Zodiacs: Just Fun & Games

We often need a reason to things going on in our lives and around us. It is only natural, as we have the cognitive ability to understand cause and effect. These set abilities have developed over time and now our reasons fall more into the category that provides empirical evidence. It was not like this always there was a time when people believed in many pseudo-logics with none or little evidence. So much so that ancient human thought that volcanoes, floods and eclipse are caused by the wrath of God(s). However, as our knowledge and understanding of the world around us improved we shrugged off the old ideas ... So no more human or animal sacrifice to appease the God(s), wrath, at least in the mainstream. Yeyy?

Yet some things remained. However, harmless though, Zodiac signs have no logical argument to support its workings. Zodiacs are some personality stereotypes that are based on the location of constellations relative to the sun during the month of a person's birth. It is pretty much saying that location of Sun, Moon and Constellations have the ability to dictate who you are as a person and what happens in your life. Now, how it "works"? Or I should say how you are sorted in your zodiac. I fall under the category of Aries zodiac. Meaning, based on the astrology's zodiac model, during the month of my birth the location of Aries constellation in the sky was tracing the same path as the Sun. 

Fun fact, we can't see that constellation of the zodiac in the month assigned to it because its location will be eclipsed by the Sun and well we can't see stars during the day. However, you can see it the best when the earth is on the opposite side of its orbit relative to that position. That will not be after six months as earth orbit is elliptical. For instance, Aries is best visible during the month of December. 

When I first got curious about how astrology works, I found the information on it. At that point, being a person of STEM academics, I needed to know the logic. Well, there was none. It is clear that zodiac system, or for that matters Astrology (not Astronomy), is not science. Astrology is not subjected to critique by other scientists, it is not based on evidence and the conclusions are incontestable/not falsifiable. 

Still, the enthusiasm with zodiacs is almost universal. Why does it seem to work? Why do we identify with the given traits? Well because they are pretty vague. It is one of those one size fits all. This point is best illustrated by James Randy's experiment on zodiacs. Watch it here.  This experiment is based on Guaquelin’s Horoscope Experiment. In this experiment, they take birth date details of a group of people. After that, they provided them with their personalized personality traits. Each participant has to review the traits they receive. The result was surprisingly accurate, 94% of participants claimed their traits were in accordance with their personality. There was just one catch; the personalized traits given to all the participants were same. This effect is called the Burnum effect. 

The Burnum effect is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to register high accuracy to the personality traits that they suppose is oriented specifically to them. However, in fact, the traits are vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. The truth is such traits have something to offer to everyone. Read a Psychology Today's article on the Burnum Effect here.

If you think that it somehow still works and your designated sign is working well for you. I have a bad news, the signs that we follow now are outdated. Due to a phenomenon called axial precession, the earth wobbles on its axis, in a 26, 000 years cycle (read here). This changes the relative position of the sun and constellation. So, technically that makes me Pisces.  But the changes were never made in the field of astrology and it worked out alright. Well, it worked vaguely enough ... in light of Burnum effect or it never really worked. 

In the end, it is fun and entertaining to read your zodiac with your friends for a good time. However, I recognize the obsession of zodiacs is all over the world. Each newspaper has a dedicated section for the Zodiac. Why are we still doing this beyond logic, but I wouldn't bet my fortune on that. 

What's your Zodiac Sign? Do you follow with conviction or is it just fun and games? Feel free to voice your opinions in the comment section below. 

This concludes my A to Z 2017. Woohooo! 

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Yearnings: A Poem

I yearn for the things that will never be.

To look at my own face, with eyes closed while I sleep.

Feel my back pressed against my chest, as I cuddle myself asleep.

To hold my thought in my hands and re-arrange them, maybe.

To see the color of my smile, 

The smell of my laughter,

The taste of color white, 

The sound of my perfume,

The touch of ...  Oh what torment it is, you see?

Damned are the things that will never be! 

-Karnika Kapoor

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This poem was originally posted on my Tumblr blog.

Xenos: The Neanderthal Man

We, humans, are the only "intelligent" species on the planet. We do treat other animals unfairly. It seems like we have this monopoly over the planet and its resources that we don't tend to share with our fellow earthlings. Sometimes I like to think about other possible scenarios that could have been. What if it was not like this? What if the Neanderthals had survived? 

We left our native land of Africa around 50000 years ago. Not to mention we spread like wildfire all over the globe. Neanderthals, our closest cousins, had left the native land 230000 years ago. They settled in Europe, Middle East and central Asia. They survived until, well, we reached there. We were quite same, yet quite different. That pretty much would have been like Bonobos meeting Chimpanzees. Man, the Homo sapiens and homo Neanderthals shared 99.7% of the DNA. We are from the same genus: meaning we are the descendant of same species Hominins (the great ape). 

Fun fact: The name Neanderthals was given to them because their bones were first discovered in the caves of Neander valley. We called ourselves Homo (Man) sapiens (wise), the wise man. Not quite humble of us eh?  Ernst Haeckel proposed taxonomic name Neanderthal as Homo Stupidus. That name is obsolete now. As the matter of fact, The Neanderthals were not stupid. They had the same brain to body mass ratio as us. They were physically stronger than us. It is now believed that they had pretty refined societies too. To read more about the Neanderthals click here.

So what happened to the Neanderthals? It is a mystery! There are a few theories. Moreover, there is an indication that all of the factors may have had a combined effect in the extinction of Neanderthals.

Climate change: There was a super volcano, around 40000 years ago, in a location that is now in Italy. This volcano had blanketed the area with lava and ash. This may have led to the lowering of temperature that led to endangerment/extinction of the species

Sapiens invasion: Humans and Neanderthals coexisted for a millennial. There might have been competition for resources amongst Neanderthals bands and sapiens bands. They were bigger and good at hunting and humans were innovative and formed larger bands. One can only imagine how the dynamics of society would have worked in those days. It is believed that the domestication of Dogs was advantageous to human over the Neanderthals. We might have starved them with our better skills on calling dibs on the resources or we may have slaughtered them because it could have been threatening. It is difficult to tell for sure.

According to recent understanding, the Neanderthal and sapiens often interbred. Many of the modern humans have 2-4% of shared DNA. You can read more about Sapiens and Neanderthals interbreeding here. Now we can even sequence our DNAs with services that will tell us about our personal ancestry and likelihood of diseases. I am quite curious to sequence my DNA as I have bright red hair which is very rare in my location. Also, red hair indicates the presence of Neanderthal DNA. Find out other traits that are associated with the presence of Neanderthal DNA here.

Now the interbreeding side of anything related to humans just spirals down and the ugly alley of eugenics. The Nazi's romanticizing the Aryan race had made this discussion tarnished with genocide. So much so that experts have lost interest in exploring that side. Well, it is all very fresh in human conscious and we cannot walk past it just yet. Maybe someday in future, when the political and emotional wounds of the racial scars will be filled and the world is ready to walk past the petty inclination claiming to be superior in one way or the other ... Until then, we should just heal the old wounds and learn to live in peace with our differences.

The fact is there are no more Neanderthals. Had they survived, Wonder how the co-existing societies of modern human and modern Neanderthals would have been like. How would we have formed the governments and divided the resources? Would we have worked out on integrated society with them or would it have been a divided state of constant wars and the arms race between us? 

What are your ideas on how would we have been with an equally intelligent species co-existing? Let me know in the comment section below. 

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Weltschmerz

There is something about the German language that makes it stand out amongst the other languages. It has some words that express our feelings and ideas so perfectly; so much so, it seems that there is a lexical gap in the other languages. Some German words just cannot be quite translated by just another word. One such word is Weltschmerz. 

Weltschmerz comes from German Welt “world” and Schmerz “pain”. It means a universal pain, world-weariness, or melancholia about the state of the world. It is the sadness that is not because of some issue, but a feeling of depression because of existence itself. It is the feeling in which one realizes that the reality of world cannot fulfill the desire of one's heart. This term was coined by a romantic German author Jean Paul aka Johann Paul Friedrich Richter.  

The contemporary meaning of Weltschmerz is the psychological distress of realizing that our frailties are the product of social, physical and circumstantial states of the world. The feeling of Weltschmerz may cause depression and may lead to social or mental withdrawal. Weltschmerz is the despair experienced when the world as it is does not line up with the world as we think it should be.

The word Weltschmerz, in my mind, always takes me back to Charles Darwin. I recently read his book, on the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. That is the full name of the original book; I find it amusingly long and precise. The book is more popularly called Origin of Species. The book was brilliant and the ideas in it were strongly supported by evidence and reasoning. Many of the common questions of creationists in the debate panels with Richard Dawkins, were first handledly answered by Darwin in his book. Moreover, I found Darwin's knowledge of geology was far ahead his times, he more or less explained plate tectonics. 

I, as a person living in 2017 with a world view on evolution as a given, cannot fathom the feeling of Weltschmerz that Darwin must have experience. Darwin traveled the globe in his youth. He was a naturalist on the HMS Beagle, a naval exploratory voyage around the world. He studied the geology and nature. He studied plants and animal life and collected fossils during his five-year-long voyage. After his voyage, he studied his finding on the theory of evolution. He didn't share his ideas with the world for twenty-one years. It was that time during which the world-weariness of preconceived idea of creation faced up to Darwin. Darwin was reportedly battling an undiagnosed sickness throughout his life. Nowadays, it is believed that Darwin's sickness was psychosomatic. He was raised a devoted Christian, during this time he was facing up the flaws in the creation idea and being accused of "killing the beloved God". This might have been the source of Darwin’s depression and Weltschmerz.

I think the life and experience of Darwin, even though he was brilliant and ingenious for the knowledge that he imparted us, was filled with the Weltschmerz. You may read more about Darwin and his Theory of Evolution here.  The reality of life and the emotional leaning towards the desire of how we wished it should have been ... is heart-breaking. 

If you wish to learn some more, awesome German words check here. Do you have a scenario that explains and represents the word Weltschmerz? Let me know in the comments section. 

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The Virtue Of Respect

The thing about virtue is that it is not objective. It is a factor of culture and era, per se the year referring to or under consideration. If it was the 1500s the morality would vary from what it is in 2017. Across the globe, the virtues that people believe in changes. However, in the current age of globalism, the virtue of humans is approaching a saturation point. We more or less have the same kind of morals in society, nowadays. It is not quite a lot segregated as people believe it to be, at least for the younger people. The internet age is helping in ideas come together and irate into an optimal moral code. On a second thought, the current polarity the world makes me think, umm maybe not. Maybe we are more divided than ever. 

Growing up I was often told to, respect my elders. So I obliged and paid my "due" regard to people who were older than me. As a grown up now, I found myself questioning should respect be granted based on age?  Respect: a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. It is not the same as a courtesy or a good behaviour towards someone. One may say it is the same, but then why should it be limited to elders? Isn't that how we should behave by default? In this post, I am digging into the "Respect your elders" virtue that we teach children. Is it the right approach? Do all the people older than me deserve my respect by default? No!

Politeness is a sign of civility. That should be taught to children irrespective of age. I have been "respectful" towards many people who did not deserve my respect. Now, when I look back to such people from the perspective of an adult, I find it obscure to fathom what I was told to do. From my adult judgment, some of those people were plainly grown up bullies to the younger me.  As a matter of fact, I am still in the process of unlearning that my respect is not depending on the fact that someone has spent more years than me on the planet. 

This idea of default respect is a breeding ground to tame people into submission. Children should be taught to behave nicely with everyone, irrespective of age. The underlying idea of taming a child to curb the questioning to authority is unhealthy. We should, on the contrary, make them question the authority. Respect/listen/obey the elders are kind of a classical conditioning, which makes docile adults for the authoritative society. Why would we want that for the future generations? It is dormant, even regressive. 

Respect has to be earned! It shouldn't be a product of relative ages. Everyone has had one of those mean aunt /uncles, a cantankerous old man in the neighbourhood or bully older cousins/siblings. A child should be made aware of the fact that not every older person is to be respected. They should be taught to retaliate and reject the bad authorities. I don't demand the people younger than me to respect me! That would be insanely obnoxious of me. I rather believe in mutual politeness and earned respect.

  

Do you respect people based on age or do you believe, respect has to be earned? Let me know in the comment section below.

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Ukulele Covers

Growing up I had a guitar, but I didn't know how to play it. However, I sure posed with it for pictures. I always wanted to learn to play. A few months before, I stumbled on an online search for music theory out of curiosity. One thing leads to another, I found myself learning more and more about Ukulele.

After a few days, I got myself a Uke. I had done enough research to theoretically know how to play it. However, finding one in my hand made me realize the value of practice. My grandpa always said "Practice makes a man perfect" to make me practice more in maths. I, in my mind, always had an excuse to that. I am not a man! ha! Nevertheless, I got the gist of it.

Since I started playing it I notice I was getting better. I am still learning ... I am not as good as Tyler Joseph, but I can strum a bit. I can pretty much play a few songs on it. Here are a few of my covers

A post shared by Karnika Kapoor (@karnikakapoor) on Mar 25, 2017 at 10:15am PDT

A post shared by Karnika Kapoor (@karnikakapoor) on Mar 24, 2017 at 2:34am PDT

A post shared by Karnika Kapoor (@karnikakapoor) on Jan 23, 2017 at 6:51am PST

A post shared by Karnika Kapoor (@karnikakapoor) on Apr 24, 2017 at 10:59pm PDT

Did I mention I am in love with it? Yes, I love playing my Ukulele.

Do you play or want to play any musical instruments? Let me know in the comment section below. 

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Train Of Thoughts

Welcome aboard!

This train of thoughts is brought to you by my brain, with a little coordination with my fingers. I wrote the prequel to this post, last year, for the post on "T". It is the alphabet that reminds me of the newspapers. If you haven't already, read the last year's post here. Old passengers to my train of thought must be thinking "So is this a yearly thing now?" NO, it's just a thing! I am not making a yearly commitment. I can't even commit to having a certain breakfast next morning! Basically, it's just the idea of not having a choice and being stuck with oatmeal that scares me. No kidding, even one of my frequent scary dream is all about, my college's mess breakfast making a dramatic entry back in my life! Back in college, I simply skipped the meals to break out of that routine...

I took a break after writing that one part because typing is exhausting. Especially, if you are an entitled and short-attention-spanned millennial. One message on phone and you lose track of what you were doing! Am I right? Or am I right? Back in my parents' days,  they had better; fill in the most baby-bloomer cliché here. Who cares! Time changes and so does the trend. Changing trends can be sometimes difficult to adapt to or get used to.

For instance beard epidemic.  The scruffy hipsters with a beard, you know there was a time when I found beard attractive. Now all the men in my city have beards and well, it is a nightmare!  You can't even distinguish your friends from a random stranger because they all look alike. So to avoid any confusion or accidental infidelity I don't date men with beard, in the current times of beard epidemic. Besides its summer of 2017 that means it is the hottest year of our lives, why would anyone want to cover their face with human fur! Moreover, there is another factor; I don't take men to be as self-caring as women. Selfish, sure that is not something dependent on gender. Yet, not shaving and grooming is just lazy! No offense to you, men, but if you want to take it be my guest and take all offense you need. It's free!

I noticed something on my dressing table. The thing is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Well; a lot of people online and in real also just categorically claim to have OCD. Without even realizing how it is to live with it. The romanticization of mental health issues is a fad. OCD is not just washing your hands it is washing your hand after touching anything that is not you! I do that, I confess. I even bathe three times a day. I have a thing for arranging things in certain fashion. I have a certain order of arrangement of products on my dressing table. That essential oil has to be next to my perfume bottle... why you may ask! Well because that is the right order in my brain. I cannot look at the bottle being next to my body lotion. I will have to fix it or else a section in my brain will be screaming. 

Essential oil is not next to perfume bottle 

I do the only thing that is wise to do in such condition ignore the screams of my brain. What are those screams? They are just a certain sequence of sparking neurons! I am far above those tiny neural synaptic sequences. Keep screaming I shall not re-arrange my dressing table because it is my dressing table. I shall keep it however I like. Essential oil is not next to perfume bottle. 

Okay, I confess, I am out of Ideas to talk about; I woke up tired and sad.  I don't know why it happens! I just woke up why I am so tired. Was my body sleep-walking while I was sleeping? Maybe! Everyone say keep a journal for your ideas. I do, the thing is I never open the journal to withdraw any idea. One day when future archaeologists will find my buried city and raid my home they will find my little journal take it the museum and display it. Students from future schools and universities will visit the museum ... Will they still have schools and universities? I think they should be able to upload information with computers linked to their brain. That will be more advantageous and economical. They will do their made up jobs ... I don't know! I don't know what future people will do to spend their times after having everything done by the machines and computers. Essential oil is not next to perfume bottle 

It is kind of a scary thought, right? What if machines gain consciousness and end up enslaving us. Imagine humans doing the manual labour and machines taking up the white collar jobs or whatever made up positions. The machines masters will lash humans with the future electric whips. That would be right out of a sci-fi book. Then one fine day, a group of humans will try to escape the state lead by machines into the wilderness. If caught they will be thrown into more awful labour camps or even exterminated. It is unlikely because most of us will die in the upcoming global climate catastrophe. Some will survive to take the human genome ahead and re-populate the earth if or when it cools down. After all, humanity is quite persistent to survival, I believe it is innate. Essential oil is not next to the perfume bottle. 

Essential oil is not next to perfume bottle ... Do you want me to tell you what would happen if you don't re-arrange the bottle? 

Alright, I am about to throw my pride and give in. The universe is at stake, if I don't fix that fucking bottle of essential oil and put it next to my bottle of perfume. It just keeps on pondering in my brain no matter how much I try to distract myself from that. So for my ability to completing this post, let me just fix my dressing table and save this train of thought from being hijacked by the OCD. Sigh! Once again I gave up to the compulsive thoughts.

Ah, the sweet peace of mind! I can see Lady Macbeth's trace on my window.  She has started to softly pat her paws on the windowpane. Lady Macbeth is my cat, alright she is not mine. She is a free cat who lives in our neighbourhood. She visits me often. We have a symbiotic relationship, I feed her and she comes to my one-cat ukulele concerts. Lady Macbeth, a new mommy to adorable little kittens, offers best fandom one can hope for. It appears, my strumming provokes some deep thoughts in her clever cat mind. I am happy to help the great feline thinker with my music.  Symbiotic! Uh!

 Lady Macbeth needs breakfast and I need coffee,  

Deboarding, The Train of Thoughts, 

Thanks for traveling with us.

Well then, cheerio chummy!

Feel free to rail up your thought to the train of thoughts in the comment section below. 

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Simulation Hypothesis

Are we living in a simulation?  

Anyone who has watched The Matrix may have an idea of what is the Matrix in the movie. It is a computer simulation of the reality. So the instantaneous answer to the above question for most of us would be; "Bah humbug! We are not living in a computer simulation”. What if I tell you we might be living in one? In fact, Elon Musk, himself said there are one in billion chances of us not living in a simulation. 

In 2003 Nick Bostrom from the Oxford University published papers citing a thought experiment. The experiment has the same advantage as an argument as religion does, it is unfalsifiable. Pretty much like solipsism, I wrote about Solipsism for my A to Z challenge's post last year read it here.  In his papers, Bostrom puts forward the three arguments and argues that at least one of them is true. You can read Boston's proposition in details here. 

• The human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; 

• Any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); 

• We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. 

We as species may go extinct before further advancement in technology. It could be an asteroid that hit our planet or we end up nuking the whole planet. As a matter of fact, Earth is on the brink of mass extinction in the light of climate issues; we can be one of the species that may get extinct.  However, we are in a very safe place compared to other animals, such as polar bears. (Read my post on polar bears here). However, the perception of a likelihood of this fallout depends on how much brunt of climate change you are facing at your location. My city, Delhi, is breaking the 'hottest ever' record every given year. Sigh! Still, some of us have more chances of survival and overall chances of human reaching posthuman stage are strong. 

Reaching posthuman stage will be marked by the integration of technology in our day to day life. The technological revolution of our era is enjoying an exponential growth. I remember when I had a lousy video game player to play Super Mario. It was amazing to the past me, such good quality! Had someone told me that in a matter of few years this would be ridiculously lame I wouldn't believe. Now the games are better and realistic. Many experts say that it will still get better with time up to a point where the gaming worlds like the Sims will be indistinguishable from the real world. Your player may even experience real distress on that "Game Over" mark. 

The odds are in favour of integration of consciousness into the computers. In the light of substrate independence, the current technology is making and attempt to "upload" the consciousness/mind to a computer. This technological advancement will bolster the chances of your player having a consciousness and independent thoughts. So, in future when you lose a game you may end up troubling the poor guy living inside the game. However, if that happens we might not choose to put such technology in use to trouble or little game player or would we? That is the ethical question for future people. 

Now, with the ability of computers, we already run simulations some awesome simulations. Check our Millennium simulation project here and Illutris project here. Over time, there are chances that, people will run independent simulations on their personal computers just for fun. It could become a fad, like one of those Farmville games. Now that we have given those simulated people the ability of consciousness. They somehow could evolve and built their own simulation, I know! It sounds crazy, right? Now, what if there is a chain of simulations inside simulation inside simulation... People, in each simulation, having their own set of individuality, like we do! Moreover, we do intend to make more and more real-ish simulations. At some point, we may want to see our history simulated. We may want to see the Greeks doing their parliament meetings. We would just make a computer program run the simulation to watch Socrates making his case to the people of Athens. That would be quite educational. 

Now that we know it is possible, in future, how can we be sure it is not already happening? How can we be sure that someone from an advanced civilization didn't want to see what earth was like at this very time?  How can we say we are not their simulation? After all, there are no grounds to prove that we are the ground reality. This is the Simulation hypothesis and that leads us to the last point on the Bostrom's list. We are almost certainly living in a simulation. You may check out this Ted talk by the Nobel Prize Winner George Smoot trying to convince you about living in a simulation here.

If you find this thought distressing, don't worry! It is just fun to have some counterintuitive thinking once in a while. Nevertheless, in the end, it doesn't matter if we live in a simulation or not. Our "reality" is already subjective. Our lives will go on just the way they do...

On a Scale of 1 to 10, (1 for we are the ground reality and 10 for this is a simulation) what is your point - scale opinion on, If we are living in a simulation?  Feel free to express your opinion in the comment section below. 

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