On Richard Feynman and Pidi's  
(Pidi's are Partial Differential Equations)

     I want to make this quick blog post before the idea skips my mind  (partly due to the episode of Bite Me loading up on a separate tab)  , sitting in the library hall (apparently my new home since no longer living on campus) drowned in typical post lecture thoughts I begin to take my plunge ...

    For those of you who don't know yet my main pursuit on Youtube is science communication, subscribers of my channel (links down below) would know that I generally try to instill a sense of wonder and curiosity in my videos. 

     This endeavor usually involves absorbing my own fair share of inspiration from other similarly interesting if not much much more eloquently put content made by fellow Youtubers aimed at communicating science, that and reading / re-reading books by Sagan , Kaku and Dawkins all of which are excellent science communicators in their own right, their strengths being that they can appeal to a very broad audience given that it is an audience with an open enough mind. All of which I have a blast just absorbing information from. 

Bitch Please, "If you think you understand Quantum Theory ... Then you dont understand Quantum Theory" 

       
    
  

    

     
    Recently I've been filling this demand for inspiration with content from a much lesser known science communicator to most people of recent years (but a legend in the academic world). A Physicist by the name of Richard Feynman who won the Nobel Prize in 1965, known best for his works in the Quantum Theory and Quantum Electrodynamics, his pioneering lecture on Nano - Technology and for playing the Bongos. (probably more for playing the bongos if you've been watching CBS's The Big Bang Theory recently). Well anyway, don't let my words decide for you whether he was "half genius half buffoon" let the man's voice echoing through history tell you himself.

    Anyways , what does this have to do with the title of the blog and the so called "Pidi's". I had the idea to write this pretty much 20 minutes ago and i'm challenging myself to do it in less than an hour so let me take you back 45 minutes. I was nearing the end of a lecture on Partial Differential Equations. I'm trying to be quick here so forgive me if I don't write out the equations down below. While sitting down next to friend Ivan Tan, (bless his naive soul) as the lecture ended and the magnitude of all the equations  started to set in I suddenly remembered a line that Feynman had once said and at that moment just blurted it out to Ivan, The conversion although mostly a one sided one consisting of me telling him my opinion goes as follows

Me: You know there's this Physicist who won the Nobel Prize in               
     1965, his name was Richard Feynman who once said that             "nature is going to come out the way that shes going to come          out, so when  
     we're looking for the answers we shouldn't presuppose 
     anything , because whatever that we find is what it is, not what 
     we hope we want it to be", Its like when we're trying to   
     investigate nature and do science even if all the people in the  
     world believe that the answer to life is x + 2 no matter how 
     hard we all believe that the answer is x + 2, it wont change a   
     thing. We just have to accept what is as what we find                    and whatever it is we find. 

     <Both of us looked quizzically back at the board trying to 
     decipher some deeper meaning from the equations that had just  
     "skull fucked" us for two hours>

Ivan: Ok ... Just seems kinda long for something so trivial.

Me: Yeah, Yeah it is actually, sometimes I really dont get all of            it myself, but then again I cant really complain that this 
        is the best method we have of modelling reality, it is the way         it is so  its not really our fault that it came out like this, I               mean I figure there is probably a ton of other things that are           far more complex than this ...

        but at the end of the day the real world is only going to come         out the way it is, and that is real, and if this is the best way           of explaining it than I don't really have anything to argue               with.

Ivan: I dunno man just hope the exams are survivable

     The rest of the conversation is not really important, class ended and as I was packing my things, only then did the magnitude of it hit me , up until that point I had generally been a sponge of many of the ideas of the people that had contributed to the knowledge of mankind but only then did Feynman's words come to life in my mind.

At that particular moment It dawned on me what the true meaning "perception" was, it was sort of like a burst into a temporary state of intellectual Nirvana . Humbling yet incredibly satisfying despite the fact that there were a lot of things that I still didn't understand yet and probably will never understand the slightest bit about by the time that I die, but it was still ok.

    I felt completely fine.

    My only hope is to live in order to leave some of that feeling in others so that future generations can stand on the shoulders of giants ever taller than the ones that came before.

More than Stories, More than myth ... everything we know is what it is because we've seen it that way

     

Times are a changing.


     Now I was never alive at any time during the 60's,but I do believe I speak for a great number people when I say the following words that come from that era do hold quite a considerable meaning.


Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.


Heres a link to the song on YouTube ... Enjoy

     I was an upstart and impatient kid growing up in the 90's and I never really started listening to real music until the early on in the 2nd Millennia of the Common Era (Early 2000's were alive to the beats of bling rap and punk rock) so in all honest truth I only discovered Bob Dylan's music as a 17 year old watching the superhero movie The Watchmen. The first thing that came to minds was "Damn this shit is hippy". Remember that opening scene when they captured the transformation of  superhero life  in the midst of the arrival of the Cold War, this brief musing is played to roughly the same tune albeit with extra shades of optimism and equivalent spades of despair when it comes to where we are now.

     I recently watched a TEDtalks video that came out a few days ago on YouTube by "techno-preneur"  Peter Diamandis (linked to TEDtalksDirector below) and his idea on how the human race is moving into an age of abundance, the main idea of which is that all the problems , tribulations and shortcomings we have today can and will eventually be solved by the brute strength of reason and the power of innovation particularly technological innovation. First and foremost I would definitely applaud the MIT graduate for his rousing words of optimism for a better tomorrow and for speaking out against the corporate media anarchists at Fox News. His presentation was definitely one born from the hopes of every computer geek and utopian revolutionary of the 21st century, a world where technological penetration affects the lives of every single soul on Earth subsequently improving overall productivity. However, the talk wasn't just aimed at the rich and empowered  as a considerable part of the talk centred on the awakening of billions of new minds to   knowledge and information. Placed within the context of population control and the value of human capital I think that Peter Diamandis really does have a concrete set of plans on how to bring forth this so called age of abundance I approve !!!

     But wait, I'm a skeptic so there's gotta be a catch. There's always gotta be a catch...

     While I definitely agree that high technology will definitely extend the reach as well a the overall  lifespan of nearly all human beings towards the year 2050 I think there is an unaddressed problem with the speakers proposed solutions. When all is said and done I think Peter Diamandis had definitely neglected some crucial details regarding the challenges that we face in the process of realizing that ideal Utopia of tomorrow. 


     The presentation neglected the issue of resource management , although the speaker had stuck with the underlying idea that information technology will eventually become incredibly widespread he forgot to elaborate on the cost of building stable infrastructure to get that technology off the ground, sure hearing about Massai warriors with access to Google certainly elicits a feeling of quaint intrigue but what would it take to build a functioning cellular network across a continent with one of the poorest countries in the world?  What amount of resources would we need to call on ? It isn't just about availability its also about reliability. On top of that , the ease of which he said that these solutions will come about makes it look as if everyone will eventually be armed with the latest Apple products in the coming decade. In my opinion there are 3 different aspects to practical technological progress (Read up on John Brockman's version, this is just a spin off of it) You need intellectuals and tech-heads to build it, managers and economists to fund it and the average joe to pass judgement on it. While I would definitely agree that a future society would take and integrate many aspects of the presentation I am still pretty much hard pressed to believe that any one aspect of those three factors I had mentioned earlier would be the solution for any other two as laid out by the speaker (I could be interpreting his words wrongly but to me it did sound like he was proposing a one shot solution to everything). We still have quite a few rivers to cross before we find our way and we will certainly have to cross those rivers with all three aspects of that which influences progress acting hand in hand , not with one clearly over weighing or under weighing the other.

Doctor of Tomorrow in a world without doctors ???

     If what the speaker said truly is the depiction of how far and fast humanity is going then it would be safe to say that the world is a very different place compared to the 60's when Bob Dylan first penned down his music. In all their staunchest forms, human beings have not changed, personally I think it will take more than just half a century to get rid of "all" of our evolutionary baggage but we are getting there and although the Iron Curtain has since met its last call the world we live in today hangs  no less in the balance than it did back during the Cuban Missile crisis. Today we are faced with an array of environmental problems, global warming , depletion of the zone layer and planetary resources etc . All of this is made worse by the mismatch between our technology and our wisdom. A future of abundance wont be acquired completely by science and technology, however it will be shaped by human choice and insight into the knowledge we have gained from nature.    

Forward unto Dawn


    This brings into light the notion that as we move forward into the future distinct forces of order and progress will be forced to clash against forces that influence disorder in the world. On one hand it is becoming ever more clear that we are moving towards a multicultural, multi racial and tolerant social civilization. We've seen this in the rise of global socio-economic ventures such as NAFTA and the EU and even more so locally in my part of the world in ASEAN. Cooperation and compromise is at an all time high if you look back in time from our current vantage point. We have seen in this age international cooperation on scientific and even humanistic endeavours on a scale never encountered before, and the numbers are rising. It appears as if the more animalistic part within us all has slowly been tamed by the forces of intellect and empathy after all these the millennia.


     Just take a look at some of the more recent events coming from late 2011 and early 2012, everywhere you look you can find evidence for the emergence of this independent planetary mindset, represented in the march of various peoples against oppression to the democratization of dictatorships and even to the fight for the accessibility of internet technology. We also find a mutual desire for peace and negotiation. A clear example you can find is in what happened to the "hermit kingdom" of North Korea. In a mere 3 months since the death of the dictator Kim Jong Ill ( I hadn't even known he was ill badum tss), North Korea has since suspended its uranium enrichment program in exchange for humanitarian aid from the United States, although tensions still remain between both communist and capitalist countries this could be the beginning of non violent difusion of hostilities between the two states. Small steps but stops toward a solution non the less.


    On the other end of the spectrum we still find a reluctant few that resist the gradual change aimed at creating such a planetary society. Resistance to this change can be seen in fundamentalist ideologies  ranging from science denialists erecting creation museums to racial hatred groups on the internet. It is a personal thought of mine that the clash of these ideologies is a clash of civilizations, one side isn't necessarily guaranteed victory over the other.  Only time will tell which idea will surface as the lasting victor...


Awaking call on the other side of the world ???

     We aren't humans until we disagree, just look at our history. While Peter Diamandis was giving his presentation on possibility another similarly humanistic (yet clearly misunderstood in the comments section) speaker Paul Gilding author of "The great Disruption" was taking a reconciling the worlds crisis with a different angle of retrospect by taking a look at how environmental issues affect the global economy.I wont go in to too much detail as to the contents of his talk but I would like to take one line out of his train of thought that he had indeed gotten right ...


     "The crisis is now inevitable, the issue is how will we react."


     These two talks kind of compliment each other. So I suggest following one with the other when watching.

     So here we are, with all the problems in he world enroaching upon us, almost making the individual human being seem insignificant, but yet through the smoke and haze of possible collapse all the solutions to those problems are here too within every mother , father , hopeful child and member of society. The future depends on choice, your choice.