Sunday, July 4, 2010

Zoozoo and What it says about Indians


Many of you have seen Zoozoo advertisements of Vodafone. 
I got curious at the shape of these characters. Why do we (Indians) like them.
They resemble the typical shape an Indian has with a large midsection. Hence an indian audience
implicitly (subconsciously) accept these characters.
I think that such an adversitement would not have a great following or accpetance in western countries. They have been fed with perfect figures of superman, spiderman, etc.



Are our Holy Books complete?


There is a famous theorem by a Mathematician Godel. In short it says that

Which means that there will statements in such systems which cannot be proved within the system. We as a human being understand that those statements are true in that system but by using rules of inference present within the system we cannot prove the truth/falsity of such statements.

Now my point is this. Kuran/Bible [or any other holy book] can be considered to be sets of axioms and rules of inference. It is a System. It is supposed to govern human behaviour. In short it is supposed to govern human brains. Since our human brains cannot be modeled by any System [defined as sets of axioms and rules of inference]. This means human understanding/  behaviour is beyond any System. Then how can a System (i.e. Kuran/Bible) be relied upon to govern a non-System (human being) in a reliable way. There will be situations in which the System (i.e Holy book or Kuran) will not be able to judge truth/falsity (or appropriate/inappropriateness) of a human behaviour. A human brain itself is so complex. Think about how complex the interactions between 6 billion human beings will be. Also thrown in the complexity of the environment itself with which we are interacting.

Considering the above points, I think it will be foolish for human beings to rely on a code of conduct or a holy book for ratifying/validating their behaviour. Because such a book won't be able to cover all the myriad different interactions in human society

Quality of Recommended Books


Majority of us are not into reading books. i.e many of us are not well-read.
So only few have crossed 100 books or etc.
So if majority of us are recommending some particular books, say Harry Potter or The Alchemist or The Monk who Sold his Ferrari or Five Point Some One, then if follows that recommendations may not be appropriate or well founded.
Hence Rule of thumb could be that read only those books which Few people suggest and those 
people suggest the book strongly and wholeheartedly.


Morals and their context


We all have heard stories about Hare and Tortoise

The moral there was : "Slow and steady wins the race"
Sub-moral : "Never underestimate your opponents" 

Now suppose in that story, Hare doesn't sleep so ultimately he would have won the race.
The moral now becomes : "Fast and steady wins the race"

Now suppose the race track was passing through a jungle which is full of carnivorous animals.
Since Hare is fast, it could easily pass the jungle. But Tortoise being slow would be attacked by other animals etc.

Moral now is "Core Competence wins the race"  Race now favours Hare

Also assume further that after the jungle, there was a river which had to be crossed to win the race.
Now chances of Hare winning the race is very small since it doesnt know how to swim [ probablity~0]
But this is an advantage to Tortoise. There is some chance that he would pass the jungle unnoticed and reach the bank of the river and wave "TATA" to poor helpless Hare.

Again Moral now is "Core Competence wins the race"  but here Race favours Tortoise.


Morals are limited to their context. Similarly learnings/quotes/analogies are all related to their context.
IF you take the moral out of its context and apply the moral anywhere,  the moral can backfire.


I heard this story from Swami Sukhabodhananda.Please do make a point to watch the following videos.
http://sukhabodhananda.jnanajyoti.com/