Hey Hey

It has been a long time that I had last penned down my useless nonsensical thoughts on a public podium, such as the internet. Over time, I realized, with every decision of putting out something I wanted to do for later, I was feeding my habit of procrastination. Now it has become plum fat. 

Anyway, I suppose, I have got that idiosyncrasy out of the way. Now, the reason, why I have finally come out of my solitude. Yes, there's more than to just share my sense of poor humor in self-depreciation, but to feed my narcissistic ego, and sharing my conquests with the world, or at least the buggers who accidentally or much less willingly stumbled across my blog. 

I got me an Aston Martin 1963 DB5. Pictured here, to testify that. Not photoshopped (if I were that talented, I would not be this jobless!). 

I would have uploaded this in my facebook profile quoting 'feeling Bond-like', but I refrain from that, primarily to not encourage super-villains.  

Conquest two would be the mark (yet another) successful start to my guitar playing days. For those who are new to the English language, the phrase '(yet another) successful start'  usually means 'a futile attempt to do something I want to do and have already failed once or more'. Of course, I plan to learn all the Eric Clapton songs this time and play more blues and classic rock. Now with my agendas declared to the world, I can go and pretend to sleep. 

Because we like Clapton today. 

My take on the Control Principle

It's been long since I wrote anything here, and i really have no reason for it.. maybe I did not have as many thoughts as i would have thought.. hmm.. anyway, moving forward, I want to talk about my take on the Control Principle (it's fine if you are not a philosopher and even better, for me, if you have not heard of this anytime before in your lifetime!)

My take on the Control Principle -- It's wrong!

Why? Well to think about it, let's do the following thought experiment, consider you happen to pass by an empty street and you see a little puppy crying .. it can be either he is just stupid or he is about to die (both equally likely) .. you have now 2 pills (that GOD has given you to cure the world) one kills him, other makes him smart (we'll call them A and B) .. either way both stop his whining .. so what do you do? (if you are a mathematician, let me save your time that all events are equally likely, and your probability won't really help you this time! )

Say you give the poor puppy the right pill, this would make the world beautiful and happy again and everyone praises you, else he dies and all the Gods curse you! 

Let's talk of the control principle now, which says "We are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for depends on the factors under our control" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Phil.)

To every (or most) problem(s) there's always a right and wrong answer.. just because one does not know the right answer (or maybe has absolutely no way to know the right answer) does not magically make the world different.. anything that's not right.. is just plain wrong! 

So, what does that mean? If you kill the puppy you are to be condemned as much as you would have been praised had you cured the little puppy. 

Let's talk crazy now! Assume the universe to be an isolated closed system with a finite amount of goodwill.. say on curing you receive X amount of goodwill, so if you kill it should you not recieve (-X) amount of goodwill.. otherwise how just destroy the "law of conservation of goodwill"
So, what does that mean, if you kill the dog, you are worth an equal share of (negetive) "goodwill" as you would have been had you cured him.. 

So, based on my crazy hypothesis and my opinion on the Control Principle, I would really like to know your opinion about it :)

Where have all the flowers gone?

#

Me: "Yeah"

 : "I am going to a certain 3 letter abbr. institute … "

Me: "Congratulations"

 : "Consequences of decisions" 

#

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shit decisions, glorified ghosts, mundane emotions we make up and lessons we never learn.

the wind of change

For all we know

Here's an attempt to proof the following claim that I saw in @CompSciFact's Tweet earlier today.

(in case you don't know already, I am on twitter, find me @SubhayanRM :) )

Claim:

Let F[n] be the nth Fibonacci number. 

Then F[0] + F[1] + ... + F[n] = F[n+2] - 1.

Proof: (By induction)

We deine F[ i ] = F[ i - 1 ] + F[ i - 2 ]

and  F[-1] = 1

F[-2] = 0

i.e. We start from 1.  i.e F  = 1,2,3,5,8, ... 

however the proof is valid even if the you want to start from F=0,1,1,2 .. , just change the base case :), which is trivial and certainly holds true.

"I leave it up to the reader to verify" ;) 

The inductive hypothesis and the proof of it will be the same. 

Base Case:

  for n=1

  we have F[1] = 1 = 2-1 = F[2]-1

    so the base case holds true

Inductive Hypothesis: For purposes of induction we assume that proposition

  P(n) =  F[0] + F[1] + ... + F[n ] = F[n+2] - 1 

  is true

  so,

  P(n+1)

  = F[0] + F[1] + ... + F[k ] + F[k+1]

  = F[k+2] - 1 + F[k + 1]

  = F[k+1] + F[k+2] - 1

  = F[k+3] - 1

  = F[(k+1) + 2] - 1

So by laws of mathematical induction, P(n+1) is true whenever P(n) is true.  \qed

I might be wrong... i saw a light coming on

there is a pretty cool mathematical anecdote I recently came across Dr. Lipton & Dr. Regen's blog (in case you don't know them, let's just say they's a pretty important names in CS Theory, to say the least)

Dr. Ken Regan pointed out certain "traps".. this is what he wrote..

Square root is not a function. It is written like a function, but isn’t. Here is an example of what you can “do” by conveniently forgetting this: , so take square roots of both sides. You get

This contradicts the definition .

now after looking at it for sometime,  I THINK he himself fell for a pretty bad trap!  (PLEASE FORGIVE ME AND CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG ! )

His proof follows

                            (1)

but is it?

Recall the elementary definition of a square root: 

The square root of a number is number when squared gives back the originial number

OR

"A square root of x is number r such that r^2 = x"   Wolfram.com

Think about it..  why should ?

                             (2)           

shouldn't THIS be allowed only if both x and y are positive integers?

in general, it can be  

                             (3)

think about it again, the square both sides and you will get exactly x/y .. 

so what we can conclude is what Dr. Regan claimed is only necessarily true iff x and y are both positive.

however if we allow  sqrt{x/y} = -sqrt{x} / sqrt{y}

we still have balance in the universe where even if the square root is function,  i^2 = -1 still holds true.

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BUT THEN AGAIN, I MYSELF MIGHT HAVE FALLEN VICTIM TO SOME FALLACY..
please let me know if you have any questions :)
find me at @SubhayanRM

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i might be wrong.. it's nothing at all :)

We are a born .. born to be wild

It took me 21 years to figure out one simple thing..

The key to happiness is not necessarily success.. 

Oh wait, I actually know a lot of this stuff (movies are made of things like this..)

lets say it took me 21 years to

Caring less for everything else that does not interest me!

But that does not mean I don't want anything now, turns out I want it all.. i wan't my PhD, teach young minds, start up a company with my best friend, and good coffee !
(okay just for clarification, I am not an industry/entrepreneur guy, I want to be in the academia, the people who tell really boring jokes.. i am pretty sure I am half way there, specially with the jokes part! :D )

I like to think I have hit rock bottom, and now I have nothing to lose.. so why not have some fun now.. (after all the key idea here is to have fun, right?) Anyway, things can't possibly go any worse, and even if they do, who the hell cares, I would have had my share of fun, and in a few years down the lane, we all would be worm food or polluting the water bodies ..  so why bother living up to someone else's expectations when you can cast your own dream.