Can inequality kill you? Are poorer brains smaller? Is poverty (= inequality + deprivation) the mother of all diseases? Do the rich lead shorter lives in unequal countries? (Why) does Law, with its attempted neutrality, often criminalize poverty? How is theft by a rich person different? Can/should the State demand actions off the poor for them to access ‘benefits’? Is providing opportunity enough, or must inequality of agency also always be addressed? Would you drink water from any well? Are there economic benefits of having a socially cohesive society? Does our brain respond to the environment more than any other body part? Why are the poor kids in schools often not learning? Should poverty be defined within the context of communities (& not externally)? What do all the poor have in common? How can policy account for the heterogeneity of responses by different people to any given situation? However, can the poor be thought of as mere individuals? Can deprivation be eradicated in the future? Can striving for short term equality lead to long term efficiency? Must all children be fed and loved? Must every story be heard…? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from psychiatry (Prof. Vikram Patel, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts), economics (Dr. Vijayendra Rao, The World Bank, Washington DC), & law (Dr. Anup Surendranath, National Law University (NLU), Delhi). Listen in…

#TIOP (The Implications Of Poverty) --- SynTalk

f(q) = Who owns the past? (#TSTP)

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Who does the kidnapping and raping? Are you a parasite? Is your politics in the service of capital? Do the lumpen form one group/class, or is it a general disposition? Are the punk ‘anti-social’ disruptors? Was Namdeo Dhasal punk? Was Kabir? Why write obscene poetry? How (& by whom) are the boundaries policed? What leads to the various underground anti-aesthetic movements (such as punk music, & anti-poetry) across cultures? How was Sex Pistols born? Does the notion of (unemployed, & all other) waste come only with modernity and capitalism? Is the oppositional market for shit, trash, & filth, then, created by a certain death drive in us? Can suffering be enjoyed? Where do you seek solidarity? Did late industrialization lead to fascism in Europe? How do political and aesthetic imaginations influence each other? Do the poor need aesthetic tools to agitate? What happens when industries rust? Are we now passing through a phase of barbarism? Is culture necessarily a good thing? Are you (truly) interested in abolishing inequality? Can the proletariat be precariat proletariat? &, are the lumpen forces (the ‘surplus population’) now here to stay forever? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from literary studies (Dr. Nandini Chandra, University of Hawai’i, Honolulu), music production (Kunal Dole, Punk On Toast, Mumbai), & political science/poetry (Prof. Ashwani Kumar, TISS, Mumbai). Listen in...

#TPHAL (The Punk Hooligan And Lumpen) --- SynTalk

Is pencil complex? Is computationally hard complex? Is ‘i’ a weird number? Why wasn’t Hamilton able to multiply triples? Are we just a bunch of neurons and connections? Is our ability to think (& do mathematics) an emergent phenomenon? Is mathematical thinking core to understanding the world? Is complexity always a subjective feature? Do opinions spread in complex random graph-like patterns? How is alternating current complex? How do quaternions help with (3D rotations) in computer graphics? Are there (irreducible) prime complex numbers? Can real prime numbers be understood via functions of complex variables? How is the idea of ‘limit’ (& continuity, & differentiability) different on a complex plane? Is something more complex the more you can talk about it? Can there be a general theory for conditions leading to complexity? Are all complex systems many bodied? Will several emergent phenomena & biological systems see invention of a new kind of math to understand them? Will computational models (& ever more complex machines) likely precede such mathematics? &, will more branches of sciences / knowledge keep getting more integrated? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from electrical engineering (Prof. D. Manjunath, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), non-linear science (Prof. Ram Ramaswamy, IIT Delhi, New Delhi), & mathematics (Dr. Kaneenika Sinha, IISER, Pune). Listen in...

#TTTC (The Transformations To Complex) --- SynTalk

Are you a master of your emotions? How do banks learn to loan better? Is king less queen = boy less girl in the word2vec world? Does your ‘body’ sometimes feel inferior even when you do not think so? Do humans learn only cognitively? How do you learn to have self respect? Are models a result of learning? What can be learnt by trial and error? Can mere prompts sometimes be enough to learn vast new things? Are there unthought knowns? Can you have the thought of going to dinner without thinking in a language? What is the nature of internal representations in between the multiple layers of neural networks? Do we acquire languages sub-consciously? How does one account for integrated multilingualism? How do you speak with your Gods? Is grammar social? Did sociality (& then spoken language, & then writing systems) evolve (or exapt) from tool making? What is hunger for LLMs if it has never itself gone hungry? Why does the familiar feel safer? Can machines learn behaviorally (without modeling/cerebration)? Why do couples sometimes fight over the same issues after several years? What are your default neural pathways? &, what can AI do in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from psychotherapy (Aruna Gopakumar, Navgati, Bangalore), computer science (Dr. Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), & linguistics (Prof. Pramod Pandey, Deccan College, Pune). Listen in...

#TLAN (The Learnable And Not) --- SynTalk

Do you have the courage of a Spartan? Are we all partly anarchists? What are we truly? What do we value? Are Reason and Nature entangled? Is there a hierarchy of beings above/below human beings? What do Gods have that humans don’t have? Does Nature offer us moral guidance? How do plants imitate Gods? How much does human nature vary with (say) geography, culture, language, & time? Are we more (or, less?) diverse at birth? Do you want to transcend your body? Is matter evil? Does social evolution change (the psychological) human nature? Does one need to have a theory of human nature to think about political forms? What is it to be a flourishing human? Do literature and art have the function of ‘making’ human? Do stories around the world share something? Why do classics endure? Do each one of us need to realize our human-ness? Where does this normativity come from? Does (only) force keep us together? Is the construct of human nature both useful and dangerous? Are (most) determinisms dangerous? &, will any new kind of world in the future (off a new structure) have a new kind of human nature? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from German language & literature (Dr. Milind Brahme, IIT Madras, Chennai), philosophy (Dr. Aditi Chaturvedi, Azim Premji University, Bangalore), & political studies (Prof. Chandran Kukathas, Singapore Management University (SMU), Singapore). Listen in...

#TEHN (The Eternal Human Nature) --- SynTalk

‘How’ are you hearing what you are hearing? Is hearing decoding? Do you already know what’s next? Would it have helped to have an accompanying video? Do we ’need’ to be able to differentiate at the level of sound to be able to ascribe different meanings? Why do a few hear Yanni, & a few Laurel? Do frogs need to see each other when croaking? When does the ear begin to form? Is the ear also a vestibular organ? Are you aware of the coordinated movement of your articulators? Are these articulators highly inefficient? Is there a link between hearing and higher cognitive functions? Is there a critical period for articulation? Did Neanderthals have vocalization? Are speech production and perception multi-sensory? Do gestures accompanying speech indicate that they may have been all integrated in the past? Did we get eyes before ears? How do sound vibrations become electrical signals? Have you experienced auditory hallucinations? Is the process of hearing confirmatory? Is silent reading (almost like) speaking ? Do we know how we think in language? Do several animals catch musical beats? Could the deaf hear in the future? How do dolphins hear? &, would we communicate via telepathy in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from phonetics & linguistics (Prof. Indranil Dutta, Jadavpur University, Kolkata), & developmental biology (Dr. Raj Ladher, NCBS, Bangalore). Listen in...

#TIOP (The Implications Of Poverty) --- SynTalk

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