What it means to be educated

I have recently become a fan of Steven Pinker. His Wikipedia page tells you who he is and if you like, youtube him to find some remarkable lectures, specially the one on why we use swear words. But this post is about his eloquent and precise definition about what it means to be an educated person.

There is a big time controversy that was generated by a provocative article in the magazine New Republic "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League". In response to this Steven Pinker wrote a great piece "The Trouble With Harvard". In this article, he gives a wonderful definition of an educated person.

"I think we can be more specific. It seems to me that educated people should know something about the 13-billion-year prehistory of our species and the basic laws governing the physical and living world, including our bodies and brains. They should grasp the timeline of human history from the dawn of agriculture to the present. They should be exposed to the diversity of human cultures, and the major systems of belief and value with which they have made sense of their lives. They should know about the formative events in human history, including the blunders we can hope not to repeat. They should understand the principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law. They should know how to appreciate works of fiction and art as sources of aesthetic pleasure and as impetuses to reflect on the human condition.
On top of this knowledge, a liberal education should make certain habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity, and know how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition, rumor, and unexamined conventional wisdom. They should know how to reason logically and statistically, avoiding the fallacies and biases to which the untutored human mind is vulnerable. They should think causally rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence. They should be acutely aware of human fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that people who disagree with them are not stupid or evil. Accordingly, they should appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather than intimidation or demagoguery."

I'll try to keep updating this post to provide some web resources that I've found, which one can use to actually educate themselves..

"13-billion-year prehistory of our species": Big History Project. and the talk.
"basic laws governing the physical and living world": This is the all the things taught in the high school science class.. Can be learned online from Khan Academy.
"diversity of human cultures": .......Quite tough.

"major systems of belief ": Religion, not a big fan!!

 "principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law": Random reading on Wikipedia!!

"clear writing and speech": A very helpful and short video on writing is here. 

"think causally rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence": Difficult concept to convey...

Going beyond your biological capability to understand Biology

The multicomponent system that's our body (or other multicellular organism), requires a much more sophisticated brain than the one we are endowed with to comprehend and understand. The natural selection, through which our brain has evolved required only simple two or three component analysis and intuitive understanding our world. To make sense of our surrounding and survive within the environment, it only had to evolve, compute and analyze a small number of variables that are sensed by our limited sensory systems. And as pointed out by the physicists and cosmologists, our sensory system is quite limited in sensing only a very small spectrum of signals. Except for the chemical senses (smell and taste), which is responsible for detecting complex chemicals of different varieties, our auditory and visual capacities are very limited in sensing the electromagnetic wave and sound wave spectrum. Furthermore, we only use maximum three sensory inputs at one time to compute and interpret any object that we encounter. So, our brain has not developed abilities to handle multi-component analysis and interpretation. This leads to a very common natural behavior of profiling and trying to find patterns and use previous understanding of the detected pattern to predict its behavior. A great example is our common understanding of quantum mechanics. Since its discovery followed by successful application in everyday technology, it has been one among many difficult concepts of physics to comprehend and understand by common people, because it deals with a microscopic world that none of our sensory system allow us to delve into. We have developed sensors and detectors, which enormously extends our senses, but our brain is not equipped to handle them resulting in the lack of general understanding and appreciation of these profound concepts.

I'd argue that the understanding of biology is now facing the same challenges. Due to historical reasons and partly because of its complexities, there was a large push to study simple life forms so that we can understand the basic common principles of life. We studied viruses, bacteria, worms, flies etc. However, due to the evolutionary origins of each species that we have studied and the natural selection that have shaped them, only a handful of principles can be applied to humans that we want to study most. In fact the most used model organism to understand human physiology and diseases has been mouse, and these days, in the field arguments are raging why a laboratory mouse, even a humanized mouse is not a very good model. On top of which add the various genetic and physiological differences we all have as individuals - the path forward looks quite abysmal. And it is the humans and the improvement of humanity is one of the most coveted goals of biology.

This brings me to my final point: why we need to go beyond our brain's capacity. Modern biology is now endowing us to decipher and sense extraordinarily large volume of information about various integral parameters of life in the form of genetic, behavioral and clinical information. It is like the revolution in ground and space telescope technology to revolutionize the modern astronomy and provide us with a better understanding of the origin and the fate of the universe. But processing and interpreting this information is beyond our poor brain's capacity. Therefore, the only way out is to change the approach. We may need a new visionary in the likes of Charles Darwin, with superior metal ability, or use computational model approach. What I'd envision that there could be an empirical computational model that can be built, where all the known parameters can be included and the rate constants for their interactions can be constantly improved upon to reflect the reality. Some such models have been created and have been shown their utility in explaining single signaling pathway outcomes and at the single cell level. However, these ultimate models have to be built based on inputs from all biologists using wiki principles. They have to be peer reviewed and curated for including information on interaction rate constants. I think the most difficult part of this effort/initiative would be the funding mechanism. There is no chance for a for profit organization that would fund such initiative. Therefore, it has to be funded by the government/s and in the scope of something similar to a Manhattan Project in biology. In my mind, it is probably the only way to make sense of biology and generate verifiable outcomes, which can ultimately benefit humanity and handle complex diseases such as cancer.                     

Raka's 16th Birthday..

Why I use Facebook

Today it suddenly occurred to me why I use and would continue to use Facebook. A common question that comes up in discussion about the new wave of social networking, "who cares about what you are doing right now". Isn't it presumptuous to think that your FB friends have time to learn and think about your latest headache, or if you sneezed 5 times this morning!! In other words, it may kind of seem like bragging sometime when we post some sily good news, rather lack of modesty. The question of limits of privacy has also been raised. .

I've also wondered about the question FB poses "What's on your mind?" Absolutely Nothing!! Why should I tell you, Isn't thoughts are supposed to be the ultimate private property in modern civilization?

But now I realize what it does - maintain a passive connection and communication with people. Before FB it always took either a letter, phone call or e-mail to exchange news and our status in life. people wrote long letters developing this as a literary art form. But, eventually the time between replies for letters, e-mails increases. Finally dropping down to no communication. FB does not let that happen. It took efforts to keep in touch with old friends and acquaintances. FB has reduced that effort. Although last time I had seen/spoke to some of my friends (Moumita/Sudipto) was several years ago, I know the name of their children and I've seen their picture. So Before FB I'd have probably not called or thought of dropping by to their places in case I was in town. But now because of FB I don't feel so distant. I wouldn't feel awkward of calling them if I'm in town and probably think of drooping by if given a chance!!