Reality & States of Being

Of late, I've been having random thoughts, very ambiguous, ecstatic and weird even. Sometimes I wonder where all this really comes from. I mean, does me saying I'm happy or sad or confused or angry mean that I'm all those at different points of time. What is the reality then? That is, if 'reality' even exists.
Well then if I feel those at different times, aren't my thoughts always subjective to that 'reality'. So those random feelings - are those just states of being(emotions) depending on various situations. So if we can control our thoughts or situations can we control our subjective reality? Our states of being?
Which brings us to an important school of thought - Subjective reality.
Here's an excerpt from Steve Pavlina's theory of subjective reality.

Subjective reality is an integrated belief system where consciousness and awareness are primary. They are the container in which everything else exists. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
In a truly subjective universe, there is nothing outside your own consciousness — no world, no bodies, no brain. Suppose I ask you the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” With an objective belief structure, you might say yes, but you might also say no, depending on your views on quantum physics. However, if you believed in subjective reality, you have to reject the question entirely. You’d say that there’s no such thing as a tree outside your awareness. That tree doesn’t even exist. Nor does the forest for that matter. If you are not there to observe it, it doesn’t exist at all. Without consciousness there is no existence.
A secondary element is that within a subjective universe, thought is the primary creative element. All thoughts manifest in some form, whether conscious or unconscious. So the physical universe is like a giant computer, crunching your thoughts into reality. Thoughts are waves, and the physical universe is the summation of all those waves. Hence where there is no thought, there is no physical existence. If a thought does not exist, its physical manifestation does not exist either.

In spite of all this, we have objective reality which obviously is a departure from subjective reality, but again it is one that is under the realm of subjective reality. Here's an article on transcending subjective reality from http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/transcending-subjective-reality/
Do check out the quote from the blog on the Persian philosopher Ibn Sina which I think makes sense as far as understanding objective reality is concerned.
My point is, in order to understand reality, we have to be aware of both the subjective and objective realms and act accordingly. Sometimes it may not seem to make sense but we wanna cope up with our reality a basic understanding is definitely essential.
(picture courtesy - http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/enlightenment.html)

Corporate Plagiarism?

When an individual steals content (or anything) from a corporation, he/she is brought down to their knees and made to pay for the 'crime'. But when a corporation does it to an individual, then the issue is swept under the carpet and conveniently forgotten. I for one believe in open sourcing of information, free usage of information by anybody, but when someone(especially a corporation who are the torch-bearers of the concept of copyright violations) crosses a certain line by lifting content from an independent person, saying the original work is theirs, without crediting the content creator, then it should be dealt with seriously, which is exactly what's happening now.
In regard to the story below where the Yahoo India(malayalam) portal has purportedly stolen content from an independent blogger Suryagayathri at Karivepilla,
Check out the reactions from the blogger community who are raising their voices against corporate plagiarism. There is a Protest happening today March 5th, 2007 against this copyright violation where Yahoo India is being asked to either issue an apology or compensate for the use of the independent blogger's content.

Yahoo India launched a beta version of their Malayalam (an Indian Language) portal and what do they do to fill their pages? Lift content just straight from small web magazines and blogs without asking a word or adequately compensating for those. What a shame!
We all like the idea of giants like Yahoo launching multiple Indian language portals. But that doesn’t give Yahoo India the right to lift contents, word by word and put those on their Malayalam portal.
View Suryagayathri's food blog.
They have copied some(6 and counting) of her recipes word by word. The only thing is that they changed the picture. What an easy way to cook up a portal. I can only laugh and sympathize at their confidence that their portal wont be read :). What other reason to copy contents?

For more related links on the issue, visit http://sajithvk.blogspot.com/2007/03/protest-aganist-plagiarisation-of-yahoo.html

India's Knowledge Commission

This is an email from one of the members of SAJA(South Asian Journalists Association), Ram Narayanan who is with the US-India Friendship group. Good read for those who want to do something for India, in any of the following ways.

"Dear Friends:
The National Knowledge Commission is a high-level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India, set up with the objective of transforming India into a knowledge society. It covers sectors ranging from education to e-governance in the five principal focus areas of the knowledge paradigm, viz.:

1. Access - Easy Access to Knowledge: Literacy, Language, Translation, Libraries, Networks, Portals
2. Concepts - All Levels and Forms of Education: School, Vocational, Higher, Medical, Legal, Management, Engineering, Open and Distance Education.
3. Creation - Effective Creation of Knowledge: Science and Technology, Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), Innovation, Entrepreneurship
4. Applications - of Knowledge Systems: Traditional Knowledge, Agriculture
5. Services - like e-Governance.

The Commission has set up nine working groups on:
Libraries, Language, Health Information Network, Undergraduate Education, Medical Education, Legal Education, Management Education, Traditional Knowledge, Open and Distance Education
It has organized a number of workshops and surveys on these and related subjects.

The website of the National Knowledge Commission can be seen at http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/
The Commission’s Report to the Nation 2006 can be read at http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/report2006/default.asp
There are many pieces of information on the website worth reading including:
Report of the Working Group on libraries, as submitted to the National Knowledge Commission... http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/wg_lib.pdf
Expert Report on Knowledge Network prepared by Dr.D P S Seth...
http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/er_nknet.pdf
and
Report of the Working Group on language, as submitted to the National Knowledge Commission....
http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/wg_lang.pdf
More working group reports will be out in due course.

The Commission’s website also has a "Discussion Board" to post comments, although I didn’t see any comments at this time.
All in all, the Commision’s website is worth careful study. For those living here in the US or in India or elsewhere, who possess specialized knowledge and/or have the ability and passion for doing something in and for India, here is an opportunity to start thinking.
To me it appears for successful implementation of the Knowledge Commission’s present and future recommendations, the involvement of government bureaucracy, especially at middle and lower levels, should be minimized (except for funding) and a major share of responsibility fixed on the private sector, including credible, competent and passionate NGOs. Do you agree?

Do you think it would be a good idea to set up a "Fraternal Help Team" (can we coin a better term?) for each of the 21 Focus Areas to offer ideas to the Working Groups and to help implement their recommendations when they come out.
Would you like to be part of one or more "Fraternal Help Team(s)" devoted to each of the following 21 Focus Areas?:

Literacy, Language, Translation, Libraries, Networks, Portals, School Education, Vocational Education, Higher Education, Medical Education, Legal Education, Management Education, Engineering Education, Open and Distance Education, Science and Technology, Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Traditional Knowledge, Agriculture, e-Governance
If you have specialized knowledge in any of the above specific areas, your contribution may be crucial to help India get successfully established on the road to becoming a knowledge superpower.
Do let me have your thoughts on what you CAN AND ARE WILLING TO DO?

Cheers,
Ram Narayanan
US-India Friendship
http://www.usindiafriendship.net/

Self-Discipline > Intelligence/Academic Brilliance

Here's an entry that I read in Desh's blog that indicates that Focus, Hard Work & Intelligence are the key for success (in that order), that Intelligence is only secondary to Focus/Self-discipline. True, but are we following it?

He talks about a journalist 'who found her librarian predict the kids getting the first class degrees with remarkable consistency and accuracy!'
Here's the article:
"A DECADE ago when I was an undergraduate psychologist, a departmental librarian called Anne was doing something any psychologist would say was impossible. Every year, with near-perfect accuracy, she would predict which third-year undergraduates would be awarded first-class degrees.
Anne didn't know how their essays were rated, what A-level grades they had under their belts, or how they scored on IQ tests. (All information many would say was essential to forecasting final results.)
All she knew was how often she had seen students in the department library: reading course notes, photocopying journals, borrowing books. And the handful of students who Anne saw a lot - conspicuously more often than the other students in the same year - were going to get a first.
Anne was working on the principle that in academic achievement it is self-discipline, not talent, that counts. Ten years on, a study published recently in Psychological Science has come to exactly the same conclusion.

Now a research study has found the same thing! After all it is the self-discipline that is a better predictor of better grades of students than raw talent!

Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman descended on the eighth grade of a large public school in the northeast of the US. As the autumn leaves fell, each of the 160-odd children took an IQ test, then they (and their parents and teachers) answered questionnaires that probed self-control. Are you good at resisting temptation, they were asked. Can you work effectively towards long-term goals? Or do pleasure and fun sometimes keep you from getting work done?
The children were also given a real-life test of their ability to delay gratification. Each was handed a dollar bill in an envelope. They could choose either to keep it or hand it back and get $2 a week later. Their decision was carefully recorded.
The researchers returned in spring. They took note of each child's grades and then looked back to see both how clever, and how self-controlled, that student had been in autumn. What, they wanted to know, was the most important factor in school grades?
The psychologists discovered it was self-control, by a long shot. A child's capacity for self-discipline was about twice as important as his or her IQ when it came to predicting academic success.
At first glance, research of this sort is a comfort to those of us not exploding with raw talent. The science seems to back up the writer Kingsley Amis's well-known advice that "the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair". Why, in that case anyone can write a book. Yet a small problem remains; namely, the problem of keeping the seat of one's trousers applied to the seat of one's chair.

For the Pseudo-Intellectuals & the Wannabees

I came across an excellent list called "Must-know terms for the 21st Century intellectual: Redux" formulated by George P. Dvorsky, a blogger I came to know about through Desh's (an intent blogger) blog. The thing that drew me to this list is the fact that I've always played the devil's advocate when it came to being the Generalist(Jack of all trades) Vs. the Specialist. How much ever I tried to be a specialist, it never came to be, for I had been and rather will always be a Generalist.
And Dvorsky, with his comment below, made me even more biased towards being a Generalist. He says
"First, I am trying to come up with a list of the most fundamental and crucial terms that are coming to define and will soon re-define the human condition, and that subsequently should be known by anyone who thinks of themselves as an intellectual. I admit that there's an elitist and even pompous aspect to this exercise, but the fact of the matter is that the zeitgeist is quickly changing. It's not enough anymore to be able to quote Dostoevsky, Freud and Darwin. This said, while my list of terms is 'required' knowledge, I am not suggesting that it is sufficient.
My definition of an 'intellectual' also requires explanation. To me an intellectual in this context is an expert generalist -- a polymath or jack-of-all-trades who sees and understands the Big Picture both past, present and future. While I value and respect the work of specialists, they can be frustratingly out of touch with other disciplines and some of the more broader applications of science, technology and philosophy. Given the obvious truism that nobody can know everything, there is still great value in having individuals understand a diverse set of key principles."
Don't get me wrong, this list is for anyone and everyone, not just the true intellectuals and the pseudo-intellectuals, but even for the wannabees. Chances are, if you are a true intellectual, you are probably gonna know this all.I have listed just a few of the terms but if you are really curious, go check out the full list here.

Anthropic Principle: Once considered a philosophical lark, the anthropic principle has become an integral methodological tool with which to best analyze the extreme unarbitrariness of the Universe's parameters. The AP, which suggests that our Universe's qualities are unavoidable in consideration of the presence of observers, has helped cosmologists, astrobiologists and quantum physicists as they work with such related concepts as the fine-tuning hypothesis, string theory, and various multiverse theories.

Artificial General Intelligence: This ain't your daddy's AI. Rather, AGI describes the kind of intelligence that you and I have -- the commonsense knowhow we have when we're put into unfamiliar situations. Once developed, artificial agents endowed with AGI will be non-specialized intelligent entities that will come to represent the bona fide synthetic equivalent to human intelligence, and then move beyond.

Cosmological Eschatology (aka physical eschatology): CE is the study of how the Universe develops, ages, and ultimately comes to an end. While hardly a new concept, what is new is the suggestion that advanced intelligence may play a role in the universe's life cycle. Given the radical potential for postbiological superintelligence, a number of thinkers have suggested that universe engineering is a likely activity for advanced civilizations. This has given rise to a number of theories, including the developmental singularity hypothesis and the selfish biocosm hypothesis.

Existential Risks: The development of nuclear weapons marked a disturbing turning point for the human species: we are increasingly coming into the possession of apocalyptic technologies. Soon to join the list are such problems as a malevolent superintelligence, deliberate or accidental misuse of nanotech, runaway global warming, a killer artificial virus, an antimatter holocaust, or a particle accelerator disaster. Read more here and here. Adding insult to injury is the Doomsday Argument.

Human Exceptionalism (aka human racism): Not everyone is in favour of human enhancement and the prospect of greater-than-human intelligence. Nor is everyone in favour of extending personhood outside the human sphere. These 'human exceptionalists', a group that includes anti-transhumanist Wesley Smith, argue that being human is what matters, and that to give equal moral currency to non-humans is a violation of human dignity and worth. The opposing viewpoint to this is that of Non-Anthropocentric Personhood -- the notion that nonhumans, be they animals, robots, or uploaded minds, have the potential for personhood status, and by consequence, are worthy of moral consideration.

Post-Scarcity Economy: A post-scarcity economy is a hypothetical form of economy or society in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free. Such a future could come about due to abundance of fundamental resources (think nano, AI, alternative energy, etc.), in conjunction with sophisticated automated systems capable of converting raw materials into finished goods (namely by molecular assemblers). In such a world, manufacturing would be as easy as duplicating software.