SynTalk

Observe. Which colour do you see? Is blueness in there? Which languages do you speak? Does experience tell us anything by itself? Would language make any sense without it? What is it to be grounded in experience? Does some of our reasoning depend upon it? What makes a concept legitimate? How does science try to make itself less subjective, & more observationally verifiable? Do experiments expand our experience? Do ordinary habits of languages sometimes perpetuate misconceptions? Is it important to distinguish between the reality, the appearance, and the ‘tag’? Why is learning a new language difficult? What is the logical process by which naive concepts become sharper – & does experience play a role in this? When might eye witnesses at a crime scene see different things? Must we defy intuition? Does experience both constrain and free us: how are/were we able to say that simultaneity is not absolute? Is experience really undifferentiated? Will experience remain a logical problem in the future? Would we need to understand both the metaphysics of the Self and the physicality of phenomenology to this end? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from psycholinguistics & coaching (Ravi Bhoothalingam, Manas Advisory, New Delhi), philosophy (Prof. Anil Gupta, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), & physics (Prof. Arvind Kumar, ex-HBCSE-TIFR, Mumbai). Listen in....

Do you live without regrets? Do you spontaneously follow rules? How did we first know if something is right or wrong? Does moral reasoning always progress in stages? Is this process always culture-relative? Can ethics, then, ever be universal? Must all ethical dualities be collapsed? Does bad become good when slaves become masters? Does our resentment for those with power give us satisfaction? Can we buy goodness? Does morality need faith? Must we behave decently even if existence is absurd? Is the individual always subordinated to the social? If human beings are self centred, then how do empathy, compassion or ‘commitment’ arise? Does self interest precede conventional morality? Can we sacrifice for the (contemporaneous) Other just as we do for our ‘own’ future other? Can moral law be like a law of nature? Is efficiency the principal ethic? Can the requirement of minimal liberty be Pareto inferior? Does ethicality primarily comprise in taking into account the spontaneity and the resistance of the Other? Who/what is the Other? Will everything be perfect in the end? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from social psychology (Prof. Janak Pandey, ex-University of Allahabad, Allahabad), philosophy (Prof. Jules Simon, The University of Texas at El Paso, Texas), & economics (Prof. Sreenivasan Subramanian, ex-Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai). Listen in....

How unpredictable are we? Do our desires and constraints make us more detectable? Is data collection (somehow) always human? What’s not predictable? Can terrorist behaviour be predicted with consistency? Must data be balanced? Are cheats (terrorists, hackers, spiders, bots) more easily detected only if they are in the minority? Must predictions necessarily have explanatory power and granularity? Would tsunamis become completely predictable in the long run, as solar eclipses now are? Are predictions, like for gravitational waves, sometimes very difficult to confirm? Must we sometimes capture 'all' the data (say via sky surveys) even before deciding on all the analyses? Would natural history be more predictable if there were no astronomical events or human beings? Do very rare events (like 'zero day attacks’) often go undetected? Can we even predict if (and where) life might be elsewhere in the universe? Why is it so difficult? Will we know if/when aliens invade the earth? Could we be gone in the blink of an eye? Is it comforting to know (…precisely) how the night sky would look on 14th September 2400 AD? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from statistics (Prof. G. Jogesh Babu, The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania), natural history (Dr. John Mathew, IISER, Pune), & computer science (Prof. V. S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland, Maryland). Listen in....

Do you have difficulty sleeping? Can one dream while sleep walking? What/when/how do we express to ourselves via our dreams? Can painting be dream-like? Do we understand the mechanisms underlying imagination, dreams, and fantasy? Are (conscious) signals below a threshold deactivated when one is asleep, so that the (un/sub-conscious) ‘noise’ becomes signal? Are dreams always replays of thought processes? How graded is sleep? Do cats or platypus or hunting dogs dream? Do we dream every time we sleep? Are memories ever lost? Do dreams have a duration, & can we narrate them sequentially? Are dreams solely pictorial and necessarily haphazard, with no sound or word presentation? Why don't we snap from the wakeful state into sleep? Are all the different states of consciousness fluid? Does non-REM sleep always precede REM sleep, & can we sleep directly into a dream? Would we dream if didn't have any desires or memories? Can the dreamy state be induced? Can dreams be fiddled with? Do we always dream in (timeless) fragments? Is dreaming itself an emotional (affective) process? Is it possible to feel super alive? Is it possible to die mid-way while dreaming (when asleep)? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts and experiences from psychoanalysis (Sarala Kapoor, Kolkata), neurobiology (Prof. Birendra Nath Mallick, JNU, New Delhi), & art (Tara Sabharwal, New York). Listen in...

Is anything isolated? Is comparison essential? Does the entire cosmos consist of a structure of relationships? When comparing, must we think in terms of similarity rather than difference? Is comparison a fundamental way of dealing with complexity in the world? Do you write in a third language? Why is Persian metaphorical (& more so for the non-native speaker?)? Does one have to negotiate the terms of comparison before comparing? Does this depend on the ‘operation’ one is looking to carry out? Is a plane (say) an analytic as well as an algebraic as well as a geometric object, among others; How? Can everything be translated? What, then, is distinct? Do homogenized monadic structures interact in just two ways (war or dialogue)? What happens in the liminal spaces? How does one get to bārahmāsa in Persian poetry? Can one get from anywhere to anywhere using ‘atlas of charts’? Is it possible that objects in the same family do not share any property (but may share a context)? Is the emphasis on similarity likely to have a homogenizing tendency? Is the future in the past? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from topology/mathematics (Dr. Jayadev S. Athreya, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington), culture theory & philosophy (Prof. Anil Bhatti, JNU, New Delhi), & Persian/Indian literatures (Prof. Sunil Sharma, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts). Listen in....

Is life precious? Whose property is it? Is the final act of suicide narratable? Can you tolerate frustration? Rage? Shame? Could one commit suicide without any conscious reason? Is suicide alluring? Do we instinctively long to unite with some deep inanimate part of nature? Are we ‘beings towards death’? Does a suicide bring together both the radical uniqueness and the similarity of death? Why do men commit suicide more than women? Do you identify with your mother? Is suicide a cowardly act? How coherent is the Self? Can the killer and the killed be one? Is suicide a breakdown of the capacity to mentalize or symbolize? When is (say) fasting unto death ‘permitted’? What is the underlying promise? How does the changing body-soul relationship influence our attitude towards suicide? Do you live in a culture of honour? Is attempting suicide a crime (or a sin)? Do we have a right to be 'alive'? When (must) might we have the right to die? Why not just 'run away'? Will cyborgs commit suicide in the (perfect) future? Will there be ‘demand’ for suicide as long as there is humanity? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from religion studies & philosophy (Prof. Purushottama Bilimoria, Graduate Theological Union (GTU), Berkeley, California), cultural studies (Prof. Manas Ray, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), Kolkata), & psychoanalysis (Dr. Madhu Sarin, New Delhi). Listen in....

Can you be creative consciously? Can verification of an idea be fully worked out in the unconscious state itself? Does P equal NP; & is proving computationally more intensive than verifying? Can a system be called creative if it explores all possibilities (with brute force) before selecting one? What, then, is creativity for machines? Might daydreaming have underlying processes akin to stochastic optimization or simulated annealing? Are there different types of creativity? Can it be defined? Is a non-obvious step essential? Can a software program be granted a patent? Is Transfigured Night still surprising? Can one be technically incompetent, and yet have a flow experience? Do we search for answers differently in the arts from the sciences? Is creativity domain specific? Are heuristics always 'directional'? Is the topography of the unknown solution space often rugged? Do neural networks run algorithms? Is evolution creative? What does culture do? What is the simplest creativity problem that we do not understand? Is artificial creativity possible? Would such a system classify differently? What do you expect? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from theoretical computer science (Dr. Deeparnab Chakrabarty, Microsoft Research, Bangalore), cognitive neuroscience (Prof. Arne Dietrich, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebabon), & theoretical physics (Dr. Anita Mehta, Kolkata). Listen in…

Why is your shape what it is? Are shadows 2D? Is matter potentiality, and form actuality? What do shapes mean at different scales? Do shapes evolve? Are only regular 3D shapes stable? Is (the shape of, say) quartz stable, & can equilibrium shapes be derived? Is all matter porous? Why isn't everything spherical? Does nature (topologically speaking) make toruses from spheres? Do forms depend upon whether a system is isotropic or anisotropic? Why are biological shapes always fluctuating? Is life always out of equilibrium? Are kinetic (growing or moving) shapes different? Do swarms, liquid crystals, & bacteria colonies act like magnetized systems? Are murmurations 'thick'? Why aren't larger entities necessarily more complex in shape? Is our shape emergent or encoded? Why is it difficult to know how shapes mediate self assemblies or evolution? Would non-carbon life (if) certainly have a different form? Can one peel graphene layers from graphite? Is the core shape question essentially an attempt to understand the interplay of all forces at all length scales? Can small particles constantly change form, and be quasi-molten? &, what is the very long term future of shapes in the universe? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from biophysics (Dr. Shashi Thutupalli, NCBS & ICTS, Bangalore), & nanotechnology (Prof. Pulickel Ajayan, Rice University, Houston, Texas). Listen in…

Are you proud of your buckets and combs? Is a cup culture-specific? What's typical? Are objects a part of your identity? Can empathy be created? Can buildings foster (multidimensional) equity? What is bad design? Do the best designs (try to) do many things simultaneously? Does a challenging design problem always involve trade-offs and incentive conflicts? How do evolving needs, preferences, and available resources lead to new categories? Why do non information intensive products (such as debt) catering to perennial needs stay central for a very long time? How sharp or fuzzy are the boundaries between different products? Why don't we have labels for everything? Do we reduce the complexity of the world by creating affordances and categories? Is design always particular to a context? Are the best designs aware of the context of the context? What makes designs robust? Are income tax systems also influenced by norms of culture and identity? Are markets culturally neutral? Can designs enable transitions? Will we (even) be designing for particular needs in the future? How can self-regulating non-manipulative infrastructure be created; would community formation play a key role? Is the future of design ecological? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from design (Prof. Uday Athavankar, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), mechanism design (Prof. Praveen Kumar, University of Houston, Texas), & architecture (Prof. Rahul Mehrotra, Harvard University, Massachusetts). Listen in…

Is 29 absolutely prime? Are the 26 letters of the English alphabet arbitrary? Can you learn a word in isolation? How are children able to learn languages without being taught? Why are there patterns at all, & which are more likely? Do objects with more symmetries occur more often? Can patterns be understood via distributions? (How) are constellations in the sky invariant? Are relations more fundamental than entities? Are prime numbers randomly distributed? Is transformation possible only in invariant systems? Which patterns are transitory? How is the multiplicative (rotation?) operation different from the additive (translation)? Do we know which computer program is most likely to produce a certain binary string? Are all languages equally complex? Do numbers (or, numerals) emerge from a language? Why is decimal number system efficient? How are vowels and consonants distributed? Can human language be 'random'? Can there be patterns of change too? Is there a likely master program creating the Universe around us? How do we see beauty in (grammatically incorrect) poetry? Are nuances (really) rules? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from mathematics (Prof. Krishnaswami Alladi, University of Florida, Gainesville), computer science (Dr. Manoj Gopalkrishnan, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), & linguistics (Dr. Avinash Pandey, University of Mumbai, Mumbai). Listen in....