Wednesday, June 28, 2006

My Novel/Movie

Overview: The protagonists character is this storys soul. He is someone no one wants to love. He is rudely obnoxious and forward. Doesn’t care about what people around him think of him. He’s never the hypocrite. Behaves the same way with everyone.

Setting: Early 90’s. Protagonist is in the army’s anti-terrorism squad. He’s the best officer in terms of achievement. He’s a stickler for cleanliness and professionalism. He enforces it with almost brutal force amongst his men.

Characters: Protagonist is not a favourite. Disturbing childhood. I’m thinking Tam-Brahm. The person who’s the best for any mission.

One of his superiors is fond of him, because he’s straight and always focused.

He also has a best friend who’s his wingman sorta guy. These two are the only people who like to be even in his vicinity.

One other officer. Pretty good guy, has had a good childhood. Just younger than protagonist. Is happily married. Father's a general. Generally jolly guy, everybody likes him and is diplomatic most of the time, which is probably why everybody likes him. Protagonist hates his guts. Probably because he represents everything that he’s not. Never had a tough childhood, had it good all the time, first thing on his list is to ensure everyone likes him. Which protagonist is totally against.

The second officer's father. The general.

Second officer’s wife. Devoted wife. May play important role later. Truly loving person. Never thinks bad about others. Assumes everyone in the world is good. Refuses to believe otherwise.

Key point: Strangest part of the story is when the protagonist takes a decision which is in no way in line with his character. He risks his life, breaks rules because of some dilemma in his head at that specific moment. And the funny thing is that he does it to help the person he hates. That should be the thing that stuns everyone. There’s no idea anyone has why he did what he did. The result however is that he is handicapped ( at the last instance when he’s just about to be totally victorious ). He hates the pity he now gets. He especially hates it from the second officer and more so her wife, who goes to length to try and take care of him. The ppl who like him and now, a lot more who don’t, are appreciative of his valour, bravery and sacrifice. He hates all of it. He knows it wasn’t bravery, nor was it valor or sacrifice. But he can't explain what it was.

Till Eternity

Pope John Paul passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was one of those truly good people left in this world. A man who worked for the betterment of people without looking at personal gain. A few controversial policies, I’d ignore because he was an old man brought up in a world where things like abortion, etc were taboo. It’s not easy to unlearn 80 years of learning in a few years because the world has changed so quickly. It’s been 3-4 weeks since the old Popes passing. There’s a new pope at the papal palace and he’s begun his work quite quickly. The strangest thing is that I still feel Pope John Paul is still up there and working like he never did before. I’ve never met the man, never saw him even nor do I even know a lot about his past and his work. That makes the feeling even more profound. I only knew him virtually and today after he has gone I still think he’s there. It’s not the old “Legends never die” concept. It’s actually the feeling he’s where he always was. Nothing has changed in my life. So I don’t really feel he’s gone.

Entropy and Categorization

The law of entropy is an amazing law that seems to be the only true law across all systems. The most brilliant part of it is that it does not matter what type of system we’re referring to, whether it is physical, social, etc the randomness in the system always tends to increase itself. In fact I believe that this very concept might be central to the discovery of the fundamental governing dynamics of the universe and everything within.

One of my major dreams has been to find a governing dynamic for human consciousness. I believe that one dynamic will be key to creating the true AI system which begins to learn like we do. I need to find out how to apply entropy to this.

Many thinkers do not agree to this fact of entropy being the governing law since they say that the largest counterexample is that of evolution. Evolution selects the most fit species from the population and hence the population becomes more and more specific and special with each generation. My answer to this is that the system is being looked at in the wrong way. The system in evolution is all of life. Life has definitely gotten more complex since the beginning of life. Pick any random living being and check if there’s an identical being. There’s not going to be one. Hence the randomness has increased in evolution too. The only reason we’re thinking specialization is because we have categorized every species for our understanding.

People tend to over categorize everything that they see, feel, hear, experience or learn. They do this to try and gain control. Anything that is categorized under an existing category makes it behaviour predictable and that eases their anxiety regarding that object. In fact they try to force some objects into some categories even if they don’t even come close to fitting there. This is only meant to reduce their individual anxieties regarding these objects. Predictability is key. People don’t like unpredictable objects or events.

God-Fearing

The question here mainly is why people are “God-fearing”? How did this phrase even develop? Why should the “Supreme one” become portrayed as one who should be feared. The reason probably is that during the earlier days, priests and gurus put the thought into the heads of people that they would be punished if they performed evil deeds. Yet people who have never even had the thought of doing an evil deed is afraid of Him. This might stem from the fact that the dealing out of justice by the almighty is not consistent. Good people also get punished and the bad people also get rewarded. This pattern instead of causing a lack of belief tended to create an increase in fear. The almighty who was supposed to stand for good and punish evil became to be thought of as an eccentric tyrant who deals out justice mostly correctly but has been known to deal out crazy judgements too. This I believe is what first brought the fear factor to the fore. The misinformation campaign by priests selecting only the favorable examples has probably let this fear from running to hysteric proportions. Or maybe the truth might have caused major disbelief.