Intelligent learner

 There are some science myths that are very deeply ingrained in our society.  One such myth is regarding our brain and how much do we use it. There are many numbers floating around, depending on who are you talking with! Some say, we use just 2 % of our brain, while some claim it to be 4 or 10 %. Whatever the numbers are, I usually become frustrated with such claims. These notions became more popularized because of media- specially Hollywood films and TV shows. I can distinctly remember a show where one can just take a pill, and suddenly, they are able to use all of their brain- and thus resulting in great memory retention, information processing to catch bad guys and saving the day.  Unfortunately, this is not true- at least using our whole brain at special occasions. The potential range of memory retention and information processing can vary largely based on lot of factors. You need to understand that a normal healthy brain has mechanisms to actually 'forget' memories or to a

On 24 th of February, Russia launched a military invasion in Ukraine. It not only had a direct impact on the people of Ukraine and Russia, but it would also have lasting ripple effects to the rest of the world. One of such impacts can be seen in Oil price which in turn affects the cost of whole range of things thus affecting economic stability. So, let’s talk about that today. To start with, we need to understand the fundamentals for any product pricing. The price of any product basically depends upon two things- Demand and Supply. Very simply put, if the demand and supply is comparable (irrespective of both increasing or decreasing), then you typically get the product at the right price. However, when the demand is comparatively higher than the supply- the price goes up. Similarly, when the opposite happens, that is, the supply is comparatively much higher than the demand, then the price goes down. This simple equation holds true for almost all the products you can think of- fr

We are amidst a war between two nations currently. And we all are apprehensive about the results. Wars are always ...always a terrible business with all the lives lost, all the properties being damaged, all the destruction that ensues. But apart from all these bad stuffs, do you know that war can have an adverse effect on our height as well? Historically speaking, the average height of an European got reduced during the two world wars in the twentieth century. So, what’s exactly the relationship? Why does it happen?   Height of a human being, like any other biological processes, depends upon mainly two things- 1) The genes that you get from your parents and 2) the environment that you was brought up in. It’s almost like a game of cards. Genes are basically the cards that you got and the environment can be thought as the way you play your cards. Any biological process is the combination of them. You also might’ve heard about the nature vs nurture debate? More on that later som

Transformer architecture While having a chat with one acquaintance over WhatsApp, I realised that there is a natural human tendency to use the biggest or the most complex or the most recent things wherever possible. I think using GPT-3 anywhere and everywhere falls within this tendency to go overboard. For those of you, who do not know what GPT-3 is, it is a transformer-based architecture (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). Transformer architectures have gotten a lot of traction lately due to its’ performance in natural language tasks (Like Generating texts based on contexts- writing poems, stories, tweets, or any generic NLP tasks like translation, summarization, question answering etc.). There are different transformer architectures suited for different tasks. In the last few years, few groups are trying to build and train bigger transformer architecture (not necessarily better). GPT 3 is a result of such efforts. I am not at all saying that GPT 3 is not great. It is. Anyone who is

There are certain topics that are like showstoppers in the intellectual debate world. The notion of ‘Free Will’ must be in one of the top positions among those. And like other good debates, the main points revolve around- ‘what exactly is Free will’ and ‘Is there Free will’. I am not going to answer them today (that would have been interesting!). I am not sure whether we as human beings are certain about our understanding of free will. But I will give a brief review on the book, ‘Free Will’ by Dr. Sam Harris, discuss his opinion and might throw some of mine (opinion, that is).   The Book Starting with the book, it certainly is a great read. The book is pretty short (at around 100 pages) considering the subject matter. But it certainly creates an impact. It enforces you to not just read its’ contents within but also to think and to introspect. Dr. Harris has a PhD degree in Neuroscience. He knows what he is talking about. He started off with what we as a community think or define

For the last few years, interests in cryptocurrency and blockchain related topics have skyrocketed. Active investors, traders have increased by manyfold. People and to some extents Governments have mixed reaction on this. Some have accepted this change whereas some are doubtful. El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender and also plans to create “crypto-city”. On the other hand, China has taken steps to clamp down crypto-mining and crypto assets as a whole.   I am an ardent fan of new technologies and as such I adore Blockchain for what it can offer. People sometimes forget but cryptocurrencies are just one of the applications made possible by Blockchain technology. But the current debates and discussions are not on Blockchain, rather on private cryptocurrencies. Here are few of my points on this matter, as per my limited knowledge (anyone may choose to disagree)- What are the cons/ worries associated with cryptocurrencies? One valid point is the ene