The determinism and justice paradox

when I came across determinism and the possible absence of free will, the whole idea just blew me away. The thought that none of our actions are freely willed but a consequence of previous events was bewildering. But the initial bewilderment was followed by lots of doubts and a sense of inevitability in our lives. Why then do what we do? why do anything? I was able to answer most of them by claiming it is an illusion we can't get rid of, we're so bound by it and the feeling of inevitability is also not free! The choice of not doing anything is also not a choice, by the same reasoning. So, might as well live with the illusion of doing stuff that we feel like doing. One major doubt I had then was the futility of reward and punishment in the absence of free will. Why reward or punish someone when he wasn't really free to make the choices that he did make. I initially had to answer that too with the simple answer of it being an illusion.

But, as I thought again I begin to realise that while the part of illusion might answer why we reward or punish, but the benefits of reward and punishment aren't really bound to free-will. All it requires is a learning mechanism which uses feedback from past outputs to alter the system transfer function, something similar to a neural network (which is modeled from our own brain!). Any feedback mechanism which gives more weightage to those actions that result in a positive response and less weightage for those actions with a negative response would benefit from rewards and punishments. It doesn't require free will. As I think about it a bit more, I begin to realise that a punish and reward mechanism is precisely what is required in the absence of a free will. A free will that is un-influenced by external causes would be totally immune to any form of punishment or reward. It is because that our will is not free that we can learn from our mistakes, as they become a part of what makes "us" just as much as our accomplishments.

The principle of diminishing moderates.

I somehow couldn't get myself to post here. I was hit by some sort of mental block preventing me to blog. Anyways let me get started...

I guess the general elections are almost upon us, so what better to write about. Somehow this coming election isn't something that I'm keenly looking forward to. Don't get me wrong, it isn't because of a general disinterest in politics. There just doesn't seem to be any actual signs of hope or change out there. I'm even beginning to feel a genuine helplessness in the Indian political system. Maybe it's the Obama hangover..lol! or maybe not.The feeling of helplessness is not in the intentions or the capabilities of the politicians but in the limits to which they can actually act to make things better. In hindsight, I believe we've had one of the better crop of leaders in the last government. I think barring Shivraj Patil and to an extent Pranab Mukherjee's poor social skills (not taking away anything from his other good qualities) most of them were quite capable people. And yet there isn't any sense of actual benefit they've done. I'm beginning to think the problems don't rely at the centre and not even at the state level, but at much lower levels of the bureaucracy. I think we need better town/city planners, mayors, commissioners etc.. who have actual authority and the competency to make things better.

I was a big fan of the BJP, when they formed the government in '98. I thought they were just what India needed and an answer to all our problems. Arun Jaitley and Arun Shourie were my pet favourites. But over the past few years I've begun to realise the problem with the BJP. It's not their political agenda, but the agenda of a certain set of their supporters. And somehow these "extremist" supporters seem to speak louder (or atleast heard louder) for the BJP than the many moderates. And something I've found out with the whole extremist moderate phenomena is how the former so easily not only outshouts but even absorbs the members of the latter. In fact, while writing this blog I actually got so carried away thinking about this phenomena that the rest of my blog is going to be about it.

I actually find this a very peculiar social phenomenon that has been repeated numerous times with different communities. Allow me to digress from the original topic of the blog to elaborate on this social phenomenon. It starts of with some event which stirs up the extremists in a particular community, say A who then goes on to do something vile against members of another community, say B. These actions offend and are condemned by all members of community B as well as moderates of community A. The extremists of B then go on to start a broadside attack against all members of A, which are met with opposition by even the moderates of A. The moderates of A is angered by the fact that a few extremists of their community are being considered as representatives of their community as a whole. The moderates of A, in retaliation to the attack on them also try and bring out the reasons behind the initial attacks, the "supposed" root cause. And this is in my opinion is the "turning point"! From this point on, "reasons behind" gets turned into justifications, justifications gets interpreted as the community ideology and from then on its basically every member of A versus every member of B. At the beginning both the moderates probably had ideals and principles that were closer to one another than the extremists of their own communities. But at the end, the sense of identity takes over all pretense of principle or ideology.

In most cases, these identities aren't chosen.. most people have these identities thrust upon them by virtue of birth and yet sometimes these identities tug at your emotions more firmly than any of the principles that you've learnt and imbibed over the years. Strange don't you think? But maybe not so strange if you think about it some more. Your ideals and your principles are mostly just in your head, not many know about it, not many care about it. But your identity is flashed around like a giant billboard, probably your name, or your accent or the colour of your skin. And it's almost like no matter what is there inside you, it isn't going to change the way people perceive you. Because they're going to mostly make their perceptions based on the superficial. You fight it to an extent, you shout it from the rooftops, I'M NOT AN EXTREMIST!!!, but it doesn't matter. And then you realise the futility, and you throw away the principles and embrace the superficial!Because that is the easy way out, the superficial wants you much more than you want it. It is going to accept you with open arms, you give it credibility, you give it legs to stand on and you slowly become what you hated!

Let's get this started....

Ok.. so I've finally started a blog. I've been wanting to start a blog from quite some time now... not sure what I was waiting for, but finally it's happened now at this un-godly hour. So hello world!

Basics first.. my current intention is to remain anonymous. My interest are in movies, sports, politics, philosophies, science etc... (not in any particular order) I'll probably be using this as a mechanism to voice my opinions on these and other happenings in and around my little world. I'm not sure about how often I'll be updating this, that'll probably depend on how much I'll begin to enjoy this (or not). I hav a quite a few things on the top of my head that I'd love to ramble upon, so hopefully it'll be a good start, but whether I'll be able to sustain it is another issue.

Tata.. till I'm ready with the next one!!!