Viswanathan K's Thoughts

At the end of Through the Language Glass , Guy Deutscher points out that colour, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. As is well known, the eye has rods and cones. Colour perception is because of the cones. In humans, we have 3 different types of cones which can detect 3 separate colours – red, blue and green (RGB). Only those three, nothing else. How then do we “see” so many other colours?   Well, if light happens to activate both red and green cones with equal intensity, it gets interpreted as yellow. Put differently, we are not capable of detecting if a light is “truly” yellow or just a combo of equal intensity red and green! So all those non-RGB colours we are able to see? It’s just a combo of those three colours we can detect (RGB) combined in different intensities (ratios).   In fact, colour TV’s use just this point. They (like our eye) only support 3 different colours (RGB). By varying the intensities of those three colours at each pixel on the screen, ...

I found Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality fascinating. It felt like a description of one aspect of Hindu philosophy explained via analogies I am familiar with. The aspect in question – do we perceive reality as it is?   The answer is No. He says our senses convey a picture of reality that can be compared to icons on the computer or smartphone: “The purpose of a desktop interface is not to show you the “truth” of the computer – where “truth”, in this metaphor, refers to circuits, voltages, and layers of software. Rather, the purpose of an interface is to hide the “truth” and to show simple graphics that help you perform useful tasks such as crafting emails and editing photos.”   Evolution, he says, has made us evolve in a way where we seek not truth, but whatever increases our odds of survival: “Perception is not a window of objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.” Helpful wrt survival, tha...

Can being good at what you do work to your disadvantage? Seems illogical. But consider this. How do most of us value a person’s effort? Based on his ability and skills? Or based on the time he put in? Check out this video for an example of how the same locksmith was perceived differently as he got better at his job. Why do so many people value the time and effort put into the task more than knowledge, skill and efficiency? (Except for those rare cases where the person can visibly demonstrate those qualities). At some level, I think that mindset is a legacy from our childhood where effort and sincerity were valued highly. Nothing wrong with that in childhood, of course. But as adults, we forget that we are expected to be somewhere between good and excellent at what we do, not hard-working-but-unsuccessful at our job! The other reason could be because the activity itself is invisible to us. So we never realize that the guy who did it faster may have come up with a new way of doing things...