A surreal experience!!

I have been to Hampi quite a few times and it never ceases to surprise, bewilders and overwhelm me. However, this post is NOT going to be about the lost grandeur of Hampi. Many people have written about it extensively and I am sure I cannot add anything new to it. But my recent visit made me feel something unique and this post is about it. 

A bunch of us visited Hampi last week. We had hired a guide to take us through all the monuments along with the stories behind those. Nobody can miss the famous Vittala temple which has the musical pillars in it. While I was lost imagining how it would have been in those times, our guide showed a picture (below) which was taken in the 19th century, more than 200 years after the fall of the vijay nagar empire. The picture depicted how a couple of villagers had made the great Vittala temple as their house. Yes, their house!!! 

This was one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had. Imagining people washing clothes and cooking food amidst those musical pillars was something I couldn't fathom easily. While people were busy capturing moments with their cameras, I was captured by this surreal moment for a long time. 

P S - After few hours, far from any of the monuments, while having lunch, I was explaining what I felt to a friend of mine. Then it occurred to me, for all you know, we might have been having food amidst a place which could have been grand like the Vittala temple itself but just that it's too old or too torn to have been discovered. We are just matter constantly being recirculated!! 

Personal empiricism or Informed practice?

My post on "Black rights, Animal rights, and......?" talked about how I felt related to those whose Whites to discriminated against Blacks. There is an other context where I felt the same and this post is about it (Che!! My self image is taking a beating with this constant connection with the people who have discriminated).

As a teacher, I have witnessed innumerable number of times, the difficulty (or inability?) of some students to cope up with the difficulty of science and mathematics. Their comprehension of the subject and the ability to solve a question is so inadequate, its almost impossible for a teacher to help. Not surprisingly, I have given up many times saying that the student is better off pursuing a path other than the sciences. During these times, when people have made statements like "Anybody can do science and math. All it takes is effort, determination and external help", I have opposed such views calling them overtly romantic in nature. Can anybody be a runner or a swimmer with just adequate practice? What if someone's muscles are not adequately developed to become an athlete? Similarly, can a person with Down syndrome (where brain is not adequately developed) become a physicist? I have always asserted that any performance (academic or non academic) is both nature and nurture. The body composition matters as much as external factors (if not more) was a belief I held for long and that was also supported by personal empiricism (or confirmation bias?)

My long held belief was challenged last summer when I went for a month long course on science education research at HBCSE. There were many speakers who gave lectures on this topic of what determines whether one can do well in math and science. Almost all of them said, research indicates that 'being a genius' or 'being gifted' is NOT a strong indicator of whether one can do well in science and math. I vehemently argued with those speakers but what can be done? This is scientific research and not some religious debate where everyone wins in their arguments. If research indicates, it does. I returned to Bangalore with a split mind. My personal empiricism strongly believes in the role of body composition for academic performance while decades of research indicate otherwise.

Immediately after returning to Bangalore, I went to this Bollywood movie "Article 15". Before the movie started, I saw the trailer of the movie "Super 30". It's the story of a guy who took 30 students from underprivileged background and succeeded in getting them all to IITs. The IIT-JEE is one of the toughest exams in the world and not even in my wildest of dreams I would have entertained the thought of anybody cracking it with mere hard work. I believed some inherent 'smartness' is absolutely essential to get through it (Here, I don't intend that the under privileged students were not smart. But the fact that all of them got through implies, external factors is playing a prominent role). At that juncture, I was able to relate myself with the Whites who discriminated against Blacks. If we go back few hundreds of years and examine the conditions of Blacks and Whites, it's understandable why the Whites thought they were superior. The living conditions were such that Whites thoughts the Blacks will never be able to be like them. Even if somebody would have told that the BlackS are capable but its just the external factors have brought a huge gap in the living styles, nobody would have believed that. If I was there, I doubt my ability to believe in that too. But see how things have changed. With external factors being changed, the gap between them are reducing. This helped me to put my own split into perspective. I guess I was the White when I was seeing some of my students who were struggling with math and science. It might just be about providing the 'right' environment for students to study math and science and most of them might be able to do well irrespective of the inherent 'smartness' factor. It was time for me to move from personal empiricism to informed practice.

P S 1: I still believe a student with Down syndrome cannot become a physicist. My current understanding is, a IQ of above 130 is not necessary to succeed in science and math. If a student even has a IQ of 100, it should be enough but the presence of the right external environment is important. That's when the role of inherent smartness gets minimised.

P S 2: The book "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond is an excellent read on WHY there was a huge difference in the living styles of Whites and Blacks. Bottom line -  It's NOTHING to do with the body composition or smartness but purely external factors!!!

Is awareness of a problem a necessary criterion to feel the effects of the problem?

If a child has been brought up in a jail right from the birth without any knowledge of the external world, is the jail, jail to the child or a home? (Remember the movie, The Truman Show?)

We all want to minimize problems/pain/loss and maximize happiness/comfort/pleasure/gain etc. However, this is seldom easy to achieve and hence a large fraction of the population struggles with various problems from time to time. I am interested in one particular aspect about problems in general - Is awareness of a problem a necessary criterion to feel the effects of the problem?

I would like to break down the problem with problems into various components to get a better picture of it.

This post is mainly concerned about the cell which says 'YES AND NO' in the above tabular column.  Let's examine the conditions under which it is YES and conditions under which it is NO.

NO - This is a no-brainer. Whether the parents are aware of the possibility of mental illness at a later stage of their children's life or not, it has no bearing on the result. If the nature and nurture interplay results in the problem (mental illness in this context), the parents have to just deal with it (of course, the kids too)

YES - This is where things get interesting and troublesome. Irrespective of the awareness of the effect, if the children get the problem (mental illness in this case), they have got it. However, there is a chance that this problem might not be perceived as a problem by the parents. They might rationalize this by saying, "This is all a part of nature". However, if you ask the same parents whether they will drive a car which has a high probability of breaking down, they will refuse and not rationalize by saying, "This is all a part of nature". But when it comes to children, often parents fail to recognize the problems involved. This is where the answer to the question in context becomes YES. Awareness of a problem becomes a necessary criterion to feel the effects of the problem. 

What does all of this leave the knowledgeable other with? In the context of the child birth, I was the self-appointed knowledgeable other due to my strong anti-natalist ideology. Very often, I have tried to dissuade people from giving birth to children on various grounds but most importantly, the Anna Karenina principle - since we have limited control on the trajectory of a life of a child, there is a possibility of many things going wrong and hence it is logical to refrain from giving birth. However, not surprisingly, I often lose the battle in front of the power of the millions of years of evolution which has given people a strong predisposition to engage in procreation. But something got me thinking. I have always believed in the objective reality to the sensations of pain and pleasure. However, if a person does not become aware of the problem, will the effect of the objective reality still hold good? In such a case, should I even intervene? 

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?". Similarly, "If people don't perceive a problem as a problem, has the problem caused problems?"