Religion became what it is known for today, being unscientific and devoid of logic and reason, when people stopped questioning it. When people started taking religious facts for granted. When people stopped asking questions. A fear of a similar fate dwindles science today. If science does not evolve, it will be obsolete. That  is why it is vital to science to ask questions. Physics in particular has seen itself being taken for granted. Facts after facts are being blindly accepted, ignorance, is poisoning physics. There is only one antidote. Questions. The Omphalos Hypothesis, popularly known as the ideology  of 'Last Thursdayism' is one such question. It is the hypothesis that considers the possibility that the universe was born last thursday. All the stars with their light in transit was strategically placed this way. The universe was made to look old. Sounds impossible. At first. We may never prove this theory. But the thing of interest here is how, if this were to hold true, it would destroy physics as we know it. This theory gels in just as well with the rest of physics as the theory that the universe was started 14 billion years ago. So why did we choose one over the other?
Was it convenience? Was it just too much of a mathematical hassle to go with the other theory.

So it was the average saturday night, I was out for dinner. With the walrus. As always, the walrus was late. He was supposed to come in at 8:00 and he was already 26 minutes late. After about half an hour of waiting, the restaurant door flung open, and in came the walrus. He was wearing a watch. You would expect him to not know of human norms such as wearing clothes, paying for food, wars, etc. but you would be wrong. The walrus was fully dressed. He had a certain stature to his walk. An intimidation. He would walk into a room and the crowd would be like, "Hey, whoa what is that, freight train of confidence." The walrus marched to my table and looked at me. He just stood there, and looked at me. He looked and said nothing. His ivory teeth were inches from my face. He blinked, and opened his mouth. He asked me, "Do you think I'm insane?" I look at him, dazed. What? What did he just ask me? But then it hit me. It was a fairly good question. The walrus was big. But it came off as small in the right conditions, and massive in others. He sometimes said things that were contradictory. He would say that things can't appear and disappear out of nowhere. Then he would talk about how electrons disappear from one shell and suddenly appear in another. He would say things can't be in 2 places at once, and then talk about some weird german cat. He would say that nothing is faster than light, and then talk about neutrinos. Sometimes, the walrus was just bonkers. He'd say that light travels in straight lines, and then talk about black hole photon sphere. He spent most of his time figuring out his relationship with philosophy the sea maverick. Sometimes he would strange things. He'd say the sea maverick was his best friend, and then say that the two of them can't agree on anything. The walrus was an atheist. He was a dreamer. But he was also a danger to himself and the people around him. A luring trap if I may. Countless had lost their lives to his tusks, Newton, Einstein, Tyson, Greene.
He had a split personality. Sometimes he was eerily sure of himself. An assumed paramountcy. At other times, he questioned his very viability, and felt entirely insignificant. He asked himself if he was just a fragment of imagination. No real substance. Tears would roll out of his eyes.
He was wild, often destructive, ever changing. Within days he would go from Einstein is a god to he was wrong and back. Like a finicky mistress trying to find where she belonged where no one told her she was worthless and is simply made up. The walrus was weary of his world, yet so dynamic and young. Hopping from one island to another, even two at once, his ship of the imagination would take him anywhere. Anywhere. Wherever he could imagine himself. He would jump and swim where he felt, and sometimes just sit by the fire trying to convince his fickle mind that his work here was done. But the mind, wouldn't listen. The mind wanted more, it was restless. It wanted to know how the world worked, because that gave him power. The walrus wasn't just one being. He was several. Constantly at war with each other, fighting, telling each other that they are better than them, that they are not insignificant feeding their own security. Running, scurrying, the rat race to a land called right. They all simply wanted to be right. What the silly walri did not understand was that the island was big enough for everyone. But the walrus was immensely stupid and frivolous in spite of its wisdom. That disequilibrium of the walrus's self was incredible to watch. One could spend years trying to understand what the walrus was telling them, and not get a word. Scholars made it big in life by teaching others what the walrus spoke of. But the walrus didn't really say anything. It just stood there. And stared at the island. The walrus of crazy. It was borderline mad. So when he asked if I thought he was insane, I could only think of one peculiarly interesting cat. Well all cats are fairly interesting, but this one in particular was different. So as the walrus stared at me waiting for an answer, I looked into his eyes and whispered, "Yes and no."
He remained unmoved. Just kept looking at me. Suddenly, he smiled and asked me, "Shall we start with some soup?"

The wonders of the quantum world.

Let's lay down some simple truths.

Things cannot vanish, or just disappear into thin air, by the second law of thermodynamics, the law of conservation.

Things can't appear out of nowhere for the same reasons.

Nothing can be at two places at the same time.

And then, there is quantum mechanics.

LOL. I'm too quantum for that.

Yeah. We have common sense. That's what tells us about all these facts above. So let's get rid of this presumption parasite. For that, we have to super small. Billions of times smaller than we are right now. By a few billion times. At this level. Here, common sense is like orkut. It works at first, and then Zuckerberg happens. Let's stand next to a hydrogen atom. Remember electrons? Those funny negative balls that stay in shells? You were told that they revolve around the nucleus, and they stay in their shells. If you are going to say this to a particle physicist, make sure there's nothing around that is throwable. They don't stay in there shell, and they are not balls. They are not  definite structures that revolve the nucleus, 'they' are actually just a weird fuzz around the nucleus. They also suddenly disappear from shell and magically appear in another one.

It's like going from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor, and not existing on the way.
In your face thermodynamics. Well, actually, thermodynamics is not violated. Yet.
So that's common sense folks. Wait, look at the animation again. Notice that red wave? That's energy. In some form. A simple rule is that electrons go to a higher shell when they get energy and a lower shell when they lose energy. They also exist at two or more places at the same time.

That's all for today.

"The thing about homework is, it demands to be done."
-Eve Ryhighs Choolkid

I am Daksh Gupta, and as always, never stop  asking questions.

How much do you know for sure?

How many unique facts could you swear by?

For me, the answer is none.

There are no facts.

Here's why:
This is how we prove things. We look at a theory, and make it a fact, when we are sure it applies in all relevant locations. Our knowledge, our as in humanity, is facts built on facts. We laid out some simple rules, and explored their implications. Any new piece of information is made a fact as soon as it complies with other facts. What if one of these 'fundamental facts' are wrong'? Wouldn't that destroy everything that we've built on the basis of that? That's where axioms come in.

People don't like it when we go to space. They say it's consumes far too much money, which can in turn be used for things like buildings roads, hospitals and other indigenous government-y things. They also have a million and a half other problems with it. I've picked my favorites from debate.org.

Why waste money???!!!!!!

Yes. It's expensive. Like north of $10 million expensive. It uses taxpayers  money. That's what average anti-JPL person would tell you. India most definitely needs money, and the Mangalyaan mission pissed a lot of people off due to it's high price and apparent lack of efficacy. But here's what I'm about to tell you. very few countries are equipped to toss twenty tons of aluminium and hydrogen even into lower earth orbit. But a lot more countries want to put things like satellites into the orbit. Therefore, they pay countries that do have space programs, to carry their payloads for ridiculous heaps of cash. For research exploration like the Mangalyaan, Many countries added their own tools to the satellite, in exchange of money. Rich countries, such as the People's Republic of China. That makes space travel like the corporate Robin Hood of our time, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.

It's too much pollution!!

So when carbon burns, it produces it's dioxides and monoxides. CO and CO2. But rockets burn with hydrogen.

It's not worth it!!!!!!

We spend too much

"Being a physicist is fairly easy. The challenge is staying a physicist without surrendering yourself to the infinite abyss of physical and mathematical theory."
-Daksh Gupta

Being a physicist is, as a matter of fact fairly easy. The way a physicist thinks is very different form the common man. Physics thinkers are probably the most liberal thinkers in the world. They have trained their brains to ignore the hardwiring and observe everything. And I mean everything. Here'e the definite guide to becoming  physicist.

1. Dump those textbooks

Education systems, in my opinion have reduced this liberating science into a junkyard of formulas. And that's the first thing to get rid of.
"Reading off a textbook is to figuring it out in the shower, what reading about forests is to camping."
-Daksh Gupta

2. Read/Watch this list (or the books/videos/TV shows in it)

Now that you have factory reset your physics brain. Let's load up some software on it.

• Read: Stephen Hawking's 'A brief history of time'
• Read: Stephen Hawking's 'The grand design'
• Read: Brian Greene's 'The elegant universe'
• Read: Take a break and read Randall Munroe's hilarious, 'What if?'
• Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson's ongoing sitcom, 'Cosmos'
• Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson's collaboration with youtube channel 'minutephyisics'

Hello readers!
I hope you have been enjoying this blog, and also my posts are encouraging you to think. I will unfortunately be unable to write for about a month now, as my school tests. While I'm away, I do encourage you to read my other posts, such as the Life, the universe and everything series, and 'For all we know'. As soon as I am back, I will bring you more interesting
posts. Also check out the new online app store I made. Here it is. Till then, peace.
Daksh Gupta

Or why Douglas Adams' notion of Magrathea and custom built planets is the most promising theory ever.

Standing at crossroads makes you think. The streets full of pedestrians, walking to someplace, to fulfill some goal. You see the roads we've built, the houses we've built. More than that, you see the intricate social system we've developed. I wake up i the morning, go to school do what I'm told to do, live up to society's expectations. Millions of people go to work everyday. Their all different, these people, they do different work, they have different opinions. But they have something in common. Something we all have in common. We all live under a common delusion. We ignore the world that we live n so vastly, that ignorance is not even a strong enough word for it. Our daily activities are cleverly designed to ignore the fabric of the universe we live. This is the great delusion, and this is what today's post is about. To take a break from the addictive exhaustiveness of physics, I spent 4 days doing nothing but biology. Mostly because I had a test coming up. During this time, I started observing more of the human brain, something I am known to do from time to time. Because only if you understand how you perceive things can you understand truly what is being observed. And I realized a fairly scary truth. Our brain has limitations. Physical limitations. There's things we just cannot imagine, no matter how hard we try. Take the universe for example. Can you picture a universe without planet earth? No buildings, no radioshacks, no Burger Kings. What about the world without matter? Just vast stretches of empty space. Possibly. But what about nothing? Can you imagine nothing? Not just empty space but true nothingness. A nothingness you can't measure, no lengths, no distances, no time, just true nothingness. You can't. The great delusion has hardwired our brain to ignore the universe entirely. Its like a system lockout, There's things like multiple dimensions, slowing down time, wormholes, that are just impossible to imagine, because we are programmed to just be simple social animals who have no meaning in the cosmic context, and are meant to make meaning to each other only. We ignore by design. Even physicists who have a fairly good idea of the workings of the universe almost always don't use that in real life. Our ignorance is so huge, we manage to ignore our ignorance too. The line between real life and physics is so blurry, its impossible to see. Looking at a man pass down the street, talking to his friends, maybe planning to go out for dinner later, and how much his ignorance towards the universe is. But then, is the universe really worth knowing about? It's what we live in. But so is my room. I never bothered to measure it out, find out what it's made of, where the wires run. Because how irrelevant it was to my daily activities.  Maybe that's the same with universe. Maybe humanity's morbid curiosity bears the seeds of its destruction. (Go ahead, quote this if you want to). Is modern physics needed at all? I don't know. f you think about it, the great delusion is helpful. It provides us with incentive to live on, as without it, without our raw, illogical instincts, we don't have anything to look forward too. It's puzzling, intimidating, but maybe one of these days, someones going to figure this out, and he or she will be the saviour of all humanity. Or maybe we'll just sit around, waiting for the advertisements to end so we can watch another episode of Downton Abbey. I am Daksh Gupta, and as always, never stop asking questions.

No links today. Come back later folks!

The world is a complex place. And we humans  tend to believe that there is one field that will explain it all. It was theology, some 500 years ago, Then, theology was marked unscientific and a wrong explanation for the universe. Physics replaced theology, and now everyone thinks that physics is paramount. How do we know it wouldn't come tumbling down, as the assumptions on which it is built are destroyed, like theology? After all we are to a great extent building physics that explains the universe on the basis of observations that have been made on earth. For example, the laws of thermodynamics. And the assumption that all effects follow causes on the scale of time. You can theoretically prove things as much as you want, but till when? Ultimately they are based entirely on observations, which is what separates mathematics from the other science. As a matter of fact, physics is often challenged, by paradoxes, or concepts that comply with the laws of physics, but yet contradict themselves. Look at Zeno's paradox, or Banach-Tarski.
But everything gets simpler when we make one lear distinction. What is? and What is it that we are observing? Because never has there been something so vaguely related to each other in the history of mankind. If you keep distinguishing between what is and what seems to be, you will make a great thinker. Only when you make that distinction will you understand is all of your ideas and everything that you observe is just electrical signals from your senses, a system which is surprisingly easy to fool. A UC Berkley group of biotechnology students ran an experiment on some subjects where they gave everyone a virtual reality headset and noise cancelling headphones, and pitting them in several situations, and recorded their brain activity and other parts of the body. Subjects you were subjected to antarctic areas, actually felt cold! 2 of their senses were able to fool their skin's temperature sensors. A system so complex is very easy to delusion. But then how do you know when to believe and what to believe. How do we get to know the 'what is'? Hence the quest of finding one topic that explains everything. I am Daksh Gupta, and as always, never stop asking questions.

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Time

1.3 Space

1.4 A brief history

1.5 Expansion

1.6 Only one?

1.7 What next?

So, Microsoft has rolled out the newest version of their computer OS, Windows 10. Here’s my first impressions. When opened, the desktop does not look particularly different in any way.

 The folders have a nice flat scheme, and the recycle bin icon looks different, but that’s pretty much it. The one feature I'm most hyped about is the fact that you can now open metro UI apps on the desktop, so apps like wunderlist and store are now desktop based. You’re looking at a cleaner and in my opinion better laid out and more complete settings app, and Cortana if you are in one of those countries. Swipe up with three fingers and all of your open apps are neatly arranged in blocks.


Another great feature is the new browser-Microsoft edge. The clean borderless look is a great refreshment from IE11.

 The start menu is back! It’s not excellent, but it’s not bad. Clean, translucent, and doesn't take up the whole screen. Thumbs up Microsoft.

 The settings app has changed. A lot. Looks great and has much more function coverage the settings from windows 8.1, where the control panel was always the better choice.





The UI feels more consistent in its style. Windows 8.1 often felt like using a skinned windows 7, as a lot of elements remained unchanged and did not match with the design scheme. File explorer added the recent files section, to show you the files you've recently worked on. Handy feature.




 Click with four fingers and it opens the action centre, for notifications and basic functions.


 So that should conclude the my impressions on the OS. Are you going to upgrade? Why or why not? Leave it in the comments below.

First off, a big thanks to all of you who read this blog, I hope it left encouraged you to think and question the wonderful world we live in.
Alright, back to the post.
What is learning?
I would define it as follows: It is the processes of absorbing information and allowing it to make changes in your system.
We have two kinds of memory, conscious memory that we can voluntarily recall and sub-conscious memory that happens on its own, kind of like background processes.
The conscious system is simple, relatively, it takes information from the surroundings, strips them down to what's important, and throws it on a shelf. I like to call this smart memory making. Yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time on that. So if this memory is not used for a while, it steps down repeatedly, until its lost forever. File Types include (.jpeg),(.txt),(.png),(.pptx)
Sub-conscious memory is more interesting. So as I said in the post 'Breaking down the brain', people learn from experiences, once bit by a bee, you will learn to stay away from them the next time. Did you voluntarily tell yourself that bees are bad? No. It just happened. The next time you see a bee, you will instinctively run away from it. This is true learning. Another interesting fact about this is how it is recalled. You may not remember what all is kept in your drawer but when you need it, you'll know where to find it. Incoming information affects the way you think. Watching the bollywood feature film 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan' (link below) will probably change your perception of Salman Khan movies.
File Types include (.exe),(.zip, some files which when extracted run a program),(.iso and .img).
Some .exe, .img and .iso files may also run conscious system memories.
System 1 (read the previous post on how we think) relies on subconscious or random access memories that are always ready to come in when needed. This is a smaller space.
System 2 relies on both kinds of memories. It absorbs information, and processes it based on the memories you might have. solve this: 168 + 73 = ?
You first read these digits, and use your mathematical knowledge to geometrical values. Like extracting the contents of the .zip file. Then you add the geometrical values, to get a rough estimate, which will later serve as a verification for the answer. the you run the file add.exe which you installed back when you were in 2nd grade, and gave it administrator privileges.  It uses whatever method of addition that you use and spits out an answer. Finally, it verifies the arithmetic answer with the geometrical answer, and sends an analog input to your larynx thus completing the sum. This would be so much easier if you would have had some extra RAM hardware, like a piece of paper perhaps. I'm Daksh Gupta, and thank you for reading. And as always, never stop asking questions.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan
www.youtube.com
Pranav mistry on technology
TED
And how a car learns
TED

The brain is complicated. I did try to battle that in my post 'Breaking down the mind' (link below). But, it's true. To make it clear, this isn't biology. Its theory of knowledge (somewhat).
We think all the time, sometimes we know it, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we don't? Hmmm. What's that supposed to mean? If you started thinking of intuition right now, I'm getting better  at writing, if not, now would be a great time to start. I'm going to try and make you believe that intuition is an illusion. Our brain is biased towards 2 things. patterns, and things we desire, and/or believe in.
It's happened to us, we wake up in the morning feeling that it's going to rain and hours later it does. Several times, more often than not actually. There are two explanations I can put forward for this.
    1. Your brain is biased towards things you belive in, which holds true when it comes to making               memories, to your brain tends to remember the times that your 'intuition' worked rather than the           times that it didn't.
    2. Thoughts that you had that didn't amount to anything fade away quickly, as if we keep running           ccleaner (link below), and efficiently remove unnecessary data to free up disk space. All that's             left is thoughts that did amount to something i.e. where it did rain.
That would be intuition.

Our brain, has two systems, one fast and instinctive, for choices where speed is prime, and the second slow and thoughtful, for decisions that take processing.
2+2=?
 You probably answered instantly, as system 1 took over, first because this information is ready and you've answered this question before too, and second because you don't have anything at stake, so loss would not hit particularly hard.

But what about:
Should I take this offer?
What's 223568 + 66727?
Effect or affect?
 These questions would take longer to answer as the circumstances are opposite of the ones above.
If you want to read more on this, read the book 'Thinking fast and slow' by economist and nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. (link below)

We think when we don't know that we're thinking. In the video 'the counterintuitive physics of riding a bike' minutephysics shows a great example of this phenomenon. Our brain, through years of experience automatically learns about classical mechanics and believe it or not, derives from its observations. We know how gravity does its thing. If you drop a ball, it falls and if you lean enough to get your center of gravity off of your body then you can fall over. And we also know, how we turn a bike. Do we? watch this video and continue right on. Click here

Did you see that! Your brain knew to turn to the other side! It thought about something subconsciously! you probably wouldn't know about this if someone asked you, even if you know how to ride a bike.

 But, then what is this subconsciousness! and doesn't it ask us before it does its thing? Check out these links, and as always, never stop asking questions.

subconsciousness?
www.youtube.com
The counterintuitive physics of turning a bike:
www.youtube.com
Thinking fast and slow:
www.amazon.in
ccleaner No, nobody paid for this, I just really like ccleaner.
www.piriform.com

So this was post 1 of 'How we think and learn' go chuck norris in that comment section if you like it, and keep 
a check for the next one. Peace.

In the following weeks, I will be posting 2 series of posts, namely 'How to think and learn.' and 'Life the universe and everything' which will be theory of knowledge for the first one, and physics and philosophy for the second one.
The first series will have 2 posts. One which talks about how we think, and one about how we learn.
the second series will have 4 posts, life, the universe, everything, and a surprise post in the end.
The first post is likely to be out today itself, and is just being checked for grammar. So stick around, and as always, never stop learning.
  

Breaking down the brain. Without the boring. J

Type of solution	example	computers	humans	Who can do it better
Pre-programmed	Adding when you know how to add	yes	yes	computers
Can be solved with adaptation	Android’s autocorrect	yes	yes	humans
imaginative		no	yes	humans

There are still many aspects of our brain that are waiting to be completely understood. Sub-conciseness, dreams and ideas only begin to define the most incredible machine on the planet. That’s right. Us