Pramit

I asked this question on day 81 of starting this journal. So a really long time ago. Today I chanced upon a paper that I had kept in my pc. It was on degeneracy in biological systems. Degeneracy here means "Different structure, Same function". For example, both an analog watch and a digital watch tell time. Now, the purpose of this degeneracy, at first glance, seems obvious : it acts as a biological "safety net" against mutations, or to produce more of that stuff. If I break your digital watch, you still have the analog watch to tell time with. But isn't that the same as redundancy(same structure, same function)? Unlike a system designed by humans, biological systems follow a "Whatever works" policy, evolution is a blind designer. So, the net result is that complexity increases even though its "unnecessary"(or rather, evolution doesn't understand the meaning of that word). Degeneracy, unlike redundancy, accounts for that increase in complexity. Redundancy would not account for that higher complexity (is what they are trying to say, I guess). Degenerate elements also strictly do not have the same function, there could be variability. Degeneracy is especially prevelent in nervous system, where individual neurons(let alone synapses, circuits, and higher structures) can have large degree of variation in an organism. The authors argue that this is beneficial since it works for evolution, allowing survival in the event of a new unforseen selection pressure. And that's why most biological phenomenons and aspects of behaviour (such as intelligence) evolved from degeneracy (multiple genes/cells/circuits). They also argue that complexity increases with degeneracy. Since there are two aspects of complexity - 1) functional specificity of an element 2) Interactions between elements. Degeneracy can increase both 1 and 2 , by making different structural elements that can perform the similar (But not entirely same) function, by allowing diversity in basic structures, by making interactions more diverse. But, the idea that complexity always increases is not an empirical fact and requires more evidence. Ultimately, they end the paper on the speculation that modern design principle of low cost efficient design might one day give way to degenerate designing. This is for problems that logic and traditional computation cannot solve, problems that require adapting to a changing environment. Law of internet comments: This may seem obvious, but its something I noticed when I read internet comments. The ideas expressed in the comments follow a particular pattern - simple ideas and common ideas are expressed in the majority, more complicated versions of those simple ideas come about in smaller samples(usually this has been parroted somewhere else), and complicated versions of different/novel ideas are very rare or non-existent. Of course I am talking about mainstream simple topics. Today I finished reading Haruhi Suzumiya. When I read this, I can't help but feel a desire to put myself inside the novel. I want to be a part of SOS brigade, I want to go on fun adventures, I want to interact with koizumi, I want to make some kind of retort to sakaki for her psuedo philosophical BS. Their life seems so much more fun than mine. Hm..but is it really? They have their ups and downs too - in fact its rather chaotic. Also, the main character prefers to be ordinary, much like me. And the world is pretty ordinary too (on the surface) for a random person (which is why I'd want to be one of the members of the SOS or someone who regularly interacts with them in meaningful manner - and not merely some bystander). But I think this way of thinking is wrong. Lets say someone is 'reading' my life right now. What would I say to that person, if he wanted to be me? I'd probably feel sympathy for that person. Haha. But seriously, I would tell that person that my life isn't so special. It has its ups and downs like any other ordinary life. Since you are reading me, I assume you are god since the act of reading is, in essence, creation. Then, I'd tell that person, that there's nothing to be envious about. By reading me, you are me. So rejoice! You aren't missing out on a thing. May be you will survive the reading of this Pramit - and you will have memories of my life which might make you feel..lonely(Nostalgia is never without loneliness). Sorry for that haha. If I can give you any advice, it is not to look at this situation in isolation. You are fixated on something and unable to consider my point of view or my opinion. In other words, your perspective is different - thus you are capable of cognizing this issue. It is just a matter of a particular brain state. Different circumstances lead to different outcomes. That is all there is to it. Now that I think about it, I probably don't want to be in Haruhi Suzumiya. Haruhi is too overbearing for my tastes, and while the author does put in some thought into the science fiction and philosophy, its still meant for mass consumption - thus simplified and full of holes (there's only so much I can do with my imagination). My phd applications are still ongoing. Random trivia: Gene scrambling - an example of redundancy and "constructive neutral evolution" where new features (like a really cool mutation) can occur even though it has nothing to do with the selection pressure or niche of an organism.

you first have to define what you seek. What is innate value?

you cannot call a poet a scientist. What you described would be regressive to the field of science. You can also read an article on karl popper, to understand why science is different from psuedoscience. Typically when an experiment fails to obtain the result that a scientist wants/desires (lets say for the advancement of his career) then the scientist might do one of two things : Modify the experiment, modify the theory/hypothesis. If none of the approaches work, its a null result, which can be difficult to publish (but steps are being taken to remove this problem). Sometimes a scientist modifies the experiment in such a way so as to create a self validating experiment. That is why old science is getting harder to replicate, they did not have tight controls and their old equipments sometimes gave erroneous readings. Science that cannot be replicated goes to trash. Whether it takes 10 years, 20 years, doesn't matter. If you do bad science, eventually you will get caught. This is why science works or is successful. Because sometimes things just happen by chance, sometimes these are weird things, and we explain these things as paranormal. Our brains are not hardwired for science, we are hardwired for intuitive thinking. Humans can see patterns everywhere. Science is just a way to make sure that the pattern we see actually exists.

this is a good summary: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#ConCon

Its your life, do whatever you want to do, don't seek other's opinion like this. Go make mistakes if it makes you happy. Although, my personal opinion is that the magnitude of the mistakes seems to be rather large. But hey, its your decision at the way, and may be this is supposed to be your way.

try different things and see what works for you. I just sit.

simple: you can't. the whole thing is just people who can "resonate" with you. there is no objective or experimental way to distiguish that. So if you seek a psychic, and he/she helps you (doesn't matter weather its real or fake) , that's good for you

on the surfce level ur right, the interpretation plays a big role, and scientists are ideally meant to actively be aware of it, and have tight controls and other measures to reduce it. However, just because the current scientific method has real problems, it doesn't make sense to deny science, or propose that alternative explanations are somehow valid. thats a leap of logic

all I can say is : keep an open mind and judge for yourself.

Just use Dark Reader app for google chrome. It gives you a dark theme for everything.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to browse through the art that I've saved in my pc. I won't give any description of the things I am attaching here, but I do recommend reading up on the art in wikipedia. There is also a limit of 4.88mb so I'll stop here.

Boredom, curiosity about what people post here, sometimes updating or reading my journal

I consume a lot of tea every month and I recently bought this "whole leaf" tea. It came with pyramid shaped tea bags, made of plastic. Unlike paper tea bags they don't get soggy, and are better at imparting flavour into the tea (better "flavour profile" or something). So I decided to write a review on amazon, which is where I found a reviewer that said these bags release a large dose of microplastics into the cup when they are steeped. I searched and found the original paper where they published this finding - and it was true. The plastic tea bags, when steeped in water for making tea, release billions of plastic microparticles, several orders more than in other food products (all food contains some small quantity of micro plastics these days). This is alarming news. Even though we don't know the health risks associated with ingesting this much plastic, it is better to have precaution and not consume tea in plastic tea bags. Stick to loose tea, or paper tea bags. These triangle shaped tea bags cost more anyway. Link to original study : https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.9b02540 (read the intro and discussion section if you are interested but feel intimidated by the technical stuff like I was). Anyway, I am really enjoying green tea, especially the lemongrass flavour, or if it has lemon/mint/honey. I don't like herbal tea's though, it feels like a gimmick (all those claims about the tea containing X which helps in X are guranteed to be bullshit) and the tea feels like hot water with aroma. I like black tea with milk too, bought some peach black tea and I kind of enjoy that. And I tried red tea recently (vanilla flavoured), it was good too, though my mother said it tasted like medicine(!). Media I have consumed recently: Multiple visual novels with gameplay, Watchmen TV series(2019). I should not start anything now. Current project: 1) PhD applications 2) Continuing my japanese learning One interesting project that I want to take on is to address a question in my mind : Why do I know some things well and some things vaguely? For example, even though I never worked in the field of magnetoreception, I have a good understanding of the current state of that field. One thing I can do about this is to go into something deeply, pursue it till it occupies your entire day for at least a few weeks or may be 2 months. The easiest topic would be statistics, or something related to computation - because its something I can do without requiring any specialized equipment. Can I really do it though? I don't know. Self-motivation is something that I have some success with, but there are a large number of failures as well.

Good post OP. Thanks for sharing this. Hope you have the best time of your life now! That's very interesting, both her behaviour and your association.

You have to try and think from the other person's perspective. What are his values? What outcome does he want? Then you say whatever you want to say. Otherwise, like most people, you will say your piece and not help at all. And try to emphasize. South park had a really good episode on this.

Telling someone to go through practices gurantees repeat customers

It might also help that simulation theory is based on probabilities. I personally believe that the human brain is a simulation machine. So simulation is true by default. The brain recreates the stimuli in the form of an electrical signal. This is the inverse optics problem generalized to all stimuli. Now you just have to ask yourself : is it a faithful recreation? For which, I will agree with Daniel Hoffman in saying that, no, it is not.

hehe, this reminds of a family guy skit.

read Emil Cioran. Or if you hanve't read it yet, read Albert Camus's "The stranger". But to answer your question, no. Medication might help if this is clinical depression, so you should find a psychiatrist in that case.

I don't know, but I don't think its that odd. What is truly odd though, is the fact that I got three 7's in my quantum random number generator. See, I wanted to take a decision but both decisions were equally valid. So I used my trusty random number generator that takes its number from a quantum generator(whatever that means). I selected only the last digit from the 5 or so digit numbers, so getting three 7's is a 1/1000 chance! Amazing right?! That's practically like winning the lottery..if there were only 1000 tickets in circulation and each person had 1 ticket. You know how strange it is that even though the chances of winning a lottery are super duper low, someone still wins a lottery anyway? Weird. Don't they understand basic maths? There's no way they should be able to win. And yet, even at those odds, someone wins, and someone wins not just once but a few times in a row.

yes I agree. People eat what is in front of them.

Perhaps you should see a doctor? Could be a medical condition. Sounds like your eyes have difficulty focusing.

Indian here. Where in India do you plan to move to? I would suggest going to the reddit subforums of that place and ask people there. Be objective in your questioning, don't ask questions like "What's it like to live in India?", ask specific questions such as "how good is the internet service?", "Is the police reliable?"

"What is it that you are chasing?" "I am not chasing anything." "No, you are clearly chasing something." "Who is chasing what again?" "..." I find it harder and harder to update this journal. Nothing new to add. All I am doing is waking up and going back to sleep. Which state am I in when I update this journal? I find it harder and harder to distinguish between those two. Have I been sleeping all this time? I am enjoying this. And, I am despairing this. My small part of the dance. Everything, a kind song. For me this journal must serve a purpose. Therefore, unnecessary repetition is not good. A hundred posts of "I awoke at 8 and had breakfast" is not needed. Neither is "I turned 25 tomorrow and shit in the toilet like I was 24". Perhaps its time to say farewells, if such a thing is possible. Why on earth did I try to seek refuge in my journal? My words cannot possibly save ME. I am applying for PhD. Why? I am perfectly content where I am. Do I desire change? No. Do I desire stagnation? No. Then what did I desire? Ah..I see. What I wanted was this moment. It may change form, but this moment will be mine forever. It is the one thing I have Advice to myself applying for PhD: If an advisor posts a "Things I expect from my student" and puts "excellence" in that list, she expects too much or has an inflated sense of self worth, lab is likely to have issues. At the very least, not a good place to learn science from. Late edit: South park season 15 episode 8 "Ass burgers" is really good and says something really important about change.

Excuse me, but I don't know if you understood my position, or if I understood you reply. I am talking about the phenomenal experience of time. Yes, death is inevitable, but that was not the main point of my post (I don't want to repeat it here again so you can go back to read it if you are confused). What assumptions do you want to validate? Why do I have to cut my arms?