speculations on extraterrestrial life...

There is a view that existence of life in other planets is almost a certainty. It is also very likely that two life forms in different planets end up communicating. Science fiction is full of stories where civilizations collaborate forming galactic federations. The characters in such novels end up being remarkable human like. I often wonder if it is possible for "human" like life showing up on other planets. It does seem rather reasonable to expect that "intelligent" species on other planets look dramatically different from us. Is it also reasonable to expect them to have eyes, ears, hands, legs, brains etc?

I'm of the view that it is indeed very reasonable to expect them to possess the faculties that humans and lot of other life forms on earth possess. My reasoning goes something like this. The big bang throws out a huge amount of energy. A fair part of it ended up being matter. These elementary particles ended up producing "elements". I think it is reasonable to expect other planets to have "matter" that is largely like the "matter" on earth. Solid, Liquid and Gaseous. The laws of Physics would ensure that Chemistry works much like it does on earth. An extension of Chemistry to Biology and origin of life on some planets is also inevitable and can be expected to occur very similar to how it did on earth. So, it is reasonable to expect that the laws of biology are also universal. Natural selection, I think, is a fundamental law of nature. I think it is very very reasonable to expect any intelligent life on other planets to be subject to the laws of natural selection. In short, I think the laws of physics, chemistry and biology ought to be universal.

Light exists everywhere. Life everywhere will evolve sight. Eyes are inevitable. Such a reasoning would almost extend to the sense faculties that we possess.

Locomotion would add survival value. Life everywhere would evolve legs. It seems reasonable to expect hands to follow. Bipedal life would evolve.

Life would evolve very much like it did on earth. Most intelligent life on earth does have hands, legs, brains etc. Is there any reason to expect things to be different on another planet? I think not.

My speculation is that if and when we find life elsewhere, it is going to be boringly similar to life on earth. Maybe pink plants and green men. That's about it.

BTW, blogging is apparently good for your mental health. Some more reason to keep typing.

Genetic algorithms in the Design of Comparators - Part 2

This blog follows up on my previous blog on the use of Genetic Algorithms in the Design of Comparators. The basic mutation methods used earlier used only single gene mutations. The next generation is just derived from one "parent" with some "genes" changed. It is very easy to modify the process such that the new gene for any iteration is derived by combining the changes that were made in the previous generation that results in the two best "children".

Let C = F (X1, X2...Xn) be the cost function of the "comparator" where X1, X2 ...Xn are the genes. If the changes in genes Xi and Xj result in the two best comparators in an iteration, the evaluated cost function will be of the form

Ci = F (X1, X2, ..., Xi, ...Xn)

Cj = F (X1, X2, ..., Xj, ...Xn)

In the previous method, I would have just used (X1, X2, ..., Xi, ...Xn) as the base gene for the next iteration. I could very easily change that to use to two best genes and use (X1, X2, ..., Xi, .., Xj, ...Xn). It also makes sense to evaluate the "base" in each iteration since it is new.

One can expect the effect of the two genes to "superpose" and result in a larger improvement than each individually. This need not happen in all iterations though. One might expect such a process to produce improvements in the design faster than the previous method. I don't think there is any reason to expect dramatically different "results" though.

Extensions that pick the top three best or more genes are also possible. I live on earth and not a para universe. Hence my preference for two.

A variant of the idea is to to pick up all "mutations" that result in an improvement from the "base" or "parent" gene in each iteration. Improvement is defined as the "cost function" evaluating to a value higher for the "child" than the "parent". Superposition principle would for the most part still apply and one can expect the next "gene" to be better than the previous one. I did notice that most of the "children" quickly end up being "not better" than the parent and very few changes actually improve the "cost function". I'm not sure if these methods are any better than the method that just selects the best in each iteration. It appears that "vanilla" natural selection performs just as efficiently as any "intelligent" variant of the idea. Maybe Intelligence has a lot less practical value than you think.

Another aspect of the two methods described here that make them different from the older method is that these methods can result in designs that are temporarily worse than the previous iteration. There is a possibility that the "mutations" that are being combined in one generation result in a worse cost function in the next. This is in contrast to the first method where the cost function can never reduce from one iteration to the next. The possibility of a temporary decline is a price one needs to pay for the possibility of faster increase in the cost function. Intelligence, invariably implies fallibility. The theory of natural selection, apparently, does not allow species to get worse temporarily. That might disqualify these methods from falling into the category of Genetic Algorithms. Maybe the biologists have some thing to think about. Can intelligent species temporarily decline?

Who watches the Watchmen!

I read this quote in Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. Quis Custodiet ipsos custodes? A lot of us have been thinking about the question that the quote asks. The Hindu carries on its front page the story behind why much of India (granted it is urban, middle class, cable tv watching India) is on the topic now. Before we go any further, there is a petition you can sign to support the cause. There is a group on facebook that you can join as well.

Back to the question. It is the public that has perform the role of watching over the watchmen. Some would argue that the pressure and prejudice so generated is unfair to the accused. I guess that's a good reason to ensure that the trial is speedy. The people who are getting involved would be much happier if they did not need to get involved in the first place. It is heartening to note that people don't shy away from this responsibility when needed though.

The other arms of the government, namely the judiciary and legislature also need to be part of the solution. The public involvement certainly makes the legislature interested. I believe that the judiciary would have done the right thing (albeit slowly) in any case, including pointing out that the investigating "executive" has acted to favour another wing of its own.

Such cases almost always bring the question of "Trial by Media" and its fairness into question. I think media has been a tool the public has used to further its cause throughout history. I have not heard many people complain about the role of the print media in the freedom struggle. Why do we do so in such cases?

Does the media keep the people interested in these cases to further its own cause? Is public opinion being manipulated? The responsibility to present the facts truthfully lies with the media. It is hard to believe that so many people are acting in concert to whip up public sentiment. I also believe that the public needs to get their facts from multiple sources to ensure that they are not being manipulated.

Actually all I wanted to say was Jail the b@$!@^d ! NOW! It would have been easier to do that. But then hyper-intellectual BS is bliss. In case you do not notice, I did not say Hang the b@$!@^d! NOW! Aah! That feels so good!

Reading list for 2010

Here is a list of books and their authors that I intend to read in 2010. I hope that reading these will improve my understanding of the world around me and provide me with some much needed inspiration. You might notice that almost all of them are science books. I spent the better part of the last two years reading books by Osho, Robin Sharma, Deepak Chopra, Dalai Lama and Gurcharan Das. I even read Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol". I feel that there has been an over-dosage of "meta-physics" and "philosophy". A stiff dosage of science is required to restore some balance! Some of these are classics worth reading multiple times. I hope to be able to lay my hands on most of them. Wish me luck! I might even blog about some of the "interesting" things I learn from these books.

I'm considering taking a vacation to do this as well. I hope that the recession thing is done with and one can hope to live a little again; Rather than work one's butt off in perpetual fear of the axe.

A Short History of Nearly Everything	Bill Bryson
Dragons of Eden	Carl Sagan
Cosmos	Carl Sagan
Mind's I	Daniel Dennet and Douglas Hofstader
Stumbling on Happiness	Daniel Gilbert
Godel Escher Bach	Douglas Hofstader
Blackholes and Warped Spacetime	Kip Thorne
Complexity	Mitchell Waldrop
The God Delusion	Richard Dawkins
The Selfish Gene	Richard Dawkins
Climibing Mount Improbable	Richard Dawkins
The Greatest Show on Earth	Richard Dawkins
Shadows of the Mind	Roger Penrose
The Road to Reality	Roger Penrose
Programming the Universe	Seth Lloyd
A Brief History of Time	Stephen Hawking
The Universe in a Nutshell	Stephen Hawking
At Home in the Universe	Stuart Kauffman
The User Illusion	Tor Norretranders

Stop the climate change denial.

There are a set of jobless scientists who have spent years of their lives trying to establish that human activity is contributing to climate change. Clearly human beings have nothing to do with it. Actually Human beings have nothing to do with anything. It is ridiculous to suggest that we are in any way responsible for anything. Every event that occurs on earth can only be influenced by celestial objects. For instance, people lost their jobs recently because saturn transited from the 4th house to the fifth. Clearly the fact that the person was not being productive or that the economy tanked had nothing to do with it. On similar grounds, it is quite obvious that the changes in the global climate are the result of Sun transiting from house 8 to house 3 and the mars transiting from house 6 to house 3. Mars is the ruling planet that controls the emission of lava from volcanoes. Just in case you did not know. The stupid scientists at IPCC etc should have just consulted any local astrologer who would have been able to confirm the same. The fools went around the globe with their fancy measuring apparatus, dug holes in the artic ice to recover ice samples and many other "discredited" methods.

I guess one needs to be bit careful these days. I actually think that the attempts to blame the sun and volcanoes for climate change are no different from citing "astrological" reasons for events in our lives. A lot of human do so. I'm not surprised that some of them are trying to use similar "reasons" for climate change. Seriously people it IS that lame.

I do hope that better sense prevails in copenhagen. I woke up today morning to a nice editorial from the hindu on the topic. You can view it here if you have not done so.

Lets stop the silly denial and get to action. We owe our kids a better life.

A silly fable.

Back in the 1980's the school I went to had a class on moral science. The teacher uses parables to get the students to see what morality is. The idea of using parables to get a point across is quite interesting. Aesop's fables are possibly the most popular literature of this kind. Well, I do have a point to get across and intend to use a fable to do so.

Kamal Education Promotion Board is a non-profit organization working to advance the cause of academic achievement amongst children living in the suburban areas of Chennai. The board would like to see the children in these areas achieve better scores in their exams. It is quite evident that improving the scores would allow the students access to elite schools and subjects of their choice in the future.

The board comes up with the following recommendations that it believes will allow it to achieve its goal.

1. Teachers will be held accountable for achieving the target score in select subjects. 70% in Physics, 80% in Maths, 90% in Chemistry.
2. The questions in exams should be clear. For instance, all questions should end with a "?". Questions should require elaborate answers. Multiple choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks type questions are to be avoided.
3. The students will be required to wear white uniforms with their report card (scores) printed on them to school.
4. It is desirable that the students achieve these scores without any "additional" classes. The Board should be notified if teachers deem it necessary to train specific students with additional classes.
5. Supplementary exams for students who did not do well are banned. Students must do well in the exams that are already in place.

These recommendations are then shared with the teachers and students printed in nice glossy paper. A bunch of kids were found looking at these papers, laughing and making paper planes out of them.

There you go! That's my fable. It it not very good. That is the point.

Replace the KEPB with management, improving student scores with improving an organization's or an individual's performance. Do you see similarities between the list mentioned above and some steps management in general takes to improve performance? Are you surprised that the kids (workers in this case) don't take it seriously? Would you be surprised if the kids don't score better?

metamorphosis

Metamorphosis, we learn in high school, is the process that transforms the creepy crawly caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. The larva becomes a pupa and then the butterfly breaks out and flies away. I often wonder why human being do not or cannot transform themselves into something beautiful, develop capabilities that they did not possess earlier or set themselves free to do things they were not able to. I guess the trouble is one never starts. If one does want to start do we know what one wants to metamorphose into?

For instance, the question of freedom. There are dozens for things that one wants to be free from. We want to be free of our worries, our bosses, annoying colleagues, bigotry, violence in society etc. We have concepts of freedom enshrined in our constitutions. We, (most of us, anyway) live in nation states that guarantee us a right to freedom. Technology has set us free of much of the drudgery of life. It is far easier to cook, clean, commute, communicate (and those are just words that start with "c") than it has ever been in the history of humanity. Yet, most of us feel trapped and want to be free. Why?

Friedrich Neitzsche says "Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?" That actually sounds like a good point. Most of us never think about what we want to be free to do. Is that why one feels trapped?

I often find myself wanting to have a lot of free time or leisure. Who doesn't. At times wondering if taking a long break from work might free me up. I can't answer the question free to do what? Is it possible that sorting out what I want to do would actually make a difference? There are many unplanned activities that I end up finding time for at work. It might be possible to do the same in other contexts if one can identify what it needs to be. Maybe one can create the time required to pursue a hobby or learn something if one identifies what these pursuits need to be.

Another year draws to a close. I'm sure a lot of us, whether we like it or not, end up reflecting upon our lives at this time of the year. It might been a good idea to think about what one wants to be free for. Doing so might just initiate a metamorphosis in us and transform us into the butterfly we'd all love to be. Just a thought.