SynTalk

Could traits trend? What do you want to detect? Are there many more rare species than common species? When is the past representative of the future? Are all models wrong and precarious? What, then, is evidence? Can surprises be modeled? Do unlikely events often happen in very likely ways? Are correlations higher on extremes? Are rare species more redundant? How might one find proxies for rarities? Is likelihood a comparative measure of ‘distance’ from the truth to the model? Is it trivial to select the most ‘likely’ model when given the data? Are inferences always highly model-dependent (especially for rare events)? What leads to thin or thick tails? Do rare events need sensitive (&, not robust) models? When does simulation help? Is extinction often followed by speciation? Why did a tree go extinct with the dodos? Do all elk have a certain (statistically significant) ‘elkness’? Do hyper-connected markets or systems increase the overall ruin risk? Would certain blackouts, shutdowns, collapses, and perfect storms be designed away in the future? &, will we continue to adapt and, somehow, escape our inevitable fate? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from applied probability (Prof. Sandeep Juneja, TIFR, Mumbai), statistics (Prof. Subhash Lele, University of Alberta, Edmonton), & conservation biology (Dr. Karthikeyan Vasudevan, CCMB, Hyderabad). Listen in...

Is repair a form of creation? When can the new and the old coexist? Is the idea of ‘new’ itself, human and, new? Is this understanding always subject/context dependent? Why don’t we sometimes notice the new? What’s new for the deer in the savannah? Is memory history? When is the old also obsolete? Do events have both a past and a future? How is the past unlike an object? Did capitalism ‘create’ time? Did modernity change both the object and the subject? How do certain societies break away from the past more easily? How can the erased be recovered? Does language often carry traces of the past? When are myths essential? Why was the old found to be necessary for the Meiji Restoration? Is Viśhwákarma Brahmā? Why do Nations want to be timeless? Is the grammar of the evolutionary past neuro-anatomically encoded in us? Similarly, are some vestiges of older social forms always present in the present? What cannot be repaired? Do we really need a ‘new’ future? Is old/new an either/or choice? Must we think of new and old as different ways of being? How might one find (realistic) choices to radically new problems? &, will we disappear again? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from cognitive sciences (Dr. Rajesh Kasturirangan, ClimateX, Boston), history & philosophy (Dr. Viren Murthy, UW-Madison, Madison), & anthropology (Dr. Abhijeet Paul, UC Berkeley, Berkeley). Listen in...

Is Earth one system? How stable is New York? What sort of a person are you? How does the structure of your networks change the way you behave? How do you find out if something is good? Are societies with (Royal Family-like) strong hubs bad for social learning? Can atmosphere be thought of in terms of networks? Are unstable solutions more likely to become strong? Is it coincidental that strong El Niño and weak Monsoon often go together? Why/when did Krishna have to show his large magnificent form? Is strength always a transient (contingent) ‘solution’? Is democracy the rule of the weak (the ruled…)? Could weak ties produce solidarity? Are States and Markets substitutes? Do both of these, however, needs ‘lots of’ Society (i.e. social ties)? Do you need to have friends to succeed in a competitive market? How are couplings made stronger? Can synchronization be lost after strengthening? How do dynamics and structure of networks influence each other? Can a tornado destroy the whole earth? Could seeking extreme efficiency be risky? Would there be no trade-offs in the future? &, would the world keep becoming more ‘superfluid’ (and superfluous)? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from dynamical systems (Dr. Amit Apte, ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore), political theory & poetry (Prof. Ashwani Kumar, TISS, Mumbai), & economics (Prof. Sanjeev Goyal, University of Cambridge, Cambridge). Listen in...

Is it nonsensical to think that suffering is a part of the ‘human condition’? Are you a passive victim? Can you easily be more or less of yourself? Who suffers? Do we suffer because we are highly (self) conscious creatures? Are you forced to engage with the everyday? Does suffering have a duration, and can we live purely (& independently) in the present? Is violence inevitable in all lives? Can one voluntarily incur suffering? Does being a victim have any moral consequences? Can sacrifice be practised narcissistically? Is sacrifice a way of taking violence, and turning it inwards? Does everyone have something to sacrifice? Do those who do not suffer lead shallow lives? Do human beings differ in the amounts they suffer? Do you decide generically? Can the underprivileged be moral heroes, & when? Why does fasting-unto-death sometimes work? Are language and suffering very closely connected? How can one suffer better? Is vulnerability (or the performance of it) potentially a political force? Is a moral life fearless? Why do people with no hope of survival fight and die for everyone else? &, must one learn to die ‘appropriately’? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from history (Prof. Faisal Devji, University of Oxford, Oxford), sociology (Prof. Pushpesh Kumar, University of Hyderabad (UoH), Hyderabad), & philosophy (Prof. David Weberman, Central European University (CEU), Budapest). Listen in...

Are we neighbours? Do ghost authors write probabilistically? Could one build a house between your and your neighbour’s house? Can we draw a graph of the universe with colours of all the points in it? Do languages have distances from each other? How do sounds create neighbours linguistically? When/how can process states or words or sentences be said to be neighbours? Can A be a neighbour of B, when B is not a neighbour of A? Why can’t there be adjacent ‘points’? Are neighbours geometry dependent? Does the idea of neighbours change if time and/or space is continuous? Are scripts a technology to transmit (natural) language? Is Latin evolving? What role do texts play in language transactions and for context? How is pursuit of chess different from the pursuit of science? Can chess games be said to progress like sentences? Are humans language-using-machines? Is thinking of ‘only’ adjacencies as neighbours limited in most contexts? Are meanings neighbours? Are both humans (also randomly) and machines always changing the idea of neighbours? &, how did Hamilton Bridge become Barber’s Bridge? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from computational psycholinguistics (Dr. Emmanuel Keuleers, Tilburg University, Tilburg), discrete mathematics (Prof. Navin Singhi, ex-TIFR, Mumbai), & control theory (Prof. M. Vidyasagar, IIT Hyderabad, Hyderabad). Listen in...

What makes Ujjain searchable? When did you last use a thesaurus? Does all search presuppose a structure, & can this structure be implicit? Is labeling necessary; when? How can one say if a text is structured? Are we all unique; but are we all also searchable because we belong to ‘groups’? Are all search problems matching problems? Is all search correlational? Can we search in different ways and find the same thing? Can different documents/texts/languages be coherent vis-à-vis each other? Is the final arbiter eventually the (human) searcher? Are you able to walk into any ‘library’ and use it with ease straightaway? To what extent can one determine (or estimate?) the identity of an unknown decomposed dead body? Does everything revolve around bones? Could our footprint give our face away? Are fingerprints gendered? How do we identify bird species? Why is image (or, even, sound) search difficult? How much can one disguise oneself? Could one search ambiguously and without, precisely, knowing what one is looking for? &, what kinds of searches are likely to remain very difficult in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from forensic anthropology (Dr. Kewal Krishan, Panjab University, Chandigarh), computational linguistics (Prof. Amba Kulkarni, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), & information sciences (Prof. Stephen Robertson, City University of London, London). Listen in…

Can we avoid fractals if we want to? Are our fingers irregular? Is there thumb cancer? Or, toe cancer? Are all regular objects ‘algebraically’ representable? Are cones manifolds? Do cubes have an algebraic description? Can algebraic equations catch everything (?) that topology cannot? Might two visually indistinguishable manifolds vary dramatically? Can circles have a ‘complex’ structure? Do biological objects (including virus) have edges or points? Do multi scale interactions make hearts or kidneys regular? Do biological objects always (always) live in time? Can the open Euclidean space be put ‘inside’ another space? Can shape, volume, and size (say) tell us whether a biological organ is regular? Might there even be regularity across species? When/is cancer growth predictable? Can fractals only be approximated (algebraically)? Why can’t biological objects be thought of only computationally? Is it easy to tell irregularity and complexity apart? Is ‘too complex’ as good as irregular? Can irregularity be no-where-dense? Why is 3-dimensional space much more complicated than spaces with both higher and lower dimensions? Will biology have to take the material properties (hardness, etc.) into account in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from cell biology (Dr. Ramray Bhat, IISc, Bangalore), & algebraic geometry (Dr. Amalendu Krishna, TIFR, Mumbai). Listen in...

How are you experiencing time now? Is everything moving? Is the Still merely an ‘extract’ from the flux? Do images constitute both matter and memory? Can a 3D representation be created from several 2D images? How is motion detected? Is the interrelationship between the cameras themselves crucial to figuring out the structure of space? Is the moving image (truly?) a composite of still images? What lies between the moving and the still – GIFs? Is the perceptual world constituted by our senses? Is sensory stimulus itself always ambiguous? Can moments be appended if they are not already there? What exactly does exposure do to a photograph? Can you make stories out of whatever images you see? If Word is Photograph, then what is Articulation? Is cinema an art of time? Why do we have two eyes? Why is sports photography also physical? Do you bother lizards? Are dreams a field of action? Are still pictures ‘deeper’; why do they hold our gaze? Can only interesting things be perceived? Is high-level, purposive, & affective robotic vision possible in the future? What is our future like? &, will we belong, think, remember, & act differently in the world? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from photography (Arko Datto, Kolkata), computer vision (Dr. Venu Madhav Govindu, IISc, Bangalore), & critical theory (Dr. Rajan Kurai Krishnan, Ambedkar University, New Delhi). Listen in...

Are you thinking of going back to paradise? Does technology exist, autonomously, without us? Is it the new vector ruling the world? Where did the idea of newness come from? Does technology come (more) from arts & crafts than science? Do both socialism and capitalism go together with technology? Was Industrial Revolution science driven? Might religious change drive technology? Similarly, do new technologies change social relations? How is organic evolution different from the technological? Are hybridization and differentiation possibilities much greater in technology? What does not change? Do we need a ‘Darwin of machines’? Is there always a gap between the users’ tactics and the engineers’ strategy? Can technology make us ‘stupid’? However, is technology neither good, nor bad, nor neutral? How did acoustics go from the paradigm of music to engineering? Are wars the mother of all inventions? Can technology be forgotten? Must there be more social actors? What is the future – Will we still have hammers? Would we blow ourselves up? Will the digital and genetic come together? &, would we have a new ‘model’ of dog every week? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from economics (Prof. Praveen Jha, JNU, New Delhi), media studies & semiotics (Dr. Carlos Alberto Scolari, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona), & history of science (Dr. Roland Wittje, IIT Madras, Chennai). Listen in...

Are bones dry? Is blood sticky? Are cells ‘rough’? Do dead cells dry up? Are stiffer (cancer) tumours more dangerous? Would stickiness on another planet be a tell-tale sign of the presence of Life? Does the act of adding and/or removing parts make things imperfect. Therefore, are all engineered artifacts rough? Does wettability depend upon both materials? Why do cells jiggle inside the matrix? Are all living environments aqueous? Can the architecture of blood vessels or cells be mathematically modeled? Is context everything? Why do some materials refuse to stick to another? How does one make something slippery or sticky? Do dryness and roughness go together? How does a wound heal itself, & how ‘heterogeneous’ is the seal? Is surface tension a competition between cohesion and adhesion? Do cells have ‘feet’ to crawl and feel? Are there many ways of sticking? How do cancer cells survive elsewhere? Does the rigidity or fluidity of membranes impact the signaling processes themselves? Can there be a master glue that sticks everything? Do all bio-molecules multitask? Might all interfacial interactions (such as adhesion) be understood via electrical impulses? Will cyborgs of the future get cancer? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from cell biology (Dr. Nagaraj Balasubramanian, IISER, Pune), & mechanical engineering (Prof. Suman Chakraborty, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur). Listen in…