Greek Complexity

What non-religious movements can learn from religion

Here's a thought-provoking TED talk by Alain de Botton, who has also written Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion. He makes the case for taking the best aspects of organised religions and religious institutions and applying them not just to atheism, but also to companies, small entrepreneurs, art and so on.

His book is out in March 2012. Click through to view:

Where do ideas come from?

I am reading a book called I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstader that explores the concept of "I" or the self. What does it mean to say "I", where does "I" come from and so on. Fascinating and highly readable.

In the book, Hofstader quotes another scientist Roger Sperry as having written in an essay titled Mind, Brain and Humanist Values the following passage:

In the brain model proposed here, the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain [and] in [other] brains. And they also interact with the external surroundings to produce [...] a burstwise advance in evolution.

Now, this reminded me of a thought I had a couple of weeks ago: does information obey the first law of thermodynamics? The first law of thermodynamics states that "energy can be transformed, i.e. changed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed". Does this apply to ideas too? If so, does this mean that every idea that has ever been or shall ever be already exists in some form? Does that then mean that "new" ideas are simply the discovery of existing ideas and/or the uncovering of ideas via logical extensions of already recognised ideas? For that matter, is information the same as energy?

On the other hand, while the notion of extending existing ideas to generate new idea may be true for purely "algorithmic" reasoning, how could we then explain seemingly blue-sky creativity? Also, if we take it as a given that ideas aren't merely invented abstractions with no physical basis, aren't "massless" and arise from biochemistry, then what is the literal fuel for a new idea? Is there an equation that is the equivalent of or an extension of E=MC² which incorporates a variable representing information?

I'm sure none of these questions are new, so enlightenment, or at least a discussion, would be appreciated! My trawls through Wikipedia uncovered useful-looking articles like Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory, but my knowledge of even high-school level physics is shaky at best and deeply suspect at worst. :-) Landauer's Principle might be what I'm looking for if I could just decipher it.

The science behind snoozes

Came across a graphic in The Boston Globe that tells us how to nap. This isn't as frivolous as it sounds. Quite sciencey, in fact.

See How to nap for detail.

Something similar at NYTimes back in October: Really? The Claim: For a More Restful Nap, Avoid Caffeine

All of which reminded me of this fascinating book, which provides a look into the bigger theme of synchronicity in nature, napping being just one among several examples:

Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

I highly recommend reading it.

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Separately, I read a lot but haven't really put much of this on the blog itself. Changing that from today. See new post category On Murli's Radar (LOTD). Meaning, "Link of the Day". I used to put this stuff on my On Murli's Radar feed but as you may recall, Yahoo decided that good enough ain't good enough. They seem to have fixed the problem since my post but I don't trust them.

Jonathan Franzen rips off my post

Read this and then this and judge for yourself. I was just more concise than he was.

Only joking, of course. He's much more perceptive and eloquent than I was. I wish I'd had time to finish reading The Corrections before I had to return it to the library. Oh well. He may be more profound and much better expressed, but at least -- and I flatter myself here, at my own peril -- I was funnier.

Book slobs

via www.newyorker.com

I'm a bit like this except for the food stains! Not that I have that many books. The guilt means that I prefer not to buy books to begin with. Either read on-screen or borrow from the library. Click through to see two interestingly different points of view.

Book review: The Machine Stops

The Machine Stops by EM Forster (Rating: ****)

Interesting novella. Definitely worth a read, particularly so when you consider that this was written a hundred years ago. Why? It's the type of story that's generally dumped into the category of "science fiction" (but will be enjoyed by non-scifi geeks), some of it has actually come true and it is a cautionary tale that continues to make predictions about our future. That's why.

Read the whole thing on my dinky mobile phone screen.

Book review: The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Rating: ***)

Interesting premise but the narrative is plodding and never really takes off. I had to struggle to finish it and only persevered because I was curious to see how it would end. This being my first Atwood, I didn't know whether she favoured happy endings or sad ones. In the event, she favours... actually, I won't tell you.

Book review: The Intrusion of Jimmy

The Intrusion of Jimmy by PG Wodehouse (Rating: *****)

Not a laugh-riot all the way through like a typical Wodehouse but I loved it! The essence of the Wodehouse is there: an involved plot with the puppeteer juggling a hundred strings (to employ a mixed metaphor), all of which resolve themselves satisfactorily at the end. Add a superb understanding of human nature and a dollop of mirth, and there you have your pièce de résistance.

Book review: The Island

The Island by Peter Benchley (Rating: **)

Terror? What terror? I was terrified of falling asleep while reading this. He should have stopped after writing Jaws.

Pragmatic vegetarianism

Interesting article. JG is Jeff Goldberg, a journalist with The Atlantic. JF is Jonathan Safran Foer, a writer who recently published the book Eating Animals. 

Would normally have just stuck this on my radar feed but I thought I'd bung in a quote:

JG: When I was a vegetarian, the first thing I would cut out was mammals, because I figured that mammals are the closest species to me. Birds are more distant and fish are still more distant, but you argue very strongly that beef is actually the most humane thing to eat. Do you differentiate at all, on a moral scale, between eating mammals and eating birds and eating fish?

JF: Another way to think about this is how different does an animal have to be for us to simply regard it as a living thing. And I think this kind of dichotomous way of framing this - it does a real disservice to the conversation. Even the word 'vegetarian.' You were talking about cutting things out of your diet, instead of cutting down. There are an awful lot of people who care about this stuff and for reasons good or bad, just can't envision becoming vegetarian. So what do we do with that? Do we throw our hands up in air and say that since I'm not going to be perfect about this I'm completely off the hook. They will say, `I was a vegetarian for six years and I found myself at an airport and I was shaking from hunger so I ate some McNuggets and that was the end of my vegetarianism. It's just such a bizarre way of thinking about it.

I care about the environment, I try to buy good appliances, I certainly turn the lights off when I leave rooms, and so on and so forth, and yet I also fly. So should my getting off the plane say 'Okay, I know that was bad, so I'm now bad, I'm going to leave lights on, I'm going to let my car idle.' It's nuts. I wish people would talk about food in a way that was more similar to how we talk about the environment. The question of 'Are you an environmentalist or not?' is nonsense. It just doesn't make any sense.

JG: Something is better than nothing.

[...]

JF: Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now.