to make the world a better place for everyone during your 73 years on earth, and we’re honored to be able to carry on this work in your memory–for as long as it takes. </i></p></blockquote><p> </p><p><i></i></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-38195199029997943352024-02-14T06:00:00.000-05:002024-02-14T06:00:08.369-05:00Is AI Anti-Animal?<p>I am in the field and stupid me, I missed this. </p><p>The data behind training the models are created by humans. And humans look down on animals. This is not good for the future of animals. We need a way to minimize this biased data. </p><p>In general, AI should go beyond data but we are not there yet. So we are stuck with "cleaning" the data to remove bias (and good luck with that). </p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>It should come as no surprise, then, that AI is also a replicator, perpetuator, and normalizer of speciesism. </b></i></p><p>We need to work with big tech to eradicate this bias before it <a href="https://riseforanimals.org/news/ai-is-anti-animal/" target="_blank">spreads into the future this anti-animal virus infected human brains</a>. </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Speciesism – or “the belief that a mere difference in species justifies us in giving more weight to the interests of members of one species (usually our own . . . ) than the similar interests of members of other species” – is a prejudice, similar to sexism and racism” that underlies all human exploitation of other-than-human animals, including inside laboratories. </i></p><p><i>Unlike other forms of human-on-human discrimination like sexism and racism, however, speciesism is not “widely accepted” to be “wrong”, and its “biased views and actions [] are shared, accepted, and performed by a large majority of society”. As a result, its elimination from AI is not a “high priority” (if it’s even on the list at all…):</i></p><p><i>“Massive efforts are made to reduce biases in both data and algorithms to render AI applications fair. These efforts are propelled by various high-profile cases where biased algorithmic decision-making caused harm to women, people of color, minorities, etc. However, the AI fairness field still succumbs to a blind spot, namely its insensitivity to discrimination against animals.”</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>To spark change ourselves, all we have to do is change the world (something we in the animal rights movement were already planning to do anyway, right?!)!</i></p><p><i><b>At present, “none of the major AI companies [] have any mention of animals in their ethical guidelines, and they’re not instructing data workers to consider how responses affect animals”. This means that speciesism will continue to be “hardwired into algorithms running our lives”.</b></i></p><p><i><b>And, this means that those of us in the animal rights movement must remain vigilant in our opposition to oppression in all of its forms – for changing our machines’ reflections of our world requires changing our world itself; and changing our world itself requires each and every one of us taking action. </b></i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-27761069850380569452024-02-13T08:51:00.001-05:002024-02-13T08:51:10.014-05:00Obelisks - Virus-Like Entities in Our Gut<p>Another <a href="https://medium.com/technicity/obelisks-what-does-the-discovery-of-these-virus-like-entities-in-our-gut-reveal-853175256559" target="_blank">example</a> of epistemic humility; we have not even scratched the surface of knowledge (leave alone humans who act like they have passed the end of knowledge). </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Viroids are small, infectious, and circular RNA molecules that are distinct from typical viruses. Unlike viruses, viroids do not possess a protective protein coat. They were initially discovered in plants, causing various diseases, and were later identified in fungi. Viroids are known for their ability to replicate autonomously within host cells, co-opting cellular machinery for their own reproduction.</i></p><p><i><b>Initially believed to exclusively infect plants, recent research suggests viroids may extend their reach to other hosts, including animals, fungi, or bacteria. In the current study, researchers delved into the genes of microbes inhabiting the human body, exploring the potential existence of viroids in this domain. They termed newly found viroids “Obelisks” due to their predicted 3D structure resembling a thin rod when they fold onto themselves.</b></i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>Recently discovered Obelisks appeared to include instructions for replication enzymes, rendering them more intricate than previously described viroids. However, akin to most viroids, they still lacked directives for a protective outer shell. The impact of these viroids on human health remains uncertain, although they could potentially influence the human microbiome by infecting bacteria. Additionally, ongoing discussions surround the evolutionary relationship between viruses and viroids — fueling the debate & questioning whether viruses evolved from viroids or vice versa.</i></p><p><i>In essence, these recent discoveries not only add layers to our understanding of human anatomy but also underscore the ongoing process of discovery and refinement in the field of medical science. The impact lies in the potential to enhance our ability to diagnose, treat, and prevent various health conditions through a more comprehensive understanding of the human body’s intricate workings. </i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-2852151968659440282024-02-11T21:01:00.002-05:002024-02-11T21:01:17.950-05:00How To Live a Resilient Life - Nassim Taleb<p>I love to listen to this once in a while to evaluate myself at a given point and time. Plus it gives me insight about myself which I was unaware of. </p><p>Today, I understood why I moved away from so many "friends" :</p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Tell people what you do not what they should do. </b></i></p><p>When I talk about things I do and act on; I think it irritates and intimidates those people. They prefer talking abstract bullshit or signaling topics. </p><p>I prefer not do those mating dances. </p><p>Next one: </p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>If something is nonsense... say it!</b></i></p><p>This one is more elegant. People who can digest that fact I am calling their "bullshit, are more open minded and have an ability to change their mind. Plus they are mature enough to understand that I can be trusted and I will be a shoulder they can rely on.</p><p>This has been my technique to weed out crappy humans out of my life. It not only saved me time but helped me avoid unwanted psychological drama. </p><p>Here's Taleb's 11 rules: </p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><i><b>Do not disappoint your 18-year-old self. </b></i></li><li><i><b>Sacrifice for others</b></i></li><li><i><b>Seek self respect</b></i></li><li><i><b>Do not read newspapers (or consume news) </b></i></li><li><i><b>If something is nonsense... say it!</b></i></li><li><i><b>Be most respectful to manual workers</b></i></li><li><i><b>Avoid things that bore you</b></i></li><li><i><b>Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you</b></i></li><li><i><b>Start a business</b></i></li><li><i><b>Tell people what you do not what they should do</b></i></li><li><i><b>I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will.</b></i></li></ol><p></p><p>Things to avoid completely: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i><b>Muscles without strength</b></i></li><li><i><b>Friendship without trust</b></i></li><li><i><b>Opinion without risk</b></i></li><li><i><b>Change without aesthetics </b></i></li><li><i><b>Age without values</b></i></li><li><i><b>Food without nourishment </b></i></li><li><i><b>Power without fairness</b></i></li><li><i><b>Facts without rigor </b></i></li><li><i><b>Degree without erudition </b></i></li><li><i><b>Militarism without fortitude</b></i></li><li><i><b>Progress without civilization </b></i></li><li><i><b>Complication without depth</b></i></li><li><i><b>Fluency without content</b></i></li><li><i><b>Religion without tolerance</b></i></li></ul><div><br /></div><p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aYhacHNHTEs?si=NkohzP582R5OSkl_" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-89138421844076723962024-02-11T08:10:00.003-05:002024-02-11T08:10:35.989-05:00Non-Human Animal Talk<p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>It is clear that some animals have the potential to use language in the sense that we understand it. This is not realised in the wild because it would not give a selective advantage. African grey parrots are the obvious example. One famous African grey, Alex, lived in Professor Irene Pepperberg’s lab. Every night, when she left for home, he said to her, ‘You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow.’ That’s not particularly impressive: the parrot could simply have been copying her. <b>But Alex could do much more than that. He knew that words related to concepts, which is probably a defining element of any true language. If presented with a tray of objects of different shapes and colours and made of various materials, he would accurately answer questions such as ‘How many triangles?’ or ‘How many red squares?’ or ‘How many wood?’ And he learned not just the associations of words, but their meanings too. He looked into a mirror and asked, ‘What colour?’ That was how he learned the word ‘grey’. This has been described as the only known example of a non-human asking a direct question. Alex, says Kershenbaum, had ‘the core of what is necessary for language’ – and probably ‘that’s an understatement’.</b></i></p><p><i>‘Do animals have language?’ is a bad question. They talk, concludes Kershenbaum, but not in the way we do. We are pathologically linguistic. We chop the world up into propositions and, if we’re not careful, examine those rather than the world itself. The behaviourist Temple Grandin speculates that non-human animals might rely on mental images rather than something tantamount to language to conceptualise ideas (as people like her, with autism spectrum disorder, do). We can’t know, but Kershenbaum is sympathetic to the notion. </i></p><p><i>Kershenbaum no doubt sees Why Animals Talk as a book about biology.<b> I prefer to see it as a humble, genial, scholarly, impeccably clear meditation on our own Umwelt. He challenges us to consider that there are ways of being in the world other than ours. Our old instinct is right: if we learn how to listen properly, animals really can tell us something significant about the world that we wouldn’t know without them.</b></i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p>- <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-soliloquies-of-the-lambs" target="_blank">Review</a> of the book <a href="https://amzn.to/3ODO1ay" target="_blank">Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication</a> by Arik Kershenbaum</p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-18895486155589792522024-02-09T12:29:00.004-05:002024-02-09T12:29:32.702-05:00From A Recent Study - At Least 65 Species Of Animals Laugh<p>Many people were surprised when they saw Max laugh! I have seen my Max laugh almost everyday. I miss his smile and his kisses. </p><p>This is a <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/new-study-65-species-animal-laughter-rp5" target="_blank">slap in the face of sapiens who look down on animals</a>. Another reason to treat our fellow non-human animals. </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Researchers at UCLA have identified 65 species of animals who make "play vocalizations," or what we would consider laughter. <b>Some of those vocalizations were already well documented—we've known for a while that apes and rats laugh—but others may come as a surprise. Along with a long list of primate species, domestic cows and dogs, foxes, seals, mongooses and three bird species are prone to laughter as well. (Many bird species can mimic human laughter, but that's not the same as making their own play vocalizations.)</b></i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>The UCLA researchers shared that the study of laughter in animals can help us better understand our own evolutionary behavior.</i></p><p><i>“This work lays out nicely how a phenomenon once thought to be particularly human turns out to be closely tied to behavior shared with species separated from humans by tens of millions of years,” Bryant said, according to UCLA.</i></p><p><i><b>“When we laugh, we are often providing information to others that we are having fun and also inviting others to join,” Winkler said. “Some scholars have suggested that this kind of vocal behavior is shared across many animals who play, and as such, laughter is our human version of an evolutionarily old vocal play signal.”</b></i></p></blockquote><p><br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R0aK-_d8ZL0?si=uriwVO3FCy-g_bVG" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hhlHx5ivGGk?si=7SSJG-uoMtrMaL7D" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>I knew about Rat's laughter since Max was a puppy. </div><div>And we treat them horrible with animal testing. Wake up humans!</div><div><br /></div><div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d-84UJpYFRM?si=1wJE7llqxFP0_d7E" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-55825370819053380932024-02-08T20:07:00.001-05:002024-02-08T20:07:33.375-05:00Last-Chance Pets & The People Who Rescue Them<p>This is a moral area I fail miserably. </p><p>Rescuing old pets and seeing them die will kill me daily. I know who I am, what drives me and what kills me. </p><p>I will be emotionally drained. I don't know if this is an excuse to protect myself. </p><p>One thing I know about myself is that I do change everyday. I hope I become stronger to give these beautiful animals one last chance soon or work ways that this horrible fate doesn't happen to any animal. </p><p>This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/07/they-deserve-love-last-chance-pets-and-the-people-who-rescue-them?ref=thebrowser.com" target="_blank">piece</a> is about my human heroes who rescue them. I bow in front of you. Thank you. I hope your acts will change my mind.</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>In a car on the way back from an animal shelter, with a 12-year-old chihuahua on his lap, Steve Greig felt peace. For months, since the death of his dog, Wolfgang, he had been inconsolable. “I couldn’t make sense of it,” he says. Wolfgang had been hit by a car. Greig had the idea that he could adopt a dog that nobody else wanted, to give an animal a last chance of a loving home. The chihuahua, whom he named Eeyore, was the oldest dog in the shelter and had a heart murmur and four bad knees. Eeyore spent that car journey looking out of the window, tail wagging. “It was not a no-kill shelter, so his future didn’t look that good, but he had a new lease on life,” says Greig. “I’ll never forget it. It felt like Wolfgang had a hand in letting this dog live and it was exactly what I needed.”</i></p><p><i>It was so rewarding that he soon adopted another old dog – “and one turned into another”. He now has 11. Every so often, a shelter calls him with news of a dog that might be put down and he can’t resist. “The problem with seniors in shelters is they’re the last that are looked at. If you have a senior with health problems, they’re the last of the last.” Greig lives in Colorado, but most of his dogs have been rescued from other states – from “high-kill shelters” where dogs who are elderly, disabled or can’t find homes are euthanised.</i></p><p><i>Being older – the dogs, not Greig, although he recently retired as an accountant – means they are easier to handle, he says. “It’s not like I’ve got 11 puppies running around. They, like myself, love a routine.” The oldest is 19 and the youngest is eight, but since she is an Irish wolfhound it is as though she were a centenarian. Greig gets up early, takes them out – five can walk without problems; the others usually sit in a wagon – then back for medication and breakfast. Some need more care – one of his dogs is diabetic and has stomach problems. This means boiled fish for his meals and insulin at the same time each day. “I have to plan around that. Others are on special diets as well. A couple are blind, so they won’t go out by themselves; I have to place them outside and bring them in.” Sometimes, he says with an affectionate laugh, they get lost.</i></p><p><i>[---]</i></p><p><i>As for the inevitable, everyone goes into it knowing this. “It’s just the idea that you’ve made a difference for a short time to an animal’s life,” says Kennedy. Williams has no idea how long Libby has left, “but every day is a delight”. Crockett says he will mope around for a while once Tia goes, “then reach the conclusion there’s another poor old cat out there who needs a home”. Lewis thinks that, for Sheba and Teddy, “whatever time they’ve got left, they deserve some love”.</i></p><p><i>For Greig, going through mourning periods fairly regularly has given him an appreciation for life. “I don’t take things for granted. I constantly see how fleeting life is. I see them happy and doing well, usually much better than when they came in, and I feel like I’ve given them the best of whatever time they have left. I don’t mean to say that it’s not hard, but I comfort myself knowing how their lives could have been.”</i></p><p><i><b>His last-chance dogs have taught him a great lesson, he says. “The advice I always have if you want to make your life better? Realise that it’s not about you. The people I have seen that are most unhappy think everything is about them. Once you realise that almost everything isn’t, which is what these dogs have taught me, life is so good.”</b></i></p></blockquote><p> </p><p><i></i></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400212529619631372.post-60073587792702388622024-02-08T06:55:00.000-05:002024-02-08T06:55:26.057-05:00The Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories<p><i>Abstract</i></p><p><i><b>We hypothesize that fictional stories are highly successful in human cultures partly because they activate evolved cognitive mechanisms, for instance for finding mates (e.g., in romance fiction), exploring the world (e.g., in adventure and speculative fiction), or avoiding predators (e.g., in horror fiction). In this paper, we put forward a comprehensive framework to study fiction through this evolutionary lens. T</b>he primary goal of this framework is to carve fictional stories at their cognitive joints using an evolutionary framework. Reviewing a wide range of adaptive variations in human psychology – in personality and developmental psychology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary biology, among other disciplines –, this framework also addresses the question of inter individual differences in preferences for different features in fictional stories. It generates a wide range of predictions about the patterns of combinations of such features, according to the pattern's of variations in the mechanisms triggered by fictional stories. As a result of a highly collaborative effort, we present a comprehensive review of evolved cognitive mechanisms that fictional stories activate. <b>To generate this review, we listed more than 70 adaptive challenges humans faced in the course of their evolution, identified the adaptive psychological mechanisms that evolved in response to such challenges, specified four sources of adaptive variability for the sensitivity of each mechanism (i.e., personality traits, sex, age, and ecological conditions), and linked these mechanisms to the story features that trigger them. This comprehensive framework lays the ground for a theory-driven research program for the study of fictional stories, their content, distribution, structure, and cultural evolution.</b></i></p><p>- Full Paper <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/osf/me6bz" target="_blank">Here</a></p><p><br /></p>Balaji Sundaresanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107801950712873225noreply@blogger.com0