On Questions

Lately quite many questions kept coming to my mind. It is hard when inflow of question is far greater than your capability to answer them. After some time, you start to fail to appreciate questions. They become cheap. However, it is a simple questions, which moved people to great feats in science, in social organisation, in law, and etc. A simple question, like "why not to let people give right to govern themselves?", "why not to study certain phenomena?" have a potential to spark an idea in curious minds which could become a light, a fire or a thunder shining far and wide.

To appreciate questions, one could try to cherish them by trying to ponder and think over them. This requires certain effort and time, however such practice is well worth the sacrifice. By practicing thinking and pondering one could understand the world better, thus empower himself and others. When I ponder about questions by writing them down on sheet of papers, this provides some level of clarity. However, the downside is that these notes tend to get lost, so it become hard to manage all these ideas.

So I decided to write some of the questions coming to me and my thoughts as blog posts. Let's see how it will go.

On New Pages

As one reads through a book, each page unfolds new stories, details and lessons. So let me share about a new page in my life. It has been a year since I have last written here. In this year quite a number of things happened: graduation from PhD program, joining a university as a lecturer and starting my own research and social projects.

I have submitted my dissertation titled 'A Study of Randomness and Groups using Finite Automata' in May and defended it around end of August. So on 30 of September National University of Singapore (NUS) has conferred me the doctorate degree. Strangely, I did not feel any surge of emotions at that time. People we congratulating me with this 'achievement', however the degree itself meant quite a little to me. I was happy to contribute a knowledge discovered during my PhD rather that with PhD itself. I felt that I have really contributed something to the society, so it was one of the few times I kind of liked my work.

In June 2018 I have joined Suleyman Demirel University (SDU) as a lecturer. I have loved my new workplace. People seem to be enthusiastic and passionate about their work. Since the university is very new, there are many things to be done, so I am happy to be a part of this process of building the educational and academic foundation of SDU. In September I have began teaching 'Introduction to Algorithms' course. It seems that teaching this course was a valuable learning experience to me. Before I used to be a teaching assistant at NUS, which meant quite a little responsibility. However teaching the whole course in SDU I had to learn the skills of coordinating the work of multiple people, organizing study process and developing a pleasant learning environment. By letting students to engage in team projects, students could explore various important algorithms which have changed the world. I was surprised with students' ability to understand and implement relatively complex algorithms and using quite a modern frameworks in doing their work. In the end, I feel proud of the students' journey and hard work they put into the course.

I have started several projects such as 'Neural Nets as Morphisms' and a few Machine Learning based projects. The interesting thing is that these projects have almost nothing to do with Automatic Randomness, the theme of my PhD work. I somehow realized that I am no longer interested in Automatic Randomness. I have given 2-3 years of my life to this topic, however a new directions are lying ahead of me. For one I became quite interested in Applied Category Theory and Machine Learning. So I was trying to carry several theoretical and applied research projects in these directions. One thing I realized is both excitement and difficulty of carrying one's own research projects. Though I was quite used to be researching on my own, having almost no one to consult makes it a bit harder to continue one's research. On the other hand, there is an immense possibilities of reaching out to various people around the world. Probably, I need to tap into this resource.

This has been a rather long post, partly due to a long break that took place. I hope to write here more often. 

On Languages

A word language comes from Latin 'lingua', which means a tongue. In Kazakh we even use the word for 'tongue', when we speak of language. This means that people mostly think of spoken language when the word 'language' is mentioned. However, we know that language is not limited to spoken or written languages. It seems to be something much wider than that. One way to look at language is as a medium of information exchange. In this respect, every professional community has its own language. Algebraists may speak of groups, rings and modules. Geometers might speak of points, curves, surfaces and tangent planes. Civil engineers might speak of well their stuff, let's say. People from different professional communities might not be able to understand each other's languages. The same might hold even for related fields.

However, all these people from different professions will understand when one speaks of patience, compassion, losses and victories. Because an activity in every discipline involves dealing with failures, learning from books or more experienced people, being curious and so on. In this sense, any person speaks a multitude of languages: domain languages, a language of ethics, a language of human emotions and so on. When people say that communication skills are important, I believe that they mean not only knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, but a whole family of languages which are needed to understand people and express oneself.

When I was in high-school most of my peers were trying to learn English at it opened doors to overseas colleges. Many students sacrificed their time and energy to learn English vocabulary and grammar. Some of them got into desired colleges and completed them with honours. However, when one completes such an educational institution, it becomes clear that knowledge of English alone might not automatically enable one to contribute to respective community. It takes much wider knowledge of human needs, available resources and ways to make a meaningful contribution. After few years the same phenomenon might be applicable to Chinese language, as China becoming stronger with each day. Surely, knowledge of Chinese is helpful, but so is knowledge of other types of languages. 

On The Little Prince

Having watched the movie 'The Little Prince', I came to know that it is based on the famous novella  by Antoine Saint Exupery, having the same title, so I set myself to read that novella. As always, I could find a right time to read it, but recently I managed to read it. The first surprise came with a storyline. It is has very little resemblance with that of film. The book is about a prince, depicted as a naive young boy, who lives in a small planet with small mountains and the rose. Somehow, he sets to leave his home planet, and leaves the rose, which is his beloved. He meets all kinds of characters in his journey and learns much about life. There are few lessons that I learned from this book, which I think are worthy of sharing. 

The first lesson is about value we give to the things around us. There are different ways to assign values to things or people. The most common is economic way. Prices of most objects are determined by markets, while the value of people are mainly determined by the economic value that they are capable of generating. For this reason, we respect CEOs, as their decisions can bring millions of dollars, while the decision of an office clerk might not bring as much. There are also values that are determined by society or an agreement of majority of people. We tend to respect scientists even though some types of research bring no immediate economic benefits. We do this, because majority of people believe that these things are important to investigate and to learn. Apart from these two valuation systems, there is also a personal approach: how do I value a particular object. Observe that a personal value might be very different from above two. For instance, a child of office clerk might love his father dearly, even though his father might generate relatively low economic output or have relatively low social status. The prince has realised that the personal value of the things are determined by the energy, love and time he puts into those things. In the case of his rose, he has put so many hours to take care of his rose that it became dear to him. When he encounters a valley with thousands roses, they catch his breath for some time. However, he then realises that those roses mean not so much to him, no matter what other people might think of them. 

The second lesson has to do with a dichotomy between following one's desire, which I call recklessness in this case, and being responsible. In modern times people tend to value their freedom. Society tells us to celebrate our differences, take pride in our uniqueness, and think outside of the box. In this kind of environment, it becomes easy to fall into a trap of recklessness. It becomes easy to ignore voices and feelings of other people, and to follows one's desires. This kind of behaviour tend to satisfy one's soul for a short time, however, as time goes along, a sense of remorse may replace that of satisfaction. At one point, a little prince regrets leaving his rose alone. He remembers how vulnerable his rose is and tries to return to his planet to take care of his rose. It shows that being responsible person tends to give one a sense of serenity and peace, as one knows that one has done the right thing, instead of following one's fancies. I guess that I need to learn this lesson. 

On Animal Farm

Recently I have completed reading of Animal Farm. I have heard quite a lot about this book, and it lived up my expectations fully. The author, George Orwell, astonished me with his plot. Who on earth would come up with a plot where animals overthrow their owners to form a republic. It seems that creativity has no boundaries and Orwell demonstrated this with his ideas.

Animal farm has started with the noblest of intentions of securing freedom and well-being of its inhabitants. Animals came up with their constitution of seven lines written on the gates of the farm. At the beginning everything worked as it supposed to work, until some of the animals started using dirty tricks to secure and maintain power over the farm. Those animals have enjoyed privileges beyond any of their dreams in the past, while lives of ordinary animals got even worse compared to their old times. However, illusory ideas of freedom kept them lingering to their lives. In truth, they were not free,  the only thing that changed was identity of their owner. The constitution that they once upheld has amounted to nothing.

One could see a story of human civilisation in this short story. People have experimented with many kinds of government structures, legal systems and moral codes. Most of them started from pure and genuine sources. However, in each case the result of such systems were similar, a tiny fraction of people turned out to rule and sometimes mistreat majority of people. One could ask if this is a human thing. It seems to me that it is not. 

On Personal Energy

Time is more valuable than money: if you have time you can always earn more money, but not vice versa, a saying goes. All it says is that having access to a generator is more valuable that having access to generated objects only. In the same category, there are sayings like, better to know how to catch fish, rather than having fish. Also we have: having a chicken is better than having eggs (Did I just made up some saying?). Anyway what I wanted to say that sometimes I find myself with an ample free time, but with no power to do anything. For this reason, energy seems to matter. Having energy allows one to pursue dreams and aspirations, while a lack of thereof makes it difficult even to get up from bed. Having experienced different levels of energy I have observed few things about what and how changes my energy.

Positive feelings boost energy. It has to do with a simple fact that emotional parts and physical parts of the body are connected. By pumping up the emotional part, one could add to one's energy. Any positive feeling seems to work, like: love, understanding, thankfulness and much more. 

Negative feeling deplete energy. Most of the time I found myself exhausted was not because I did some extra-challenging work, rather it was due to unnecessary worries and regrets. Negative feelings such as envy, fear, regrets crushed my energy resources many times. The strangest thing is that I kept falling at the same trap of negative emotions knowing their danger. At the same time, I thought myself as a quite intelligent entity. Turned out I was not so right. These days I try to avoid negative feelings whenever possible. In doing so I have observed that negativity of other people affects me much less than before. Previously I was thinking that negativity is highly contagious feeling, however it might not be the case.

Finally, levels of energy depend very much on usage. By nature, human beings are pretty weak. Any inconsistency in our body could send us onto a deathbed. Our emotional parts are not resilient as well. For this reason, energy is a scarce resource, and should be used wisely. 

On Commitments

Commitments shape our lives. Commitments can have rather different forms. A young couple can be committed to each other. A single mother can be committed to raising her children. A teacher might be committed in providing the best education for the students. A father can be committed to providing for his family and ensuring their well-being. Not all commitments are as positive as ones I have mentioned. Some people might be committed in doing crazy things. But for the purpose of this essay I wish to focus on positive commitments and how they change over time.

Commitments bring heavy weights with them. A committed person might realize the need to act on this commitment, however it might be extremely difficult at times. A part of this challenges come from society that we live in. Take for instance an example of aspiring teacher, a fresh gradute from local teaching program. She might might have high aspirations on educating future generation and contributing to society. However, as she tries to do what she loves the most, there would be numerous people who would discourage her by making nasty remarks about low-pay, lack of respect for teachers and lack of jobs. When she arrives home in evening, news agencies are always ready to tell her about numerous bombings, killings and other crazy things around the world. A single such day might not affect the level of commitment in our aspiring teacher much, but continuous bombardments with all this negativity will have its effect. As time goes on, our teacher might question very foundations of her commitments and convince herself of futility of her situation.

Let us understand what we have observed in our story. Why did our teacher lost her initial commitments? I believe that it has to do with social dynamics. Any person who observe nature for sometimes would realize that dynamics of a single object is vastly different form that of multitude objects. Group factor, or social factor in case of humans, add extra layer of complexity on that of individual behavior. In general a social movement can be a source of abundant good as well as evil. Take for instance peaceful movement of Gandhi and Nazi regime of Hitler. Both were massive and influential, however qualities of the influence were completely different. A movement of Gandhi was constructive and contributed to independence of India, while that of Hitler was destructive and contributed to devastation of the world. But one could ask what prevented people led by Hitler from recognizing their wrongdoing? A part of answer lies with social dynamics. When a large number of people are engaged in certain kind of behavior, it might become a norm in that society, even thought it might contradict to the basic tenets of human conscience.

To make the point clearer, let us consider few more examples. Take for instance, mass riots. Sometimes peaceful riots might turn violent, where cars get burned and glasses get shattered. The cause of such behavior might not be barbarity of the protestors. But the cause might have to do with group dynamics which involved at that particular place. On the other hand of fence, we might have policemen shooting rioters. Again these policement might not intend to seriously harm people, but when crowd is running person's ability of reasoning might undergo significant chages. This examples seems showcase a group dynamics in action.

Does all of this mean that we are just social robots, who are not capable of individual decision making? I hope not. What I wanted to convey is the fact that society exerts much influence on commitment of people. On the brighter side, one could use social component in positive ways by joining communities which facilitate action of one's commitments. Finally, I wish to remind that a commitment by definition is a personal thing. A society can influence person's desire to fulfill commitments, however it is up to every person whether he or she will pursue those commitments.