Sunday, May 06, 2018

Gandhi, Jinnah, Marx, and Taleb

Just saw the powerful #Dostoevsky monument at Bad-Homburg, where some of #crimeandpunishment was written and backdrop for the #gambler. Now need to make time to read "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" about his travels thru #Europe . @fromdostoyevsky @Dostoyevsky @DostoevskySoc https://t.co/lj0f2fUHUM

Why Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life" is amazingly appropriate for India today. https://t.co/q5pNrFtVXG
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of the pre-eminent “public intellectuals” of our time, although the very meaning of that term is unclear. On the one hand, it is applied to superb intellects such as the late Christopher Hitchens, Theodore Dalrymple (not the other one), Ian Buruma, S L Bhyrappa, Gore Vidal, et al. On the other hand, in India, the term is routinely misused for certain koopa-manduka Lutyens mercenaries (you know who they are). So I must clarify that what makes Taleb a real intellectual is that he is neither sold out nor willing to accept received wisdom. He likes to argue from first principles, personal observation, and rigorous mathematics. By Rajeev Srinivasan

How the leftist Economic and Political Weekly viewed the formation of Sharad Joshi’s Swatantra Bharat Party https://t.co/ZMyBqrhR96 … https://t.co/bVkCgTDick

Honoring Marx As An Activist https://t.co/rn877Wye4v

In reading some classic works of Marx, we are often placed in the uncomfortable position of the theatre-goer who loved Hamlet as a play, but wondered why it was so full of quotations. -Amartya Sen on what we can learn from Karl Marx 

Engrossing read by Shri @anirbanganguly. Brought out by #PMModi days before #KarnatakaElection2018 obviously “the family” is unhappy. https://t.co/JZxIduHUeC
The author is Director, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.
The example & legacy of your late respected father continues to inspire us in our intellectual quest & struggle...
#IndiaRussia ties are immune to external influences despite changing global equations- My column today in @Sunday_Standard: https://t.co/O3RDBHBmXE

Jinnah defended Tilak in a sedition case. That too is part of our history, says historian Prof Irfan Habib https://t.co/5y2PMrGCtc

The reason Brits allowed Gandhi to take stage was that Gandhi was far more malleable to British machinations and Aurobindo saw thru the Brits. The British feared Sri Aurobindo the most.

'Liberalism advocates tolerance, but can it be tolerant of intolerance?' https://t.co/3Hzeb5AYkh
Nine Theses on Fire Politics by Sam Mickey
In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx includes eleven statements expanding on the materialist philosophy of Ludwig  Feuerbach. Marx does not mention the material burning within the German name Feuerbach: the elemental materiality of fire (Feuer). 

What is the difference between a Vedic yagna and a Agamic puja? Is there one? My explorations: https://t.co/zvVW6FwZUo

Every atheist thinks he is somehow the first one to think that God doesn't exist, and that maybe religion is silly. Too bad their genes suck so much they keep killing themselves off. Every cycle of civilization we have these losers, it's really sad. https://t.co/Y8vmNWuZCS

The one thing Adi Shankracharya and Stephen Hawking agree on https://t.co/6pUj7SR1dN
The universe would be completely self-contained, and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE. Modern science is thus validating the basic Advaitic concept that, in conformity with the eternal nature of Brahman, the universe too is part of a successive cycle of manifestation and dissolution, and this process is eternal in nature.

Marketime: India needs Gandhian nuance and sophistication https://t.co/RWtPoogAjm Posted by Tusar Nath Mohapatra @NathTusar, Director, Savitri Era Learning Forum, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad -201014. #SavitriEra of those who adore, Om #SriAurobindo & #TheMother. #MirraAlfassa #Marx200

Of saints and humans || short blogpost. https://t.co/bFVxSIzHD4 via @thinkpragati In judging a man like Gandhi one seems instinctively to apply high standards, so that some of his virtues have passed almost unnoticed... in an amoral world, morality can be a handicap, much less a weapon.

While Indians still debating whether India had Vedic airplanes and dissing those with foreign credentials, @dhume right to point out prosperous East Asia has embraced best of the west and progressing rapidly. https://t.co/tPB5XiwxZs

I began the @TakshashilaInst Convocation 2018 with the invocation of the Arthashastra. I read out a few key lines on governance from the text using RP Kangle's & LN Rangarajan's translations. https://t.co/oONke4gmIv

I see Charvakas as primarily hedonists, and all their arguments are based on a rejection of a supra-sensuous reality.. Modern man is essentially a Charvaka, having a philistine attitude towards life.. Sri Aurobindo explains this civilised barbarianism in "The Human cycle".. (1/3)

very beautiflly written @Auro_Mere _/\_ that is why I respect u so much. the essential diff is that Charvaka was more of a reaction to later vedic degradation,as SwamiVivekananda put it,ie,it was a whole Darshan in itself.But communism is just an economic system.

शांत प्रकाश जाटव की मुहिम  का परिणाम - दलित शब्द अनुसूचित जाति के लिए इस्तेमाल करना प्रतिबंधित हो वर्षों पुरानी मांग को संघ ने दिशा दी,
नहीं होगा दलित शब्द का इस्तेमाल... https://t.co/UP7CipbkYZ

Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe priests are as old as History people just don't know or don't want to know

It is not just Jinnah’s secular politics of the early decades of the 20th century that is being ignored by the Aligarh protesters but also the values he practised writes Karan Thapar https://t.co/PY5F4z3ZfW

I don't know about closet commies but the fact is that Jinnah was a former Congressman who married a Parsee, was English is lifestyle. Yes, it requires sophistication of thought to look at issues on detail https://t.co/Wq8U8Jmdwk

With Hari and my publisher @sankrant with the first copy of #UrbanNaxals Launching officially this month. https://t.co/82KaNSktCA

Heard Ababahikara Swapna by Manoranjan Das yesterday @AkashvaniAIR after three decades where Jharana Das recites Juan Olivarez's [If I had wings on which to fly, Up in the clear blue sky] & Percy Bysshe Shelley's [The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean]
...

The blueness of a
blue sky is a fact-of-qualia in itself -- a fact-of-consciousness for which adding "recursion" to an explanation in no way helps to explain.

Best,
Whit
...

Whit, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you write below. 

One minor addition: while it is true that the idea of our lives being "instantiated in dark matter" is too speculative right now for any scientist to try and defend it, it may have much going for it in the long run. That is because of the general consensus that dark matter is far more common in our universe than the "ordinary matter" that can be studied not just through its gravitational properties, but through a host of others-- electrical and magnetic, along with emergent chemical, biological, psychological, etc. properties.

What seems even MORE speculative to me is the assumption that dark matter has no interaction with other dark matter except the gravitational. Why should it be so different than "ordinary matter"? And it would also beg the question to assume it has no other influence on our "ordinary matter" than the gravitational. In fact, it is almost a reflex among physicists to want to detect particles of dark matter, and that assumes already that there  are other forms of interaction. 

Perhaps there is also interaction that helps to mold our consciousness. And so, I would not mind at all if Paul turns out to be right about that. It would certainly add a new dimension to my picture of our universe.

Peter Nyikos 
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics       
University of South Carolina 

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