What is 'Smartness'

            I affectionately remember browsing through my ninth grade textbooks at the beginning at the year. Even though the year hadn’t started yet, I already had a sense of accomplishment. I knew I was going to get through the year and, from what I had seen, it looked as though I would be learning so much. I smiled at the childish prospect of bowling my friends over with some of the obscure facts I had memorized from my books.

            A year is a long time. By now, I have become a master of my chemistry and physics books. However, as I have learned from reading the Q and A section below Khan Academy videos, I am far from a master even on some of the most basic topics. It is only after reading beyond the textbook I have come to understand the amount of simplification that goes into a beginner high school course. I’m not a master. I’m just a sorry guy looking for gold on the surface when all the smart guys are mining tons of the stuff down below.

            That realization really drove in the understanding of the monumental task of learning. Even If I study for years and years, I may never be a master of even one field, unless I create it myself.

            That’s a pretty sobering fact. It’s motivating a discouraging. I want to see how much I can learn, but, honestly, I hate studying. I’m much more practically minded. Of course, the virtue of books is that we can read a few words and learn what it took others lifetimes to discover.

            That also leads to another question. Any qualified scientist today have a much better understanding of the universe that Newton did. But does that make them ”smarter” than him? How does one define smart? If I spent all my waking hours memorizing facts from textbooks, would I really be smarter.

            In the end, the question we have to answer is, what really defines a master: factual knowledge, or ability, or both? If Einstein were resurrected, would his impressive capabilities make up for his lack of modern knowledge?

Why Do We Exist?

            One of the greatest advantages humans have, the advantage that has been a major contributor to our (arguable) success, is our inherent ability to question. Humans are masters of asking why. The why has driven us to make astounding and wonderful discoveries of our Universe.  Yet the question, why do we exist, or better yet, for what do we exist, may never be answered.

            The answer to that question is probably quite anti-climactic. I doubt there is any over-arching purpose for which we humans were built, aside from existence. But that isn’t a very satisfactory answer. The fact is, humans need purpose to continue to exist. Without our whys, humans would have any drive to understand anything, no drive to better ourselves, and no need to become anything more than animals. Humans need an answer to that question of why we exist, and often, humans make up an answer to satisfy ourselves.

            I personally know how important purpose is. Summers and vacations can be especially tough on me. I used to think that my sister was crazy when she chose to intern during the summer. I mean, why would you want to lose all this free time you have? Now I understand. The experience of having hours in your hand with nothing worthwhile to do makes one abhor life. This summer, when I finally found a self-improving activity that I liked (programming), the sense of elation I felt was indescribable. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a good mood all my life.

            So then it’s pretty clear that boredom often arises from our inability to find purpose in life, or, our unwillingness to accept the answer that has been given to us. If that’s the case, the solution is to make a smaller goal, a smaller purpose for yourself, and then work on achieving that. The wisdom you gain from your successes will accumulate, until you are able to craft your own personal answer for your existence.

Clarke VS Asimov

            I was pretty annoyed when I found out that Mumbai had no public libraries. I was also annoyed when I found out that the British Council Library, a ‘private library,’ didn’t carry Isaac Asimov’s books. I was even more annoyed when I realized that the BCL search engine was just as atrocious as the Washington Country library service search engine was. But I digress. Back to Asimov.

            For me it was a terrible blow to be estranged from this wonderful author I had just discovered. My mother’s ear was subject to these complaints, and soon enough, I found myself sitting upright in bed with Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in my hands.

I was suspicious, to say the least. I mean, who was this imposter Brit, who thought he could go around calling himself the greatest SF author of all time? Perhaps I was being too hard on him. After all, he had co-created one of the greatest movies of all time. Then again, Asimov’s movie had Will Smith in it.

            I cannot deny that Clarke is a good writer. His books have that essential quality of being page turners. Indeed, he does make very obvious attempts at creating suspense. The last line of each chapter practically begs you to flip the page.

            The most common praise given to him is his understanding of science. I think it is more remarkable that he is able to seamlessly convey this understanding of science through the story, without taking away from the action. Clarke uses science to add to the action.

            To be fair, while Clarke and Asimov both were masters of SF, they wrote about two completely different fields. Asimov conjured tales of robots secretly running our world, whereas Clarke concerned himself with ancient, godlike beings who monitored the universe with massive and iconic monoliths.

            Honestly, there was something about Clarke’s description of space that clicked with me. Clarke has made me a thrall to the wonders of space, and I devour his books to experience them. So farewell for now, Mr. Asimov. I’m blasting off to Europa.

Deprivation Addiction

            It is pretty obvious to me what caused the productivity issue I have been dealing with the last week: addiction to television. If you lived with me, you’d say “that’s impossible! You don’t even have a TV.” That’s true. In fact, it was because I was so bored without a TV that I finally decided to go online and torrent shows. Big mistake.

            Show producers are very particular about ending each episode on a cliffhanger so that you are torn to pieces waiting to see what happens. Usually that’s fine. If, like me, you only care about one or two shows, there’s six days between episode premiers. That’s long enough to prevent an addiction. When it comes to torrents, however, how much you view it at your discretion. Since it’s so easy to find out what becomes of the world you have immersed yourself in, you just keep clicking the play button to fuel your addiction.

Once my school starts, my addiction will end. I just won’t have time to squander on watching action TV shows. July 29^th will mean the end of my deprivation addiction.

Deprivation addiction. That’s the term I’ve developed for when people are deprived of something for long periods of time, and then abuse use of it during the short periods when that can. I myself have a lot of experience with it.

When I was younger, we didn’t subscribe to the kid’s channels like Disney and CN. When we used to go on trips, instead of exploring the new location, my sister and I would spend hours watching the very shows my parents wanted us to avoid at home.

It doesn’t only have to do with TV either. Unlike many of my friend’s families, we didn’t keep a constant stash of junk food, most notably, Doritos. My friends would have a constant supply of the stuff, and finish a packet every week or so. I, on the other hand, obtained a packet every three months. My family was lucky if I hadn’t finished it within two days.   

The funny thing is, once I finally got a constant supply of children’s TV channels and Doritos, I lost interest.  Now that I’m on break, with too much free time on my hands, I’ve fallen into the trap of television once again. But I still cringe whenever I see Doritos, though.

Useless

            You might I noticed that by blog remained the same on Monday. I failed to update the page. I see it as a failure because I knew I had to get a blog post out, and I knew I had material to write about, but I kept of procrastinating. Now it’s already Saturday. So, instead of writing on my planned topic, I’m going to address the issue of procrastination and laziness.

            This week has been particularly rough on that front. I’ve not felt like doing any work, mental or physical. I’ve been avoiding some tasks, and completely ignoring others. In their place, I’ve been squandering hours away watching pointless videos. I’ve can’t count the number of times I’ve said “just one more episode”.

It’s coming back to bite me. Since I’m on my vacations now, I don’t have extra work piling up on my desk each day. I don’t have a constant supply of menial worksheets to keep me occupied. And since I’m ignoring my other work, my productivity has essentially dropped down to zero. Now I’m starting to have battles with my personal demons. Each hour I waste hurts me like lingering poison. Before I know it, the day has passed, and I feel terrible that I haven’t gotten anything done. I can’t do much more that say “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.” Tomorrow morning, I say “I’ll do it in the afternoon. I have plenty of time.” It’s a never-ending cycle.

            I’m starting to break free. My own growing frustration at my uselessness is compelling me to change. I’m tired of that horrible feeling I get at night, that sense of failed expectations.

            By the end of the summer, in 23 days, I want to look back and say “It wasn’t too bad. I was pretty productive.” Then I want to dive into the school year, already feeling positive and charged up, ready for success.

Qubits

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who know binary and those who don’t.

 

If you don’t get that joke, I suggest you read up on how binary works, because binary isn’t just a cool thing to know anymore. Practically every human alive today will interact with a computer at some point in their life. While it appears that computers understand our languages, that’s just a facade. The language of computers is binary: long endless streams of 1’s and 0’s.

As mentioned in the last video, computers process these 1’s and 0’s with transistors. The more transistors you have, the more operations you can do in parallel, equaling faster computing speed. But, eventually we will reach a limit on the number of transistors we can hold on a chip. At that point, what will be do?

The traditional system of storing information uses bits, each bit being a 1 or a 0. Supposing I had two bits, I have four different combinations: 00, 01, 10, and 11. Each combination represents exactly two bits.

Now, let’s bring in some quantum mechanics. Scientists are working on developing new types of bits, known as qubits (quantum bits). Like classical bits, the have two positions: up and down. However, these qubits can exist in superpositions, where we don’t know whether it is up or down. Essentially, it is both up and down, and we only have probabilities two predict which position it is in. That’s pretty cool, and something that takes time to wrap your head around!

Now imagine I had two qubits in superpositions. There are still four possible combinations: DD, DU, UD, UU. However, we don’t know which position each qubit is, so instead the information is represented as probabilities of each combination. That means two qubits conveys four classical bits of information. \

Scientists have found that n number of qubits convey as much information as 2ⁿ classical bits. At first, that doesn’t seem like much of an improvement, but once you start thinking of having 300 or 400 qubits, the numbers get impossibly large for a human to comprehend.

By requiring a lesser number of operations, qubits can work faster than classical computers. But is that the end of the story? Are qubits a universal substitute for classical computers? We’ll look into that in the next post.

The Moore Dilemma

Why is it that after a year, or even a few months, some new hardware is released that makes my computer obsolete? Yeah, you could say that computers are always getting faster, but isn’t there a more precise explanation?

I think the most elegant way of doing this is to refer to Moore’s Law, named after the co-founder of Intel who proposed it. Essentially, it states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit is double every two years. According to Intel, that, in conjunction with the faster performance of transistors, means every 18 months sees a doubling in chip performance. That’s pretty cool.

The obvious question here is, how long can we keep this up? Eventually, won’t we run out of space for transistors? To answer that question, we have to look at what transistors are.

To put it crudely, a transistor is a switch with no moving parts. It can be closed by generating a potential. Each time it opens and closes, it is essentially sending some information, a 0 or a 1. Clearly, the more transistors you have the more information you can deal with (for an in-depth explanation, check out this Veritasium video. It’s fantastic.).

Right now, the size of a transistor can be measured in nanometers. 50 Silicon atoms (the things that enable the transistor to work) fit in this space. To minimize the size of a transistor, one has to bring the nodes (watch the video) as close together as possible while being able to break the switch.

Eventually, quantum mechanics will prevail (again, watch the video), and it will be extremely difficult to make transistors any smaller. Current predictions put this date at 2025. 

I first read about this dilemma a few years ago. My first question was, isn’t there a replacement for transistors? Ironically, the answer lies in quantum mechanics! We’ll look at that more in the next entry.

Exam Time Ruminations Pt. 2

The structure of my school is far from a democracy. Yeah, the stories of scary school-masters are a stereotype, but I’ve never really taken them seriously until I came to my current school. Like other schools, we have your normal principle, and while he does do much of the high-level work, he’s more of a puppet to the real master and the final decision maker. That privilege belongs to the Head of School (HOS).

First of all, let’s get something clear before I talk about what the HOS does to my school. She is only in that position because of nepotism. It just so happens that her husband is a major owner of the school. A few years back, she was the principle. She eventually left that position and created this one for herself. From what I’ve seen, she doesn’t have any qualifications or proof to show that she does belong where she is. That’s pretty significant. In a school like mine, a student’s relationship with the administration is important in determining their success.

There are two important things about our HOS. Firstly, her mind is ingrained with the image of the ideal, Indian student. She loves all those who can step into that mold, and scorns the ones who can’t, or don’t even try. Secondly, she’s a miser. She’ll jump at money making opportunities and circumvent discussions about spending it.

Above those two things is the reputation of the school, a thing both she and her husband hold with great importance. Together with her two attributes, these three things form the basis on which she makes any and all choices. Even though it’s hard to tell, she’s behind all the decisions made at my school: who’s fired and who’s hired, what trips to plan, what events to hold and how to hold them, who joins the student council, who gets an award, who gets recognized for the school’s success, everything is approved by her.

There’s no grey area with her. Those she likes are showered with praise and opportunities throughout their time at my school. The others, the ones in the ‘black,’ are insulted in front of other students and ignored otherwise. Spend just a few minutes with her and you’ll see who she loves and who she thinks is useless.

What does this mean for the school? Well, those she likes are favored to succeed. The rich kids with money to donate, and the ones who carry out her every whim and fancy are given each and every opportunity to succeed, and not all of them are legal. The rest, if they even want to, have to struggle to reach the top. In the end, all this does is create an environment where all the ‘others’ stop trying to succeed and resign themselves to coming in fourth place.

Now, you might say that this is a good system, because it’s survival of the fittest. I agree that survival of the fittest is a good policy in the workplace, because in that mechanism, both the workers with initiative and the company benefit. But in school, it is the job of the institution to ensure all the students succeed. That’s what families pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for. And while all of the HOS’s ideas may not be bad, this is definitely an imperfect system with an obvious replacement. And by replacement, I mean replacing her.

Exam Time Ruminations Pt. 1

Twice a year there comes a time in my school of wealthy kids where the majority of them actually consider picking up their books and reading. It’s ‘affectionately’ referred to as Exam Time. Don’t get the idea that any of them have very lofty goals; most are just trying to pass their subjects (50%). For some reason, the word ‘exam’ carries much more importance with them than the common test, even though both add up to give them their final grade.

Of course, their studying isn’t all that helpful. Most of it is just patchwork memorization. The kids learn formulas, but don’t really understand what they mean. One kid could easily rattle of the formula for acceleration, but couldn’t supply a simple definition of the same. Yet, even when the flaws in their revision methods are revealed, they just shrug it off. For most of them, these grades don’t matter. Their fathers have saved spots for them in the family business. The rest, those without businesses, are too ignorant to realize they have followed their wealthy friends into a trap that will mar them with regret for the rest of their lives.

Obviously, a large amount of the blame lies with the parents, who don’t bother to correct their child’s ways and mindsets. Yet a lot of it also has to do with the school’s culture…

Ruminations on Cultural Understanding

If you haven't yet read about, or finished, the guessing game below, please ignore this post for the moment, scroll down to the previous post, and read it.

With a few directed searches, I'm sure you all have guessed where I am now:

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

 

 

It hasn't been as big of a change for me as you would expect. My family often made trips to India over the summer, so I knew what life here was like before arriving. While I would prefer living in the US, this stay in India has taught me some important lessons.

 

One thing that seems so obvious in retrospect, but is really only apparent when you live in other countries, is that the world is huge. We never really appreciate the fact that despite being the same species, us humans have grown and developed a myriad of cultures that are so diverse that it would take lifetimes to experience, much less understand, all of them.

 

By coming to India, I am now able to see things from a completely different viewpoint that only an Indian can give me. Despite the diversity in the US, due to the fact that everyone I met was from the US, I could never get the point of view I get here.

 

Now, I truly understand what an enormous task international negotiations must be. Everyone around the world has different viewpoints, and very few people have clear understandings of viewpoints other than their own. This single fact is the sole impediment between humanity and peaceful collaboration.

 

That leads us to the point that the globalization we see today isn't really globalization unless it is free of a profit-motive. Once a person frees himself of greed, they can wholeheartedly launch themselves into learning about and comprehending other cultures and viewpoints. Even if they don't agree with that viewpoint, understanding it empowers them, because now they know the true reasons for a certain group's actions.

 

If I learn to understand the Indian during my stay here, I will carry with me a huge advantage. Indians are increasingly breaking out onto the world stage, and if I do any business in the future, chances are Indians will be involved. With a knowledge of the Indian mindset, I'll be able to deduce what motives guide an Indian, and therefore be infinitely more successful dealing with them.

 

Even if I fail at analyzing the Indian mindset, at least I'll return to the US knowing that there's a whole world out there for me to explore.

Return

It's been so long since the last post that this blog has almost died. But, suddenly finding myself with a wealth of time and many new interests, I've dedicated myself to a comeback. Unlike before, I will try my best to utilize all my efforts in maintaining this blog.

 

Of course, before starting, I need to give a few updates, and I have had some pretty major changes in my life.

 

1. With my sister's departure to MIT, my family has entered a new stage of life. And this new stage is taking place in a new location. As I write these words, it is the middle of the night in my previous home in Beaverton, Oregon. I'm in a city with a (purported) population of 18 million people. On the streets I can see S-class Mercs and street-dwellers driving and walking side by side. All around me are the sounds of construction, the drone of fans, and the smell of sweat, pain, hope, desperation, and contentment. Of course, I'm not in the US.
2. Now that the big one is out of the way, I can focus on the smaller changes. This blog is primarily going to focus on my activities and interests. One reason I am reviving the blog, and making dedications to maintaining it is so that I compel myself to find new interests and take up new projects.
3. Some posts may just be my own ramblings. I hope to share any insights of mine I find particularly helpful. Many of the first few posts will be like these, as I take time planning future, more practical, posts.

I assume many of you will have noticed that I left out where exactly I have moved to. If you have not guessed (the details were intentionally ambiguous), I implore you not to search for city population stats, and instead play a little game with me. Here are a few facts about the city I'm in. See how long it takes you to guess where I am.

 

1. This city was originally a cluster of seven islands.
2. This city saw its first economic boom during the American Civil War, becoming the world's most important cotton trading center.
3. This city is home to a mosque that can only be reached at low tide.
4. Despite being the richest city in its country, it is also home to a 535 acre slum.

If you couldn't get it yet, here's one last hint:

 

     5. The city derives its name from the name of a goddess of the Koli people.

 

                Just yesterday, I discovered a website, weseed.com, which allows anyone to “invest” in the stock market for free. Upon joining the website, you are given 10,000 dollars of WeSeed cash. The website has nearly every public company listed, and with your WeSeed funds, you can carefully research and invest in your favorite companies. While the results of your investments will be realistic, there is no risk involved.

                The thing I like best about the website is how much it encourages learning. For example, each company has a meter which shows how fair the price of the stock is according to analysts. This meter is either green, denoting a fair price for a stock, yellow, warning you the stock is slightly overpriced or undervalued, or red, signifying the stock price is highly overpriced or undervalued.  For example, I wanted to invest in GE stock. The meter was in the red zone, and WeSeed told me I should “do some digging” to find out what the case was. Lucky for me, I had the 2012 Fortune Investor’s Guide, and learned that GE stock is probably undervalued right now.

                WeSeed also offers a series of short lessons on economics that will furnish you with the basics you need to know to make educated decisions with your funds. However, intuition may be all you need to perform well in the market. According to WeSeed, inexperienced investors can perform just as well as many of the pros managing millions of dollars in assets.

                Who knows? With a modicum of practice, even you could be talking and trading like the pros. Of course, you may need to hit that reset button on your portfolio every now and then.

Following up with his interview on Fresh Air on NPR, I picked up the Future of Physics, a new book by physicist Michio Kaku. I have only just begun to read, but I am already intrigued by the idea.

The book centers on predicting the future up till 2100. All of the futuristic ideas presented in the book already have prototypes in various laboratories around the world. I have ventured a few pages into the book and have encountered computer chips the size of atoms and as cheap as scrap paper, contact lenses that can act as an interface to the Internet, and augmented reality glasses than can paint a false projection of the world around us.

One problem I have with this book is that it shows us a utopian image of the world in 2100. While it is always good to be optimistic, I feel that the author does not account for any of the downfalls of these new inventions. Of course, this is very early into the book, and he may address my concerns later on. To his credit, he has predicted the end of Moore’s law, a law governing how computing power should grow: at an astounding rate.

When I read about the use of computers to create an augmented reality, I was reminded of the Pendragon Adventure series of books. In one book, huge, futuristic pyramids were constructed on a very technologically-savvy planet. The entire population of the planet lived in these pyramids. The appeal was that the giant behemoths allowed the people to dream and live in an augmented reality they controlled, a perfect life, so to speak.

The downfall of this augmented reality was that the world outside slowly began to change as nature retook its property and began to encroach upon the pyramids. Worse, all the denizens were inside dreaming and had no wish to see whether the rumors of destruction outside were actually true.

Whether our future will one day turn out like this is unlikely, but only time can tell.

Matterhorn

Just two days ago, I finished reading the book Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. Marlantes himself was a soldier in the Vietnam War and I was lucky to have read this novel after I read his latest book What it is Like to Go to War. The novel essentially follows the author's own tour in Vietnam, but he adds some extra ideas for storytelling effect and doesn't go into as much detail about his own feelings as each event occurred.

What really struck me about the book was how inefficient the handling of the war was. Not only was it a mistake to enter the war, but even more atrocities were committed under the radar after that as well.

Some of the bigger mistakes are easy to see: the battalion giving up a key hill and letting it fall into enemy hands, the battalion nearly starving its soldiers on an endless march (in the book, the soldiers name the march the "Trail of Tears Operation"). However, other smaller issues are ignored by the war commanders, most importantly racial issues. Eventually, this issue spins out of control, and a well-liked leader by soldiers of all color is accidentally killed.

Aside from cringing at all the mistakes the armed forces made during the war, just in this small Marine regiment alone, I was shaken by the raw emotion the characters expressed at each event, and how effectively they were conveyed. One such moment is when the main character is debating in his head whether he accidentally killed the young soldier he was trying to save, all the while knowing a bullet from his M16 was what pierced the young man's head.

All in all, I felt this was a very eye-opening look into one of the most controversial periods in American history. I just wish there were more books like it.

Back To School

The school craze has started once again. As an eighth grader in my school I am now used to school life and there don't seem to be any surprises in store this time around. Within a day of getting to back to school, I realized that my summer was just a distant blur. School has become such a prominent and important part of my life that everything else takes a back seat once I have to go back.



Once I realized how quickly the memories built over summer can topple down, I recognized the immense value of photos and home videos. Without these tools, our lives can become absorbed by our occupations.



I remember reading about a very creative solution to this dilemma in the book Moonwalking with Einstein. One person the author interviewed records every second of his conscious life. If he ever wants to see what he did on a random date, he just has to look through his volumes of hard drives, find the correct day and comb through the footage. This would be especially useful for resolving family debates and finally proving who in the family really has the best memory!

The Numerati

I am currently reading The Numerati, a book detailing the rise of computer science and technology geniuses. A couple things that caught my interest so far:


Supermarkets have been gathering data on our purchases for a long, long time. They just haven't found out how to implement their ideas and send us specially targeted ads that should catch our interest according to our shopping patterns.


Of course, gathering the data is the easy part: every day, we are corporation's willing test subjects. The hard part is finding the patterns. Not only do computers have to search through thousands of possible patterns, but there are so many complexities involved that could throw the computer off track and give researchers the wrong idea. It is the job of researchers to find these complexities and teach the computer what they mean and how to avoid them. Or, they could send the computer on a hunt and learn a thing or two about us from it!

First Blog

Hi. The posts here will be about my experiences. I have varied interests from swimming to reading Fortune magazine.



These first few blogs are going to share my experiences at the U.S. Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. It was an amazing experience, and it was all thanks to Congressman David Wu's Education Opportunity scholarship. The link to that website is here: http://education-opportunity.com/



Below is the essay I wrote that won me the scholarship. Out of four topics, I choice one that asked me to describe in detail a futuristic object or piece of equipment that we may see some day, how it works, and how it will help humanity, Earth, and the era of space exploration.

Piezoelectric Bubble

Unless we can clean up our act on Earth, Mars looks like the next step for humanity. By no means will colonizing Mars be a routine task. Many road blocks stand in our way. One of these impediments is an energy source.

Employing the concepts of piezoelectric energy, scientists and engineers could create an ingenious device. A “bubble” would surround a colonist city. It would consist of three layers: the outside layer of a glutinous and flexible substance, the second layer a strong metal with channels of an electricity-conducting metal, and the third, an amalgamation of plastic and rubber shielding the citizens from the energy produced. At the apex of the bubble, a metal rod would sit between the first and second layers, gathering all the energy and allocating it to the necessary locations.

The Martian wind is constantly blowing, and the location of the city would be no exception. The outside layer of the bubble would be a substance that is capable of creating piezoelectric energy. The wind would blow onto this first layer, compressing it between the minute distance between it and the second layer. The result: energy is created. This energy is channeled into the electricity-conducting portions of the second layer. Each of these “roads” would lead up to the apex rod, handing control of the energy over to the “brains” of the bubble, and hence providing energy to the city.

If the Martian wind is blowing with too much gusto, the first layer would have to be pushed away from the second by a mechanism to ensure that the production can continue smoothly. Also, the first layer would have to be replaced at some point, or be rendered useless.

Perfecting this idea would solve some of the energy problems for colonists and Earthlings alike.