the fall every one has to face

"Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile. We are all vulnerable and we will all at some point in our lives fall; we will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts…that what we have is special. That it can be taken from us and that when it is taken from us we will be tested…we will be tested to our very souls. We will now all be tested. It is these times…it is this pain that allows us to look inside ourselves."


Friday Night Lights; Pilot [1.01]

Dreams

It is amazing how sometimes dreams can so accurately portray what we fear, hope or expect. Maybe its the sub-conscious's way of making us more aware of our own feelings.

Possible Consequences of Genetic Transfer of Knowledge

Once while I was thinking about developments in Science and other fields and how each person has to go through all the work done by others before him/her in his/her particular field to start introducing new ideas, I just thought how good it would be if knowledge could be transferred by genetic process through parents to children. My first reaction was the happy realization that in such an event the rate of development would be amazingly fast and humans as a race would go so far in terms of technology.

But then I realized that the situation will probably not be as happy as I initially thought it will be. Firstly there were some other questions that came up in my mind when I thought about genetic transfer of knowledge: If the child would have all the information the parents have, would the child still be technically a child, at least as far as the mental growth goes? The answer that I came up with was that though children will have all the information their parents have, they still won’t have the maturity that adults have and thus would still be children, albeit very informative children!

Then come some of the negative consequence of the knowledge being genetically transferred. If genetic transfer of information becomes possible then the disparity between people who are educated and people who are uneducated will become extremely high and would keep on rising. Imagine two different classes of people. One is from the upper class, lets call him A, who went to one of the most renowned universities (mostly due to the tremendous amount of money his family had). The other is from a poor family, lets call him B, who could barely afford the minimal level of education. Now in present circumstances, the children of the poor man (B) could still study in good schools/colleges (they might get scholarship or any other similar thing) and hence they might actually come to the same level of education as the children of the rich man (A) would be. And hence the disparity between different classes of people (education-wise) is not permanent in the present world.
But now imagine the world where there is a genetic transfer of information from parents to children. Now the children of A would have all of A’s education and they would potentially be a full life-time of education ahead of B’s children. Now if B’s children, being from a poor background, fail to get good education as well, then their children would become two-life time of education behind of A’s children’s children and it would become harder and harder for them to catch up. This process will go on until A’s generation will become so far ahead of B’s that it will be almost impossible for them to catch up with A’s generation’s information level. It will almost be like two different species of homo-sapiens: B being the primitive and under-developed while A being the surviving and leading segment of the species.

And with this disparity, generation-B will not be able to find any work except for manual non-technical work (assuming that machines haven’t taken over such work by that time!) because employers will always prefer the highly educated generation-A compared to generation-B.
Indeed the world won’t be a pleasant place for people who will belong in generation B if the genetic transfer of information and knowledge ever becomes possible.

Rationality and misery

Very often rationality all the time can make life miserable.

safe from car accidents?

I often see people (in Pakistan) tying black cloth near the wheels of their car or hanging religious prayers inside the car, all meant to avoid any potential accident. Just tying the black cloth or hanging the 'prayer' gives them the comforting belief that they are now safe from any road accident.

Now imagine if every single person believed in the 'prayer' and every single person hung it inside his/her car; so if the 'prayer' actually works, there should be no single road accident in the world and that would be the best car safety precaution anyone could ever have! But clearly, this scenario seems to defy reason because we know that given the number of cars, it is almost statistically impossible not to have any road accidents at all - thus reducing the utility of the 'prayer'.

greatest fear

Sometimes I wonder what my greatest fear is. Though many different scenarios come close to being classified as the greatest fear, I realize in the end that what I fear the most is "exposure"; that somewhere along the line of life someone will understand how i feel, what i think and why i react the way i do. Indeed for me that will be a very scary thing.

to achieve extraordinary moments...

Scully: I, uh... actually, I was thinking about the- this gift that you gave me for my birthday. (takes out the Apollo 11 pendant/keychain and looks at it) You never got to tell me why you gave it to me or what it means. But I think I know. I think that you appreciate that there are extraordinary men and women and extraordinary moments when history leaps forward on the backs of these individuals. That what can be imagined can be achieved. That you must dare to dream, but that there's no substitute for perseverance and hard work. And teamwork, because no one gets there alone. And while we commemorate the greatness of these events and the individuals who achieved them, we cannot forget the sacrifice of those who make these achievements and leaps possible.

Mulder: ...I just thought it was a pretty cool keychain.

The X-files; Max 4.18