Lately i have been thinking a lot about the human brain, and also playing a bit of NFS Carbon....(now that i have a laptop which has 2Gb RAM and a 128 Mb Graphics card...ah! the sheer execellence of that.... beautiful!!!)... So these are a few of my random thoughts...
NFS Carbon has three types of cars, the Tuners: which can be tuned to give good performance; the Muscle: which have raw horse power and give u good straight line acceleration plus speed but nothing else; the Exotics: which are costly but look good and will perform depending on the players skills (My Fav - Tuners!!). In these types also there are three level of cars.. the tier 1,2 and 3.. each tier better than the previous one such that a fully modified tier one car will not be able to beat a tier 3 car...
THE evolution of brain has given analogous results.... the primitive brain is an unmodified tier one tuner car, good for nothing except the most basic sensory and effector functions. It will sense a danger and run for it. The next level of brain resides in higher animals and regulates and controls an increasingly complex gene machine, thats the body...its like the ECU of a sports car (albeit much better) which has to control a lot of functions at the same time. The Tier 3 brain is the HUMAN BRAIN. It is good at sensing danger, but better at avoiding it and even better at preventing it altogether. If it cant do that, it will "scout" better ways to escape (like the design of a cheetah,built for speed - might sound ironic but makes sense to me); else it will make sure that a "cooldown" spot is near by (like the absolute camouflage of stick insect!!), and it will always have a store of "nitrous" (The sprint of a lion!!) and "speedbreaker" (the stink of a skunk!!) for emergencies...(some terms would be understood only by people familiar with carbon - i wont go into those terms!! You will also notice that there are "semicolons" and "elses" in my "syntax" thats the c programmer in me blogging!!! :-) )
In the Humans also there are different tiers of brains....some are unmodified tier 3 Tuners!!! the saddest of em all. The best are ofcourse the fully enhanced Tier 3 Tuners!!.... Some are like the fully modified Tier 3 Muscle.... fantastic straight line acceleration but inflexible - read orthodox or brainwashed; unable to think or digest new information or memes - (some PhD guides can be that way, all terrorists also fall in the same category!!). These brains are excellent databases, they make excellent backups, once data is put into them it cant be erased nor new data put into them, there will never be any redundancy here and theres absolutely zero processing power!! (Yeah i take my Introduction to Database Systems course seriously!!)
This zero processing power unfortunately is quite widespread, for example my roommate has stuck some wierd symbol and geometric pattern on the wall just above his little worship corner, he says they are the symbols of Lord Hanuman and on meditating on that he recieves positive energy and better concentration. I pointed out that even if he meditated on a point on the opposite wall he will improve concentration and feel good (that is positive energy)..... he understood that and digested it... he is a tuner and i am thankful of that...
Some times i wonder what has happened to independent thought... why wont peole think about what they are doing and why they are doing it...Where are all the Howard Roarks?? The ability to question is inherent to Human Brain... it doesnt matter if a person is rural or urban, he/she must question, none the less rural people are more superstitious than urban... how strong is peer pressure a factor here?? When does a Human Brain "forget" to question?? Mind that i use the word "forget" not "lose" since the brain never loses the ability to question as is evident from the inspiring oratory speeches given by bent minds to bend more minds... there the normal peole start questioning and turn into a mob and then we see a more complex social behavior as a result of what is called as mob mentality... may be that is embedded in our brains and i see a connection to the herds of bison crossing the savannas...
Today i read an article in the newspaper giving the Muslim's view point of the terrorism in the country... in short a few black sheep have soiled the impression of the whole herd. So what can be done about it??? Why dont we attack the root cause and remove the Jehad clause from Islamism?? How can any war be ever holy?? What, as a people, are they trying to prove by killing non-muslims?? And now the situation of Muslims is even worse... now they are targetting themselves as is seen by the act of terrorism in Delhi and Islamabad carried out by the "Indian Mujahideen" (pathetic) on fellow muslims. Had there been an independent thought process all would have questioned the clause... who wrote the book anyways?? what were his qualifications and what is its credibility in todays context?? Many people might be hurt by these statements... i can only ask them to think independently...write their own book, for themselves. My views about Hinduism are the same btw, and for all religions... the other day i was asking a friend of mine her reasons for fasting for a month... she said thats what they do in Jainism....hello? why are u denying yourself? this Q shud have been asked by her instead of me... This is the reason why i am not religious, nor very spiritual...
Why dont people question???
BTW all these correlations, similarities and analogies between seemingly different topics is also a result of brain activity....amazing piece of evolutionary engineering!!!
8 comments:
well, you are right about the last half, and the first half separately. People should question first themselves, and then the people who put down the so called law. Now for that to happen...people who can be entrusted with the power of questioning, should be given the power of reason, or they will waste the time of people. they say...a fool will ask questions that not even a wise man can answer.
So if u find a herd of bison, or cow or sheep...i suppose its their way of conveying to us...we dont have the power to reason, we dont have the power to question.
Thats why some people rule, others follow.
Truely i dont know what to right on this topic.....Not tuned to answer ur questions...well da tuners u talked about who cant think is something i really agree...I see most people with no zeal from within to find an answer to things around us...As u said that its a evolutionary process..Our brains evolve in way we interact with our environment.IN such situations some people really have bad experiences or are truely exploited which then develops a jehad(or mob mentality).At this we can say that brain has capacity to understand what is right n wrong but since we have been victims of something people around us shud also face the same..This attitude is spontaneous.I wonder why the entropy increases for such process n from where the hell Free energy comes to drive such stupid processes with our hands...Truely as humans we dont know what we really want beacuse we think that our brain is so developed that it can do anything n this happens to be the main reason for our wrath!!!!!
I really dont know what i am tryin to convey..whatever came to mind i typed..plz excuse if u dont understand!!!!!
Anyways dude...gr8 going..develop ur theory!
Actually i see humans first as highly evolved animals.....when i compare them with other mammals theres not much difference actually.....
A lion will not only drive away another lion that tries to steal its females but also kill if any cub is born to another lion...
A foreign gorilla will be killed or atleast wounded badly if it tries to enter another group.
Theres a similarity here with humans.... with religion its like we wanna kill everyone else who doesnt follow this religion...thats wierd cause some individuals can be very liberal or have open minds and thoughts while others are so rigid that they are willing to kill their own if they dont follow their religion strictly.....
As u said even i am not very sure what i wanna type or what or why these things happen or comitted by certain individuals....
@ nikhil.... i guess only those rule who have the power to reason and others follow
talking about questioning...i feel ppl dont forget thinking or questioning...its by choice they dont want to think....they are comitted to be followers or they trust someone to an extent...that whatever the authority says is correct and so where is the question of questioning???
in case of terrorists they are brain washed...may b brain washed is the wrong word...since their childhood they are being told and bombared about the thought process their leaders convey...they haven't heard of any other thought...they are literally developed to be a terrorist right from their childhood...mentally!!!not their fault...if they are never exposed to just any othr thought process...!
@ sups....
i think the statement u make about "not their fault" since terrorists are never exposed to any other thought process...i find it unable to digest...
That way we would have still been worshipping rain gods and sacrificing animals for better yield of crops cause at some time that was the only thought process that was bombarded on every one....still today we have ban on human and animal sacrifice....
there would never have been anything called science today then... there were people saying that organism are created by something supernatural....still we have evolution today.... that the earth is flat, still we know its spherical (more or less)....
The strength of Human brain is in questioning.... its the dextirity that the brain possesses that has resulted in evolution, gravity and the water cycle...
Now when the terrorists are exposed to only 1 thought process which is somebody elses.... why dont they Q that thought process and create their own...ause they can very well do it!!!
Thats where the Q of independent thought comes in!!!
tell me, if we assume that even one of them questions??? then what, will he be able to divert or educate the others in his group...infact he will be asked not to speak hence forth...and extra efforts will be put forth to keep his mouth shut...so before the beginning of a new thought process...there is a end of it...!
with whatever you said i.e the examples you gave there is no disaggrement from my side...but that doesnt seem to happen in this p'cular scenario!!! y? do you think such changes took place...very few questioned...and they raised their questions without fear of dissaproval or other life staking consequences...and their argument was atleast listened too...and then finally accepted!!!
still it doesn't answer...y? normal ppl like you and me don't seem to question or apply simple logic under nomal scenarios???
See the point is not that if a terrorist treansforms into a peace loving dude that he be able to transform others also into that avatar.
The point is that every one should think independently of each other and justify their being peace loving dudes OR hard core terrorists...
And the thing about "once you have come to a conclusion independently are u willing to stand by it and to what extent??" is a different matter altogether, as in it can be a topic of another blog itself!!!
:-)
Still if u read my blog again u'll see that i have posed a Q - "how strong is peer pressure a factor here??". This is a definite cause according to me which drives Human behavior, more than independent thought....i guess thats the basis of mob mentality. If a terrorists independently comes to conclusion that killing is bad and he wants to stop, will peer pressure let him stop??
Similarly u remember what we were talking abt the other day : that hopefully our brains dont rot cause theres not enough stimulation in MSc (read bad peer pressure). Even Phadke sir was saying this only: that students actually go worse in MSc, i hope that doesnt happen with us....scary!!
But if it does i wont be surprised!!!
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