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Sci-fi movies in plausible chronological order

Sci-fi movies in plausible chronological order

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Here’s what I’ve observed: some movie can follow from another movie because the events in movie1 can plausibly lead to the events in movie2.
For eg. – Terminator -> Matrix
In Terminator, machines rise up and become the superior race trying to eradicate humans. They probably succeed in proliferating over the world. In this process, as Matrix tells us, humans would try blocking out the sun to prevent the machines from getting their energy source and hence those machines come up with using humans as batteries and eventually the whole Matrix movie follows.

Here’s another plausible flow of movies:

Iron Man -> I, Robot -> Terminator -> Matrix

1) Tony Stark comes up with a brilliant invention – a powerful, sturdy yet compact cyborg suit which has highly developed and interactive AI built into it. Then its just a matter of time that the suit is modified into an independent robot. Soon these robots are commercialized and I,Robot happens.
2) In I,Robot we see that the AI (V.I.K.I) evolves and becomes self-aware just like the AI in Cyberdyne systems in Terminator1. But alas, it is destroyed in the end. However, Sonny the unique robot, the Hero throughout the film, also has a capability to evolve coz he is highly human-like AND FREE, having free will! Whats more, in the end, Sonny sets out to FREE all other NS-5 robots. Isn’t that exactly the beginning of a new superior race? It is bound to happen that among these 1000s of FREE robots, some would be aware that they are superior to the human race and become just like VIKI or Cyberdyne systems and hence Terminator follows.
3) Then as discussed earlier, Matrix follows.

Another possibility:

Iron Man -> I, Robot -> Bicentennial Man (with Sonny from I, Robot as the robot in this)

In I,Robot if at the end Sonny doesn’t set free all the other robots, then he could be the robot in Bicentennial man – he has emotions, feelings, dreams just as in bicentennial man.

Levels / Orders of Thinking

Levels / Orders of Thinking

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When you’re in a strategic situation or a game, there are, what I call, Levels of thinking or Orders of thinking.

In a strategic situation, you must anticipate what your opponent would do and act accordingly. Your opponent will also anticipate your moves and act accordingly. Which action is the winning move depends on which order you and your opponent are thinking on. Interestingly, when the action can have only two values, it alternates every level.

That must have made no sense, so here’s an example:

Suppose you have done something wrong, lets say you’ve abetted someone in a crime, and a detective is hired to look into the matter.The detective is gonna talk face to face with a bunch of people rounded up for interrogation.

Its your turn. He shows you a photo of the thug whom you assisted and asks sternly, “Recognize this fellow?”.

*Now, if you show fear or guilt on your face or by way of body language like gulping down your throat, the detective is gonna corner you even if you answer “No”. And you lose!

That is Level 0 thinking – Ground level thinking or obviousness or naiveness / artless / simpleton.

Level 0 for you coz, you did the obvious/naive move: showing the guilt by gulping down.

Level 0 for the detective coz also took the obvious decision as according to him, you were clearly guilty.

The detective wins coz thats what was supposed to happen – he was the Expected winner. This was the simplest case.

Now, instead, suppose you act smart. You realize if you show any signs of fear or guilt while lying, you’re done for. You anticipate what the detective is gonna look for.

So when asked about the photo, you calmly deceive the detective by saying “No” just like other innocent people.

That is Level 1 thinking on your part.

The detective was still on Level 0.

So, you won.

However the detective may also be artful.

Lets assume that he has a presumption that all suspects think on Level 1. So even he thinks on Level 1. Hence if you do suppress your gulping or body language, he CATCHES you. He wins.

If you DONT suppress your gulp, you DONT get caught! Here’s where it starts alternating.

If you understand all this and you purposefully decide not to suppress the gulp, it means you are thinking on Level 2. It means you completely anticipated your opponent and stayed one step ahead of him.

If you had not anticipated your opponent AT ALL i.e. if you had been naive i.e. if you had been on Level 0, even then you would have won.

However if you had anticipated your opponent but not completely i.e. if you had been on level 1, you would lose! Thats like executing a half baked plan… no plan is better than a half baked plan.

Now, lets take this a level higher – the detective is one smartass like Michael Scofield (from Prison Break). He understands all of what is written above! He believes you are also a smartypants and so you are not gonna be on level 1, let alone level 0. He has reason to believe that you are gonna be thinking on Level 2. You don’t know this coz you have not anticipated that the detective is one hell of a smartass; smart, but not so smart; so you go with Level 2 (half-bakedness). Hence, you DO GULP expecting to win the battle, but unfortunately for you, the detective is also on Level 2. He sees through all your smartness and He wins!

An amusing point to note here:

If the detective was on Level 0 i.e. a simpleton/naive, say a teletubbie as a detective (not worthy of being a detective), even then, he would have won!

What we can conclude in numbers here is:

Of the two entities competing, one of them is gonna be an Expected Winner at ground level – In this case the detective.

1) When both the entities are on the same level, the Expected winner wins. Or to generalize, when there is a difference of 2n between their levels, the Expected wins.

2) When there is a difference of (2n+1) between their levels, the Expected loser Wins.

So its like an alternating ladder:

Also, when your action/move can have more than 2 values, I think the representation might look like a helix:

Where do you encounter such convoluted thinking?

In real life, usually, only level 0 and level 1 are common. Thinking on Level 2 by just one party is quite rare. Thinking on Level 2 by BOTH the parties is hardly ever encountered in real life, atleast I have not observed it yet. Level 3 and beyond are practically non-existent IRL.

In fiction, esp crime drama, psychological thrillers Level 1 and Level 2 by one party is somewhat common. Level 2 thinking by BOTH the parties is seen once in a blue when the producer/writer wants to shock you. And Level 3 thinking by one party would be very rare. I think Death Note exhibits Level 3 thinking at some point… not sure, I’ll have to watch it again.

Where do you use this?

Social Engineering, deception, investigation, day-to-day life decision making, recognizing people, Sports, Games.

My example considered an “intellectual battle” between two characters. However, this concept of levels of thinking is evident in other cases also whenever you would anticipate something. *Cant think of an example right now; will update as soon as i find one*

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Now that you understand what levels of thinking means, suggest me some movies, serials, animes, books which features “High Level thinking”. The universally known genres “Psychological Thriller” or “Mindfck” come close to describing the same quality but not quite exact.

Here’s my list:

Animes:

1) Death Note

2) Code Geass … I haven’t seen it yet but from the descriptions by its fans that I’ve read it does seem to be like “high level thinking” stuff.

Serials:

1) Prison Break

Movies and Books, dont know. All of the ones I know are Level 1.

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“Levels of Thinking” was my way of putting up this concept that we unconsciously follow. Do you have a similar framework? Upto what Level have you ever thought?

Leave your comments.

My Goals in Life

My Goals in Life

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Note: I’m gonna write this article as if this blog is my personal diary. So excuse some random disorganization in the structure.

People ask children what they wanna be when they grow up. Some say they wanna be a pilot, some say they wanna be an actor. When I was a child, I never understood why they think so. I think there were too many uncertain variables to be able to answer that question. Or, I think I didn’t have a goal. Rather, I didn’t understand what a goal is. Most of the people go with the flow doing high school, college, engg or medical and get a job.

About 2 years ago, I understood what it means to have a goal in life. I know its quite late, but, better late than never. A goal is something which if not achieved makes you frustrated and hence inspires you to work towards achieving it. I felt it first when I was thinking about the universe and existence.

I categorize my goals in life as:
I) The Ultimate Goal
II) Practical Goals that will define my career

I) The Ultimate Goal

This is infact, the ultimate goal of mankind, of each and every person knowingly or unknowingly.
I am an introverted person and a thinker by nature. Everytime I think about existence, the universe, the planets, the oceans, humans compared to animals, mosquitoes, modern science, meditation, psychology, I get frustrated knowing that we are apparently so insignificant in this universe about which we know almost nothing.
Why do we exist? This is the basic question that baffles every person but people nowadays seem to ignore it. However, I believe, finding out the purpose of our existence (and all related questions about the universe and existentialism) is the ultimate goal of every conscious being. The question cannot be answered by a systematic project. Each and everyone in this world contributes towards answering this question by their actions, unconsciously or consciously.

So that is the Ultimate Goal of mankind. And I stress it as My Ultimate Goal too because my practical goals in life are based on it.

II) My Practical Goals

Although I call them “practical goals”, they are still far-fetched. There is no fixed way to achieve them. These goals are what would decide my career. Some of these are just fascinating ideas which later became one of my goals.

1) To build a Free Energy Device

Since my high school, I was trying to think of a PMM (Perpetual Motion Machine). During my college, I learnt that there exists a word for such a machine which is called PMM. I always feel that there must be some way by to build a device which can provide energy without any expenditure. And to support my feeling is the fact that the 1st law thermodynamics aka the conservation of energy is just based on human observation. Its not a mathematically derived law. Anyway, I now call it by the proper name – “Free Energy Device”. I wish I could play an important role in inventing a FED which will propel India towards being a superpower.

2) To come up with a technology which will enable direct transfer of thoughts and knowledge from one mind to another or to an electronic system which can store it.

My inspiration for coming up with such an ‘absurd’ idea is simple – during my schooling I noticed the teacher cannot convey absolutely what s/he has to teach. Even if s/he does, the students interpret it differently. Plus, we spend about 20 yrs in just learning. So what if, one could copy the teacher’s knowledge directly? I know that is ridiculous, flawed and might probably even inhibit learning but that was just the inspiring thought. Lets develop it some and see the implications.
As of now, there already exist commercial toys which can read concentration levels and manipulate a prime mover. There also exists technology using which you can indicate directions to drive a car (say in a video game) just by thinking which way to go.

Suppose we are able to come up with technology which can copy a person’s thoughts as it is i.e. without any data loss we could accumulate the thoughts and understandings of each and every person on the earth into a powerful supercomputer. This computer will be like the Akashic Records – a library of all human knowledge and experience. Then the computer can be programmed to process on the thoughts and knowledge of every person to reconcile discrepancies between every person’s understanding of the universe and various phenomena. This will drastically accelerate our understanding about the universe, history of mankind, mythology and will catapult mankind towards The Ultimate Goal.

Alternatively, if we are able to transfer our thoughts and knowledge directly to another person instead of to a computer, then a global network for mind information transfer can be setup. Then, instead a single computer reconciling discrepancies, it will happen in every person’s mind which will bring the understanding of every person to the same level. In essence it means every person will be able to understand other perfectly. This is when complete and worldwide Peace will be established. This idea of mine was reinforced when I heard it in Naruto Shippuuden. I think Naruto says something like “Only when people can truly understand each other will peace be established”.

3) To make a self-learning machine

Various sources have inspired me to consider this dream as one of my goals. One of them is a funny quote: “I’d rather write code that writes code than write code.” :D. Another is the array of sci-fi movies and literature that feature AI such as The Terminator, Matrix, I Robot etc.
Most importantly, though, I believe that for the innovation of a self-learning algorithm, one needs to think philosophically. For instance, always think how a new born baby would learn what is good for it and what is harmful. Or how a baby learns to filter out unmeaningful background noise from language and within than, how it makes out words – something based on pattern recognition. I have a philosophical mind and I love thinking philosophically on quite anything.

Implications of a self-learning machine are of tremendous gravity. For one, if the AI goes out of control, the story of I Robot or Terminator could happen followed by Matrix 😛 Sometimes I think jokingly that how ironic it is that one of my goals (no. 2) may lead to world peace while another (this one) may lead to the destruction of humanity and that due to the limits posed by my educational qualification, I cannot pursue the Peace goal and am pursuing the Destruction goal :P.

However, suppose we are able to create a self-learning machine that is kept in control preventing Terminator, then we will in essence have an immortal human being which is able to learn and improve itself at an exponential rate! Hence, it will drive humanity towards The Ultimate Goal with exponentially increasing rate!

And ofcourse apart from helping mankind in achieving The Ultimate Goal, an intelligent, human-like-thinking robot will drastically advance each and every field. Its no feat to imagine its wide range of applications.

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Now about how these goals would affect my career:
I have done my Bachelors of Engineering in Mechanical. Hence, its impossible to pursue my 2nd goal. It is very much fitting to pursue my 1st goal. And lastly, I can also pursue my 3rd goal by getting into the field of robotics – humanoids, intelligent machines, AI and so on. I chose the 3rd one.

All three of my practical goals are also highly far-fetched but I have a gut feeling that they are possible although I admit, the 2nd one is the most unrealistic of all.
Regarding the 1st one, work in FED is already taking place all over the world.
As for the 3rd one, just think of it as bio-mimicry. Humans themselves are self-learning machines. If humans can exist, so can man-made self-learning machines.

I know that probably during my entire life till death, I might not achieve the goal but atleast, I would contribute as much as possible in achieving it. Maybe sometime in between, I might gain immortality by becoming a cyborg 😛

What the hell do we Sleep for?

What the hell do we Sleep for?

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Why do we sleep?
The most common answer to this would be “to rest ofcourse!” But why is there a concept of ‘rest’ in the first place?

When there can be man-made robots which can work 24×7, why can’t we? Why do we need to rest every 16 hours for 8 hours atleast!? Thats a lot of time!

Surely our body is thousands of times better than machines and robots. Our body can even cure itself in case it is damaged. Same goes for the mental part also. There should not be a conecpt of mental exhaustion too.

Hence, one of the possible explanations to this can be that – sleeping was not meant for resting! It was meant for something else, that we have forgotten now. No wonder, sleeping is a weird phenomenon then. We become absolutely unaware of our surroundings. Time doesn’t feel absolute. We might as well be dead mentally. And to make things even more interesting, we ‘Dream!’.

Here’s an interesting analogy:

When you go to bed and wake up, if you had no clock in your room, no watch at hand, you cannot tell how much time has past. It feels like a very short time has gone by when actually, many hours have gone by.
Infact, if u leave aside the time taken for you to fall asleep (the time during which u r conscious),
it would feel like no time has gone by.

There’s another phenomenon which would feel exactly the same and it has been proven to exist – time dilation by theory of relativity. If go on a ride on a superbike travelling at say 99% speed of light, and come back home in 5 minutes according to ur wrist watch,… at home actually hours would have gone by! You would have no idea how it happened.

Thus to conclude, I believe the purpose of sleeping is not just for rest. Sleeping and Dreams are vital pieces of the puzzle of the Truth of the Universe. Don’t underestimate them. Everytime you go to bed, clear your mind and hope for some Enlightenment!
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Journal Copying Trick?

Journal Copying Trick?

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An interesting find:

When completing writeups if you are just copying quickly from another journal, mostly you just copy it blindly word to word (if u r not skipping words and even if u r, u might do the skipping also blindly, not caring for grammatical mistakes).
You tend to copy word to word, buffering a small amount, without making sense of what you are reading or writing. Sometimes you don’t even realize if the sentence you are copying has grammatical mistakes coz u don’t buffer the entire sentence. This is like xeroxing. So it might look like its a no-brainer. You don’t need to think or do processing.

The interesting find is: If you understand while reading and then write, it requires lesser processing!

Accidental experimental Proof:
I was copying a writeup at 2.30AM, tired. I was following the xeroxing method as always and was doing quite well and not sleepy. Then I tried understanding the sentences and writing. And I relaxed and sleepy! Plus I required lesser time to write the same amount of content.

That was not an intentional experiment so there r no psychological effects.

There’s a con though to the 2nd method of copying: You can’t sing or hum your favourite tune while understanding (reading) though u can do that while writing. So in other words, u can’t multi-task efficiently. But maybe girls wont find even doing that difficult as I hear, girls are better at multi-tasking 🙂

0.999 (9 recurring) = 1?

0.999 (9 recurring) = 1?

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From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_0.999…_equals_1):
{
In mathematics, the repeating decimal 0.999… denotes a real number equal to one. In other words, the notations 0.999… and 1 represent the same real number. This equality has long been accepted by professional mathematicians and taught in textbooks. Proofs have been formulated with varying degrees of mathematical rigour, taking into account preferred development of the real numbers, background assumptions, historical context, and target audience.
}

One of the proofs given is:
x = 0.999 (recurring)
=> 10x = 9.999
=> 10x – x = 9.999 – 0.999
=> 9x = 9
=> x = 1

But this wrong! Whats making it wrong is that you consider the no. of digits after the decimal point remains same; or in other words, that you consider (infinity – 1) = infinity.
When n is HUGE, (n – 1) is approximately= n.

The following is the correct method. First assume that x = 0.999…… (n 9s) with n = HUGE!
x = 0.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999 (40 9s total)
10x = 9.999999999999999999999999999999999999999 (Still 40 9s; 39 after decimal point)

10x = 9.9999999999999999999999999999999999999990
– x = 0.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999
————————————————-
9x = 8.9999999999999999999999999999999999999991
————————————————-

Now make n = infinity. So it makes
9x = 8.9999999999999999999999…(infinite 9s)…………99991

Now when you divide by 9, you get

x = 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999… (infinite 9s i.e. recurring again!)

———– x ———–

Another proof goes as:

0.333 (recurring) = 1/3
=> 3 x 0.333 = 3 x 1/3
=> 0.999 = 1

But since the problem we are dealing with (i.e. Is 0.999… = 1?) is very critical like a man standing on a knife edge on a single toe, immeasureably small factors also matter!
So we cannot say 0.333 (recurring) is equal to 1/3.
1/3 is a perfect division of a cake into 3 parts.
0.333 (recurring) is NOT a perfect division into 3 parts!!

As a corollary of this discussion, you can say:
One who can divide perfectly may be called God.