Everest Uncensored

We are living in a world full of problems. I can see people all over groaning with it. There are various levels of problem with various priorities on it. They are still problems that make you cry, that increase your heart beat faster, that takes you away from your belongings including your friends, relatives and most of all you, yourself. But, we all have one single view for them ‘Somebody will solve it for me’. And so we have different names for them like Engineers, Doctors, Painters, Tailors, etc and even TV, Internet, Facebook for our regular loneliness problem. And to all the problems whose solution we cannot find, we have only one word- GOD. Ah!! He creates problems and somehow knows about its solution too.

But before I go any further with my words. Let me begin with a story; one I heard in my primary class lessons. It talks of one rich guy visiting a hermit one evening. This guy seems to have all thing but still visits this poor hermit. His request is happiness. The hermit goes out in search for something without heeding to his request. The guy follows him and ask hastily what he is searching. Now, hermit replies ‘I have lost my towel in my room and need it, so I am out in moonlight for its search’. Immediately, this smart guy answers ‘Your towel is inside your room and why are your searching it here outside?’. Now, hermit replies ‘Right! the solution to your problem lies with yourself, and why are you searching for it outside with others!!’.

Now, these words strikes me every time when I cry out for help in a world which itself is engrossed with problems. Everybody in this world blame others for causing problems and expect them to solve it. Surrounding it are various conspiracy theories that expand it to a large scale. This can be at various levels including a single person, a group of people or entire humanity(hoping animals wont be thinking what we are thinking so I can safely negate them from this group). In this confusion, we forget this simple thing. Maybe our brought up never focused on this or our academics didn’t stressed on it as much it needed to. Maybe our social nature forces us to depend on everything for needs and that’s natural.

But, these dependencies and expectation have some serous problems. We forget our own power. We lose our strength of analyzing different perspective of problems and other solutions. Moreover, we tend to take problems as something that is impossible or can only be undertaken only by experts. For expert jobs, its truly right. But, the problems start when we go to extreme and believe everything as expert jobs. Consider common cold. We think that cold is something of doctors job and just visit him/her who gives us antibiotics in hope of getting fine. But, little we think of common cold; its cause and side-effects of medicine. We are at mercy of doctors for a problem which is caused by ourselves. Regularly occurring cold can be allergic or may be due to lack of immunity which maybe caused by regular intake of antibiotics or lack of ‘practice’ on the part of your immune system against simple common cold. A simple analysis of your own history and habit will help you avoid getting cold and doctors visit. Daily living habits helps in determining our condition which can be made better by ourselves using daily exercise, work ethics, etc. Maybe the marketing campaign that is worse than viral fever is reason. Consider bottled water. The companies in an effort of generating revenue out of free water have inputted on our minds that bottled water have more minerals and is healthy. I don’t know if it is 90% more healthier than tap water but I can guarantee that it is 1000% more expensive that tap water. Again, we don’t analyze this. Rather, we just spend few more money for bottled water. We can apply various ways of making our normal tap water more healthier to drink with some of simple process that are way better and economical. Maybe, trend is reason for it. Even if we don’t accept, we are species of monkeys and tend to copy what others around us do. One example of it fashion. The aim which was to protect ourselves from climate has turned into way for heavy spending, mad competition. Marketing plays only initial role here whose motto goes like this ‘Fool 10% of population and rest 90% will follow’.

Analyzing present condition, I wonder only one thing. What would I say when my son asks me for solution of a simple problem. When I ask for solution for common cold with my mother, she answers ‘DeCold’ or ‘Paracetamol’. But, when I ask my grandmother, she goes and cooks me hot ginger water with suggestion of getting some warm clothes on. My granny had through practice and deeper analysis have understood cold. She knows the problem and thus solution comes by. My mom knows problem partially and even its solution, partially. But, If I continue this trend, I will definitely call doctor asking for his help because I wont be knowing what is cold except that its a medical problem and physician can solve it. Whenever he will ask for water, I will shill off some money from pocket to let him buy bottled water because I may be blinded by marketing campaigns that tap water is harmful and bottled water is best water ever. The main reason is that I, in my life never analyzed by own problems and has no experience of solving it myself except becoming dependent on others. So, how can I expect my son to be smart when I myself lived a foolish life!!

Following current trend, we reach to conclusion that we are heading towards knowledge based society which will be headed by experts who will know Alpha and Omega of their field but none of other. They will tend to view their own problems which does not fall on their field of expertise as foreign and look for solution from related experts. But, what about good health, what about happiness as asked in example. In whose expertise will it fall? Who in this earth will take responsibility to make people happy, to make them independent of unending wants? So, finally people will take resort to things like Drugs, Prostitution, etc for temporary happiness as ultimate happiness rests on us and no expert (like hermit in my story) can solve this.

Moral is clear in title of blog itself. Unlike some books which lure you into buying and later at end of it specify solution of problem mentioned in title of book, I just mentioned them in title itself! I just used this blog as a way for elaborating my idea on this. For those who are hopeless with their condition, its a fortunate thing that solution exists with them. But those who endlessly seek it from others, its an unfortunate condition. A drunkard who drinks to get away from life trouble is truly unfortunate to not realize this idea. So, at end I request the reader (including myself) that before running away from problem, face it, accept it, analyze it and then find solution yourself first.

Vyasa Houston M. A.

The extraordinary thing about Sanskrit is that it offers direct accessibility to anyone to that elevated plane where the two —mathematics and music, brain and heart, analytical and intuitive, scientific and spiritual— become one.

It is tempting to think of them as computer scientists without the hardware, but a possible explanation is that a search for clear, unambigous understanding is inherent in the human being.

Prof. Weizenbaum obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Wayne State University in Detroit. After a few years in the industry, he entered the Massachussets Institute of Technology where he has held faculty positions since 1955. He is currently a professor in the department of Computer Sciences at MIT. His current research interests include Artificial Intelligence and social implications of computing and cybernetics.

Shastric Sanskrit

The sentence:

(1) “Caitra goes to the village.” (graamam gacchati caitra)

receives in the analysis given by an eighteenth-century Sanskrit Grammarian from Maharashtra, India, the following paraphrase:

(2) “There is an activity which leads to a connection-activity which has as Agent no one other than Caitra, specified by singularity, [which] is taking place in the present and which has as Object something not different from ‘village’.”

The author, Nagesha, is one of a group of three or four prominent theoreticians who stand at the end of a long tradition of investigation. Its beginnings date to the middle of the first millennium B.C. when the morphology and phonological structure of the language, as well as the framework for its syntactic description were codified by Panini. His successors elucidated the brief, algebraic formulations that he had used as grammatical rules and where possible tried to improve upon them. A great deal of fervent grammatical research took place between the fourth century B.C and the fourth century A.D. and culminated in the seminal work, the Vaiakyapadiya by Bhartrhari. Little was done subsequently to advance the study of syntax, until the so-called “New Grammarian” school appeared in the early part of the sixteenth century with the publication of Bhattoji Dikshita’s Vaiyakarana-bhusanasara and its commentary by his relative Kaundabhatta, who worked from Benares. Nagesha (1730-1810) was responsible for a major work, the Vaiyakaranasiddhantamanjusa, or Treasury of dejinitive statements of grammarians, which was condensed later into the earlier described work. These books have not yet been translated.

The reasoning of these authors is couched in a style of language that had been developed especially to formulate logical relations with scientific precision. It is a terse, very condensed form of Sanskrit, which paradoxically at times becomes so abstruse that a commentary is necessary to clarify it.

One of the most distinguished computer scientists in the world today, Prof. J. Weizenbaum is known for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence. He authored the famous ELIZA program (fore-runner of DOCTOR and other similar programs) which startlingly demonstrated the possibilities for building ‘intelligent effects’ into a computer through programming. Weizenbaum is also the author of Computer Power and Human Reasoning from Calculation to Judgement in which he critically examines the far-reaching social implications of research and philosophical assumptions regarding artificial intelligence.

Until recently, modern science, seen as a religion, lacked a deity suitable as an object of worship. The machine, which is generally pictured as something that has gears, moving parts, and so on, has existed for a long time now. To modern man the machine certainly represents power, control, mastery over nature-in other words, attributes a worshipable deity should have. But the machine lacks mystery. In fact, it often demystifies in the sense that people believe that most anything can be transformed, metaphorically at least, into the form of a machine and then understood as such. The machine has become an almost universally applicable metaphor that demystifies both itself and the thing to which it refers. This thinking holds true for both intellectuals of all persuasions as well as for ordinary people. Perhaps most people today think a thing is not understood until it has been reduced to a mechanical process.

I think that this phenomenon has contributed to science’s inability to provide an idol which the faithful can worship as truly representative of their common faith. Now recently, within my lifetime, the computer has appeared, and it seems to me that the computer fills that need. Modern man has seen that machines which physically destroy and reconstruct his environment — the steam-shovel, for example — are made in his own image. The steam-shovel has an arm and a hand, and it digs into the ground, picks up objects and so forth. Clearly, it is a kind of imitation of a certain aspect of man. But the computer takes things a step farther. When instructing a computer to think (if I may use that term for a moment) in imitation of human thought, we cross a subtle line.

http://www.gosai.com/science/computerized-gods.html

NASA on Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence by Rick Briggs.

Renowned physicist and Nobel laureate, Erwin Schrodinger, father of Quantum Mechanics, writes: “No personal God can form part of a world model that has only become accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it.” (1) We find that almost all of the scientists have chosen to rule out god from the very beginning of their research.

Presumably scientists seek to improve their position of knowledge and better satisfy their needs (pleasures) in this world by controlling nature. Unfortunately we find that so-called scientific progress more often brings an unexpected toll, a negative reaction from the material energy.

Their analysis of language casts doubt on the humanistic distinction between natural and artificial intelligence, and may throw light on how research in AI may finally solve the natural language understanding and machine translation problems.

References
Bhatta, Nagesha (1963) Vaiyakarana-Siddhanta-Laghu-Manjusa, Benares (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office).

Nilsson, Nils J. Principles of Artificial Intelligence. Palo Alto: Tioga Publishing Co

Bhatta, Nagesha (1974) Parama-Lalu-Manjusa Edited by Pandit Alakhadeva Sharma, Benares (Chowkhambha Sanskrit Series Office).

Rumelhart, D E. & D A. Norman (1973) Active Semantic Networks as a model of human memory. IJCAI.

Wang, William S-Y (1967) “Final Administrative Report to the National Science Foundation.” Project for Machine Translation. University of California, Berkeley. (A biblzographical summary of work done in Berkeley on a program to translate Chinese.)

[THE AI MAGAZINE Spring, 1985 #39]

Considering Sanskrit’s status as a spiritual language, a further implication of this discovery is that the age-old dichotomy between religion and science is an entirely unjustified one. It is also relevant to note that in the last decade, physicists have begun to comment on the striking similarities between their own discoveries and the discoveries made thousands of years ago in India which went on to form the basis of most Eastern religions.