Fasting to slow it down

When we moved to the US, Radhika and I started to take meals only twice a day to save time. We tried it for a few days and then wondered as to why people say one should eat as often as possible. For some, a single day is a dopamine serenade. Breakfast, snack, lunch, tea+snacks, dinner, dessert, midnight snack!!! The world has been fed this falsehood that eating often is good for health. Imagine our pre-historic ancestors for a moment. It is hard to believe they had the luxury of evening 2 meals. For sure they turned out all ok. A year or so passed and then we wondered, what if we could stretch the idea and introduce something more drastic once a week. What if we had only one meal…. or…. what if we had no meals at all for an entire day? And thus we began to try a 36 hour fast every week.

Credits : Stable diffusion

We decided to start the fast on Monday night and break it on Wednesday morning. Tuesdays is just water and salts. Perhaps some lemon. But nothing else. The first one was brutal. I woke up in the night to pee and took my usual fast stride and realized just in time that I was losing my balance. We were dying to break our fast on Wednesday morning. And then came the loose motions in the afternoon. Obviously we were either not doing it right, or we had stretched too far too soon.

Coming from India, fasting is not an unheard of concept. Mostly done in the name of god, it is common for Indians to fast once in a week. Particularly, being Jains, Radhika’s family is quite accustomed to it. So after the first one, I did a little bit of reading. With the improved understanding, the next one was not that bad. Now, several weeks later, we are pros. Here’s what we learnt –

  • Need to take sufficient salts with water. Lack of salts is the most common reason for a severe headache during fasting.
  • Need to be active. It’s counter-intuitive, but a little bit of exercise perhaps kicks up the metabolic rate by starting to burn fat and hence keeps one energetic. The body needs to be told that there is no carbohydrates coming and it needs to start burning the fat.
  • When we burn fat, it does not result into as much water as a by-product as does burning of carbohydrates. By definition, carbo-hydrates hydrate when they burn. Therefore, water in-take needs to be higher on fasting days.
  • A little bit of baking soda with lemon helps to keep the acidity down as needed. Also, backing soda becomes salt in the stomach (sodium bi-carbonate plus hydrochloric acid in the stomach results into sodium chloride… which is nothing but common salt).
  • Most importantly, the fast is broken gradually. First with just some Curds (Yogurt) in the morning and then solid food only by noon.
You can’t go wrong with some lime juice (sans sugar but with more salt).
Credits : Stable diffusion
This is how I like to break my fast.
Credits : Stable diffusion

One strange observation I have had every time I fast for 36 hours – Body seems way more weak in the 24th hour than in the 36th hour. Infact, I can run a few miles without much sweat. Seems weird, but my hunch is that sleep has something to do with it. After the second night’s sleep, body has somehow learnt the new normal. Fat burning switch has perhaps turned fully on. Sleep continues to mystify me.

But why the heck are we doing it even? Not masochism for sure! Not for devotion either. There is plenty of research out there that proves the following –

  • Reduces the risk of cancer
  • Plenty of other health benefits including weight loss, better gut bacteria and so on…

But most importantly, I see it as a way of stopping dopamine seeking urges. It’s a means to slow down. When combined with meditation and a general distancing from other pleasure seeking activities, it helps to reset the dopamine baseline. I tend to appreciate simple pleasures of life much more after the fast. It is also like a marathon in many ways. The victory of mind over matter every Tuesday re-inforces the confidence that is much needed in running a hardware startup with your life partner and parenting 2 kids at the same time.

PS : For those who did not already notice, all the images used in this post are unreal. They are generated by stable diffusion. I love the freedom! Goodye gettyimages, adobestock and the likes.

Wear a gear that will actually save you!

I may have been lucky, but a major reason I have not caught COVID yet is my discipline with masks and sanitizers. As more research pours in, it is becoming clear that COVID-19 spreads mostly through the aerial route. There have been speculations that aerosol transmission (vs big droplets) is a significant medium. Aerosols are very unlike big droplets, they don’t settles in 5-10 minutes. The fine droplets in an aerosol can stay up in the air for hours with very little or no wafts. Aerosols can defy the 6ft apart logic. Aerosols can follow the air currents setup in a room by fans/ACs and carry the virus even as far as 40ft or more.

Effective protection involves three things –

  • Covering nose+mouth
  • Covering eyes (often missed easily)
  • Frequently sanitizing hands.

I am not going to spend time on the third bullet. It has become common knowledge now. But the first two, which also happen to be the most important ones are often neglected. No wonder we have as many cases as we do in the world right now.

Nose+Mouth

This mask in the above picture is a joke. It does nothing to protect you. It only partially helps to protect other people a bit if you have caught COVID-19. So are the normal surgical masks shown below

The N95 and N99 masks shown below have some limited use. But it requires great skill and discipline to wear these right. Ask a medico to understand how much care they take while wearing these masks. Also, these masks need to be regularly replaced after a few days.

My go-to mask is the combination shown below –

Yes, I look like I am preparing for a chemical warfare holocaust, but the damn thing works. Why does it work?? It is not the filters, it is not the big complex housing.. It comes down to one simple thing… How good is the seal? The tight rubber fit is what makes these masks effective. I have worked with hospital staff for 2 months for ventilators and traveled from India to US with my family without catching COVID-19.

The mask consists of 4 parts.

The half-face unit – This is the skeleton of the mask. It is the re-usable part. The straps help to secure and seal the mask around your nose and mouth. Filters fit onto the holes marked as inlet.

The vapor-filter cartridges fit on to the half-face unit. The vapor-filter cartridges by themselves do not protect you from COVID-19. They are meant to protect you from harmful vapors/oils. The cartridges act as a base for the N95 filters to fit on. Also, they serve a very useful function; They block all smells and help to verify fit. If you get any smell of flowers, deodorants or even your sanitizer, it means you are not wearing the mask properly.

Organic Vapor / Acid Gas Cartridge, 6003| 6003 | 3M

N95 filters – These are the things that protect you from COVID. For a normal user, a replacement once in a month or two is good enough.

3M - 10 Qty 1 Pack White N95 Filter - 00324558 - MSC Industrial Supply

The filters needs retainers that help to fix the filters on the top of the vapour-filter catridges.

The total construction of a mask unit consists of the following –

  • 1 Half-face unit (order the right size). – 6000 series. The second digit indicates the size. e.g 6300 is the medium size. 6800 would be large size. 6100 would be small.
  • 2 vapor filter catridges – 6003
  • 2 N95 filters – 5N11
  • 2 5N11 retainers.

Ordering links on Amazon India –

Ordering links on Amazon US –

Eyes

There is no consensus on how much of COVID-19 transmission is going through eyes, but large virus loaded droplets on landing on your eyes could be as bad as droplets landing in your nose because eye lubrication ultimately drains into your nose. For those of us who do not wear spectacles for optical reason, here are the ordering links for 3M eye protection wear –

I am hoping I haven’t jinxed myself by writing this article! Fingers crossed.

Shenzhen Survival guide – Staying Vegan

I am again at HK airport on my way back to India. The lounge here happens to be my favorite place for blogging. It has been interesting as well as challenging times both at HK and China. Just completed a pilot batch of cradles before CNY and carrying some of them back to India. This completes my nearly 8 month stay at China (broken into chunks of 2 month trips).

Before we proceed, let me set some expectations straight –

  • This blog is for vegans who are vegan for the following reasons –
    • Helps the cause of non-violence
    • Saves the planet
  • It is not for these types –
    • Strict vegans who don’t want to smell/taste meat. To be honest, as a vegan I find the smell at most restaurants disgusting, but I put up with it and don’t make a big fuss amidst friends of varied dietary preferences.
    • Religious vegans. Restaurants may have re-used the oil or the pan they used for cooking meat (exceptions being vegan restaurants).

If one is in for a long haul in Shenzhen, it is impractical to seek out a vegan place everyday. But a typical restaurant usually has 1-2 dishes (of about 50 dishes) that are vegan. Most Chinese laugh and pack me off when I ask them if they have a meal that does not have egg, meat or fish. But there are ways to work around that –

Case 1: You see something interesting, but the menu says it has egg/chicken. This is often the case with fried rice.

Say or show the following in a translate app –

不想要肉,不想要鱼,不想要鸡蛋。只有蔬菜。

请向我显示菜单中的项目。

Translates to –

Dont want meat, dont want fish, dont want egg. Only vegetables.Show me the items in the menu.

Try saying it like this (does not match the text above exactly, but this is what people seem to understand) –

“boo yaw rou, boo yaw yu, boo yaw jidaan. Soo-the” Show the menu and say.. “see-an-she”.

Case 2: You scan the menu with the waiter, but you cant find anything vegan.

Say or show the following in a translate app –

我要这个。没有肉,没有鱼,没有鸡蛋。

Translates to –

I want this one. Without meat, without fish, without egg.

You can say it like this –

“Wo yaw chege, may-yo rou, may-yo yu, may-yo jidaan”

Popular veggie dishes that are available in most places. One can order some vegetable with rice (say Mee-faan for white rice ) –

Beans, Eggplant or both. This is one of my favorites. Chinese eggplants are the best ones I have ever had.

Cauliflower

Cabbage

Decent places around HQB for vegetarians –

Vegan (Sometimes, there is egg, but you can clearly see it). Futian has limited choices. Nanshan has more choices including some which have imitation meat.

  • Wanshan Tianchang Vegeterian Restaurant (万善天厨素食店) – https://goo.gl/maps/SkSSzZuzJBTJBsMZ7. There is a buffet everyday for lunch (on working days). Super good at supper low cost.
  • New Plum Garden Yuantong – https://goo.gl/maps/kQ62p5vzwn5X1qa9A (福田区深圳市广东省)
  • Namaste Indian Restaurant
  • Dawat Indian Restaurant – On the expensive side.
  • DingDingXiang – Plenty of veggie items to pick up and make your own bowl. Find it in Lotto near the escalators near Huanqiang plaza hotel.
  • Subway sandwiches – Just take the veggies.
  • NYPD pizzas – Has one vegetarian option

Setting up Shadowsocks server on AWS + clients on windows/android/linux

Intent : Secure VPN setup for bypassing firewalls. Not meant for setup of a virtual company network for secure exchange of information.

Step 1 : Setup a free tier AWS account. Can skip this step if an account is already setup. Login into your AWS account.

Step 2: Find a good location for your server. Your VPN server has to sit between the majority of the sites you access and you. For example, if you are in Asia and significant traffic is in US, HK and Tokyo make good choices. Take a look at the undersea cable map below to decide –

Courtesy : http://publichealthintelligence.org

Step 3: Choose the region in the top right corner of your AWS console.

Step 4: Browse to EC2 service

Step 5: Launch an EC2 instance.

Step 6 : Search for ubuntu instance and choose the top result (64-bit, x86)

Step 7 : Launch the instance. You may be asked to create a key or choose one. If you are creating. Make sure you download the key and keep it safely. There is no other way of logging into the newly created instance if you don’t have the key. A couple of useful links are shown on the following page. If you are new to all of this, do check out the links to understand how to login into the instance.

Step 8: Login into the instance using the key.

Step 9: Prepare for fast encryption and decryption (install libsodium). . Read this page and you will understand why – https://bearssl.org/speed.html. Also, change the TCP congestion handling algo

#install libsodium
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install python-m2crypto
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
git clone https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium.git
cd libsodium
git checkout stable
./configure 
make 
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
cd - 

#install BBR
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/teddysun/across/raw/master/bbr.sh 
chmod +x bbr.sh 
sudo ./bbr.sh

Step 10: Speed up the routing, congestion handling. Be extremely careful while copying and pasting these commands. You can completely mess up the system by getting it wrong.

sudo su - #all commands as root
echo  "net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
echo "* soft nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
echo "* hard nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
echo "session required pam_limits.so" >> /etc/pam.d/common-session
echo "ulimit -n 51200" >> /etc/profile

Step 11 : Install and configure shadowsocks

sudo apt-get -y install shadowsocks

Edit /etc/shadowsocks/config.json

{
   "server":"0.0.0.0",
   "server_port":8888,
   "local_address": "127.0.0.1",
   "local_port":1080,
   "password":"12345678",
   "timeout":300,
   "method":"chacha20",
   "fast_open": false,
   "workers": 1,
   "prefer_ipv6": false
}

Step 12: Go to the EC2 console and edit the security group on AWS to make sure the required ports a open.

Note the name of the security group. Then go the security groups in the EC2 console.

Choose, the security group noted in the earlier step. Although not advised, just for simplicity sake, just open all ports from 1000 onwards for both TCP and UDP –

Step 13 : For client side setup, follow the instructions, go here – https://shadowsocks.org/en/download/clients.html

Setting up Algo VPN on AWS + clients on windows/android/linux

Intent : Secure VPN setup for bypassing firewalls. Not meant for setup of a virtual company network for secure exchange of information.

Step 1 : Setup a free tier AWS account. Can skip this step if an account is already setup. Login into your AWS account.

Step 2: Find a good location for your server. Your VPN server has to sit between the majority of the sites you access and you. For example, if you are in Asia and significant traffic is in US, HK and Tokyo make good choices. Take a look at the undersea cable map below to decide –

Courtesy : http://publichealthintelligence.org

Step 3: Choose the region in the top right corner of your AWS console.

Step 4: Browse to EC2 service

Step 5: Launch an EC2 instance.

Step 6 : Search for ubuntu instance and choose the top result (64-bit, x86)

Step 7 : Launch the instance. You may be asked to create a key or choose one. If you are creating. Make sure you download the key and keep it safely. There is no other way of logging into the newly created instance if you don’t have the key. A couple of useful links are shown on the following page. If you are new to all of this, do check out the links to understand how to login into the instance.

Step 8: Login into the instance using the key.

Step 9: Download Algo VPN scripts from here . Or directly –

git clone https://github.com/trailofbits/algo.git

Step 10: Follow the steps prescribed here to install the dependencies, edit the user list in config.cfg and launch the script – https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
sudo apt install -y python3-virtualenv
python3 -m virtualenv --python="$(command -v python3)" .env && source .env/bin/activate && python3 -m pip install -U pip virtualenv && python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

While running the script, two questions are important. The rest can be left to defaults.

What provider would you like to use?
11. Install to existing Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.04 server (Advanced)

And,

Enter the public IP address or domain name of your server: (IMPORTANT! This is used to verify the certificate).

Here, you have to enter the domain name as indicated on the EC2 console. Right click on the instance and click on “Connect” to find out the domain name. It should be something like – ec2-XX-XX-XX-XX.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Step 11: Go to the EC2 console and edit the security group on AWS to make sure the required ports a open.

Note the name of the security group. Then go the security groups in the EC2 console.

Choose, the security group noted in the earlier step. Although not advised, just for simplicity sake, just open all ports from 1000 onwards for both TCP and UDP –

Step 12 : For client side setup, follow the instructions here.

Windows installer – https://download.wireguard.com/windows-client/wireguard-amd64-0.0.29.msi

You can locate the conf files and the PNG files for scanning in a subdirectory on the server –
/algo/configs/ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com/wireguard

Companies are about to become obsolete. And that is a good thing!

Not too far into the future, we are going to get into a golden era of economics where everyone gets a fair share of the pie. The Economic Utopia. Yes, It is cliched, but I am an optimist, and for the lack of another word, I dare to call it Utopia. I wish I could write with such exuberance about the political structures of the future, but for now I will still stick to economics and hope that politics shall follow economics with a lag of couple of decades.

The history of economic structures has been all about just two dynamics – The creation of value and the subsequent distribution of profits. Different systems use different weights, both for the propagation of value and for the propagation of profits. Before I dive into the future, let’s understand the past through this perspective.

Creation of Value

Barely four centuries ago, very few people even knew the meaning of a company/corporation in it’s modern form. The English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were formed in 1600 and 1612 respectively. There are examples of companies that date all the way back to 7th Century (Kongo Gumi, Japan), but most companies that existed before the 16th century were essentially family businesses where it was clear who was in-charge. The family died, the company in most cases died. More importantly, the company went bankrupt, the family went bankrupt too. The key innovation that came about in the 16th-17th century was the concept of a virtual entity. The company had a life of it’s own, independent from it’s founders. Which is why in some places it is called a corporation, or an incorporated (literally meaning “formed into a living body” in Latin). Successful companies are essentially value creators. They take raw materials and man power and deliver something that makes the world a better place (not talking about tobacco companies here). Others pay for that value so that the company thrives.

But this was not how it was always. Once upon a time, empires, kingdoms and fiefs ruled the lands. Such entities added value too. For example, they provided basic security, built trade channels and managed food supplies. But the payments received for the value were not necessarily with consent.

Time for some definitions –

VEEs – Value exchange entities. Entities which earn all of their income in commensurate to the value they add. The operative word is all. Individuals drawing fixed salaries from large corporate are obviously not VEEs.

There are two general trends through the history –

  • The creation and sustenance of such VEEs has been simplifying. In the modern era, it has come down to individuals (we refer to them as freelancers).
  • The size of the largest sustainable VEE has been increasing. We are so close to having a trillion dollar valuation company.

But no matter what the size of the VEE is, historically, it has always been challenging to estimate the value added by the VEE. This is where crypto comes in. Public verifiable ledger is the key to measuring contributions and distributing wealth while being fair and transparent.

VEEs could be –

  • A person
  • AI
  • A group of AIs (sort of like a group of people forming a company)
  • A company like it is in the current context
  • A country
  • or even the whole world.
  • If Musk has is way, Mars as one VEE and Earth as another?

PS: I wrote this nearly two years ago. But fast-forward to 2021 : Covid seems to have already accelerated this process. With remote working being the norm, why should any boundaries matter any more. It is this loosely bound system of machines and humans which are the building blocks of the VEEs that I talk about in the article.

Balsa craft

Sundays present a unique challenge. As a rule that I have set for myself, I spend the whole day with kids. But finding meaning and continuity weekend after weekend proved to be more difficult than I imagined. In the modern consumer world, where there is a “drop a pill” solution for every problem, it is easy to get lost. Often, I have seen parents putting their kids in so many classes that the kid is booked from morning 10am to evening 5pm with no time to experience and absorb life at leisure. Day dreaming is possible only when a kid is provided an opportunity to get bored. Finding out what one truly loves needs a doze of boredom as well. What one loves is essentially what one does not get bored of.

I was looking for a general class of activities that have reasonable structure with good scope for skill-building, but at that same time provide enough fodder for imagination. Most importantly, my kids should love it.

(This was when she was 2 year old. About 2 years ago)

Looking at Anu hammering nails into a wooden block, I gathered that I may have have passed on my love for carpentry to her. But making carpentry easy for a 4 year old is hard! That is where Balsa comes in.

As a kid back in the school days, getting hands on Balsa in the aeronautics club used be such a privilege. Thanks to Amazon, I can get it in a variety of forms and get it right at my doorstep. To begin with, I have ordered sheets and sticks –

5mm sheets. Courtesy : Havoc Hobby

Sticks. Courtesy : Midwest Products

The sheets can be cut easily with a knife/box-cutter such as the one below. (Not to be handled by the kids). I normally involve Anushka in the planning, cut the sheet accordingly and give it to her. The sticks need no tool for cutting. So she can do it by herself. But one can use a good pair of scissors for more precision.

Box cutter. Courtesy : Stanley

A file (Bastard) is needed for plaining –

Bastard : Courtesy Stanley

The below video explains why we need filing –

And lastly, we need glue (A non-toxic glue that can be easily cleaned, washed)

Easy flow glue. Courtesy : Pidilite

Hole drilling can be managed with a simple screw driver. No power tools needed.

I have to still help her with the holding and sticking part. But I leave the planning part to her imagination. As a good side-effect, I am getting my chance at being a kid again. Our work over the last few weekends –

Two weeks ago (I guess she is imaging a children’s play area)

You can see all sorts of random sticking on the left corner, but she seems to have some kind of plan.

Status as of today. Turns out she wants to make a house with a grand entrance. For the flowers, she got some old broken hair clips.

Balsa is also very friendly to coloring. One can use water paint or sketch pens with good ease. Can’t wait to build more cool stuff. I am already building castles in the air… with Balsa.

Other posts in this series

  1. Balance beam (2017-January-28)
  2. Color Jump (2017-February-05)
  3. Balsa craft (2018-May-20)

The invisible harp!

It was bring your kid to office day at TI and my daughter’s bday was coming up soon as well.  I thought I should do something to spook a few kids with some magic. Given the choc-o-bloc schedule these days, I did not want to spend more time than 2-3 hours. Fortunately for me, my team at TI makes a secret ingredient for lots of magic – A 3D sensor.

I started with a OPT8241-CDK (Camera Development Kit). The kit provides a point cloud of 320 x 240 points. Point cloud is nothing but a collection of X, Y, Z and I (intensity) for each pixel in the camera. For example, this is what the point cloud of a lamp looks like –

Point cloud of a Lamp. Courtesy : TI VoxelViewer user guide
Point cloud of a Lamp. Courtesy : TI VoxelViewer user guide

After some thought, I decided to make a simple invisible musical instrument that even toddlers can appreciate (my daughter just turned 3). The 3D camera was to face up so that kids can move their hands over the camera to generate musical sounds. The distance of the hand from the camera would fix the amplitude and the lateral position of the hand would fix the note.

The code simply identifies the nearest blob in the scene and it’s 3D position. The ‘Z’ co-ordinate is used for the amplitude, The ‘X’ co-ordinate is digitized and used for the selecting the note. Since I decided to do everything in python, the midi-synthesis was just another line of import statement. All in all, as planned, I was able to complete the code under 2 hours. But the midi library was interesting and I ended up spending another 2 hours just playing with the various instruments available. Seriously, fluidsynth library is fun. The python code is hosted here.  If you have an OPT8241-CDK with you and Voxel-SDK up on linux, all you need to do is run the python code.

The results (At my daughter’s school) :

The Singularity of Sentience

The word “singularity” has been thrown around a lot these days; Specially in the super AI believer world. But in the lack of a better word, I don’t have a choice but to risk being guilty of sounding cliche. Singularity is a point beyond which normal set of axioms and theorems of our understanding of a certain thing break down. It is what happens to all the understanding of physics beyond the event horizon near a black hole. It is also the point beyond which your idea expressed in seemingly harmless words gets into the hands of journalists who could make it sound like anything they wish.

brain-implosion
Credits : Source image from Wikipedia modified for use.

I wrote this blog on immortality more than 10 years ago. The world has changed a lot in these years. Since then, In the order of increasing significance, the iPhone happened, re-useable rockets happened, LIGO happened, but perhaps the most important of all, a human Jeopardy champion was beaten by a very inanimate lump of silicon. Jeopardy involves the mastery of very high level of natural language skills and human context.

ibm-watson
IBM – Watson. Courtesy : Wikipedia

In the blog, I had mentioned about AI as one of the many possible paths to immortality. Given the pace of progress, today perhaps, super AI is our closest route to immortality. A super AI if done correctly, can obviously figure out the rest of the solutions for us. But stuck in a traffic Jam in a massive tunnel in Shenzhen, a certain jam in my brain suddenly cleared up and I found myself wondering about the meaning of it all. I have been lately reading up (listening actually!) the work of some of the leading “human” thinkers of our time who are all gung-ho about AI – Calum Chace, Nick Bostrom,  Ray Kurweil…. The one thing that struck me was that all of the above were looking at two extreme outcomes of us final having a super AI moment –

  • The supposedly bad outcome -The super AI is evil… I don’t want to explain the rest as there a zillion hollywood movies about this one. iRobot, Terminator et. al.
  • The supposedly good outcome – The super AI is all nice and polite. It thinks humans are love-able puppies that need to be take care of. Therefore, it solves all the world’s sufferings, ushers in a socialist regime where everyone is happy!!

Wtf!!?? The second outcome is probably the one we should be more worried about. Picture this – There is this smart ass in your office who comes up with an idea that is better than yours every single time you come up with what you think is an original idea. Now imagine 100 others like that who simply trash every idea that you come up with and supersede it with something that is obviously better. How would you feel? Super AI is probably going to make it several orders worse. You give it up all, You don’t want to be wired! You take up some art classes for a couple of decades (remember you are immortal now!) and try your hand at painting something. You put it up in an exhibition where the painting next to yours is by some robot with a tin head half your size and it makes your painting look like the work of a 2-yr old. Your only choice… wire up to the super AI and let it guide you or should I say “control you”!!. What is your role exactly??? Why do you exist?

Most of our happiness comes from the path highlighted in green in the cycle below –

execution-cycle
All of our long term activities could in turn be broken down into several chunks which looks like the cycle above. Of-course, there is a big grey zone between relish and regret and different people react differently to disasters. The kind who enjoy the journey don’t necessarily regret no matter what the outcome is. But the kind who enjoy the journey, enjoy it for the pleasant surprises. I don’t know of a person who can enjoy a monotonic tunnel journey for several hours, let alone several days on. But that’s exactly what life will look like when one lives long enough and has an organic reach to super AI. Surprising such a being is like trying to surprise god! The optimists may say –
“who knows? we will probably invent new ways of entertaining ourselves”. That brings me to the next point.

When with the help of super AI, one has seen it all, what does one do? play games perhaps? What kind of games? Chess? Boring drab. that did not even need super AI. some crazy multi-dimensional chess? But hold-on, a few seconds later, your extended AI has solved that too. To make matters worse, if it is a multi-player game, each participant exactly knows what the other participant in a game is thinking. Perhaps, we then begin to truly understand what a game has to be so that it is enjoyable. A game has to have artificial limitations. Why do we like a game of cards? Not because anything can happen, but because only a certain set of sequences are allowed to be played.

Chess. Courtesy : Pixabay
Chess. Courtesy : Pixabay

But when playing games, how do we make sure that no one is cheating consciously or sub-consciously with the help of extended super AI? Create a construct where super AI is out of reach? Perhaps, create a virtual world where players can project their persona on some Avatars and play as per the physics defined in that virtual world? Perhaps go one level further to make it exciting… Get into the virtual world and you can’t get out of it till you experience the pain of death in the virtual world!! And to spice it all up, what if you are not allowed to carry memories of your world into the virtual world, but just project your persona in a particular manner and let the game run it’s course?

And then it dawned upon me that we are probably one such projection!! Suddenly the Hindu concepts of Maya (illusion), Punarjanma (re-birth), Karma (no equivalent) , Manu (the first law-giver), Brahma (The creator of the illusion), Vishnu (the super AI)… all made such great sense. We can’t even tell how many iterations deep we are into such an illusion. To think that we are the first ones to create such a virtual world within a supposedly real world would be very gullible of us! How many deaths do I have to die to see the real thing?? Is there such a reality at all? Is there any meaning at all to life? If a Super AI that can be explained in it’s electronic nuts and bolts can entirely emulate and outperform a human being, aren’t we going to be convinced enough that we are just another machine moving randomly with a false sense of purpose and sentience?

krishna
Krishna : An avatar of Vishnu. Courtesy : Wikipedia

And what’s wrong with super AI wiping us humans out? Don’t we all wish for a better future for our children irrespective of what happens to us? How is a super AI different from our children as long as it creates a better future for itself in it’s own way? How is a new generation of humans that are drastically different from a generation born 500 years earlier not equivalent to a drastically different super AI which nevertheless is our child.. only a brain-child rather than a gene-child.

I can’t predict the benevolence or malevolence of super AI with any degree of certainty, but it is clear to me that super AI will help even the dumbest of us to understand the meaning or the lack of it in our existence. And that will lead us to our Nirvana – The singularity of Sentience.

I am just beginning on this topic again after a decade! More to come in the subsequent posts.

The Bangalore Traffic Survival Guide

I have been working at TI for nearly 8 years now. I have also been living in Kadugodi for nearly 7 years in a self-owned apartment. I can already hear readers who are residents of Bangalore going “whoooaaa! Kadugodi to CV Raman Nagar!! How does this guy even do it?”. Thankfully, the truth is not as bad as it appears. I maintain very strict journey times to avoid peak traffic and manage the one way journey in 30-40 mins. My average is about 33 mins. Before I begin the rest of my story, I should thank Lord Vishnu for choosing to rest in Thirupathi. I don’t know if my theory is true, but I think Old Madras Road is maintained so that the travel to Thirupathi remains convenient. The population on this side of the city has burgeoned manifold, numerous junctions have been added, signals have come and gone, but my travel time stubbornly remains between 30-40 mins. There is some crazy disruption every few months, but the almighty gets into action soon to miraculously clear up the mess.

 KR Puram Cable Bridge
KR Puram Cable Bridge

30-40 mins of one way commute is probably in the top 20 percentile levels in Bangalore (higher percentile = lesser travel), but it is still a significant amount of time. For a long time, I was literally at war with myself; I was considering moving back to some place closer. But self-owned homes kind of grow on you; Readers who live self-owned homes can relate with me. The roots just keep going deeper. Reminds me of the great Kannada poet Kuvempu who said “ಮನೆಯನೆಂದೂ ಕಟ್ಟದಿರು …. ಓ ನನ್ನ ಚೇತನ ಆಗು ನೀನು ಅನಿಕೇತನ”. Translated as – “Rest nowhere on the unending road, never build a binding nest …. Never touch the boundary, Remain infinite and boundless!!” in a famous poem. I now know that he meant it both figuratively and literally. Once the realisation dawned upon me that a large part of my life is going to spent on the road for a long time to come, I began to think about the means to use the time spent more efficiently.

KR Puram Cable Bridge
KR Puram Cable Bridge

One could consider hiring a chauffeur, but it is an expensive option that costs upwards of Rs.12k per month and my motion sickness does not help either. I am at ease only when I am in complete control. The brake-gear-clutch-gas drudgery was unavoidable.

Back in the days when smart phone technology was not upto the mark, it was quite hard to do justice to 30-40 mins of travel time. I used some of my time on the way to office planning the day’s activities. If there is a particularly hard technical problem that demands a fair bit of imagination, a stalled car in a traffic signal is one of the best place to think about it. Infact, ~50% of the interesting ideas that I have come up with have been on old madras road.  In the evenings on the return journey, I would spend the time recalling the key events, discussions and decisions. But day dreaming is risky at times; there is always this street ninja who is out to surprise you.  On an average, I could use ~20% of the travel time thinking about things that mattered. Taking calls is another activity that one can do on the road. But our R&D team is entirely located in one office in Bangalore and there are not too many calls that I need to attend around the travel times.

Radio used to be a decent entertainment option, but most of the stuff on Radio these days is reality advertisements and other garbage. With the advent of smart phone, things changed remarkably. Music became a major component of travel. I am terrible singer, but who cares?? No one can hear me outside the car. Singing along classical singers became one of my favourite pass-times. Google Music added an entirely new dimension. I now have my entire collection online. I have playlists for various times-of-the-day, moods, people in my car etc.

Most recently, listening to books on Amazon’s Audible has become my favourite activity. I spend ~Rs.1000 every month, but that covers for nearly 50% of my time in the car. I don’t mind the traffic at all these days. Infact, there are times when I am close to one of those critical moments in a book and I wish that that last signal on my journey stays at red for a little while longer.