When we were kids the easiest things to learn were the ones which are clear!
Like opposites for example! Give a word and we would give you the opposite!
Cold/warm; Good/bad; up/down! You get the gist!
Then again when you grow up, you realize that the world is not so clear cut! That is a blog for another day though!
Today’s blog is to ask you this!
What is the opposite of LOVE?
In all probability you would have told, Hate! That is not the answer by the way!
There are two chief sources which tell the actual opposite of LOVE!
The first is a novel called Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky, which prominently features the quote and concept that “the opposite of love is not hate!”
The book is a scientific exploration of human behavior, examining the biological and cultural factors that shape morality, violence, and kindness. Sapolsky dissects behavior by looking at what happens in the brain a second before an action, expanding backward in time to include the roles of hormones, genetics, culture, and evolution!
Now as said in the book, Love and hate are actually identical and not opposites! The brain regions involved in strong love and hate are similar in some ways; so the true opposite should represent an absence of this emotional engagement altogether!
The quote is also popular since it was by a Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, which suggests that a lack of feeling or care is a more complete opposite to love than hatred, which is still a strong emotion!
Both the above perspective implies that while hate involves a powerful connection, the opposite must signify a total absence of concern, empathy, and emotional investment.
It is often used to highlight the dangers of apathy, as it allows suffering and injustice to continue unchecked. Even hatred is an intense emotion that, in its own way, still shows that a person or subject matters to you.
The opposite thus must be the complete void of any feeling, which is seen as a more profound opposite to love!
As a Holocaust survivor, Wiesel’s words were rooted in his experiences with extreme violence and a loss of faith. He argued that the lack of empathy of the world was what allowed such atrocities to happen!
The idea has been adopted by many, including psychotherapists and writers, who extend the concept to personal relationships and the human conditions!
Now do not love or hate me if I am not telling you the answer yet! The opposite of love or hate is what we all suffer from many times; It is INDIFFERENCE…
Then again you can never be indifferent to Dharam paji! He was not only a super man but also a great actor!
Way back in 1843 a Scottish woodturner tried to kill the British Prime minister! That is not the shocking part! He missed him and shot his private secretary!
It is still not shocking!
He was not prosecuted for homicide!
Now do not lose your sanity since that was the plea!
In 1843, an unstable Scottish woodturner named Daniel M’Naghten believed that the British prime minister Robert Peel and his Tories were following and persecuting him!
One fine day he saw Peel walking along a London street and shot him in the back of the head, killing him!
Unluckily (you think!) he got the wrong man! His victim was Edward Drummond, Peel’s private secretary and longtime civil servant!
At his trial for murder, both sides agreed that M’Naghten suffered from delusions and other mental problems.
The Daniel M’Naghten case was a pivotal murder trial in England that resulted in the creation of the M’Naghten Rules, the first legal test for criminal insanity.
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and his acquittal led to the development of the new legal standard.
The defense argued that he was insane at the time of the act and had a mental delusion that made him unable to understand that his actions were wrong!
The jury acquitted M’Naghten of murder on the grounds of insanity, and he was committed to a mental institution for the rest of his life.
The public’s dissatisfaction with the verdict prompted the creation of the M’Naghten Rules, which established that an individual is not criminally responsible if they are suffering from a “defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, so as not to know the nature and quality of the act they were doing; or, if they did know it, that they did not know that what they were doing was wrong!
The rules specially states that to establish an insanity defense, it must be clearly proven that, at the time of the act, the accused was laboring under a “defect of reason, from disease of the mind,” such that they did not know the nature and quality of the act they were doing, or if they did know it, they did not know they were doing what was wrong.
Even if a person is under a partial delusion, they are to be judged as if the facts they believed were real. For example, if a person kills another believing they were acting in self-defense against an attacker (a valid delusion for an excuse), they may be exempt; but if they kill someone in revenge for a perceived character injury (not a valid excuse), they are punishable.
Of course the plea must be proven without a doubt and also note that even if you are prosecuted; you still would be held and treated for life; not exactly freedom!
So don’t even try to act insane! Acting is best left to stalwarts like Vikram Gokhale!
The biggest issue of being a teacher is that you must know everything or at least appear to know everything!
Like if you want to be a coach then you must have been a great player! If you want to teach someone about finance then you must be adequately rich!
Even if you are giving the correct advice, if you are giving by appearing to be weak then no one will listen or follow you!
This is something mentioned by Plato ages ago in his famous work called the Allegory of the Cave!
I learnt about it when it was the clue for a NYT quick crossword! Knowledge can be found anywhere!
Allegory refers to a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a famous philosophical parable from Book VII of his work The Republic, illustrating the effect of education on the human soul and the journey from ignorance to knowledge.
The book itself is a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon, Socrates describes a group of people who have been imprisoned in a cave since childhood.
The prisoners are chained so they can only look at the wall in front of them. A fire burns behind them, and puppeteers on a raised walkway hold up objects, casting shadows on the wall. The prisoners, having never seen anything else, believe these shadows are the only reality and even assign prestige based on their ability to predict the movement of the shadows!
The change happens when a prisoner is freed and dragged out of the cave against his will. The light from the fire, and then the sunlight, is initially painful and disorienting. Slowly, his eyes adjust, and he begins to see the objects, their reflections, and eventually, the sun itself, realizing that the shadows were just illusions!
The enlightened prisoner feels a duty to return to the cave to share his newfound knowledge and free his fellow prisoners. However, back in the darkness, his eyes are once again blinded, making him clumsy and less adept at discerning the shadows than those who never left.
The remaining prisoners see his blindness and infer that the journey outside has harmed him, concluding that the outside world is a dangerous place not worth seeking.
If the freed prisoner were to try to unchain and guide them, they would mock him and, if able, kill him for his efforts! Again re confirming the fact that you cannot teach those who cannot be taught!
Of course it is an age old story where the cave represents ignorance and being cooped up in your own world! While the sun is Knowledge!
The Shadows symbolize the distorted, second-hand, or incomplete understanding of reality that most people accept as truth, based on mere appearances and sense perception!
Ironically even Plato’s mentor Socrates met with the same fate! He was executed by the Athenian democracy! That is the issue with a single thought process; any deviation is met with only death! Such regimes may not even tolerate art and artists! Like the super artist and singer Geeta Dutt! Even now her peppy songs will bring life and light in any darkness!
A son may not agree with his father which is routine! But this father son duo’s ‘disagreement of sorts’ made them both Nobel Laureates!
So JJ Thomson won a Nobel prize in physics in 1906 when he proved that electron was a particle! Then his own son thirty years later in 1937 George Thomson proved won the Nobel prize when he proved that electron was a wave!
JJ Thomson’s atomic model, also known as the plum pudding model, described the atom as a sphere of diffuse positive charge with negatively charged electrons embedded within it. The model was proposed after the discovery of the electron to account for the atom’s overall neutrality, with the positive and negative charges balancing each other out. The analogy compares the electrons to plums in a pudding or seeds in a watermelon! The crux here is that electrons are like particles!
For this he was awarded the Noble prize!
George Thomson’s theory, proven by his 1927 experiments, demonstrated that electrons have a wave-like nature by showing they could be diffracted through thin metal films, creating patterns similar to those of X-rays. This experimental evidence supported Louis de Broglie’s hypothesis of wave-particle duality and earned him a share of the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics. His work provided a key part of the foundation for quantum mechanics by proving that particles like electrons can also behave as waves!
So if you do not agree with your father, you may end up in a Nobel prize!
The current notion though is that depending on how you define “shape”, an electron either has no shape, or an electron can take on various wave shapes. The reason for this is that an electron is not a solid little ball! Rather, electrons are quantum objects. Along with all other quantum objects, an electron is partly a wave and partly a particle. To be more accurate it is instead a quantized fluctuating probability wavefunction!
Now the physics world is eagerly waiting for Thompson’s son to disprove George Thomson and win another Nobel!
For now here’s another son who can make anyone proud! Wing Commander Namansh Syal! You are a true son of the soil…
A big salute for those defense personnel like him who constantly protect us with their lives every day…
So you read about Eadweard Muybridge yesterday! Now this ‘man’ does not have to ‘explain’ it to you about today’s blog which starts with Eadweard Muybridge!
Now you also remember Rebecca Solnit from yesterday’s blog?
Rebecca Solnit had written the latest book on Eadweard Muybridge and at an event, a ‘man’ was telling him about Eadweard Muybridge!
He told her to read this new book on Eadweard Muybridge! His friends were constantly nudging him to STOP! But the ‘man’ simply carried on!
He told Rebecca that she must definitely read this new book which explains many new details!
What he did not realize is that the book about which he was ‘explaining’ to Rebecca was actually written by her!
He later on did realize it but it was too late!
After the event the Los Angeles Times published an written by Rebecca Solnit called ‘Men Explain Things to Me!’.
In it, Solnit recounts the above incident where the man repeatedly explained a “very important Muybridge book” to her, completely unaware and repeatedly ignoring the fact that she was its author, despite her friend’s attempts to inform him!
Solnit didn’t use the term “mansplaining” in the essay, but she articulated the underlying concept: the “presumption” that men’s authority and knowledge are superior to women’s, which often results in women being interrupted, doubted, and silenced!
The word “mansplaining” was coined shortly after the essay’s publication by an anonymous person in a comments section on a LiveJournal community in August 2008. Now we do not know whether is was coined by a man or a woman! Let us not explain that!
It is a blend of “man” and the colloquial “splaining” (from explaining), which already had a connotation of condescension!
The term resonated with many women who recognized the phenomenon in their own lives. It spread rapidly across feminist blogs and social media.
The New York Times declared “mansplainer” one of its words of the year in 2010. The word was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018, defined as a man explaining something to a woman “needlessly, overbearingly, or condescendingly, esp… in a manner thought to reveal a patronizing or chauvinistic attitude”!
The term gave a name to a behavior that many women experienced but previously had no specific vocabulary for, allowing them to better identify and challenge the underlying gender dynamics. The phenomenon itself is rooted in long-standing societal norms where men have historically been assumed to have more authority and expertise!
So men; you have some explaining to do! By the way there is another term also which you must know! Ironically not from a man like me!
That is “Femsplaining”!
“Femsplaining” is a combination of “fem” and “explaining,” used informally to describe a condescending or patronizing explanation of a topic by a woman, particularly to a man, often with an underlying assumption that he lacks knowledge!
It is patterned after “mansplaining,” but with the gender roles reversed and can also refer to a podcast or online content created by women discussing pop culture and other topics!
Like when she ‘explained’ to you that it is not blue but aqua! And she actually wanted azure and not cyan! While all these look only blue to you!
That’s the women power! Symbolized by women like Jhansi ki Rani!
After the apparent Men’s day; it is only fitting that the men explain! Rather let me do some mansplaining!
That is a term despised by many! Then again it is interesting about how it came about! Which will be in the blog tomorrow!
For today you must know about a book, a man and a woman author!
The book is called the River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West!
As you could understand by now, the book is about Eadweard Muybridge!
Now do not worry! In spite of a bad personal life Eadweard Muybridge has actually not much to do with mansplaining!
Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) was a pioneering English photographer and inventor renowned for his groundbreaking work in photographic studies of motion, which was a crucial precursor to the development of motion pictures and cinematography!
The story goes as late as 1872 when Muybridge was commissioned by railroad magnate Leland Stanford to settle a popular debate about whether a galloping horse ever had all four hooves off the ground at the same time!
Through years of experimentation, Muybridge developed a system of multiple cameras triggered by tripwires to capture a sequence of instantaneous photographs that proved Stanford correct!
These images, published in works like The Horse in Motion (1878) and the massive 1887 portfolio Animal Locomotion, provided unprecedented insights into animal and human movement!
To present his findings, Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope, a device that projected images from rotating glass discs in rapid succession, creating the illusion of motion. This early projector is considered an important predecessor to the modern cinema projector and was featured at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, effectively the world’s first commercial movie theater!
Muybridge’s extensive studies which produced over 100,000 images of humans and animals in motion deeply influenced artists, animators, and scientists alike. His work provided valuable reference material for understanding biomechanics and anatomy, and has been cited as an influence on figures like Marcel Duchamp, Edgar Degas, and even our personal favorite; Walt Disney!
Now do not worry! Once you get this information, the next part will be easy!
That was about the man and the book! The lady in question who wrote the novel about Muybridge is Rebecca Solnit! You can read about it tomorrow!
That’s suspense! What I like though are movies with lots of fun! Like MUNNA Bhai! Directed by Raju Hirani!
Wait for tomorrow but don’t lose your sleep over it!
This is a great book to realize how stupid one is! Of course you will not be called stupid if you read or listen to it!
Book review!
Audiobook!
Includes many sections of stupidity, assholes and the future of stupidity!
It is a fun ride!
The book is actually a translated book from French! Of course it is about stupidity!
One of bias discussed in the book is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a specific skill tend to overestimate their own competence, while high performers often underestimate theirs!
The book also explores why people, including intelligent individuals, act in ways that are irrational or counterproductive, often involving a refusal to engage in critical thinking or an unwillingness to question their own biases.
Key concepts in the psychology of stupidity which cater to these and other biases include:
Cognitive Biases: Stupidity often stems from inherent human cognitive biases and mental shortcuts (heuristics) that lead to errors in judgment.
Confirmation Bias: Favoring information that confirms existing beliefs while ignoring evidence to the contrary.
Overconfidence Effect: Overrating one’s own abilities, knowledge, and the accuracy of one’s beliefs.
Availability Heuristic: Relying on information that comes to mind easily and quickly, rather than seeking more comprehensive data. The point about Heuristics is elaborated more in the book and in this review!
The “Stupidity Paradox”: This describes how even highly educated workers may engage in “functional stupidity”—an inability or unwillingness to use their reflective capacities in the workplace, often due to strict adherence to organizational norms and thinking “inside the box”.
Here the author has given examples of supposedly intelligent people like even Bill Clinton and his fiasco at the time he was at the most coveted position in the world!
The psychology of stupidity suggests it is not merely a lack of intelligence, but a willful refusal to think critically, examine consequences, or embrace new ideas. It is often an outcome of cognitive biases, emotional influences, and social pressures that affect even smart people at times.
Another point the author makes is about Ego and Arrogance since a strong ego and lack of self-doubt can lead individuals to stubbornly cling to opinions and reject correction or self-awareness!
Also when she describes stupid ‘assholes’ she points out that there is an obvious lack of empathy and a reduced concern for others’ feelings or perspectives which is associated with more foolish behavior.
People may carry out harmful or irrational actions when instructed by an authority figure, abdicating personal responsibility.
There is also a information Overload & Short Attention Span which can overwhelm cognitive abilities, making people more susceptible to manipulation and simplistic narratives!
There is a whole section with q and a on why Trum$ is an a4s%%%! Luckily he may not read this book!
There is also section of interview with Daniel Kahneman and his book where they explain how because of two systems, people tend to do stupid things!
Here you get to know about heuristics!
Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in economics, demonstrated that human decision-making often relies on mental shortcuts called heuristics, which can lead to systematic errors in judgment (which can appear as a form of “stupidity”).
His work, primarily with Amos Tversky, challenges the traditional assumption that humans are rational agents.
Kahneman’s research established that people use heuristics, or “rules of thumb,” to make quick decisions and save mental effort. While these shortcuts are often efficient, they are not flawless and can result in predictable mistakes, or cognitive biases.
In his bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman introduced a dual-process model of the brain.
System 1 is fast, automatic, intuitive, and emotional, operating with little or no effort. It is the source of heuristic-driven judgments.
System 2 is slower, more deliberate, analytical, and logical, requiring attention and effortful mental activity.
“Stupidity” often arises when System 1 overrides System 2, leading to quick but incorrect judgments, even when the person is highly intelligent in other contexts. The brain is a “machine for jumping to conclusions” and often endorses the suggestions of System 1 without sufficient scrutiny by System 2.
This interplay of the systems can make even non stupid people act stupidly!
There is a whole section on how being a meat eater is being very stupid with lots of pointers too! At least I am not a stupid of that kind!
All in all a very good book on how not to be stupid! How not to press the already pressed elevator button! Why you should not check your watch five minutes after you just checked it! How you can be ignorant but still be ok but do not be stupid! Like the politician who actually does not understand stuff but wants to rule! How you can show empathy not only to your pets but to other animals as well!
There are many quotes attributed to Einstein in the book which are so cool and well, not stupid! One is that Two things are infinite; the universe and Human stupidity! And I am not sure about the Universe!
Another one is Genius and stupidity are two similar human traits but genius has limits!
These two are some of the best quotes on stupidity which the author makes all through the novel! It is funny and serious at the same time!
Another section states that you can be stupid once in a while and you will be! But what you do after the fact makes you either an a@@ or not! Apologize! In this the author specifically states that it should be heartfelt and real! Furthermore it is up to the person who is receiving the apology to forgive you or not! Do not be a stupid a## and make a half baked apology!
If you do not want to be stupid of course! Then again if you are at least reading this summary or the book, you may not be one!
Do you know this joke? A crossword enthusiast was sent to hell! There he saw countless books full of; well Crosswords!
He was so happy!
What is the big fear of hell he thought to himself!
Then he took one crossword book and went to the old ‘hell’ librarian and asked for a pencil.
The old librarian gave an impish smile and said, “That is the HELL of it my friend! NO PENCILS!”
I used to love the Cryptic crosswords of the Hindu but do not have access to them or much time for them nowadays since you do not feel satisfied if you cannot solve them completely!
So the NYT quick crossword is the solution now! It is fun and fast!
In the men’s hostel in our medical college, we used to wait till 11 am to cut the crossword and run to solve it! It used to be fun!
Now did you know that the very famous word crossword is actually a typo!
So the story goes on how the modern crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne!
Wynne published the first “Word-Cross” in the New York World newspaper on December 21, 1913. It became a popular craze in the 1920s, leading to the first crossword puzzle book! Wynne was inspired by an old word game called word squares!
The name “crossword” was an accidental result of a typographical error, originally intended to be “word-cross”!
After the first few months the puzzle’s popularity explodes, leading to a “crossword craze” with crossword-patterned stockings, musicals, and comic strips!
Simon & Schuster publishes the first book of crossword puzzles, which becomes a major success and helps establish the genre!
One of the most popular puzzles in the world is the NYT!
This was actually done by NYT for fun and reduce stress from war!
The New York Times begins publishing crossword puzzles, prompted by World War II, as a way to provide a distraction from the war news.
The best puzzles are actually the cryptic ones which were in Britain, featuring complex clues that require wordplay and lateral thinking!
The then Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was known to enjoy doing crosswords, as does the Queen – whose cipher ER is a frequent allusion in cryptic clues. By the 1930s cryptic crosswords had become more sophisticated in design: clues can be full or partial anagrams, double meanings and clues leading to further words!
If you thought is was simply fun, solving crosswords can actually strengthen short-term memory and long-term recall by forcing you to retrieve information and link concepts!
They also enhance analytical thinking, pattern recognition, and logical reasoning, skills that can be applied to everyday problems!
The act of solving clues requires focus and can improve your ability to concentrate on other tasks! Regular solving keeps the mind sharp and may help delay cognitive decline by engaging multiple brain regions!
It also provides a mental break from daily pressures and can be a relaxing and stress-reducing activity!
The satisfaction of solving clues and completing a puzzle can boost confidence and provide a sense of accomplishment! It has also been shown to increase dopamine production, which can improve your mood!
While doing all this you can also learn new words and can help you become more fluent in communication! Just like reading books this can also be an effective way for reinforcing knowledge in various subjects, helping to identify and fill gaps in understanding!
Just do not end up in hell with no pencil though!
Then again today is not world crossword day but apparently world men’s day! Which is ridiculous since I would like to see what a ‘man’ would do alone! But to keep the fun, which man can be reflective of a ‘man’ other than HANUMAN! For us though Hanuman played by Dara Singh ji would always be the top!
Now both ‘men’ and ‘women’ do sleep! Days will come and go! Work will always be needed to be done by both!
The novel Ayodhya Alliance tells us about this amazing technology in ancient times where the metal was made with a secret process which made sure that the iron remains rust and corrosion free for ages! A feat even difficult now with modern methods!
Iron was one of the foremost metal to deal with! It was the pride of the Iron age!
But did you know that even the classification was actually created by a intern without any knowledge of either history or metallurgy!?
The story goes that the Danish country in an attempt to uplift the country image wanted to build a museum and so collected artifacts all over the country and dumped them in a big room!
C. J. Thomsen an unpaid intern with no knowledge of archaeology was given the task of organizing them!
After one year of breaking his head he divided them into stone, bronze and iron! Little did he know that he accidentally stumbled upon the classification which historian use to this day! The stone, bronze and the iron age!
Thomsen, a Danish antiquarian and the first curator of the National Museum of Denmark, developed this system in the early 19th century while cataloging the museum’s large collection of artifacts.
He observed that artifacts made of stone consistently appeared in the oldest contexts, followed by those of bronze, and finally those of iron, demonstrating a progression in technological development!
The classification is based on the dominant material used for weapons and cutting implements during each period:
Stone Age: A period when tools and weapons were primarily made of stone, wood, bone, or similar materials, and knowledge of metals was very limited or absent.
Bronze Age: A subsequent period characterized by the use of bronze (a copper/tin alloy) for tools and weapons, with little to no knowledge of iron.
Iron Age: The most recent prehistoric period, where iron was widely used for the articles for which it was suited, superseding bronze!
Thomsen’s system was revolutionary because it established a scientific basis for the relative dating of prehistory, which had previously relied heavily on mythological or textual sources@
His methods, which included the study of associations between artifacts in “closed finds” (artifacts found together in the same layer or grave), allowed for a systematic and evidence-based ordering of the past@
The principles of Thomsen’s classification were published in his influential 1836 book, Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed (A Guide to Northern Antiquities!) The book was not in English!
The classification system has actually been mentioned couple of fmaous novels like the in the novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre) by Jules Verne! Even that was originally written in French!
This proves that knowledge is not limited to one language! Also proving that just because someone is good in English does not make him or her ‘knowledgeable’!
The system provided a foundational structure that remains the basis for much of the Old World’s prehistoric chronology, though it has since been refined with further subdivisions (such as the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods within the Stone Age)!
The end summary without digressing though is that just because you are a lowly paid intern working on a job of which you have no idea, does not mean that it is the end of the world! You can still make history!
You get upset about something and then you start Brooding! That is sad and well, your right! There is another brooding which is, well a duty and in fact a supreme sacrifice!
That is called the Mouthbrooding!
The phenomenon was thought to have evolved from a lack of nest sites or habitat invasion and predation.
Mouthbrooding is in fact a reproductive or more accurately a rearing strategy where a parent animal holds its eggs and young in its mouth for protection and incubation until they are ready to survive on their own!
This behavior is most commonly seen in fish, where either the male or female, or both, will hold the eggs in their mouth, but it is also found in some other animals like the Darwin’s frog.
This method is a significant investment for the parent, often preventing them from eating during the brooding period!
The primary purpose is to protect the eggs and hatched young from predators and environmental dangers. The parent keeps the eggs in their mouth, mixing them to ensure proper oxygenation and prevent them from sticking together.
You must understand the supreme sacrifice here!
The parent is typically unable to feed during this time, a considerable sacrifice that can also lead to a build-up of waste chemicals in their system! The point to note is that the role of the mouthbrooder can be taken on by the male, the female, or both, depending on the species.
The parent may gently mix or “tumble” the eggs in their mouth to ensure proper oxygen flow and prevent fungal growth!
In many cases, the parent will continue to protect the mobile fry (young fish) after they hatch, allowing them to swim out to feed and dart back into the parent’s mouth when danger is near! Just like the pouch of a Kangaroo!
Just when you thought you are a good parent! You learn about Mouthbrooding! Now dont go Brooding!
Good of course was actor Shriram Lagoo! One of the few sketches where both the person who sketches and the one he sketches are the same!
ramadocblog 