SynTalk

]] __begin__ [[ Welcome to SynToy ]] [[ Context. Concepts. Categories. Conversations. Chance ]] Eternity in 180 seconds. Bird songs. #SynToy_World. Shuffle. Chatter. Incoherente. Questions. Ideas. SynTalkrs. Organic. Many many. Talk. An object is. Episodes. Sense. Images. Tiles. Clouds. Culture. Session. Finite. Because they have done it. Experience. Patterns. As strange. Notes. Subjective. Verifiable. Space. Other. Process. Boundaries. Circuitry. People. One appearing as many. Thinking. Alone ]] [[ SynToy is (a kind) of living semi-autonomous toy ]] [[ SynToy (http://www.syntoy.com) being created as a technology enabled and algorithm-driven personal resource for thinking, & playing with ideas and concepts. Available soon in your app stores ]] [[ (( dream )) ]]

Are you civil? When do you put your self interest aside? Does it depend on the ‘evolutionary game’ you are playing? Is justice fairness? Is a fair world impossible? What do markets promote? Is 'price' the magic wand? Can price take all the externalities into account? Do initial endowments always matter? Can social order emerge in a group of only self interested individuals? When can natural selection be said to be occurring? Why aren’t all groups societies? Is there fairness (or even efficiency) in the animal world? Is despotism or nepotism the price that we pay for having a civilization? Would reciprocity be built into any just society? Why don’t all efficient markets (or equilibria) exist? Can order and disorder appear in cycles? Does enlightened self interest lead to common good outcomes? Do we get exactly what we select for? Is there often a disconnect between the individual, sub-group, & group levels? Are larger groups likely to be less fair? Would an 'equal' world (even if) be stable? Can there be a Theorem for Fairness? How much of private property must we respect to have a prosperous society? What (besides poetry) is worth striving for…? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from evolutionary biology (Prof. Amitabh Joshi, JNCASR, Bangalore), political philosophy (Prof. Bindu Puri, JNU, New Delhi), & economics (Prof. Debraj Ray, New York University (NYU), New York). Listen in....

Why don’t we misunderstand the number 3? Do you have a private photograph? Is most of perception ineffable? Do propositions capture reality? What cannot be shown? Or, said? How does one describe touch? Or disgust? What/how do you understand if you watch a foreign language film without subtitles? How is it even possible for our thought to be about the world? Does the logical form of a fact and its (corresponding) sentence match each other? Does language 'depict' the world? How does this picturing take place? Is saying helpless without showing? Is seeing believing? Are films merely audiovisual? Is there a limit to what can be said in filmic narration? Can tautologies or contradictions only be shown? How do you show? Can a shot of an ocean have a narrative arc? Are films more compatible with the way we form memories? Which shots stay in your mind? Is cinema closer to immediate perception? Are propositions always abstract? Can we speak about just about anything? When do descriptions fail? What would a world of only blind people be like? What might be the future of saying and showing? Should one be silent when the situation is of great importance? What else can one say…? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from philosophy (Dr. Nilanjan Bhowmick, University of Delhi, New Delhi), & documentary film making & film theory (Dr. Aparna Sharma, UCLA, Los Angeles). Listen in...

Does the Indonesian (?) in you love idlis? Are we all (universal) human beings? But, does society narrow our experience of the world? Must we then be spatiotemporally-bound? But, do universal ideas also come from situatedness? Is local, however, also always hybrid? How is a universal regionalized in architecture or literature? What is decidedly local – a consciousness? Does local see itself as hybrid? Is the self-image of your community locally constructed? Does connected mean homogenized? Can the local be fully evacuated? What is your style of experiencing the world? How can you experience darshana? Does being attuned to the local memories potentially make the new more recognizable? How do we resolve disputes? Does Sartre have a Kannada version? Do we need history to live in the world? Is the eye always more patient with an alien image than the ear is with an alien sound? Are buildings a part of the linguistic culture? Can buildings then be thought of a la language? Are buildings always glocal? How can a city be conceived? Is globalization generic? Is the future less generic? How will we produce ourselves? Would Being continue shifting…? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from sociology & Kannada literature (Prof. Chandan Gowda, Azim Premji University, Bangalore), & architecture (Prof. Vikramāditya Prakāsh, University of Washington, Seattle). Listen in....

Why don’t you help all your relatives? Why do people marry? Do you know your pedigree? Can relatedness be measured or recognized with precision? Are close relatives the best organ donors? Who guarantees your loans? Who can the closest relative be? Do four first cousins equal one sibling? Would altruism evolve in the absence of kinship? Does the environment impact the benefit/cost of helping? Can organisms self reproduce? Is it possible for males to have neither a father nor a son? Do all off-springs have mothers? Do plants have relatives? Is incest prohibition the Universal Law of Kinship? Is there an elementary unit of kinship? Is outbreeding a ‘superior’ natural selection method? Does a certain kind of exchange economy and an idea of ‘difference’ emerge with marriage? Do phases of a-/sexual reproduction (equivalent to in-/outbreeding?) alternate in certain cultures and species? What is a joint family? Are identical twins clones? C/would we clone ourselves in the future? Does marriage have a great future? Would kinship stay relevant in the long run? If yes, where would it begin? In the petri dish…? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from sociobiology & ecology (Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar, IISc, Bangalore), statistical genetics (Prof. Partha Pratim Majumder, ISI, Kolkata), & social anthropology (Prof. Deepak Mehta, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida). Listen in....

Did H. M. lead an eventless life? How was your last beach holiday? How do languages make events granular? Can events in texts be ‘inferred’ computationally? Do events always occur in the past? Is evental time modal? Are events objects? Are places facts? Is a decaying apple evental? Are all events spatiotemporal? How do recent events become long term episodic memories or facts? Are events and facts stored in the same region? Are space and time encoded differently? What is the role of relevance? Is the amount of encoding directly proportional to the amount of surprise? How accurately do we remember (or even annotate) orders and intervals? How do we relate to events in stories? Could certain events be like knots in time? What renders an event impossible? Do some surprises (trauma?) get encoded 'elsewhere’? Do our brains work in reverse gear in a dream (generating images 'from' thoughts)? What would the new kinds of events in the future be? Will we get nothing from everything? How would we tend to the right signal? Will we en/de-code or summarize differently? Would a new ‘form’ find us? Is it already here? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from psychoanalysis & philosophy (Prof. Anup Kumar Dhar, Ambedkar University, New Delhi), neuroscience (Dr. Balaji Jayaprakash, CNS, IISc, Bangalore), & computational linguistics (Dr. Inderjeet Mani, Chiang Mai, Thailand). Listen in....

Do chimpanzees play politics? Why do we act spitefully or ‘altruistically’? Is one human being equal to another? Is power without hegemony possible? Is there always an established social order? Is competition for resources scrambles or contests? Is nature a good guide to explain human behaviour? Is culture a result of adaptation? Are orders of dominance always subject to change? When are leaders and subordinates coupled? Does equilibrium selection depend upon whether a game is sequential or simultaneous? Why is it difficult to give a non-patterned response to the leader? Are there compensations for being subordinated? Do subjects contribute to their domination? Are some equilibrium stable even if the initial conditions (e.g. scarcity) change? Does strategy mutate? Are dominance systems (from egalitarian to despotic) species-specific? How does bloody or bloodless rebellion occur? What makes threats credible? Is it rational to be selectively irrational? Can social systems change suddenly? Is hierarchy overturned without creating a new one? Is it possible for one person to control the whole world? Would there always be the powerful and the powerless? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from sociology (Prof. Satish Deshpande, University of Delhi, New Delhi), game theory (Dr. Ankur A. Kulkarni, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), & biopsychology (Prof. Mewa Singh, University of Mysore, Mysore). Listen in....

Have you ever received a partly garbled email? Might mixtures be made of mixtures? Are you a separate being? Do you stand ‘in’ history? How is coming-together different from mixing? Is it possible to separate out the constituents from a mixture without knowing what they are? Why does the chiral environment of the body matter? How difficult is pure separation, & why? Can separation or decoding be done in real time? Is separation trivial after mixing? Do different groups constrain individual identities differently? Can partitions be constructions? Why is vote-to-seat conversion so difficult in elections? Does noise have statistical properties? How are filters designed? Do signals always have a continuity property? Why is it so difficult to factorize into two large prime numbers? Can individuality be dissolved (in, say, a mob)? What is the opposite of a mob? Can certain systems be made nearly impossible to partition? What is the future of separations and partitions: Will quantum computing force change in encryption? How would enantiomers be separated? Would entry and exit barriers be lower in several contexts? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from chemistry (Prof. Ravi Bhushan, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee), mathematics & statistics (Prof. Rajeeva L. Karandikar, Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), Chennai), & social sciences (Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan, JNU, New Delhi). Listen in…

Do you despise your body? Can the body be a source of transcendence? Can one, however, have nothing but only the body? Are we embedded in this world as bodies with other objects, texts, rituals, spectators, and bodies? Is everybody also a biological, physical, social, & political object? Do you see yourself through the eyes of others? Can there be The (disembodied) View from Nowhere? Is it possible to experience the body as the object and subject fused together? Why do we watch dance? Why do dancers dance, & is any movement dance? Why get into tough postures? Why touch? Can the body be ‘nationalised’? What makes martial arts, yoga and dance similar? Does the body ‘do’ the thinking, & can it (though perishable) think about the eternal (soul)? Is there a homologous relationship between the body (pinde) and the cosmos (brahmand)? If we imprison the body long enough do we also end up imprisoning the mind? Is it possible to leave a manual for dance and martial arts? Is life information? What is the very long term future of (dis)embodiment, ‘presence’, and impermanence? Is the body ready? Might it be bypassed? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts and experiences from philosophy (Dr. Kim Diaz, US Department of Justice, Texas), political theory & poetry (Prof. Bishnu M. Mohapatra, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Vadodara), & dance (Aparna Uppaluri, NCBS, Bangalore). Listen in....

Do we often misunderstand ourselves? Can we be aware of everything? Is introspective knowledge reliable? Can we be mistaken about being hungry? Might the gap between successive thoughts be increased until there is complete thoughtlessness; can this be measured? Is introspection voluntary or involuntary? Is awareness a general relational state (& not a 'happening’)? How does global consciousness emerge in the ensemble state of neurons? Do animals develop conceptual self understanding? Why do we have the introspective faculty? Do introverts and extroverts introspect differently? Is introspection culture-bound? Do you feel your body during silent speech? Is inner speech unstructured or does it have linguistic features such as pronunciation and syntax? Can introspection sometimes get to concepts parallel to those reached via scientific empiricism? Does awareness necessarily involve directed representations of reality? Does introspection need distance? What is the structure of inner awareness? Would there be more accurate ways to understand which types of introspection are more reliable? Is the future of understanding introspection very bright? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from philosophy (Prof. Christopher Hill, Brown University, Providence), linguistics (Prof. Pramod Pandey, JNU, New Delhi), & physics (Prof. Sisir Roy, NIAS, IISc, Bangalore). Listen in....