Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

I am saddened to learn of the passing of Asha Bhosle in Mumbai Sunday morning. She was 92.

Asha-ji, I thought, was the most versatile of the three sisters, though Lata was the more famous and prolific. Asha had a fan-following even among non-Indians. I got to know that from a roommate at UC Berkeley.

It was in the mid-1990s. One evening at dinner, I mentioned to my housemate, W, that I was in touch with the daughter of a very famous playback singer in India. W, a mid-Western American, was doing his mathematics PhD. He is arguably the smartest mathematician I have ever met. I had to explain to him what a playback singer was and so on. I said that the two sisters Asha and Lata were really awesome singers. Continue reading “Goodbye, Asha-ji”

“When We Cease to Understand the World” is a historical fiction work by Chilean author Benjamín Labatut. It explores the human drive to comprehend the universe, the costs of intellectual obsession, and the ethical dilemmas inherent in scientific progress.

The book was originally published in Spanish in 2020 and in English in 2021. It blends historical fact with fiction, presenting the lives of scientists and mathematicians whose groundbreaking discoveries reshaped human understanding but also carried profound ethical and existential consequences.

It is composed of five interlinked essay-style chapters, each focusing on a different historical figure or scientific concept. Labatut employs a poetic style that combines concision, cruelty, and dark humor to illustrate the human and philosophical dimensions of scientific discovery. The narrative oscillates between historical events and imaginative reconstructions, creating a hybrid of fiction and nonfiction that emphasizes the personal costs of genius. Continue reading “When We Cease to Understand the World”

Thanks to our bounded rationality and imperfect knowledge, it is certain that we are more likely to be wrong than right about many important issues. Fortunately we have the capacity and the motive to learn. Moreover we have an inexhaustible and nearly costless source of information for us to learn from. Therefore if we are willing to put in the effort, we can be less wrong about important matters.

I know that I am less wrong now than I was a few decades ago. I used to think that the world was in deep trouble because of the population problem: there were simply too many people and since resources were limited, it stood to reason that poverty was likely to persist—and indeed increase—as humanity due to its fecundity exhausted those limited resources.

I found India’s poverty in the 1980s and ’90s particularly distressing since I had seen it firsthand. I believed that India’s deep and persistent poverty was primarily because of its unsustainably large population. It was clear to me that poverty was an arithmetic problem: per capita resource availability. Only by reducing the denominator would the ratio improve since (it seemed to me) there was no way to dramatically increase the numerator which was by definition fixed. Continue reading “Learning to be Less Wrong”

I find some things quite weird. For instance, I was quite intrigued to realize that one time decades ago my mother carried me in her arms and then she put me down, and then never ever picked me up again.

Picking me up and putting me down was an unremarkable action up to that time—she’d done that hundreds of times before—but she did not realize that that was the last time she would ever do so. She put me down that one last time and never picked me up in her arms again.

That’s something that must certainly have happened to you as well: that last time when your mother fed you, or bathed you, or dressed you. And then she never did it again.

But of course, we didn’t know at that time when it happened or precisely when it happened. Simple logic forces us to conclude that it did happen someday but now we don’t know when.

I have had ancestors, as we all must have had. That’s an unremarkable fact. What astounds me is that my ancestors were around for all of the history of the universe. Let me take small steps to express my astonishment. Continue reading “My Ancestors”

It’s hard to find any humor in wars in general but pointless wars are particularly depressing. I avoid as much as I can news about the wars around the world. But it’s impossible to entirely avoid it in these days of social media. Thankfully there are stupid people who unintentionally do their bit to lighten the mood.

(Source: On X by @Nocapongod_)

Today also happens to be April Fool’s day. A couple of famous April fool’s pranks. Courtesy: Grok. Continue reading “Straights of Hormuz”

Reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are predictable offerings in the smorgasbord of sensational bullshit the mainstream and social media dish out ad nauseum. Sadly some of the publicly funded agencies of the US government have also been in that game for decades.

The government’s actions are understandable because most of the population is easily distracted, being stupid and gullible beyond belief. Couple that with the other fact that the US government has to distract the public from paying attention to all the terrorism that it engages in around the world (such as the recent war against Iran) to keep the military-industrial complex humming along.

There are lots of stories the US government uses to keep the people alarmed. The Epstein files were a good distraction. Then the war in the Persian Gulf is another distraction from the Epstein files. The show must go on.

In this post I claim that (1) UFOs are real, (2) reports of extraterrestrial objects are total hogwash, (3) reports of non-human intelligence (NHI) visitors are bullshit piled high and dry, and (4) alien abduction stories are made up by the severely mentally disturbed. Continue reading “UFOs”

Today is the spring (or vernal) equinox in the northern hemisphere. This is one of the four transitions — two equinoxes and two solstices — from one season to another: from winter to spring, to summer, to fall (aka autumn), and back to winter.

The reason that earth has seasons is that it is tilted on its axis at an angle of approximately 23.44 degrees (called its obliquity) due to a colossal impact early in its history around 4.5 billion years ago. The hypothesis is that a protoplanet collided with the early earth. This collision caused it to tilt off its perpendicular orientation relative to its orbital plane around the Sun.

During an equinox, the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west, and both hemispheres receive almost equal sunlight. The sun is positioned directly above earth’s equator, and the earth is tilted neither toward the sun nor away from it, resulting in nearly equal lengths of day and night across the globe. Continue reading “Equinoxe”

The followers of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) routinely instruct their children in their religious texts and traditions. In contrast to that, children brought up in the dharmic traditions (Hindu, Buddha and Jain) are not taught the dharmas explicitly, not even the basics.

Whatever we learn is through a process of osmosis: gradual and unconscious assimilation of ideas that become increasingly more sophisticated and refined as one grows up. We don’t go to the equivalent of a Sunday school or a madrassa.

Hindus learn about dharma gradually. It begins with puja, the worship of various gods and goddesses at home, the occasional visit to a temple, and of course enthusiastic participation in the many dozens of festivals round the year. They are primarily cultural celebrations although they have a component of worship.

As children we are told stories, particularly from the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. As we grow up, depending on individual interest, we learn more about them in bits and pieces. By the time we are young adults, we have a vague idea of our dharma but we are relaxed about it. We see nothing in it to get too agitated about. Our dharma is part of our lives but it doesn’t dominate every of our waking moments. Our attitude is to take it or leave it, but don’t get worked up about it. Continue reading “What is Vedanta?”

I’ve been spending a great deal of time following the war in the Middle East. It’s depressing as all hell.

Trump dragged the US into a needless war. I think he was sincere in his insistence during the 2024 election campaign that he’d not want the US to fight any wars. But that was before the Epstein files began to come out.

All the evidence supports the theory that there’s some seriously damaging stuff in those files that would pretty much destroy Trump’s reputation (whatever little he has remaining) among his MAGA supporters. The stupid, vain, man-child that he is could not countenance that. Mossad most certainly has the goods on Trump and is using that to force Trump to do Netanyahu’s bidding.

Trump tried his best to stop the Epstein files from being released. But the Congress forced the DOJ to begin releasing large, albeit heavily redacted, chunks of it. More was to come soon. Thanks very much, Representatives Massie and Khanna. Are you happy now? Continue reading “Reshaping the World”