Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Some Qs. people asked me and my replies to them - Part 9

How do you define something that’s easily understood, even when you can’t express it? Is something accepted as truth when the majority agrees?
Krishna :

Second Q first…

Is something accepted as truth when the majority agrees?

Not in science! Democracy doesn’t work like that in our field. In science 'majority's opinion doesn't count unless it agrees fully with facts. Majority can be laymen who don’t know anything about it who just follow others blindly. Majority can also consist people who listen to ‘funded and manipulated’ research because it is loud!

In science, there won’t be two sides unless the research is incomplete or funded by industry/political/religious lobbies - the two dark sides that can be easily avoided. There will be facts and people should stick to them. True scientists cannot tolerate cognitive dissonance ( science doesn't allow for the holding of two contradictory positions). They must choose the facts and stick to them.

Facts don’t need democracy. Facts need evidence based acceptance.

In questions of science, the authority of millions is not worth the humble reasoning based on facts of a single individual! - Galeili.

But in other fields, yes, sometimes, misconceptions, irrational thoughts, blind beliefs are accepted as ‘truth’ as majority follow them even if there is no evidence for it!

That is why scientific method is the best to establish facts.

In the field of science majority's opinion counts only when it matc...

How do you define something that’s easily understood, even when you can’t express it?

Emotions! When somebody is crying very pathetically, you know something is wrong even if the person doesn’t tell you anything.

If the person laughs happily, you can understand something very good has happened.

If the person hugs you tightly, you know he or she loves you.

Your eyes can tell a hundred stories to those who can read them! Your smile can weave a thousand narratives in my mind!

Even animals can understand these emotions, when you are happy, have you observed your dog or cat jumping with joy along with you? Mine do!

Emotions screw up your mind because they are easy to feel and understand. That is why we are trained to keep them at bay while entering our labs. To find and establish facts and truth they are a hindrance!

Q:If religion cannot be questioned, what prevents a wayward person from creating a new religion now with the doctrine to destroy civilization?

Krishna: That is what some cults do, destroy themselves and their followers with mass suicides.

Most people can’t think critically overcoming traditional, cultural, religious, emotional and political conditioning of their minds. In India if any person who can critically analyse and tell people around why they are going in the wrong direction, it can become ‘hurting peoples’ religious sentiments’ and therefore that person can be reported, arrested and can be externed or banned!

Religion is trying to control people, writing immunity against the critical thinking and progress in very bold letters, challenging science and rationality and making people go backwards.

This is because religion fears science and losing power. Politicians often use religion as a weapon. And people are destroying themselves without realizing the facts.

We should be allowed to question all that is wrong in any arena if we want progress even if hurts peoples’ sentiments. We should think about the greater good of the people and should not limit ourselves to narrow mindedness. Otherwise, humanity destroys itself.

It is the people who dares to question things that become pillars of progress. Don’t obstruct them.

And isn’t it ‘hurting and harming’ my critical thinking established facts if somebody tries to restrict me from expressing my facts? Can I report that person too?

Q:Why do people believe in god? Why don't governments ban the concept of god as it is so stupid?

Krishna: Most people need some sort of emotional outside support as they are not mentally strong to stand on their own abilities. If you remove that support, they will collapse mentally. It is each and every individual’s right to have a mentally stable world. No government has any right to deny this to any individual.

We should be mature enough to understand others’ needs. What might look stupid to you, might make sense to others. And those others might think you are stupid for denying a supernatural power.

Develop tolerance. As long as a belief doesn’t interfere with the progress of the world, we can bear it as some people might find their beliefs helpful in leading a stable life.

But, yes, if the belief becomes an obstruction to peoples’ welfare, you can fight it with all your might to defeat it. Like the scientists who are fighting some religious beliefs against vaccination.

Q: Can you speak four languages including the mother tongue? If so, how did you do that?

Krishna: I learnt five languages.

Telugu - my mother tongue. I leant it naturally from my parents and other family members.

English - I leant it in school.

Urdu - Hyderabad, where I grew up, has lots of Muslim population. You naturally learn it from your neighbours.

Hindi - learnt it in school as second language, from my friends, movies, TV. It is easy to learn it if you can speak Urdu.

French - Did diploma courses. When I was doing my Ph.D. we used to deal with lots of research papers from other foreign languages. We had to go to translators who would charge huge amounts for translating research papers. Online translators can’t deal with scientific research papers properly. So each scholar from our lab learnt one foreign language to deal with the research papers and we helped one another in translating the papers. French was the most difficult to learn, so everybody ran away from it. I took it as a challenge and not only learnt it but stood first in our university in the course.

But then I started mixing up English and French. It is funny. :)

They say the brains of people who learn several languages would be sharp but mine became very messy especially because I deal with not only five languages and but also several fields like science, art, literature, designing, running a science communication network, social service etc.

Now if you find language mistakes in my answers here, please bear with me as my brain is completely overloaded and can’t spot them immediately!

Q: What do you think of the intellectual climate of internet?

There are two sides to the net.

One side really deals with mind blowing intellectuality. Especially in fields like science. I learnt several things from outside of my field from experts. But what intrigues me is even experts differ in their answers! This is because sometimes people express their opinions and not evidence based facts which is against scientific method.

But sadly true intellectuals get less up votes and interaction and therefore, their answers and articles get less viewership.

The other side deals with crap made of misconceptions, pseudo-science, false perceptions, irrationality and lots of stuff that wastes our time if we engage with it. I avoid it like plague. But unfortunately, these answers get astonishing number of upvotes, viewership and interaction!

Why?!

Q: Do you get depressed being an intellectual?

Krishna: Recently one person asked me this Q:

*'I’m rather a happy fool than a desperate intellectual'.

Most people think in this way. Why do you think so?

Can you enjoy life if you are a genius and an intellectual ? Can we

lead a pleasant life if we go the scientific way?

What is your message to others in this regard?*

And this is my reply: Most People are averse to hard work - hard mental work is more difficult than hard physical work and drains you both physically and

mentally. It is not easy dealing with intellectuality. People avoid it 'to be happy' , easy going, and what they call 'enjoy life'. Know what? Several people think I can't enjoy life and live a desperate life because of my intellectual capabilities.

But they are completely wrong. Get this right:

Different people will have different definitions for enjoyment.

I get a mindblowing thrill out of intellectual pursuits. Science intoxicates me so much that I don't need, sleep, food, rest, or any sort of other entertainment.

Not that I became a machine. I do hang out sometimes with friends, family and relatives . But that doesn't give me any thrill. It is like when you have tasted the best, everything else pales before it. Nothing compares with the excitement I get when I am in my zone.

Intellectuals are not desperate. Not all are depressed especially if they can enjoy their own company, pursuits and mind matters.

Q: Can one stay without a thought for a minute?

Krishna: Yes, whenever my mind heats up, I just close my eyes and concentrate on just breathing. My mind becomes blank and I get relaxation. I can stay in that condition for some time.

That slows down my heart beat, calms my nerves, my hormones get controlled, and I can work again with rejuvenated energy.

Q: What is teh relationship between religion and truth?

Krishna: I was asked to answer this Q!

After the scientific era started, we realized what real facts are.

During the earlier times people saw lives with pains, tragedies, sorrows and several things around them. They wanted some kind of theory which could explain all this. Therefore, they thought about explanations and theories which gradually led into beliefs. These beliefs, which were influenced by the times they lived in i.e., non-scientific reasoning, were products of constant fear of the unknown. Instead of taking on the fear head on and finding permanent solutions, they just escaped into the world of false beliefs that gave them temporary relief. In a world where people clutch at all kinds of straws to make some sense of the madness around them, truth can never be found. Instead of analyzing, examining and understanding why something happens and how it should be handled realisitically, they tried shortcuts by bringing unknown and untested factors to interpret things! These beliefs divided people because each person had a different set of experiences and those in turn influenced their explanations and the resultant beliefs based on their mental makeup and situations and not on one truth. That's how different beliefs - both religious and non-religious - originated.

""Faith is, `To believe what you do not see', the reward of which is, `you see what you believed'''!

To avoid such pitfalls science asks us not to get attached to emotions and beliefs. It tells us to have an unattached reasoning power so that your mind can seek truth in a neutral manner.

Science and Spirituality

Imagine this situation...

A huge asteroid colloids with the Earth in the future. Everything here gets destroyed. All living beings. All religions. All the scientific knowledge written in the books.

Then life originates here again and evolves into intelligent beings. Then in the initial stages of its civilization when it tries, it comes up with religious stories with different Gods because it doesn't have any knowledge about the present ones!

But in the later stages, if it tries to gain scientific knowledge, surprisingly it finds that the Earth revolves around the Sun, Earth is round - not flat, realizes gravity and space-time in the same way as we did! It also finds millions of stars, galaxies and black holes like we did!

It sees atoms and molecules and chemical reactions exactly in the same way as we do!

Their 'medical field' evolves similar to ours! Their technology would be similar to the present one. In fact all their scientific knowledge will be similar to ours!

Even if this happens a hundred times the results would be the same each time!

If intelligent life evolves in different parts of this universe, and if it has to have 'religions' and Gods in each part, they would all be different to each other - like the different religious stories and beliefs we have in different parts of Earth. But their scientific knowledge would be exactly the same in all the given situations! Because scientific awareness cannot be different in various parts of our planet or universe.

Why does scientific knowledge remain constant while religion and God keep changing?

Can you realize why? If you can, you will understand which one is telling the truth and which one you can trust ... Science or Religion?

Why science is greater than anything else.

The answer is obvious for a mind that can reason well.

Q: Have you ever seriously investigated why astrologers go wrong in their predictions?

Krishna:I was asked to answer this Q.

Yes, I seriously investigated, but not about me making wrong astrological predictions, I don’t do that, but all astrologers’ predictions. Read here my scientific analysis and come to your own conclusion:

Why Astrology is Pseudo-science

Q: Is it true that our dead ancestors will be reborn again in teh smae family which they had lived previously?

Krishna:You asked about truth.

But people tell anecdotal creative stories. Now the real Q is what is ‘truth’. Books are not authentic and science doesn’t accept them as genuine evidence. Only peer-reviewed papers published in high quality journals are accepted in science. To establish facts, you need reproduction of results and meta analysis of the papers published.

You need high quality critical analysis to really know whether something is true or not. Without that you start believing in anything you hear/read and think it is true. Most people, therefore, don’t know what is a fact and what is not. What is science and what is pseudo-science.

And most people asking Qs look for confirmation of their biases and beliefs. If they get them, they feel happy and if they don’t, they get annoyed.

If you really want to know what science says about this, read this article fully …

There is no after life according to science

Q: How mentally tough are you and what are you doing to get stronger?

Krishna: Women/girls will have to be more tough than men to fight the world all alone because they face more problems in patriarchal societies. This is a fact. I don’t want to tell my story here and gain sympathy and up votes. I don’t need them. I don’t even consider the ones I faced as problems but as machines that polished be into a gem! My parents supported me with all they had during their brief stay in this world. Then my tough journey that tested all my mental capabilities started and sculpted me into the strong person I am now.

What did I do to get stronger? Faced all the things I encountered with a realistic high resolve to overcome them. Never avoided any problem but welcomed all the challenges that tested my mental capabilities. Each struggle made me more and more indestructible.

Majority of the people in the world think that obstacles, difficulties, pain and agony are not good for them. On the contrary, I feel, they are the machines that polish the personality of a human being. If a person knows how to learn lessons from them and how to understand the philosophy of life, adversities bring out the best in a human being and make the person very strong and beautiful.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. They are created by the adversities!

Why I prefer and choose to go the difficult ways

ADVERSITIES ARE THE MACHINES THAT POLISH THESE GEMS

Q When did humanity first figure out what happiness is?
Krishna
Did IT?! Had it really found that out, it wouldn’t run after the things it is chasing now!

We are still dumb and don’t know what real happiness is and are going after mirages!

Q: Should we believe in superstitions according to lessons in the "Scarecrow" by Satyajit Ray?

Krishna: Scarecrow is just an imaginative story. Not truth. Not a fact.

If you want to believe in superstitions based on creative stories, you have to re visit your thinking process. Read these articles that might help you …

Science's rules are unyielding, they will not be bent in any way fo...

Science and superstitions : How rational thinking can make you work...

superstitions-don-t-have-any-science-behind-them#

superstitions

Q: Why is it considered cool to not believing in our religion, especially for Hindus?
Krishna : Trust should come from facts. From critical thinking based on genuine evidence.

If your religion tells you Sun God is driven in a chariot by seven horses in the sky which causes day and night, which was proven wrong by scientific evidence, how can you still believe in it?

I am not stupid to still believe stories which were written in ages when human understanding about this universe ‘s still in a primitive stage. We are more advanced now to know genuine facts. Science should be our way to follow, not primitiveness.

Q: Do we see ghosts and spirits after opening third eye?

Krishna: There is no evidence of ghosts and spirits in the first place, according to science. Oh, yes, some people can imagine and hallucinate them.

Science and the paranormal

If you become a genuinely enlightened person like the gurus say, you will realize this. Any other arguments need extra ordinary evidences to become facts.

Q: Is religion organized superstition?

Krishna: Religion mostly denotes primitive thinking about the universe.

Like they say Sun is a God that travels in a chariot in the sky driven by seven horses whose movement caused day and night! That is primitive way of thinking and explaining things without any evidence.

Science came and smashed all that primitive thinking. But still some people refuse to come out of their boxes and believe in things religion says. Like - the Earth is flat and was created by God as it ‘s some 6000 years ago!

In a way, yes, some things in religion denotes superstition. Like the eclipses and creative stories and fears surrounding it.

Spaceman Vs Boxmen

Q: When faced with life's toughest circumstances, how should we respond: as an optimist, a realist or something else?

Krishna: As a realist. That gives more strength than optimism. You have to accept your circumstances as they are, not see them through tinted glasses. Then try to see if you can improve your situation through your hard work and determination.

Q: Why are women so mysterious as also told by the greatest scientist Stephen Hawking?
Krishna : Are we?! :)

In patriarchal societies that is the only weapon we have if that is really true! If we are mysterious, atleast we can confuse men, screw up their thought process, and escape.

An intelligent woman can use this weapon to her advantage. Any objections?

Q: Is acceptance/tolerance of 'all beliefs' possible?

Krishna: Tolerance, yes, if the beliefs don’t cause ‘any harm’ to the societies we live in. But this is rarely achievable!

Acceptance? NO! If my critical thinking says, there are loopholes in those beliefs, (I didn’t find any belief without any of these till now, the word belief itself is avoided by many in my field of science), I cannot accept any of them.

Q: Are People with psychic abilities spiritually advanced?
Krishna : After two decades of research in the US, scientists reviewed the results and concluded that the psychics did no better than chance, and that the psychic information was neither validated nor useful.

Again countless programs have been funded in the field in the US despite never having been proven valid or effective but all went futile!

Extra sensory perception (ESP) never fared well under scientific conditions, whether in the private or public sector trials. Most tests failed to replicate the results. Some that showed results had been shown to have several errors in statistics and methodology. Most psychics were caught cheating on hidden cameras, physically bending spoons with their hands — not their minds — when they thought no one was watching.

If psychics can really have good abilities, their predictions and work should be much more accurate and valid than chance or an informed guess and they should really be able to do things without cheating.

So there aren’t any people with psychic abilities in the first place!

Q: How do I know whether the positive and negative vibes we think about will affect the surrounding circumstances or by the way it happens as we think it's just a coincidence?

Krishna: It just is your perception that something is related. Human brain without any control tries to make connections where none exist. There is absolutely no evidence that positive and negative vibes can really effect something.

Oh, yes, if you are not comfortable about a situation, that is because of your prior knowledge, either good or bad, correct or not, about such circumstances and your informed imagination and educated guesswork working at its best to warn you. If you see a person that resembles a bad character in a movie you just saw in a lonely place, your mind overworks to warn you. But in reality that person in real life might not be bad at all. There is a fifty percent chance that he might be bad and another fifty percent chance that he might not! That doesn’t prove anything!

It just is a chance happening when your bad vibes meet a real bad character that might harm you. It might also be a chance that despite your bad vibes, the person might prove to be very good. a good looking person might prove to be bad too! When the chances have equal probability, you cannot firmly relate things to only one thing.

During day time, you might feel good vibes in a temple. But during nights several criminal activities occur even in temples like thefts, rapes, murders etc. ( I have read several such reports in newspapers in recent times) How can you connect a temple to good vibes then?

So, good vibes and bad vibes are just imaginative connections your brain makes. But some connections might have a base of prior knowledge based on something you hear/see/read and your fears or assurances developed because of it which might have equal chances of either coming true or not coming true!

Now come to your own conclusion!

(After reading the reply above a person sent me this suggestion: I suggest you read the book”The Secret” or watch the movie on YouTube

And this is my reply to him: Thanks. But we, the people of science, don’t consider anecdotal evidence. Except genuine scientific evidence and critical thinking based on it, nothing else can convince me.

Then he said: I cannot force you to believe something. It is up to you. What is science and what is not? It is debatable.

This is my reply: For you it might be debatable. For us, scientists, it is not! )

Q: On a 1-10 scale, how much do you believe in ghosts?

Krishna: My answer is Zero! Because there isn’t any solid evidence. science says ghosts are just your imagination and hallucination. And I trust science.

Science and the paranormal

Q: is there insight to be found from astrology and zodiac signs? Is the fact that zodiac signs appear in different cultures a coincidence?

Krishna: Do you want genuine insights? Then read this article to find answers to your Qs: Why Astrology is Pseudo-science

Q: Does our soul know before we are going to die?

Krishna: There is no evidence of soul in the first place according to science. Then how can an imaginary soul know about the time of the death?

Soul?! What is it according to science and scientists?

Okay, if you are feeling extremely bad because of a health condition, your mind can guess it, provided your brain is still conscious enough to do such work.

If anybody knows about the impending death of a person, it is his doctors treating his medical condition. Based on the ‘informed guesswork’, a doctor gives an approximate time.

Some Qs. people asked me and my replies to them - Part 9

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