Gaia Community: Vivek's Blog

fury and patience in Mumbai

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 05:29:40 GMT

Though fury at this barbarism, this violation of all things human pulses within me I earnestly hope our society does not take the path of unthinking revenge or constructing an ever more absurd and clumsy security apparatus. Fiery revenge and simplistic security measures have been tried and found wanting over the years as responses to terrorism (I hope India can learn from America's mistakes here). This is not to question resolve or diminish revenge. Justice demands that those who are guilty should be punished, but do we even know who that is?

Reports (though the truth remains enrobed in fog) seem to be coming of a faction within the Pakistani security apparatus
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Arrested_terrorist_says_gang_hoped_to_get_away/articleshow/3771598.cms

These do seem to have been something very close to enemy soldiers, supplied and trained by a components of foreign government. And multiple signs indicate that the democratically elected components of this government were not aware; and do not support this barbarity. Pakistan has always been a state divided along multiple axis. It is not a single actor and cannot be treated as such.

So can we perhaps exercise patience? Talk to the parts of Pakistan amenable to reason, without sacrificing one iota of resolve. This is a state besieged at all levels: militarily from the north, financially, culturally, spiritually. Working with others; careful yet intense pressure can be applied for them to break down the machinery of Jihad that breeds within. If all else fails, other means can perhaps be considered. But patience cannot hurt here, additional knowledge cannot hurt. Dialogue does not imply a lack courage or passion and a rapier is deadlier than a bludgeon.

just some thoughts

Tags: mumbai, pakistan, india, war, terrorism

financial regulation

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:11:08 GMT

I read two excellent books recently: both by former traders. One is the Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb the other Traders, Guns, and Money by Satajit Das. Both are notable for being written before this crises and predicting almost exactly what happened in some cases to the level of specific firms. They also do a good job of describing the new and 'innovative' things that have been happening in the world of finance. Its interesting reading; quite eye opening on a lot of bizarre practices (many of which seem to be essentially ways of skipping out on taxes and evading regulation). While before the ever intensifying sub-prime crises they were both kinda shouting in the wilderness I suspect people are listening a lot more closely nowadays.

Anyways all of this got me thinking a bit about how the worlds financial system is regulated (or as it turns out not so much)

At work I develop algorithms for MRI scanners and by now I'm quite used to heavy levels of regulation. Before an algorithm or piece of machinery can be sold in the real world we're required by the FDA to go through a vast gauntlet of tests and clearances. This can be hard work at times, but its hard to argue against it. You don't just randomly try new technologies on human beings. You build mathematical models, you do animal studies, you test on small populations, you carefully list and test assumptions being made. The alternative would be unthinkable.

Occasionally even the most rigorous of processes can fail. There are cases where drugs that are meant to heal hurt due to inadequate models and mistakes in the clinical trial process. Change and innovation are not simple things

But these case are few and far between compared to the number of truly useful and helpful medical technologies that people develop. You don't see the

wholesale chaos and absurdity that is the case in the financial system. And lets be honest, the processes and regulation that ensure quality and safety are a big part of that. Its funny, if a doctor tried out a new and untested drug on you without telling you, she would probably lose her medical licence and be open

to vast lawsuits and potential jail time. Yet apparently the money you put into bank deposits can be used as part of wild experiments in securitization without consequences, validation, or previous testing. I guess its not as 'mission critical' as your health, but imho peoples savings are a rather significant thing

and not necessarily the right 'volunteer' for exotic financial experimentation.

I suspect I'd have to look long and hard to find someone who thinks healthcare products don't really need testing or regulation, yet somehow finance is able to skip all of this.

So why can't we require financial institutions to submit new algorithms, packages, whatever to a regulatory authority before, not after use.

How about this

1. Before any new derivative technique or financial contract can be used in the real world it has to be evaluated by an independant body (like the FDA) that would decide

a. if it has value, b. what sort of protections need to be placed around it.

The obvious problem here is that just because you disallow something in one country doesn't mean financial whiz kids can't go set it up in another loosly regulated haven. The defense against this would be:

2. If an uncleared technique is being used by some third party in a different country,

financial institutions from say the USA are not allowed by law to have any financial transactions with that company or any company it deals with. This prevents contagion scenarios and loophole attempts.

At first glance #2 might seem a bit draconian. But in the real economy these sort of requirements are the norm. For example: if a company decides to manufacture parts for a CT scanner in Mexico or India, but wish to sell the completed device in the USA they need to follow FDA norms at that plant. Often manufacturing companies will even add additional international norm requirements (ISO 9000, CMM, etc) when outsourcing work. This has been a normal and accepted part of globalization for the simple reason that quality requires certain global norms. Maybe Benanke, Paulson, and co could learn something here.

Tags: finance, regulation, sub-prime, fda, bernanke, paulson.

Math, Mind, Matter

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:45:59 GMT

Really enjoyed this IAS sponsered arxiv paper/debate by three physicists (Piet Hut, Mark Alford & Max Tegmark).
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0510/0510188v2.pdf

Its a discussion of Roger Penrose's circular triangle:
or "math arises from the mind, mind arises from matter, and matter can be explained in terms of math"

The three authors are divided up into three schools: Fundamentalist, Secular, and Mystic who present independant versions of their triangle then debate.

An extended version of the fundamentalist's (Max Tegmark of MIT) thesis can be found here where he attempts to construct a 'radically platonist' notion of a multiverse built entirely on math and consisting only of universes which are godel complete and computable. Not sure I agree
with it, but I found it an interesting construction
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0646v2.pdf

Personally I find the idea of a multiverse a little suspect to be honest. Its not that its not a cool idea, or that its necessarily false. The process that was used to arrive at my main hangup, its not that we have anything resembling physical evidence, instead its that certain theories in physics work smoothly with certain categories of multiverses (string theory, etc). I'm of the opinion that applying occam's razor here necessitates that we must either a. eliminate all simpler possiblities or b. find some empirical clues of alternate universes before jumping off in that direction.

That said I do think there are very far reaching implications of Godels work as well as later work done in information theory on oracle's, computability, etc and it is nice to see some physicists acknowledging that.

Very interesting debate though, and I'd say fairly accessible outside the immediate domain.

Tags: physics, math, godel, matter, mind, science, platonism, multiverse

The Gates of India

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:34:26 GMT

Inside Gate, India’s Good Life; Outside, the Slums

This New York Times article really depressed me. Its written about Gurgaon but the same thing is happening in Bangalore.   Huge self contained gated enclaves functioning almost as city states, rimmed by slums.

Now I actually do not blame people for wanting this. People want consistant power, carefully maintained lawns and infrastructure, security, etc. Its human and natural, some people in India have wealth. Theres one of these gated communities in Bangalore that is almost an exact replica of California suburbia, quite surreal really. But I can understand the attraction. The government of India is either can't or won't manage to provide a lot of basic services in a reasonable way and so people are going to turn to private enterprise. Before, highly educated Indians would simply go to those California suburbs directly... now they replicate it at home.   So be it.

What gets me upset is not the community, or even the gate per se. Its whats outside.
Its one thing to have misery among deprivation, that is comprehensible at least. But to have people living in these conditions amidst an economic boom? Alongside so much wealth, growth and prosperity?   It strikes at our sense of justice and equality. It cries out.

Someone told me recently as part of a discussion on rural health "There will always be two Indias".   For a moment I wondered, is this just the way of things?    The British, the Moghuls, countless Maharajas, inequality does seem to have been around for a long time in India. Perhaps this is why people are so willing to tolerate this latest edition (well except the Maoists in the hills, who should not be ignored). But then I remembered the Indus Valley Civilization.

There was a fantastic series of articles on the latest research on the Indus Valley Civilization in the latest issue of Science AAAS
(sadly not availible to non-subscribers this page seems pretty decent though) The latest archeological studies have revealed more detail, but do not seem to have changed the core picture. An extraodinarily advanced society of exquisitely planned roads and the worlds first urban sanitation system. A society without the gaudy temples and palaces of parallel ancient civilization, it instead seems to have invested in roads, sewage, and huge public spaces. There do seem to have been the somewhat wealthy in this ancient civilization of traders, they were buried within additional beads and so forth. Some houses were slightly bigger than others, the Science article reports. Ok, we get it, it was still a civilization of human beings... not aliens ;) But what great human beings!

The connection between modern Indian civilization and this civilization is complex and disputed. I personally do not feel that this is a particularly useful argument to have.

What matters is they were here, they are part of our heritage, and they were a truly great people.    I think in many ways legacy is something a people/culture can choose. A model exists for a humanistic, egalitarian, technological advanced, and secular India.   Why not hold it up high?

Realities will not change in a moment. Dreams do not put food on peoples tables or get children the antibiotics they need. But at least they are a beginning. At least they give us a common goal. At least they let us believe that what is before us is not all that can ever be.

Tags: india, new york times, indus valley civilization, growth, economics, slums, development, dreams, civilization

Barack Obama

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:32:28 GMT

Obama has a definite flair with words and oratory, and there exists a critique of his candidacy that thats all thats really going on. The other thing I've run into is the critique that he's trying to have it both ways: lofty rhetoric, but calculated politics. In an ideal world his recent speech on race should have destroyed these doubts for good, that doesn't seem to have happened however (though it may have brought Richardson over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62jhStuawA

One example that truly irritated
me was the harping on Obama's line about his grandmother being afraid of young black men, as though this represented some sort of calling out or family betrayal. I actually remembered the line from the book "Dreams of my Father".   There he is discussing his disjointed feelings about being a young black man (an entity that is viewed with a certain level of distrust in much of America) being raced by his white grandparents... and how to resolve that essential dichotomy.   Race is a complex and emotion laden quality in America (and India as well quite frankly) and deserves better than media driven driven soundbitism.

What is unique and exciting about Obama, in my opinion, is not necessarily his charisma, his life experience, his name, his particular political leanings, or even his race. Rather its the nuance and appreciation for the complexity of real world problems he seems to have.   I actually disagree with quite a lot of his political views, but am personally beginning to believe that issue driven politics is inadequate and frequently dangerous.

Reading his two books (Dreams of my Father and the Audacity of Hope) what struck me the most was the fact that he seemed to genuinely spend time and effort considering complex problems and honestly admit that he didn't know exactly where the truth lies. The United States (and in many ways the rest of the world as well) seems to be entering a phase of history in which simple truths are just not good enough. The problems we face are complex, and cut across traditional boundaries.

Its become increasingly apparent, I believe, that Iraq is not just a military engagement its also a cultural, religious, economic, and ethnic nexus and minefield. A genuine solution there will require a systems level understanding of all of these components. To me the Bush administrations failure was not necessarily one of military execution... but rather a failure of imagination and scope. The idea that soldiers can go into a place, defeat an enemy and the rest will essentially just sort it out.

Other global problems: global warming, an increasingly baroque and possibly unhinged financial system, religious extremism in its many manifestations are similarly complex, multifaceted, and morally ambiguous. (will try to go into greater detail/back up that statement in a bit)

Tags: barack, obama, politics, america, iraq, global warming, audacity, hope, military

Is China Going to Go Green?

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:48:34 GMT

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/05/the_china_experiment.php
An interesting article from Seed on China's plan's to go green. It seems like
some positive steps are being made, which is quite frankly good news for the entire planet.
(with China passing the US in greenhouse gas emissions this year, its about time!)

On the flipside the chinese may be jumping in rather fast on some of this stuff as this quote from the article illustrates:
For the Olympics, a designated weather modification office will reduce air and ground pollution before the Games by shooting rockets filled with silver iodide into the sky to make rain. Beijing's Science and Technology Department has been experimenting with hormone therapy and crossbreeding to produce flowers that can withstand a Beijing August. "I'm sure that during those three weeks it will be crystal-clear in Beijing," energy analyst Brock says. "They're playing with all sorts of things."

Ah well, at least we're starting to see something...

Tags: china, environment, olympics, green, climate change, wind power, solar power

The Global Baby Bust

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:58:16 GMT

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501faessay83307/phillip-longman/the-global-baby-bust.html

A fascinating (though long) article on the massive global decline in fertility rates.
A couple interesting facts from the article:
1. Mexico will be older than the US by 2050
2. In addition the worlds overall fertility rate may be below the replacement level by that point.
3. Japan's population peaked in 2005 and is about to crash.
4. The greatest recent fertility declinces have been in the Middle East (I found this very surprising)

How populations cope with ever smaller workforces and ever greater numbers of elderly will
not be a straightforward thing. The author also contends (with some evidence) that aging populations tend to be much less entrepeneurial and innovative than younger populations.

On the bright side: the author suggests that the dramatic aging could also coincide with a fall in extremism and violence as middle aged societies tend to be more concerned with the immediate and the practical

Tags: population, CFR, aging, baby bust, fertility rates, japan, europe, children

New Nature Blog on Climate Change

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:50:34 GMT

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/

Nature (probably the most reputed scientific journal there is) has just started a blog on climate change and its very nicely done.

Tags: nature, climate change, blogs, global warming, environment, science, greenhouse effect

Neuroscience

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:28:17 GMT

http://www.slate.com/id/2164996/

Fascinating Slate article on the 5 biggest neuroscience developments of the year. I've been tracking some of this, but put together an astonishing and in many ways terrifying picture emerges. Moving through the article:

1. "Scientists in Germany used pattern recognition software to predict, from functional magnetic resonance imaging of people's brainw hether each person had secretly decided to add or subtract two numbers he was looking at. The computer correctly predicted the decision 71 percent of the time "
This isn't a huge deal yet. fMRI is not really a mature technology and numbers would probably be much lower outside lab conditions, in addition this is a much simpler problem than some sort of general mind reading. This is a rapidly improving field however and my suspicion is that within a decade a certain level of mind reading will be technologically possible. How we resolve this with issues of privacy, how authoritarian regimes use this, strikes me as a terribly intricate ethical problem.

2. "Six people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were presented with moral dilemmas (e.g., would you smother a baby to prevent bad guys from finding and killing people in hiding) and were found to be two to three times more willing to kill than people without brain damage"
To what degree is good and evil simply a product of brain chemistry? Can 'evil' individuals be 'fixed'. Can normal people be made 'better'? What else can be altered? We already use drugs to alter happiness levels, what about enthusiasm, creativity, rebeliousness vs. conformity, discipline, the list goes on. Who controls things like this? Governments, parents, individuals, communities, teachers? Do we create limits on how far we change people? What happens when we gain the ability to change people beyond the limits of what we understand as human? i.e. not just better, faster, stronger... but happier, more disciplined, or even more naturally altruistic?

3. Sexual Orientation
Can different sexual orientations be 'cured' in the womb. I find it surprising, though not astonishing that some conservatives are already thinking of technology along those lines and see it as something good. Should parents be allowed this 'choice' (I think it will be very interesting to see how party lines fall on this issue as it places a great deal of cognitive dissonance on traditional views). Is this akin to allowing some sort of genocide?

4. The discovery of vegetative consciousness.
I don't have much to say here other than that it makes doctor assisted suicide quite a bit trickier.

5. The progress of artificial intelligence
I'm taking more of a wait and see attitude on this. If it happens we'll all have to deal with
it, but all AI research seems to have done is shown us that some problems we thought were very hard aren't (i.e. Chess) and some we consider trivial (listening to someone speak, cooking, walking around) are incredibly tricky. Personally I think real AI is a while away.

Oh and if you really want to dive into neuroscience, theres a special issue in Slate on the brain here: http://www.slate.com/id/2165001/
very nice roundup of whats going on.

Tags: neuroscience, artificial intelligence, ethics, morality, consciousness, sexual orientation, science, technology, MRI, fMRI, privacy

Thomas Friedman - The Power of Green

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:27:31 GMT

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/15/opinion/web-0415edgreen-full.php

Above is quite a nice (if a bit long) article by Thomas Friedman in the International Herald Tribune about his vision of a new green ideology. Its well written and integrative, addressing the petrodollars aspect of energy politics as well as the China problem.

Tags: green, environmentalism, petrodollars, energy, thomas friedman, oil, china, california

Pulse and Glide

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:26:59 GMT

So I just ran into this article on Japanese mileage hackers.
Quick except: " Toya, a 56-year-old manager for a tofumaker in central Japan, puts special tires on his Prius, tapes plastic and cardboard over the engine, and blocks the grill with foam rubber. He drives without shoes and hacks into his car's computer -- all in the pursuit of maximum distance with minimum gasoline."

and "The mileage maniacs strive to perfect what they call the "pulse and glide" driving method.
Pulsing and gliding demands sensitivity when pushing or releasing the accelerator, so only his big toe touches the pedal. On a chilly Saturday in Aichi prefecture, not far from Toyota City, Toya removes his right shoe to demonstrate. Toya accelerates, or pulses, to 29 m.p.h., then glides down to 25 m.p.h. before pulsing again. The car uses no fuel when gliding."

Pulse and glide =)... I really like this. Its taking ecological sensitivity and mutating with gearhead techniques until it turns into this really cool sort of zen-hacker aesthetic. We need more of this.

Tags: zen, hackers, ecology, japan, technology, prius, cars

Towards an Apollo Program for Energy: Part 2

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:02:08 GMT

So heres a rough blueprint on technologies that could change things and some
numbers I threw together on what kind of funding might make sense.

The budget for the National Institute of Health is about $29 billion. I think something
along those lines would be quite reasonable for ensuring our climates future and
energy stability.

This is going to be a pretty link heavy post, and these aren't the lightest of links. I'm
going to try to boil some of this down, but quite frankly this is a pretty heavy subject and theres only so much boiling I can do so please do try to take a look at some of the links if you can.

22.5 Billion US dollars

Pretty-These are the technologies that will really make a difference in the
- Fusion $3 B (another ITER + seed innovative ideas)
- Solar $4B nano-solar, or other methods seed innovation here, to be honest I don't see solar being practical for a while now, but its probably a key component of the long term solution.
- Wind (reliability, materials) $2B
- Algae $2B (more on this later, personally I find this a very exciting approach and it might be able to leverage a lot of the stuff coming out of the wider biotech industry). Heres a nice link , worth taking a look at (more on this below)
- Geothermal $1B Some info on this here here and some stuff on a trial run in France here An interesting technology and worth investigating. Probably not a full solution in and of itself, but could be a useful component, imho.

Ugly - What follows are technologies that just aren't that pretty. They have serious drawbacks, and in a perfect world we wouldn't even have to bother with them. Unfortunately thats not the world we live in and time is running short. While the long term solution will probably come from the stuff discussed above, averting catastrophe will probably require using some of the stuff below as a stopgap.
- Carbon Sequestration -In a nutshell this is storing carbon from fossil fuel emitters underground (where it won't lead to warming), read the links for the full story. Its actually much more practical than it might appear at first reading and is probably an absolutely critical step in stabilizing near term emissions.
  - Geological Safety $500 mil
  - Site exploration and testing $500
  - Initial Testing Ramp up from $100 mil to 1 bil
  - Coal gasification $500 mil
- Shale Oil, Research $500 mil This is an alternative source for oil from shale rock. A good quick explainer here and more detailed info can be found in this pdf. This does nothing to solve global warming at all, but is important from a long term energy security perspective since there is a huge amount of it and since the US has huge deposits it helps deal with some of the dependency problems that occur as a result of relying on oil from places tlike the Middle East. It is also important to be aware of the existence of shale oil because anyone hoping that warming will be averted when normal oil deposits run out is mistaken. Reserves of both shale oil and coal are huge and will almost certainly be utilized.
- Nuclear (fission) (really a messy technology and only really suitable as a last resort... backup plans may be important here however, and this technology appears to be quite proven)
  - Breeder Reactors
    - Design $500 mil
    - De-weap $500 mil
  - pebble bed reactors $500mil
- Distribution (Many of the better energy alternative will require a radical rethinking of energy distribution... its not enough to have a very high efficiency solar cell, you also need ways to manage the inherent variability of solar energy)
  - Battery Tech $2B, one example
  - High temp. superconductors $2B (lots of potential benefits in a wide variety of fields)
  - Digging Robots $1B
  - Feasibility Studies $.5
  - heres an interesting link on a theoretical European supergrid (fairly low tech)
  - And heres a more radical proposal for a superconducting supergrid

Increasing Efficiency (nice MIT tech. review article on some of this here)
Automotive research: $500 mil microhybrids, plug in hybrids, connecting to the grid
Consumer Appliances: $500 mil -Just automatic deactivation when not in use could really do a lot.

But what about corn/soybiodiesel?
Personally I think whats currently being called biodiesel is just political pork/farm subsidies dressed up as responsibility. It is simply not practical on the kinds of scales required to actually do something about emissions.
This post on The Energy Blog makes this very clear:
Let me pull a quote out:
"To replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need roughly 140 billion gallons of biodiesel. To produce that amount of biodiesel by growing soybeans would require almost 3 billion acres or over 1 billion acres growing canola (rapeseed), at nominal yields of 48 and 127 gallons oil per acre, respectively.(7) To produce that amount, by growing algae producing 15,000 gallons per acre, would require a land mass of roughly 9.5 million acres (almost 15,000 square miles ). To put these numbers in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles...450 million acres are currently used for crop farming in the US, and over 500 million acres are used as grazing land for farm animals (1). As has been shown here it is not possible to grow enough of the more conventional crops to meet our fuel needs, but using algae it is possible. "

In summary: algae is practical, corn/soy isn't. Sadly there is no entrenched group of pro-algae lobbyists, to push things along hover.

Tags: global warming, oil, coal, wind, solar power, technology, energy, kyoto accord, carbon sequestration, superconducting supergrids

Towards an Apollo program for energy - Part 1

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:42:10 GMT

This post was inspired by this article at alternet, ominously entitled 'Behold the Rise of Energy-Based Fascism'. Read it, seriously.

The future of the worlds energy is something I've been thinking about a lot and what this post really rammed home for me was that energy is not something that is going to solve itself. I don't things are quite as scary as Michael Klare believes though, primarily because I think there exist a set of emerging technologies that CAN provide a genuine and reasonable solution. These aren't easy technologies however. They require tens of billions of dollars and capital and a certain amount of will and dedication to actually get running. What I'm going to try to layout here then, is the following

1. Why action is needed. I think a lot of people here will already be with me on this, but I still think its useful to underline just how serious a threat to civilization/the human race this actually is.
2. Why existing options aren't going to get the job done (or in other words, why Kyoto isn't going to work even IF the US somehow got on board)
3. What an energy Apollo Program/Manhattan project might look like and what the technologies are that I feel can really change things.

1. Why we need to act now
First of all what happens if we do nothing.
1. Potential ecological catastrophe (global warming)
2. Potential economic catastrophe (its running out people)
3. A political nightmare (going to link to Michael Klare's article again since you really ought to read it.) Since it lays out this scenario much better than I can, I'm going to leave it at that.

Responses:
-But global warming isn't proven: I'm not going to dismiss this statement out of hand. In fact I'm a bit upset at the hyper-polarized nature of the global warming
debate with greens trying to silence the opposition and anti-warmers claiming its all some big fabrication. I don't think censorship is ever a solution and its only inflaming an issue that desperately calls for calm considered rationality. Consider this though: if someone pointed a revolver at you and threatened to shoot would you ask how many bullets are in the gun? Would you feel safe if there was only a 2/6 or 1/6 chance of you getting your head blown off? So does it really, truly matter THAT much what the statistics are? Furthermore even you for some reason feel you can rule out 1, what about 2 and 3? I think Michael Klares article, though written by someone on the left should prove equally chilling to most conservatives.

-There's plenty of coal/uranium. Well, not really. But even assuming we can stretch things out that way, coal is seriously dirty in both local and global ways (there are ways to perhaps deal with this, but I'm going to save that for a later post). Nuclear is more interesting but
uranium is finite as well, while fast breeder reactors are an incredibly dangerous toy to play around with.

2. Kyoto isn't going to work
What I am arguing is NOT that Kyoto is wrong per se. Rather that it is an ineffectual devising of incompetent bureaucrats seeking to fix a gunshot wound with a band aid. How exactly do modest reductions in the rate of emissions growth actually change things (what sea levels rise by only 10 meters instead of 11?). And without China, which will overtake the USA as the worlds #1 polluter in a matter of years, how will it even result in modest reductions. China has large coal reserves and they're currently building vast numbers of coal plants. Its not looking good. Even Britain, one of the countries most committed to Kyoto is in danger of failing to meet its targets due to rising air travel

I have another question. Its proven immensely hard, even in Europe/Japan to convince citizens to make economic sacrifices to deal with the highly abstract threat of global warming/energy depletion. America has just refused straight up (and lets avoid political name calling here, before Kyoto was even brought up in the Senate it got shot down 95-0... the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, yes, THAT Robert Byrd :( ) Does it seem remotely credible, that countries like China and India, are going to sign up? Countries which are finally beginning to see some level of development and prosperity after centuries of oppression. Does it seem credible that people in these countries would be willing to put all that on hold, that individuals would say... "I don't need decent housing/basic transport today, I can wait a bit more." Its not going to happen. And unless something changes China, India, etc are going to build vast numbers of coal plants to fuel their rapid industrialization. Destroying any hope for global emissions reductions. (Though lifting tens if not hundreds of millions of poverty, lets not forget or ignore this fact.)

Ok, that's a pretty grim picture. But we haven't got to the distributed batteries for wind and solar, superconducting helium based supergrids, carbon sequestration, increasing efficiency, algae biofuels, etc yet. Sound a little bit to science fictionesque for your taste? Have you looked around lately? The world we live in IS science fiction.

Tags: global warming, oil, coal, wind, solar, energy, kyoto, energy fascism, carbon sequestration, superconducting supergrids

Phases in Life

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:51:32 GMT

I believe quite strongly that there are discrete phases in life... being a kid, teenager, college, early career, old age, etc... This is related in some ways to the Karma Yoga, though it deviates quite a bit. I believe that each phase has its own experiences, its own charms, and its own challenges. When it comes time to move on this can be quite a difficult thing as we must give up the charms of the previous stage and take on new challenges as well... This is rarely a purely pleasant experience. But thats life, and the rewards of each phase are worth this disruption. So, my feeling is: savour the charms of the phase your in... Enjoy it to the fullest, for all too soon the time will come to move on, and you can't go back (well, not without looking rather silly at least ;) )

Tags: life, phases in life, Karma Yoga, changing

Dreams

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:56:53 GMT

Let me counterbalance the previous post a bit.

So I recently watched Little Miss Sunshine (fantastic movie, btw) and it got me to thinking about dreams.

One of the things I think is really good about America is the cultural acceptance of dreaming. People have dreams and ambitions and while they might be unrealistic or something I personally don't understand: they have them, they care about them, and they fight for them. In Bangalore I feel that people don't always even try out their dreams (or if they do, the people around them aren't necessarily terribly accepting of it). Many people seem quite willing to do what society, their parents, their relatives and friends expect... Their own dreams getting lost in the maze of familial and societal expectations/demands. Is sacrificing some dreams at the altar of responsibility a requirement for familial/social stability? I don't know, but I do sometimes feel that there should be another way.

Tags: dreams, little miss sunshine, america, bangalore, society, family

Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:26:30 GMT

There is a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson that I have been pondering lately:
"I will not live out of me
I will not see with others eyes
My good is good, my evil ill
I would be free - I cannot be
While I take things as others please to rate them
I dare attempt to lay out my own road
That which myself delights in shall be Good
That which I do not want -indifferent,
That which I hate is Bad."

Is this the way to live? I believe quite strongly that we must forge our own path in this life.
But how far should this be taken? At what point does being your own individual turn toward arrogance? At what point does it turn into indifference to the needs and suffering of others? Harold Bloom in Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? claimed that Emerson in many ways defined the philosophical outlook we now associate with America... I do find in Emersons' works much of what I love about America and what troubles me about America.

At the same time if we do not see with our own eyes, who's eyes are we to see with? How do we temper our desire for freedom and individualism with compassion and humility?

Tags: freedom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, individualism, seeing with our own eyes, perspectivism

The Wisdom of Crowds

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 09:05:36 GMT

So the whole 'Wisdom of Crowds' meme has hit the mainstream.

Time magazine declared the person of the year to be 'You' , citing Wikipedia, YouTube, and
MySpace.

Nature put Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia up against each other head to head; and found that if Britannica has an edge its a slender one indeed. Britannica of course, replied furiously... the whole exchange can be found online. Personally I think I'm inclined to trust Nature, probably the most prestigious scientific journal in existance, over an organization with strong business and personal reasons to object.

Now the common understanding of this phenomena is that it represants something new that has recently been enabled by advances in information technology. I'd like to put forth the idea that individual authorship is whats new and that much of human wisdom is aggregated from multiple sources. Anything proceeding the invention of writing, the oral history of the human race seems to me to fall into this category. For example: most historians feel that the Illiad and the Odyssey to have been the product of many singer-poets (aoidoi) which was standardized into a canonical text, with Homer being more a title given to this aggregate than a single individual. Sounds a lot like the wisdom of crowds to me. This is also very true of other cultures myths and stories.

Following the invention of writing distinct notions of authorship were created and have gained a great deal of authority. Auteur theory in cinema presents directors as the authors of films, putting a distinct philosophical stamp on each of their works. Is this particularly credible however? In a film we have the influence of the screenwriter, the producers casting decisions, the cinematographers decisions, the actors interpretation, even the costume designers, set designers, and so on have an important role to play and influence the final product in complicated ways. Isn't this also a crowd? Isn't there also a sort of emergent wisdom here?

Perhaps wisdom has always been something that emerges from the interaction of human beings? From our discussions and debates, from people bouncing ideas off each other and new ideas appearing...

Tags: wisdom of crowds, wikipedia, myspace, youtube, person of the year, oral histories, wisdom, auteur theory

Love vs Chemistry

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:02:44 GMT

Rilke once said that love is two solitudes that reach out, protect, and greet each other.

This I firmly believe is what true love is. There is another love, a biochemical thing associated
with oxytocin, vasopressin, and so on which is far more common however.
More info here: (Economist article)

I think people frequently get confused between the two.

The love I'm talking about is an inhabitant of the mind, it is not a thing of pure rationality but it has respect for the rational. It is a meeting of souls, a decision to trust in a world where that decision frequently seems mad, it is the warmth of companionship in a world which increasingly only has room for icy superficial relationships.

Tags: love, rilke, oxytocin, true love, trust

Art, Science, and Spirituality

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:51:41 GMT

Is it reasonable to say:

Science is fundamentally an attempt to understand reality
Art is an attempt to explore the human condition

Furthermore, can we then call Spirituality (i.e. all theology, metaphysics, and most philosophy) an attempt to bridge previous concepts? Or to put it another way: a way of bridging the internal and the external worlds?

Notes: Science is not really structured to concern itself with human beings, when attempts are made to perceive science through the lens of humanity (ex. anthromorphic principle) they seem to fall into the realm of the bridging concept: spirituality. While I don't think art really seems to really be concerned with the notion of reality in itself.

For example: when landscapes are painted tthe point isn't an accurate painting of a landscape its a discussion of how we as human beings perceive the landscape, or relate to the landscape, or feel about the landscape.

Any comments?

Tags: science, art, reality, spirituality, painting

Kinds of morality

http://vivekv.gaia.com — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:48:06 GMT

Let me try to construct a more solid foundation for my rather meandering previous post.

I feel that there are 4 levels of moral action:

Instinctive: Simply doing what feels correct at any given moment.
Intellectual: Considering why you do these things and if they are actually right or rather just what society has told you is correct (and I think we can all agree that societies are not always right about these things)

Note: this is not the same as coming up with some rationalized justification for doing what you want to do, and dressing it up with logical tricks(!).

Thoughtful: Seeking to deal with root causes rather than symptoms.
Deep Morality: Deep morality is often counterintuitive and can seem aggressively contrary to type 1, 2, and even 3 morality if the broad sweep is not seen. It is also of course the trickiest form of moral action.

One example of deep morality might be the actions of the allies in WWII. At first glance it seems deeply immoral. Many people in Germanyand Japan were killed(often in terrible ways). But I do feel it served a long term good. Of course wars to serve a larger good can often go horribly awry, but that is another debate and this post is already long enough imho.

To wrap things up (and re-connect with the previous post) my feeling at the moment is that patience with certain parts of new medical technology though it may seem morally counter-intuitive does serve a deeper and more crucial sense of morality.

Tags: morality, kinds of morality, WWII, moral action, war, patience