SynTalk

Are you free if thoughts just occur to you? Is alienation – as loss of a sense of belonging and subjectivity – a phenomenon of modernity? Is freedom contra-causal and spontaneous? Is it truly in human nature to be free? Are people ‘already’ free? Do you exercise your freedom in the Market? Is all of production voluntary? Is production a form of fulfillment? Is leisure (without work), then, a threat to freedom? Are you overworked and overspent? Are your desires yours? Are we accumulating ‘garbage’? Why don’t consumers go on strike? Are we biologically and socially constrained? Is there a connection between language and freedom? Are you able to put together disjoint concepts out of a context? Does language create possibilities? Can notions of freedom also be propagandized? Do you think of the mountains as Gods? Is freedom (along with the ability to act) essential for survival of the human species? Is it sufficient to think that one is free to be free? Is it necessary (?) to end Capital, as we know it, to save ourselves? Can you conceive of the end of the world? Is the future just like the past? Will we exercise our angelhood? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from philosophy (Prof. Akeel Bilgrami, Columbia University, New York), economics (Dr. Arjun Jayadev, Azim Premji University, Bangalore), & linguistics & philosophy (Prof. Nirmalangshu Mukherji, ex-University of Delhi, New Delhi). Listen in....

Do you trust your translator? How can ‘worlds’ be translated? Where is Tamil when a novelist writes in English about Tamil speaking characters? Are all translations interpretations (judgment?)? Can one ‘read’ Nature? Can mathematics be translated into (natural language) prose? Is translation prior to language, & (therefore) is it in the nature of languages to be translatable? How then are languages different from one another? Can the forces of translation be located within one language itself? How are scientific texts different? Is symbolization a form of translation? Is science a form of storytelling? Are both equations and poetry essential & point-like? Do you read poetry with footnotes? Must the translated text do all the work on its own? Could a 20-page commentary on a 2-line sutra be considered a faithful translation? Does the specific history of interpretative communities always matter? Can Quran be translated and read as Ovi Marathi poetry? Did colonization happen via translation? But, is all translation violent? Will the ideas of interpretation, translation, & language always exist in the future? Will language die (?), but translation live? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from poetry (Prof. Mustansir Dalvi, Sir JJ School of Architecture, Mumbai), philosophy (Prof. Sundar Sarukkai, NIAS, Bangalore), & translation studies (Prof. S. Shankar, University of Hawai’i, Honolulu). Listen in....

Can you be a revolutionary? Might concrete events have causes, but not history? What drives the world? Does history develop (or progress?) in stages? Is the end there at the beginning? Are we moving from ‘less free’ to ‘more free’? Are eras and epochs merely intellectual constructs, & always retrospective? Does human mind create different visions of the same era? How did human wants increase for the formulaic economic human to emerge? What role did trade play? Is creative technology an in-born element of life? Why isn’t there progress for ever? Is each epoch about an understanding of Being? Is future an embryo in the womb of the past? Are we merely articulators of what is emerging? Are humans themselves a resource now? What separates eras? Are there ‘natural’ breaks; or universal periods? Are there gaps in memory or history? Can personal whims and thoughts create history? Do epochs always grow, mature and then fade away? Are transitions driven by a distress or might it result from aleatory play? Are great civilizations always great economies? Is the creator also the destroyer? Is the technology era only beginning? When will the Owl of Minerva fly again? Can ‘only a god’ save us? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from philosophy (Dr. Siby K. George, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), & economics (Prof. Soumitra Sharma, Juraj Dobila University of Pula, Pula, Croatia). Listen in...

Are more than a third of you crooks; could you arrive at a consensus? When do we need to work together? Can introducing uncertainty (or randomness?) get rid of certain equilibria? Is coordination necessary for resource access by multiple agents? Is building synchronous hardware difficult? Is it even possible to say whether motor proteins are coordinating? Are systems with heterogeneous agents more likely to coordinate; & when? Can you move your lips; how? Can all problems be decoupled into ‘n’ pieces? Do process ‘geometries’ and communication systems matter? How does the central bank help firms coordinate? When is central planning essential? How is the brain different from the central bank? Is more information always better? Is being precise good? Can plasticity be built? How do proteins decide which ‘track’ to choose? How do (non-intelligent?) machines coordinate? Is the dynein of the yeast better than ours? Does the ‘size’ of payoffs determine whether coordination happens? Might we be able to think of coordination as a ‘field phenomena’ using the physical notions of order parameter, thresholds, and phase transition? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from computer science (Prof. K. Narayan Kumar, Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), Chennai), biology (Prof. Roop Mallik, TIFR, Mumbai), & economics and game theory (Prof. Debasis Mishra, ISI, New Delhi). Listen in....

What is on that side? Where does identity crisis happen? Is interface a neighborhood concept? Can there be interfaces without fences? Are there non-membrane bound life forms? How do we connect computers or networks? How does the human brain communicate with the CPU? What is the dimensionality of interfaces? Can intelligence be encoded into materials? Where is a cell controlled from? Is Wi-Fi physical? Is autonomy difficult? Do different kinds of interactions lead to different kinds of interfaces? Can a physically imposed political boundary create different spaces? Are the number of interfaces in HCI systems increasing? Is all logic language based? Does more feedback make systems more stable? Can supervision be complicated? Can there be (non-physical) interfaces between faster and slower moving parts of a system? Are biological systems optimal? Are cars more complex than planes? Will highly automated systems have more rare events? Will biological systems assimilate the logic of computing interfaces in the distant future? Can cars truly self drive in the future? What can be undone? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from physics (Dr. Shankar Ghosh, TIFR, Mumbai), computer science (Prof. Philippe Palanque, University Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France), & immunology (Dr. Satyajit Rath, ex-National Immunological Institute (NII), New Delhi). Listen in....

Do you have a pain of 9? Do you malinger? 'Where' does it hurt, & when? Do you want to be admitted to a hospital? Do you want attention? Are you suffering from loneliness? Do you need morphine? Is pain subjective, & always multidimensional? Is the brain always a part of any pain experience? Is pain a disease? How can it be assessed? Can there be patients without diseases, and diseases without patients? Can groups experience pain? Is treating the pain different from treating the disease? Do only pain killers relieve pain? How does pain reinforce itself? Can social or economic or political problems be redressed at hospitals? How does torture work? Why do we suffer? Is our body socially constructed? Do you go to the gym? Can pain be addictive? Are inequality and pain really connected? Could changing the nature of work reduce pain in the world? Can self hypnosis work for unrelenting chronic pain? Might a woman’s endometrial pain (say) (sometimes) be called illegitimate, & why? What is the purpose of pain? Can one understand one’s own and others' pain via art or religion? Can pain be blocked off permanently? &, should one desire a pain free world as a right? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from palliative care (Prof. Mary Ann Muckaden, Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai), sociology (Prof. Harish Naraindas, JNU, New Delhi), & history (Dr. Benjamin R. Siegel, Boston University, Massachusetts). Listen in....

Are you very well known? Do you live in a ‘small world’? Can connectedness be measured? How did/do books, knowledge, money, voice, & commodities circulate? What is the topological structure of the internet? Is everything connected a network? Do we try to stabilize networks via protocols? Does internet have more ‘filters’ than ‘doors’? What are the effects of media? Is most economic value created via affective infrastructures by measuring & tapping the senses? Are there limits to how large networks can be? Are all large networks hierarchical? Is your memory layered? Does the human brain have hubs? Must local rules always be simple? Why can networks be made to crash (only?) by overloading? Do networks always depend on how they have grown? Do different kinds of networks transform different kinds of information? Is energy management at the heart of network management? What causes climate change? Does everything influence everything? What if the sensational is ‘valuable’ but harmful? How would an ethic of network participation emerge? What is human life supposed to be? Will all our (redundant) bodies be networked? Will the networks become intelligent? How? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from mathematics(Prof. Frank den Hollander, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands), & media studies (Prof. Ravi Sundaram, CSDS, New Delhi). Listen in....

How does your tongue taste? What do you take for granted? Can you create randomness? Do you act in the continuum? Can you then reason about racing a tortoise ahead of you? Is there something common to most paradoxes? Can all paradoxes be ‘stated’? Do paradoxes owe something to the nature of Reality? Are dilemma, doubt, disbelief, paradoxes, & contradictions in the same class? Do we necessarily need faith before reasoning? Is there a reasoning process that does not lead to paradoxes? Why isn't Gödel's Theorem a Law? Are all paradoxes connected to language? Can a logic be complete but undecidable? Is uncomputability a consequence of self reference? Can discrete cardinality be higher than real numbers’? How did quantum probability uncover the hidden assumptions behind the quantum paradoxes? Is the quantum collapse (still) a physical phenomenon? What is computing? Are paradoxes pictures? Is a paradox free conception of the world possible? What is common knowledge? Are all paradoxes counterintuitive, & will we always keep running into them? Is there likely to be a ‘Law of Reasoning’ in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from mathematics (Prof. Luigi Accardi, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy), computer science (Prof. Supratik Chakraborty, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), & philosophy (Prof. Navjyoti Singh, IIIT, Hyderabad). Listen in....

Do people bet on horses when they bet on horses? What does money 'do'? Does money fundamentally deal with the future? Why don't we have a market in people anymore? Isn’t Market an elaborate barter system? How do different things commensurate with each other? Does price make value observable? Is the world created by labour? Can labour be the scale for pricing? Can Market solve ‘all’ problems? Is price always embedded in a broader system of values? Why is Copenhagen's racing different from Delhi’s? Is capitalism also gambling? Does risk, as such, 'produce' profit? Does only the capitalist speculate? Can production itself be speculative? Why is bajra inexpensive? Are mortgages human capital derivatives? Is value objective in a sociological (emergent) kind of way? However, are all of us equal price takers? Could/do price theories incorporate the notion of 'moving' time? How (relatively) large can the non-basic goods economy be? Is a world without speculation likely? Are we always going to misprice? Would everything be free in a super-abundant future? Will we stay inside the machine? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from political economics (Dr. Anush Kapadia, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), anthropology (Dr. Stine Simonsen Puri, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark), & economic history (Prof. Ajit Sinha, Azim Premji University, Bangalore). Listen in…

Do you tip in restaurants you are unlikely to revisit? Why (not)? Have you violated a norm or a 'rule' lately? Do norms (for collective action) and conventions (for coordination) solve different kinds of social problems? Are norms constraints? Are conventions self enforcing? Is the capacity to develop and enforce norms central to being human? Would we have societies without norms? Is it important for societies to 'informally' punish opportunistic behaviour in a decentralized way? What does 'breaking the rule' mean in (say) classical music? Is there, however, also a convention of breaking the norm? Do some conventions become norms in the long run; how? Can tragedy of the commons be averted via norms? Are norms fragile structures and nearly impossible to recover? How is culture sustained and reproduced? What function do the extra musical conventions serve? Why are we willing to punish? Are norms often enmeshed with the idea of self image? How are common property and open access different? Can codifying norms into Laws sometimes obliterate them? Is 'wrong' often worse than 'costly'? When do norms don't help? What might be the nature of new norms? Would the convention of deviating continue in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from classical music (Dr. Aneesh Pradhan, Mumbai), & economics (Prof. Rajiv Sethi, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York). Listen in....