Telephone Conversation

K: How old are you, Pacha?
Me: Twenty Two.
K: Why on earth are you playing bridge at your age instead of chasing after women?
Me: Because I've had more than enough of the latter.
K (in a mock shocked tone): A guy can never have enough of the latter!

What say you, my friends? :)

Re-Organization, Self-Organization, Complexity, Chaos and God: Part 2

One of the main arguments employed by the propagandists of the Intelligent Design (ID) theory is that there is a remarkable amount of order in the universe. This is in spite of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (approximately stated thus): "The Entropy, or degree of disorder, of a closed system can only increase". If there is nobody out there controlling things, how does order persist?

The answer lies partly in the Theory of Chaos; partly in the Theory of Self-organization; and partly in the Fundamental Laws of Nature. Before I dive into these topics, I want you to imagine the following conversation between a Priest and a Scientist:
Priest: The four seasons drive the rhythm of life. There is beauty, purpose and order to it. How can you deny that it is the work of God?
Scientist: The four seasons occur because of the tilt of the Earth and the manner in which it revolves about the Sun. I don't see what God has to do with it.
Priest: Ah, but who caused the Earth to tilt and rotate in that manner?
Scientist: The Laws of Gravity and Motion are more than sufficient to explain it.
Priest: And who defined those laws and brought them into our reality?

Here the Scientist is stuck. For all the proofs and explanations that Science derives, it is still based on certain axioms and fundamental laws, which can't be proved; they just are. Chew on this for a while... but for now, some geeky stuff...

One of the Fundamental precepts of the Theory of Chaos is that there is Order in Chaos. If something is entirely unpredictable, then it is random: which is very different from saying that it is chaotic. A chaotic system is merely one that cannot be simplified by studying on a smaller scale, eg. calculus, or a larger scale, eg. statistics. And a basic characteristic of many, perhaps all, chaotic systems is the presence of an "Attractor".

An Attractor is a stable state of a system. If the system is mildly disturbed, it still returns, for no apparent reason, to the same state; give it a large enough disturbance and it equally inexplicably goes into a fluctuating, disorderly state that we call chaos. The ecological balance is a good example of this. The presence of the attractor gives these systems a self-organizing nature, that can be mathematically predicted. Nothing mysterious or magical about them, once you've run the Matlab simulation and seen for yourself!!

However, in general, when you talk about a self-organizing system, you are usually talking about the existence of an "intelligence". We are so used to the way humans run things that we can only think of intelligence as a centralized entity; hence a lot of things that are controlled by no visible central mind get attributed to God. However, it is often noticed that distributed dumbness can behave like centralized intelligence!

I know I said I'll explain distributed systems in this post, but it looks like it'll have to wait for the next one...

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Re-Organization, Self-Organization, Complexity, Chaos and God: Part 1

If you were to re-organize a system, how would you go about doing it? Baal and I have spent hours arguing on this over the years (we had our reasons, believe me!), and emerged on two clearly opposite sides: I was all for the top-down approach, and Baal was for the bottom-up approach.

Imagine that there is a group of people, and you want them to change in some manner.

View #1: Leadership is the key to change. All great revolutions in the world happened because of great leaders. A leader who has vision and intelligence, is a dynamic individual capable of leading by example, and has the charisma to sway the people to the cause, is what you need. Bold changes call for bold decisions by bold leaders, and if the leader knows how to lead, the people will follow.

View #2: All changes wrought from the top or "management" is doomed to failure. By coercing, coaxing or enticing people to do what you want, you will never achieve your purpose, as any change is temporary, and any action is half-hearted. What you really ought to do is to spend time in educating the people with regard to your purpose. You need to bring about a change in culture: that is best achieved by preaching to them, changing them slowly but surely at the heart. Once your purpose is ingrained in every person, they will be willing and dedicated.

Sure, there is a middle path, but the basic question is one of philosophy, so you can't be a cat on the wall.

To my amusement, the same question appears to have been posed to the Tamil public through the movies Indhiyan and Anniyan. In the former, the hero tries to bring corrupt politicians and bureaucrats back in line by threatening, and doing, murder. In the latter, the hero urges the people to bring themselves back in line, to follow law and ethics to the letter, in order for our country to improve. Naturally, I'm oversimplifying here, but those who have seen the movies will understand, and those who haven't will need a LOT more explaining.

Having said that I was a staunch supporter of the top-down approach, I must say here that my stance has been eroded by the unlikeliest of entities: my courses! In the next post, I will explain to you the concepts of self-organization and distributed control, and how simple rules can drive complex behaviour.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Great Expectations

All of a sudden, everyone's become an expert on me. Rahul says I'm smart enough that I have no excuse for not scoring straight A's, and that I ought to get off my lazy rump reading fantasy novels and put my nose to the grinding stone. My brother was not so mild; he said that with only 3 courses and no TA/RA responsibilities, I'd better score straight A's - or else!!

I guess 5 years of academic humiliation in an IIT has taught me to lower my expectations. That's wrong, isn't it? If you don't aim higher, you'll never go higher.

So, I stow away my novels in the bookshelf, keeping an eye out for the due date. I have only one computer game installed on my machine, and I've lost the heart to play it for now. My plans for buying Civilization IV have to wait till the winter vacations. No bridge this week, and only once a week for the 3 weeks after this.

I'll blog again during the thanksgiving break, but until then, I'm keeping to the grinding stone. Ouch! My nose....

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Burn and learn

My first fried rice was pronounced fired rice. My second attempt resulted in something my teeth had trouble chewing and my tongue had trouble identifying. Since then I've managed to make it palatable and even introduced some variety in it.

I still mess up my sambhar. It never comes out even close to the way it was at home.

The taste of my poriyal is a wildly fluctuating random variable. Sometimes it tastes so good and similar to my Mom's that it brings tears to my eyes. Sometimes it's so terrible I have no words to describe it.

But at grad school, cooking is like research. It's do or die. And hope that in time you do it well enough that people are happy with it rather than give grudging acceptance.

So, this diwali, in an atmosphere absolutely alien in the sense that I felt empty without my Mom's sweets; or the new Tamil movies on TV; or the harmless "vengayam vedi" crackers that my brother and I would throw at each others' feet; or the non-stop 10,000 walas and colourful sky fireworks in neighbouring Jaya aunty's house, I thought I'd try to cook some Indian food to bring some cheer to the apartment.

Out comes my Mom's first cookbook. She wrote it in 1988. I was a little kid then, but I still remember vividly the cover of the first print. It looked really stupid, but being a kid I couldn't point that out. My parents never understood that I understood. They still don't. Anyway, we could not afford to do a more professional job of it at that time. But I digress. The first recipe is a gravy called Dhariwala. I've known that much for 17 years. But for the first time I actually read it with the intention of remembering it and preparing it.

I did not have many of the ingredients to make it exactly the way it was. So I recalled my Mom's general guidelines on how to make such gravies, and closed the book and tried my own hand at it. Apart from the fact that I'd underestimated the tomato puree and I'd added a little less spice than I ought to, it came out ok. Amazingly well, in fact, for a first attempt.

Of course, the gravy is meant to go with a roti or chappathi. I had bought some flour that I hoped would be close to what we use back home, and I tried to remember my Mom's instructions on how to make chappathis. I started out in earnest, but alas, the fates were not kind to me. I forgot to oil the lining of the mixing bowl. I forgot to add salt to the dough. I had a really tough job kneading the dough, and an even tougher job rolling it. Everytime I rolled it, it would compress back into a smaller circle.

Since it was taking me so long to roll it, I decided to roll first and cook them on the pan later. Big mistake. I had taken the precaution of adding some flour on the surface of each chappathi(!) to prevent them from sticking together, but it wasn't enough. After 20 minutes of rolling, I realized that they were all stuck together and I had to start over. Fortunately, reinforcements arrived. My roommate whose turn it was to cook appeared and was pleasantly surprised to see me taking such pains on, apparently, his behalf.

So, I re-rolled while he cooked them on the tawa. They came out thick and really tough to chew, and tasted like a hybrid of chappathi, roti, paratha, nan and kulcha, and I dubbed them "my nameless creations". They were edible, but just barely. It had taken me a total of 3 hours to do all the cooking, even with my friend's help towards the end. The kitchen looked like a disaster zone and my nameless creations were proof of the tragedy.

I guess I ought to have been disappointed. Cowed. Frustrated. But somehow, at the end of it all, I wore a smile and felt like I'd won a minor victory.

The proof of the pudding, perhaps, is in the attempt itself and not in the eating.

Cheers,
Prashanth.