Finding order in randomness. Finding randomness in order.

One of my favorite verses from the Bhagavad Gita (and also one of the most popular ones) goes- यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत । अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥४-७॥ परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् । धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥४-८॥ Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata Abhythanamadharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham Paritranaya sadhunang vinashay cha dushkritam Dharmasangsthapanarthay sambhabami yuge yuge   Here Krishna is telling Arjuna that whenever  there is decay of "dharma" (a concept that is not easily translated in English in fact, but more commonly translated as "one's duty" or "righteousness") in the world he will be born again to restore righteousness and destroy  evil. Some people take this literally i.e. through reincarnation Krishna will be born again in a human form and take these actions. However, I think that is not what this means. Krishna is not a person here but he is knowledge, ideas. What he is ...

There are some people who directly or indirectly worship evolution/nature as one would a God or a religion. But they are wrong in doing so. Evolution or Nature (which is a broader term to define the concept) is indeed a knowledge creation process but that doesn't mean that is is "right" or "moral". Just the fact that we are born out of Nature (through the process of evolution) does not make Nature itself some grand, god-like thing which is not to be questioned. In fact I am arguing to the contrary - I think a lot of Nature is in fact immoral.  Morality is a field of philosophy as it applies to conscious beings, which includes us. It is a question of "what to do next". We do not have very good theories of morality yet (e.g. we do no have a theory of morality that is as good as quantum theory is for physics). Morality is distinct from the sciences and hence it is distinct from Nature/evolution. Nature does not, by default,  have the "right" mor...

The only requirement any system, to be effective, must have is that of error correction. As long as error correction is built into the system, and it works effectively, we can say we have a "good" system. On the contrary if a system does not have error correction built into it, no matter how well the system seems to work in the present, it will eventually fail.  This applies to all domains where knowledge is involved - politics, relationships, computer programs, mechanical systems etc. In fact I can't think of a system where it doesn't apply. Let's take a few examples -  1. Politics In politics the best form of government that we have (and which has produced the most prosperity) is that of a liberal democracy. As Popper pointed out, an effective system of electing rulers is not in which the "best" rulers are elected to power. This cannot be so since this assumes we know apriori what "best" is and such beliefs usually lead to coercion (and viole...