The concept of Time Travel always fascinated me. Just imagine – being able to go back in time – for a minute, for a day, for a year, for a century… wouldn’t that be amazing? I am yet to come across someone who would not want to change some thing from his / her past. Science fiction is rife with stories on time travel (HG Wells ring any bells?). Even serious scientists have started fiddling with time travel. But is time travel – going back or forward in time really possible? Let us try and think this through.
Let us say that the way science is pushing the boundaries of knowledge, especially over the last 50 odd years, we can start with an assumption that at some time in the future time travel would be possible. Now if that were so, almost definitely, people from yonder would travel back in time (other wise what is the point?). So logically speaking we should have in our midst, people who have come back from the future. Now, why would someone want to come back? One could be sheer curiosity (imagine the tourism industry boom!!). One reason could be to change bits of history which are not palatable to the powers that be in the future.
However this second one clashes with logic. The most famous example is the Grandfather Paradox. Picture this: a time traveler goes back in time and attempts to kill his grandfather at a time before his grandfather met his grandmother. If he did so, then his father never would have been born, and neither would the time traveler himself . Then how did he travel back in time in the first place? How does one explain this?
Traveling forward in time, however, at first thought at least, does not appear to present any such logical fallacies. But then it's well past midnight... and all I can think about now is travelling (in person and space)to my bed... so goodnight guys... will complete this later.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Jack and Jill
Recently came across a controversial study where it proved “conclusively” that men are more intelligent than women. We tend to come across various such studies where, depending on who is carrying out the study, it is proved “beyond doubt” that either men or women are more intelligent than their counterparts of the opposite sex.
Methinks it is not possible to prove who has more of those little grey cells with any degree of accuracy because of zillions of confounding factors. The first and most important of them is that it is like comparing apples to oranges. For any two items to be comparable it is a pre requisite that they have to be comparable. Women and men are wired differently. Over those thousands of years humans have been around, evolution has forced them to specialize in different activities and hence their mental faculties have developed accordingly to cater to the specific jobs they are meant to do. Over centuries, men have been the food gatherers and protectors while women have been the nurturers and in charge of child rearing and related activities. So evolutionary pressures have, over a period of time, equipped men with skills likely to help them performing their foraging for food and protecting activities. Men are more aggressive, likely to think faster on their feet, arrive at decisions quicker, less emotional, less expressive (simply bash the bugger and fornicate with the lady) and so on. While women are patient (try dealing with a stubborn two year old and you realize the virtues of patience), less aggressive, expressive, would arrive at a decision weighing all pros and cons and so on.
Now who is to say which set of skills are superior? While men are better at spatial and objective skills, women excel at emotional skills. Hence testing them on the same set of questions would be fallacious. Most IQ tests designed are sort of unisex ones. Hence though the results within the same sex would be somewhat comparable, using them to compare IQ levels across the sexes would be stupidity. So the standard arguments in favor of men like for e.g. there being less number of famous female scientists, fall flat on their face. No one would dream of asking why the best female athlete / cricket player, soccer player etc can’t beat their counterparts among men. Even if some one posed that silly question, females would not take much offense. However try talking along those lines regards scientist and most females would be on the offensive. Instead of trying to analyze the reasons behind this, most would jump up and say females had been oppressed for centuries and they had not been allowed the same educational and other opportunities by the oppressive males and so on. But that simply begs the question – if females are as intelligent / strong as men how come men dominated females for centuries and not vice versa (and this is across all cultures and not only India)? We have to understand that comparing intelligence levels among sexes is an exercise in futility. The mental circuit boards are simply too different to be comparable.
Now (to put it simplistically) women have started going out and contributing to the food gathering and protecting (read contributing economically to the family coffers) process. However this process has started like what - just half a century ago? And in evolutionary terms 50 years is a speck. To build up sufficient evolutionary pressure to make an actual difference in the IQ levels would take many hundreds of years. But that would skew the playing field instead of evening it out. For the simple reason that women would have to do this along with their nurturing and home making bit. Even though a rational and considerate man would take up some responsibilities in the house keeping duties he simply can’t give birth to or suckle a baby however hard he tries. So the super moms who effortlessly juggle career and the babies successfully without feeling the pressure would actually be superior to men - IQ and other wise. More power to them and may their ilk increase.
Methinks it is not possible to prove who has more of those little grey cells with any degree of accuracy because of zillions of confounding factors. The first and most important of them is that it is like comparing apples to oranges. For any two items to be comparable it is a pre requisite that they have to be comparable. Women and men are wired differently. Over those thousands of years humans have been around, evolution has forced them to specialize in different activities and hence their mental faculties have developed accordingly to cater to the specific jobs they are meant to do. Over centuries, men have been the food gatherers and protectors while women have been the nurturers and in charge of child rearing and related activities. So evolutionary pressures have, over a period of time, equipped men with skills likely to help them performing their foraging for food and protecting activities. Men are more aggressive, likely to think faster on their feet, arrive at decisions quicker, less emotional, less expressive (simply bash the bugger and fornicate with the lady) and so on. While women are patient (try dealing with a stubborn two year old and you realize the virtues of patience), less aggressive, expressive, would arrive at a decision weighing all pros and cons and so on.
Now who is to say which set of skills are superior? While men are better at spatial and objective skills, women excel at emotional skills. Hence testing them on the same set of questions would be fallacious. Most IQ tests designed are sort of unisex ones. Hence though the results within the same sex would be somewhat comparable, using them to compare IQ levels across the sexes would be stupidity. So the standard arguments in favor of men like for e.g. there being less number of famous female scientists, fall flat on their face. No one would dream of asking why the best female athlete / cricket player, soccer player etc can’t beat their counterparts among men. Even if some one posed that silly question, females would not take much offense. However try talking along those lines regards scientist and most females would be on the offensive. Instead of trying to analyze the reasons behind this, most would jump up and say females had been oppressed for centuries and they had not been allowed the same educational and other opportunities by the oppressive males and so on. But that simply begs the question – if females are as intelligent / strong as men how come men dominated females for centuries and not vice versa (and this is across all cultures and not only India)? We have to understand that comparing intelligence levels among sexes is an exercise in futility. The mental circuit boards are simply too different to be comparable.
Now (to put it simplistically) women have started going out and contributing to the food gathering and protecting (read contributing economically to the family coffers) process. However this process has started like what - just half a century ago? And in evolutionary terms 50 years is a speck. To build up sufficient evolutionary pressure to make an actual difference in the IQ levels would take many hundreds of years. But that would skew the playing field instead of evening it out. For the simple reason that women would have to do this along with their nurturing and home making bit. Even though a rational and considerate man would take up some responsibilities in the house keeping duties he simply can’t give birth to or suckle a baby however hard he tries. So the super moms who effortlessly juggle career and the babies successfully without feeling the pressure would actually be superior to men - IQ and other wise. More power to them and may their ilk increase.
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