To Be Conscious in a Body, Frozen
May 16, 2009, 11:21a
It's hard to tell if a thing is conscious. You know, if there is something that it feels like to be that thing. I know it feels like something to be a person, and I think it doesn't feel like anything to be a shoe (unless perhaps I've been smoking some salvia), or to be a dead person. But what ... more »
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Tom Stocky
- May 19, 2009, 6:26a
Wow, ingenious is right -- thanks for sharing this.
omar
- May 19, 2009, 9:41p
dear god. this is ingenious, but i am just thinking about this person who is locked in. i think they are likely totally insane. or almost. how could you not be, with no ability to communicate with the world?
when i read the diving bell book, at one point i was reading on the bart. it made me feel so claustrophobic that i almost threw up and had to get off the bart and breathe.
just reading your blog post is making me nauseous.
hope you are well!
Visualizing a Worm's Neural Network
Apr 21, 2009, 11:17p
For almost a year and a half, I've been working in Bob Horvitz' lab at MIT studying the nematode C. elegans. A microscopic worm of diminutive proportions (weighing in at only 1 millimeter in length), a single creature is just smaller than the size of an eyelash. These worms have been studied since the 1970s and much is known ... more »
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Sundar
- Apr 22, 2009, 6:31p
Very cool, nice to see you doing great work. thanks for the chrome plug:)
Ruggero
- May 15, 2009, 12:46a
Simply fantastic.
You have 2 time travels: Choose wisely
Jan 13, 2009, 8:37p
If you could travel to any 2 points in time, to where and when would you go?
This question popped into my mind as I was wandering the snow-cleared paths of MIT today. I had taken a break from my lab to contemplate the fine points of associative and non-associative learning (with little luck), when I saw a few plump ... more »
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anonymous
- Jan 21, 2009, 6:41p
i would like to travel back to time before the universe was created..
nikhil
- Jan 21, 2009, 7:18p
ahh... but where would you land? what would be your GPS coordinates? if your GPS coords didn't exist at that point in time, i'm not sure you'd be able to successfully travel to then..
Controlling robots with your mind
Nov 8, 2008, 12:15p
It's the stuff of which sci-fi dreams are made. Mind control, well, not of another person, but of a robot. Want your laundry done? Tell your robot to do it. But not just tell it, think it.
That's the idea, anyway.
Before I applied to grad school, this stuff really intrigued me. While working at Google, so often I ... more »
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Sachin
- Nov 9, 2008, 9:50p
Movies hosted on Posterous.com
http://nikhil.posterous.com/
Garry
- Nov 14, 2008, 11:36a
Wow, this is remarkable work.
Why I believe in God
Nov 6, 2008, 12:12a
Since the 6th grade, I've been a devout atheist. My rationale was pretty straightforward and certainly not unique. The world is such a fucked up place, that between the bad things that happen to good people and the good things that happen to bad people, even if there is a god, he can't be a good one. And if he ... more »
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Niniane
- Nov 7, 2008, 11:41p
This was a very thought-provoking post. It also made me tempted to go to survival school, but I might just hate it the entire time.
My mother was very ill in 2004 (during the last months of Desktop, if you recall), and I remember thinking that if she got better, I would be satisfied with life. I wouldn't pine for more productivity or accomplishment or any other desires.
She did get better, and I was very content for a while. Then I started slipping, and now I'm discontent most of the time. :| I am going to visit a friend near Tibet, where he says the village is very Buddhist, so maybe I will reconnect with my contentedness there.
I really liked your post, Nikhil.
Laura
- Nov 24, 2008, 2:10p
Nikhil,
Reading this post made me think of a book I read some 10 years ago.
" In search of the miraculous" by P.D. Ouspensky.
you might like it.
:)
Laura
- Nov 24, 2008, 2:31p
And by the way, being a technical recruiter I cannot but say that I am impressed with your professional background.
I happen to look for engineering talent for Microsoft Experimentation Platform in Seattle.
If it happens to be the right time for you to consider it, I will be happy to have a brief chat with you at your convenience.
Laura
530-692-9947
http://www.linkedin.com/in/laurafenn
Sanjay Mavinkurve
- Mar 18, 2009, 9:06a
I'm really disappointed to read this post, Nikhil. It seems as though you've answered questions that seem unanswerable (and which may indeed be unanswerable) with God.
Sure, you are lucky to have been born during this time, but that good fortune doesn't mean that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God (or, for that matter, any God) exists.
It takes an incredible amount of strength and belief in awesomeness of the universe to say to oneself, "There are a heck of a lot of questions that I have no answers to, and that humankind may never find answers to, but until then, I accept that I simply don't know the answers." Let's not lose our inquisitive nature that loves to discover truths about our world and universe just because we're stumped by the awesomeness of it along the way. Let's not create mythical answers to the most difficult of questions because we're uncomfortable in not knowing. Let's instead embrace not knowing because it leaves wide open the door for future investigation and discovery.
Above all, though, let's not cast reason and evidence-based investigation as somehow existing on a lower plane to the somehow "enlightened" state that your 30 days left you in. You seem to suggest that reason is on a lower plane, a plane for the unenlightened.
I'm not sure how much after your 30-day experience you wrote this post, but I urge you to rethink all the reasons for which you have suspended reason.
Your last paragraph does console me, however. It seems like the "God" you now believe in is not really a "God" at all, according to how most people I know define it. You're using the term "God" in a poetic sense, almost in an Einsteinian sense. You're bottling up all the awe, wonder, love, and other powerful emotions that you experience as you contemplate your existence and the meaning of existence altogether and calling that "God." Which is fine, except that it's, well, extremely confusing for everyone.
Sanjay
nikhil
- Apr 21, 2009, 6:13p
Sanjay!
Good to hear from you. I hope you're doing well, and thanks for the comment. Here's a response:
I think believing in God embraces not knowing just as much as not believing in God. Nor do I discount reason, as I use it incessantly on a daily basis. What I'm suggesting is that you should not be a slave to reason, a logic machine that accepts only those things arrived at by reason. Reason and logic are a closed, cold space, and while they work wonderfully as a tool, they aren't the only tool by which to act. The other tool, one that I often neglect, is the arational impulses and feelings that I often have. Some call it "trusting your gut", which is sort of what I mean.
One thing is clear to me. We can break knowledge down into 2 classes: the objective and the subjective. Science (and reason) provide knowledge in the objective domain. But let us not forget the second domain, the subjective. Even the very existence of the subjective domain (e.g. "feelings" via consiousness) has no space in the objective domain, and seems to be very much orthogonal to it. Yet it exists. It's existence is to me a testament to real, true knowledge or phenomena outside either the subjective and objective domains. I might call that the domain of God.
Maybe this is a clearer way to think about it: I have a strong subjective feeling of having a soul. I may have been taught it, or it may be "natural" - I can never know. What I do know is that I have this feeling, and I've denied it since the 6th grade. Why? Why not embrace my feeling, treat it as a truth, and see where that leads? Denial is not a good method by which to seak Truth.
I don't think my conception of God is Einsteinian, as you call it. I do believe that there is a higher power (whatever that might mean). I just don't think it's of the kind depicted by mainstream religions, or any organized religion that I've encountered. So this is not just the bottling up of awe.
I don't expect this to be very clear, and it is difficult to write about. So sorry about that - just trying to communicate what is inside me as clear as I know how. It's amazing that we're able to communicate such abstract ideas at all...
A Reflection
Sep 28, 2008, 3:23p
"I sometimes ask myself, how did it come that I was the one to develop the Theory of Relativity? The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think abour problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought of as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which ... more »
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omar
- Oct 11, 2008, 9:45a
so was he a genius? did he have 5 wisdom teeth?
Why I won't vote, and why I will give more to charity
Sep 27, 2008, 11:43a
I'm not going to vote in this upcoming election. I am not registered to vote, and I don't plan on registering. This may come as hearsay, and who am I to avoid the controversial, so on with the explanation.
I don't like either of the candidates. They both feel like fake people to me, almost people without minds of their ... more »
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omar
- Sep 27, 2008, 10:26p
nikhil,
you sound like ron paul, in some ways. i remember reading an interview with ron paul where he said something like "if your neighbor is polluting your area, then you go and talk to your neighbor and work it out, and use the courts to deal with it."
naive.
especially in this globalized world, where pollution/green house gases need to be dealt with globally.
there's one area where you need federal commitments.
now, onto healthcare. this country needs a federal mandate that everyone should be insured. it's ridiculous right now that healthcare, for most people, is tied to their employer.. and buying individual healthcare for oneself is just too expense. i suppose local communities could band together to provide healthcare for their residents (something SF is trying to do) but i really think that you only get reasonable
on obama's finance plan: you should read about where he plans to get the money for his spending initiatives. he isn't proposing spending more without taking in more, though tax receipts will almost certainly be lower this year so of course there will be issues.
on the bailout: it's too simple to see this as a blank cheque for wall street. unfortunately, if people/companies can't get credit, then the economy is going to stall. right now, banks aren't doing much lending. money markets aren't buying up short term issues from companies. these are issues that go beyond the wall street cronies, who are nevertheless partly to blame (as are people on main street for taking up these ridiculous mortgages, the people who sold them, the politicians who got rid of regulations, the regulators who didn't regulate, etc..). of course, i don't think we have an example of a modern financial crisis like this where the government didn't really step in, so it's hard to know what would happen if they didn't do anything, but i don't think we want to engage in that experiment. right now it's about getting the terms right -- for instance, if taxpayers are bailing out these companies, they better get some sort of equity stake.
as to your bigger point: i can understand your frustration with the candidates. i feel the same way. they both seem like poor options in my mind.. and they certainly are playing the political game -- there's no change in washington.
it's a frustrating time.
btw i'll be in cambridge starting 10/6 or so.
Knowledge
Aug 28, 2008, 10:16a
I've come to realize something. For much of my previous life, I read for enlightenment. I believed that, somewhere out there, someone knew a truth that would be exactly what I was looking for, would satisfy the search and change my life. I believed that there was a "lost" truth, hidden in the wilderness, discovered long ago but since forgotten; ... more »
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Leggett
- Aug 29, 2008, 7:53a
Makes plenty of sense Nikhil... thanks for sharing.
omar
- Aug 30, 2008, 2:46a
makes no sense nikhil, but when are you coming out to sf so we can go drinkin!
woo
;)
add "friends" to that love, children, family paren, and then start enjoyin your friends and bloggin less.
and start droppin ur 'g's
I Know You
Jun 22, 2008, 11:10a
Off the train, riding the escalator, reading my PCR.
An older guy, maybe 5' 5", playing his harmonica. Glance up, then back to my PCR. Make eye contact, he stops playing.
"I know you."
"You do?"
"Yeah, I know where you're from."
"Where am I from?"
"Syria."
"Nope."
"Where are ya from?"
We get on the second escalator, side-by-side.
"Guess ... more »
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Garry
- Jul 6, 2008, 11:25a
I really enjoyed this. There's something about conversational style writing like this that is always incredibly approachable.
Anonymous
- Jul 9, 2008, 1:29p
this is the best thing i've read in a while. seriously.
sam
- Jul 9, 2008, 1:30p
i am additionally impressed by your ability to remember that whole conversation (what i am assuming is) pretty much word for word.
nikhil
- Jul 9, 2008, 2:59p
yeah, I'm sure the conversation above is not super-accurate, but it was such an unusual conversation that i immediately started playing it back in my head when it was over.
Anonymous
- Jul 25, 2008, 10:25a
I felt like i was right there, thanks for sharing. I like how you asked him what do you do and he said, I'm a Greek Macedonian. There's some hilarious truth to that statement.
Harpoon
- Jul 25, 2008, 10:39a
The anonymous comment above is by Harpoon (just in case any Greek Macedonians want to join with any Aramean Syrians ;)
Brave New Mescaline
Jun 14, 2008, 3:14p
I just finished reading Aldous Huxley's double-book, "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell." It was a welcome break from all the academic papers I've been reading lately. Basically, the book is about Huxley's experiments with mescaline (also known as peyote) in the 1950s. Mescaline is a drug that is known to cause vibrant hallucinations for up to 10 ... more »
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