The Hard Problem is Really a Harder problem

The hard problem of consciousness would remain as a harder problem of consciousness. Those theories which maintains that the subjective conscious experience arises from brain is not so hard problem as it was presented by David Charmer who argued for the problem. David also further argue that the problem consciousness belongs a altogether a different realm of reality which is completely different from the physical reality. With respect to the consciousness research, the physical reality is largely confined to the brain. Many theories has been around the understanding that everything that we experience or everything that we attribute to consciousness can be explained using the brain itself, there is no necessity of any third parameter to explain our conscious experience or consciousness. However, we have not been successful so far to explain any of the phenomena. 

There could be two assumptions: 

brain is physical whereas the consciousness belongs to a different reality which is unknown . 

In such situation the problem of consciousness can only be solved in conscious reality, it can't be solve in any other realm which are characteristically less than conscious domain. Therefore, it is impossible to solve or understand the problem of consciousness using brain. 

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/02/neuroscientists-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-isnt-so-hard/

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

A Step Beyond the Neural Pattern

My feelings and corresponding neural patterns are two different things. Some of the contemporary theories strongly suggests that the subjecting feelings are originating possibly from brain itself and there is no second thing beyond that. However recent findings make a different claim suggesting that the subjective feeling can't be explained just with the neural patterns. The finds suggest that there must be something beyond the neural patterns. The problem with the neural basis of explanation is that the pattern itself does not covey the feelings, to get the idea of feelings the subject has to be asked separately to get to know how does it feel. This how does it feel is what has been called as subjective feeling a part of hard problem of consciousness. 

What kind of experiment could be performed to confirm the presence of subjective element fundamentally a different kind of element than physical one? How do we perform experiment to test this? 

One possibility is to do the following:

    Let's consider two subjects and a large set of objects. Subject: A and Subject: B, and a large set of object.

    Let I = {i1, i2, i3, ..................in} where n -> very large number. 

    Let perform a series of operation of input and output. 

    i1 will be given to both A and B, and the output from each subject will be recorded using MRI or FMRI kind of technology. 

   i2 will be give to both A and B, and the the output from each subject will be recorded using MRI and FMRI. 

  Similarly, the experiment will be performed for all the inputs and the output will be recorded. Then the output will be compared for both the subjects to find out how are they similar or how are they differ. The same output will be used to figure out the processing in the brain and then that will be compared between the subject. How are these two data points, the output and the neural patterns correlates would indicate the existence of subjective element or the qualia element. 

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Consciousness as a foundation for Happiness

What drives us? In our day-to-day activities what drives us is happiness. Happiness is so basic to us that we have rarely attempted to ask this question that what exactly is the happiness? However as time pass and society experience turmoil and tough situations, we tend to address this question on why are we suffering?Why the happiness which is the intrinsic need seems to so rare and impossible? Why the suffering has become predominant over happiness? Such questions has probably led to a systematic study of happiness. The UC Berkely course on happiness address the content related to happiness. 

A link to the course:  https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/online_courses_tools/the_science_of_happiness

We would like to address the same problem in light of Bhagavatam and Vedic wisdom. What and How the Vedic literature has addressed the same problem? What kind of solution it offers and how does it make sense in the current time? We will post our analysis and understanding here in the further articles. 

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Clarity on Consciousness

The understanding of consciousness among the scientific community is at a very nascent stage. The advancement of neuro science has provided some hope of conducting a scientific study of consciousness. However, due to lack of an appropriate approach so far there has been no breaking on the fundamental questions on either origin or nature of consciousness. The contention is that whether the brain gives rise to consciousness or it is a fundamental than matter itself. Or does the existence of matter and consciousness is parallel, means, the matter exists alongside consciousness. At some point of time, matter and consciousness interact and give rise to activities - force and action.

Vedic literature has a lot to provide on this.  A systematic study of Vedic literature on this content might provide a way to formulate a solvable problem on consciousness study. Therefore, the way forward would be to synthesize the scientific approach with that of the Vedic wisdom. We hope to explore this direction to address the problem of consciousness.

Jaynarayan, Tirupati, India

Existence of Life and Consciousness in Spectrum of Entity

The consciousness has been a non-trivial problem for the scientists of modern time. Not very long, since around last 30 years or so the problem has gained a serious attention from neuro-biologists. Not only the neuro-science, the computer science and quantum physics has also started to investigate the problem. And, of course the philosophy is involved since long. The interesting development is the integration of science and spirituality in search for a new science to address different problems of consciousness. The approach of synthesizing the science and spirituality has been invented and applied by H H Bhaktiswarupa Damodara Maharaj in search for the answers to the question of consciousness study. One of problem of consciousness is whether consciousness is limited to human being alone? Or in other words does the other creatures such as trees, plants, microbes etc poses consciousness? 

The problem stated has been investigated by Sir J C Bose long back in the year of 1900 (the history of this research goes back to 1848 by German philosopher Gustav Fechner). Sir J C Bose has demonstrated using an interesting experimental setup that plants are sentient. The plant do respond consciously to the external stimuli. The result has indicated that plant has some mechanism of being able to communicate the feelings of pain, suffering and happiness. (Well, here we may need to appropriately define what we mean by feelings. This subject we will discuss further.) Taking it from here, recently a work has been published in a book "Finding the Mother Tree" authored by Suzzane Simard which investigates the problem of plant consciousness. The work provides a set of evidences based on the authors examination of a Mother tree in a deep forest where the author studies the behavior of those trees that seems to be exactly like a mother in human being. The way they communicate about their survival, their food, friends and foe, health etc reveals a different kind of phenomena underneath in the forest society. These studies and observations lay a foundation for plant consciousness.

Reference: 

   1. https://www.the-scientist.com/reading-frames/book-excerpt-from-finding-the-mother-tree-68727

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Living and Non-living machines

The subtle difference between living and non-living that we learn from Vedic scriptures is not very well understood by the modern scientific community. The scientific community particularly the biologists are in the process of research to learn more about What is Life? Whatever has been known so far does not give any clarity on what is living and what is dead. The current understanding which is based on the large number of assumptions states that the life could possibly be the cell itself. What is not known is how does the cell  has evolved? 

The recent research on living machines published in the paper "A cellular platform for the development of synthetic living machines" [1]  is even more interesting to note that it has been titled as Living machine. The author does states that they have created a living machine. However, the understanding is that the research is on creating an automatic self-healing machine from the living organism. Some of the critical points to be noted are that the machine has not been created from dead cells, rather it has been created from living cells which after the initial organization can further behave as a self-healing machine just like a computer. The machine has also a capability to record the past behavior of the machine. 

The relevant question to be asked is does this finding anyway helps us understand how does life has started, does this finding be useful in answering the question of machine consciousness? Will the machine ever be conscious? 

Reference:

[1] https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/6/52/eabf1571/tab-pdf

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Computational Model and Human Brain

Computation has become so much important that it has become impossible to live without it in modern times. The computation has spread across our day-to-day life in various ways. We use cell phone, we use various other computational devices for our livelihood in every home utilities as well as in many other technology. Further, computation has become a tool for the advancement of science in the pursuance of knowledge. It is of course true that we are yet to define what we suppose to be calling as a knowledge.  We have discussed on the definition of knowledge in other article. In the set of knowledge that has been learned so far by the scholars, the computation is one such which needs to be understood further. The curiosity has lead the investigation further to learn about the nature of computation and computation in  the Nature that we live in. This article is a set of thoughts to understand the nature of the human brain in the light of computational model. Our interest is to understand the structure and functionality of the human brain in contrast with the computational model. Is computation one of the fundamental principles of Nature? Does this material nature also performs a unique kind of computation in order to sustain the activities? As computer science has evolved theoretically as well as physically with the advent of different technology and computational model, it is appropriate to contrast the current computational technology with that of the human brain. 

The computation has been defined in terms of an abstract machine called Turing machine by Alan Turing a British mathematician. This definition has become a model for the theoretical study of computer science. The model describes the process of computation as information processing where the information is represented in the form of a set of well-defined symbols. The processing is controlled by an automated machine which can be called a controller, technically this can be termed as a state machine. Further, the processing requires an ability to remember the past for which a memory device is used called tap. With these three components, the Turing machine is constructed which defines what computation suppose to be. Most of the modern computational devices which are most popular are based on this definition. The physical counterpart of this definition is the Von-Neumann architecture (of course there is another architecture called Stanford Architecture conceptually similar with VNA.) which describes further how a machine could process the symbols in a step-by-step manner to reach at a conclusive result. Therefore, it can be said that the Von-Neumann architecture introduces additional components with data and control paths to facilitate the flow of information and data. This architecture, VNA, has been widespread now in almost all the processors that are currently being manufactured. Among many such processors, the general-purpose processors are most popular due to its basic properties of being programmable. The programmability feature implies that the same processor could be used to carry out multiple tasks. It is for that reason called as a general-purpose processor. It is the program that is unique for a particular task. The underlying processor is common. At the first look when we contrast this architecture with that of our human brain we find that our brain is something different from the architecture that we have just described. As time progress and along with that the human needs which can be termed as applications also is emerging with various demand. One such demand is performance. The applications that the modern computer process are complex in nature and therefore they demand high-performance computing. As the demand for high-performance computing rises, there have been several pieces of research that attempt to meet this performance demand. One of the interesting advancements in this direction to note is the development of application-specific accelerators. Here comes the something worth noting point which is the subject of this article. If we carefully observe the application-specific accelerators, it is one-to-one with the architecture of the human brain. Whereas not the general-purpose processor architecture. 

The interesting part to investigate is how far the application-specific accelerator  architecture would be correlated with the human brain architecture. And, would it be the appropriate architecture for neural processing? 

We will investigate further here.  

Reference: 1. Image is taken from: https://www.kurzweilai.net/how-brain-architecture-relates-to-consciousness-and-abstract-thought

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Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Knowledge and Its Eternal Nature

The modern science though has gave rise to numerous technological solutions for the societal problem however, it has so far failed in answering some of the fundamental questions about the life and universe. In fact there is no satisfactory answer yet to the questions concerning life and universe. We are yet to know What is Life, We are yet to know How did the universe came to existence? And we are also yet to know Why the suffering exists? Well, there are several theories and hypothesis to these questions. The prevailing one could be Theory of Evolution which has been time and again examined to be able to explain some of the questions concerning life, its origin and evolution. The other theories such as BigBang which tries to explain How the universe could have originated and what would be its fate? Similarly, the explanation for Why we are suffering and why the problems existed in this universe is again by use of Evolution theory. The state of the art is that we have not yet understood the fundamental questions and its answer. While this being the state of the art, the great thinkers of the modern science have also contributed towards understanding of the physical world. Such as, in the area of Physics we have laws of motion, principle of conservation of energy, different forces, mass, and the world of quantum physics. Similarly in the other areas some advancement have been certainly made. Great deal of advancement also been made in the filed of abstract world of mathematics. Therefore, in nut cell we may conclude that the modern science has generated some of understanding of the working of this nature. Some term this as knowledge. 

However, the knowledge that we find in the revealed scripture such as Bhagavad Gita gives a complete ly newer definition of knowledge. It states that knowledge is something which enables the knower to distinguish between the life and matter. It further elaborate that knowledge is something which is an eternal in nature it being the fundamental properties of Life itself. 

We will continue the article in next week.

Jaynarayan, 

Tirupati, India

Premature Ideas and Thought in Process

Simultaneous of Existence of Multiple Fundamental Elements:

More fundamental than work is force, more than force is movement, more that movement is change, more than change is #time....Time definitely seems to be a fundmental quantity among many. The theory should be that of the theory of multiple fundamental quantities existing parallelly for an eternal time. The creation which we see as our universe therefore must be a transient appearance due to coming together of multiple such fundamental quantities. This direction needs exploration. let's look for whether this could be one of the possibilities. Existence of multiple irreducible fundamental elements. Why would this make sense? What kind of math can capture such a theory? Do we have any evidence for that?

Knowledge and Ignorance:

Knowledge and ignorance are so subtle that our mind can play and flip them as if the one would seem to b like the other. And, the most dangerous is when we accept ignorance as knowledge with a pinch of ego. It may be ok so far to remain ignorant but it is extremely dangerous to accept ignorance as knowledge and being falsely proud of it. A knowledgeable is one who understands that he is in ignorance. One who is really in knowledge would develop a very important quality of humility (and in fact this is the only outcome of pursuing knowledge)- being a humble person from within.

There could be six kinds of person:

- One who is in knowledge and is humble

- One who is in knowledge but has pride of having knowledge

- One who is not in knowledge but consider himself to be knowledgeable

- One who holds ignorance as knowledge (very dangerous)

- One who is in ignorance but does not know he is in ignorance

- One who is in ignorance but knows he in ignorance

Among these, the first and last persons are the fit for knowledge.

Scalability:

Two ideas: - scalability generally is inversely proportional to quality;

- computation and mathematics have the capabilities to voyage into the subtle world of this nature.

Generally, it is observed that scalability does not go well with quality, the moment one tries to scale-up the things the quality gets affected. Therefore, the right kind of problem to solve is can we have a kind of mathematical model which reverse the process, means, the quality also gets magnified as the scalability increase.

The second thought: computation and mathematics have the capabilities to take us to the world which is subtle and possibly can take us to the world which is of different nature than the one we have currently. The reason is that these two fields teach us to abstract the things which are located or functional in different domains. The process of abstraction builds a kind of bridge between these different domains which also can be seen as the layered reality.

Will be elaborated more!

Rotation and Circularity:

The rotation has so close relation with the circular share. nature is so meticulously designed. rotation is most efficient if the shape is circular. uniformity around the perimeter. have a look at the cosmos and you will find that the planets move or rotate in #circular orbit, have a look at the bottom the tiniest structure of an #atom, the electron revolves around the nucleus in a path that is nearly circular. ....... the #shape that dictates action... #physics #philosophy

Variation:

we will discuss on the root cause of #variation that we witness in each and everything that is being done by human beings. Why there is no exact perfection and why in everything we see variation? It essentially hints at the existence of more fundamental elements and its properties. When we build a thing, the first step we take is to plan a kind of mental and intellect exercise. And, then the next step we take is to execute to realize the plan. The process of realization or implementation has to go through a series of steps further to reach at the point of satisfaction. The point of satisfaction is defined as that point where the designer feel satisfied witht he end product. And the point of satisfaction indicates that the realized outcome is somewhat as expected to the envisaged one. However, in many cases, it has been observed, and now it is being looked at as a basic limitation that there exists some degree of variation between the expected one and the realized one. Why it is so ? that is a big question. The same also has observed in the field of semiconductor manufacturing which we called as variation effect. This intriguing question is from that observation. Why there is always some degree of variation? We will investigate the problem and search for the problem to this problem. #freewill #physics #computation #philosophy #Vedanta

Time:

Time is so mysterious so far to us that it seems it is more fundamental than anything else science has discovered. The Vedic sages have offered some of the profound understandings on time and now its time for science to investigate such findings and synthesize it with the contemporary methodology of doing science to reach at the perfect understanding. Is time is that which imposes movement and changes? Everything in this world is subjected to change, and that change is something needed to be investigated thoroughly. #vedictime #time #physics #force

Ref: The Physics and Philosophy of Time - with Carlo Rovelli, Youtube Seminar, The Royal Institution

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We will continue to post the thoughts that would stimulate further investigation and detail work. 

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Jaynarayan

Tirupati, India

Few higher order thoughts

A thoughts on Efficiency that is driving technology:

Efficiency is being quantified as an amount of work being produced in a unit time. What is that we are striving for is to ensure that we produce great deal of work while investing as less as possible. this effort has led us to look for technological solutions of our day to day problem where we deploy technology to improve upon the efficiency. And therefore, the required resources can be generated for its utility. This is the sum and substance of the technological efforts in general. We want to produce efficient engine, efficient work culture, efficient life style etc. This problem has a different perspective where we ask whether the efficiency really solves the scarcity of resources in the society as such? there is a interesting phenomena at play, which indirectly puts a challenge to the efficiency. Even if we have infinite efficiency the third parameter which we will discuss next places a challenges of consuming the results of efficiency in uneven way.

A thought on Frame of Reference and absolute reference:

Here is something which takes us to a different kind of deep thought where we find a lot of difficulties as well as joy to quantify a parameter. Lets take an example: we would like to quantify the distance and try to say that what does it mean to say 1 KM. Shall I say it as just a distance which I cover when I run for one hour? Or shall is there any other way of measuring things? the interesting point is what would be our point of reference when we define or quantify a parameter or an object. So the question is what is fundamental? where the search for reference point rest? when I say a distance of 1 KM, which has been defined if understand correctly, from the unit distance covered a photon in a vacuum. The next question is certainly how accurate is this when we go beyond the planks regime? Therefore, it leads us to the question of is there anything more fundamental? Therefore, if an object needs to be quantified, the quantification necessarily has to be with respect to some other more fundamental entity. These questions of the absolute parameter is unavoidable here, we need to investigate more.

A thought on Connection/Connectivity that exists in this creation:

Connectivity is fundamental structure and it is a kind of fabric on which the entire creation functions. the concept of connectivity has been talked about by many stalwarts of science and spirituality. for a computer science the connectivity is so necessary that without this the system building is impossible, a system can't be defined without connectivity. it plays a important role of establishing a relationship among different component of the system. the principle of connectivity is viable for both the software as well a hardware system. in this sense, there is no such thing as complete discrete. there always exist a connected system. wherever in the system we look at the connectivity is out there to build a system. well, the thought on the concept of connected system is so intriguing that it would lead us to the quest on how does the entire creation is being built. we will continue our meditation on this. eventually we will find the basic knowledge with respect to connectivity that has been gifted to the humanity by lord Krishna in Bhagavad Gita [Sloka 7.7].

A thought on the fundamental necessity of Communication:

How do we the human in specific and any living creature in general communicate with the surroundings or how express the emotion? this is an interesting question to understand. human have language which they use as a medium to communicate their emotion with the surroundings. the language has been used in various form in such a way that the emotion being expressed without loss any meaning which is primary and the other dialects or humors. the language take the form of spoken, written, drawing, acting, arts etc. the most interesting problem for computer science thinkers in this realm is how to understand the emotion and meaning which  has been expressed or represented in the said forms? i am sure, the next set of attempts by the computer scientists would be to study the neural activity and directly extract the meaning right from the brain. And, the second set of thoughts would be to study the forms of language to extract the meaning out of it. The research in this direction is active in the area of natural language processing (NLP), image processing with intelligence, voice processing etc. Both the set of research direction are interesting certainly. however, the root problem remains whether the machine can have understanding?

Jaynarayan, Tirupati, India

History of consciousness research

The new approach need to be explored to get a grip on consciousness research. The approach  so far has been to perform observation empirically and very little on the approach from first person. The first person approach needs to be taken seriously to understand the origin of consciousness. 

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/13/6976

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

First person approach in consciousness research

Consciousness has been one of the most eluding and terrifying topic of research for scientists. Very recently due to the advancement of neuroscience, some of the research has taken place to understand the consciousness by study of neural activity. One of the work in this direction is Neural correlate consciousness by Francis Crick and Christof Koch (1990) on finding out the relationship between conscious experience and neural activity in the brain. The interesting idea in this approach is to study the correlation between neural activity with corresponding consciousness experience. Such studies have shown considerable advancement by many other subsequent works. Some of the interesting outcomes of such study are to figure out whether brain causes consciousness or the consciousness is much fundamental than the brain. Such study also would be very much useful for treatment of various neural disorder diseases such as Schizophrenia. The interesting and most inquisitive search for the origin of consciousness would however go beyond the application specific research. 

It seems that among many other approaches, the first person approach would be much more appropriate in understanding some of the intriguing aspect of consciousness. We aim at taking a first person approach to understand the origin and nature of consciousness.


Jaynarayan, Tiruapti, India

Synchronized Free-will

(The figure is just symbolic, it is not our experiment, taken from Wiki)

The Nature is filled with mysteries at all level of manifestation. When the science started, I mean when we start to model the behavior mathematically and started experimenting on our observation, there have been many questions that philosophers and spiritualists have formulated which were not answered. And, among many such questions which are still standing unanswered, the question of Free-will is one of them. When we look into the behavior of human being we find many interesting and amazing phenomena which are still an unsolved mysteries even after the progress of neuro-science. Many thinks  the human behavior is tightly programmed and there is no such thing as free-will. There have been certain neuro-scientific evidence which seemingly suggest that there is no such third entity as free-will, it is the input and output learning system of our brain that is responsible for our next course of decision and action. Whereas there are other theories and experiments suggest that there is indeed a third entity apart from our brain and nature. The third entity is partly responsible for  our decision making and action. It is a free-will of an individual which is a separate entity than brain.

The Vedic literature gives a greater detail about the free-will which plays a very very important role in our (living entity) life. Free-will according to the scripture is a fundamental properties of soul. So, it is by nature a spirit, it is not a matter. The free-will that we are having is a synchronized free-will. Hence, it is not random, however, it is subjective. It is synchronized free-will because of the fact that it acts with reference to material nature or spiritual nature. When it acts in accordance with the material nature, it is to be understood that it is in synch with the material nature, whereas when it acts in accordance with the spiritual nature, it is to be understood that it in synchronized with spiritual nature. Therefore, according to Vedic concept it always acts with reference to the either Material Nature or Spiritual Nature. Another behavior of the free-will can be explained with respect to subjectivity. The subjectivity comes from the unique nature of each individual living entity. Therefore, a free-will can termed as subjective synchronized free-will.

We will discuss in further detail in the next article.

Jaynarayan Tudu, Tirupati, India

Life as I Understand

Life is certainly not as easy as we might think. It can take you through its own preprogrammed course of path. It is very difficult (actually very very difficult). It requires mercy, none of any other things will work, to get into the correct track, which will lead you to the ultimate measure of happiness. Life is altogether a different journey. It is such a kind of journey where none will be with you except the supreme lord. In the path of life's journey although there could be many friends such as, your own body, mind, and intellect. However, all these associates could be your friends or could be your enemy. Therefore, a genuine uncertainty prevails whether they are currently as your friends or enemy. Moreover, each of them are capable of reproducing a multiple number of the either friends or enemies. The most surprising part of this is at any point of time, with infinite uncertainty, one will never know who is enemy and who is a friend. In such a situation the only hope is the mercy of supreme lord Jagannatha.  

I pray therefore to my worshipable lord Jagannatha that dear lord may you be kind enough upon me to  help me in the path of life. I am suffering unbearable distress and you are only my hope. I have learned from my teacher that you are so merciful and you always protect whoever comes to you. May your kindness be upon me my lord, may our kindness be upon me.

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Quantum Computer and India

Quantum computing is certainly an interesting field of research in search for a new kind of computing machine. The classical computer (which, most of them are digital in nature) perform its computation based on two discrete states ie true and false. Using these two states the classical computer could perform unbelievably a large varieties of computation from wide varieties of domains. All the scientific simulations including the simulation of quantum physics phenomena are being performed so far using these classical computers - the super computers.

However, it has been observed by physicists that there is a fundamental difference between the classical and the quantum realm. As in the case of classical domain where the things or states are always deterministic in nature which means that a deterministic number can be assigned to each state for example a state can have either 0 or 1 value. In the classical realm a state can never have non-deterministic value or it can never have probabilistic value. Whereas in the case of quantum physics the scenario is bit weird. The state of anything can be assigned with a deterministic value. Therefore, it is unlikely that the classical system can model the quantum system. There has been an attempt to model the quantum system using the classical CMOS technology based computer, however, the attempt has yield a very meager gain over the classical counter part. At the same time there have been a serious attempt to build a real quantum computer. The nature of real quantum computer is that the hardware of the computer should be built from the quantum component. The only characteristic of this mystical quantum component is that it should represent the quantum state. The quantum state are purely probabilistic in nature and it holds the other quantum mechanical properties such as  superposition and non-locality (disclaimer: I have no formal training on quantum physics, my source of knowledge is from self study, lecture and seminar by eminences). In the similar way the programming of the quantum computer should be built. In the classical computer the nature of the program poses some specific properties. Some of the properties of the classical programs are with respect to the way of execution. Each instruction in the classical program are interdependent by time and space. In the computer science terminology such interdependence are also called as control and data dependence. To put it in the proper perspective, all the instructions can't be executed simultaneously and a single instruction or a data can't be replicated into multiple copies simultaneously - it requires time. Whereas in the case of quantum computer the scenario is different and it is fully driven by the quantum mechanical principles. The research effort around the world has now become more intense and being done by large group of researchers. Currently most of the efforts are being invested to build a specific purpose quantum computer that would solve the problems that comes from the domain of quantum physics, particularly the ability to simulate/emulate the real quantum phenomena. However, soon the effort would also come to build a general purpose quantum computer which would solve the classical computational problems much efficiently.

Some of the leading economy countries have started investing in realizing a genuine quantum computer that would solve the large scale quantum physics problems. The country such as United States and European countries are investing good amount of funds for this cause. Some of the natural question with respect to research in this domain that arises must be addressed globally. To solve such problem in the modern time it is wise to put a collaborative efforts by the group around the world. It should be a collaborative efforts by all the countries when it comes to funding. A new funding model should be initiated to solve such problems. The emerging economy like India can not afford to invest to solve such problem from bottom to top. However, India can and must invest in carrying out theoretical and simulation based research effort to solve some of the selected problems. And, such project should be done in collaboration with the countries who are building the hardware. Such collaborative effort is expected and would certainly accelerate the innovations in this area. Experts say that in the coming 15 years the world would start using a quantum computer (the genuine one) in some form.

The next big challenge is to tackle the hard problem of consciousness (the subjective self awareness) using such kind of new computer. We will try to present our thoughts in the upcoming articles.


Reference:

1) Delivering on Quantum Innovation, IEEE Spectrum, Sep 19, 2019
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/delivering-on-quantum-innovation

2) How to make computing more sustainable, Nature, Sep 18, 2019,
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02781-4

3) Simulating Physics with Computer, May 7, 1981,
https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf

Jaynarayan Tudu, 

Tirupati, India

Human Form of Life is for Inquiry into the Absolute Truth

Introduction:

Each and every activity that we or any living entity perform is driven by identity. The identity is fundamental and it goes beyond the realm which we could directly or indirectly perceive with our physical means. How our activities are driven by our identity is an interesting problem to meditate upon and to investigate? When we analyze the matter we can even find a unique property that defines that particular matter. This in a crude sense  can be termed as an identity of that matter. Here, we will discuss the identity of a living entity with respect to its activity and we will find out the activity which a living entity suppose to perform.

Identity leads to activity:

   Whether in physics or in any other branch of science we define an object on the basis of fundamental  properties that it poses. For example, an electron is defined as a negatively charged particle. What it means is the electron is having negative charge as its fundamental properties. Of course, the science is progressive in nature and we don't know what more fundamental are there to be discovered. The point to be noted here is that the activity of an object is driven by its properties. Our interest is to know such fundamental properties. In science, we search for such properties by the method of scientific investigation in which the observation is the primary. Starting from observation the rest of the things are built up to the extend of experimentation and validation. There are many weird things involved as we move towards the finer aspect of reality. One of the mysteries is subjective nature of phenomena in the realm of quantum mechanics. As we examine, in a similar way, the other branches of science, we find a tight correlation between the properties and activities. This fundamental nature is what we call as an identity of that object. This identity is unique to each and every object. The uniqueness of the identity is another area of scientific investigation, which is yet to be taken up as a scientific research problem.

Though science has progressed much, though much of the progress is in technology, we are yet to  discover the fundamental nature of life. We are yet to know the definition of life. Whatever definition we have for the time being is just a working definition for the purpose of research only. This is one of the most essential and difficult problems the science is yet to solve. There have been many research activity currently underway around the world to find out the origin of life. However, so far there is no clue about the origin of life. In this article, we will present a methodology to study the meaning of life on the basis of three systems of knowledge:

1) common man observation, 

2) the scientific findings, and 

3) the Vedantic system of revealed knowledge.

The identity of a life particle:

When we survey through the scientific research, we find nothing much substantial about the origin of life. However, the effort is underway. We (our group) have also ventured into this research with entirely different approach which is completely based on the Vedantic philosophy. We are yet to make any progress that could be discussed here. However, our theory and experiment are based on the conclusion that are laid out by the sages of Vedantic tradition. Here in this article, I will primarily focus on the identity of life particle and its activity. As I have stated in the last section the theory shall be established based on common man observation, scientific limitation, and the revealed knowledge of Vedanta.

When we introspect upon ourselves and closely examine our activities, we find that each and every activity that we perform is driven by our identity. This is subtle and fundamental at another realm than the gross physical one. The identity itself manifest and spread in various form as it percolates from the substratum of the subtle realm to the perceivable physical realm. At the substratum, we identify ourselves as this physical body which we see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. Once this primary identity is established the secondary one start manifesting itself to take a particular form. Once the secondary identity is established the living entity start to act based on this identity to interact with Nature. After that, the primary identity is almost in the background. Example: at the foundational level I start by identifying myself as this body, then my secondary identity could be I am a researcher or I am a student or I am this or that etc. Now, my secondary identity drives my activity. I start to work as a researcher, I start to meet the people of like-minded, I start to read a lot of literature etc. This is the fact and phenomena that we can observe with our bare senses in our day-to-day social affairs. Essentially, this secondary identity is acting as a bridge between me (my primary identity) and this Nature (we call this material Nature because of the existence of a different kind of nature which the Vedanta calls spiritual Nature). Some of the other interesting features of identity are: 

1) It evolves from living entity to entity, 

2) It is unique in time and space, and 

3) It manifests in multiple layers. 

So, from this observation, we conclude that we have the identity as fundamental to us and it drives our actions.

Activity leads to reaction: 

When we do further analysis in the sequence, once we perform an activity, we find that our activity  does not go way in air. The activity is recorded somewhere in the Nature and in due course of time, for some action it is instant, the action that was performed back in time now comes back in different form  which is termed as a reaction. We could express this in a equation as r(t) = a(t-i) + k, where r is reaction, a  is action, t is time, i is constant, and k is deviation. However, it is not straight forward to state that each and every action that a living entity performs has an equal and opposite reaction like Newton's third law of motion. Therefore, here we will not make any such effort for the time being. However, our interest is to find out a fundamental way of measuring the reaction. Since we are studying the nature of

living entity we must understand that the measurement of reaction would not necessarily be quantifiable like the physical entity. In the following section we would elaborate on this. 

A reaction leads to distress or happiness: 

The big question is how do we measure the action and reaction. Again, coming back to the common man observation, lets ask this "What sustains a living entity to continue its action?". It is the happiness that each and every living entities are searching for. Either concentric happiness or distributed, direct happiness or indirected happiness, the observation is we are looking for happiness. We measure our action in terms of happiness as its outcome. As far the current society is concerned, it is the money which we have assumed to be the cause of happiness and we try to quantify our happiness with the money. However, if we look for the fundamental cause, it is the happiness. The happiness could be mapped to the real number line which range from -infinite to +infinite. This means that we could be in the distress of bitter kind as well. Therefore, in other way happiness and distress are the unit to measure our reaction.

Our fundamental nature is to be happy: 

How do we study the nature of living entity? We have an abundant amount of wisdom revealed in the Vedic scriptures. In the scripture following three things are made clear:

   1) Living entity is atomic 

   2) Living entity is infinitesimal 

   3) Living entity is SAT (eternal)

   4) Living entity is CHIT (knowledge)

   5) Living entity is ANANDA (bliss)

The revealed knowledge that are propounded in scriptures are the knowledge that comes directly from the source of super intelligence or GOD or lord Krishna to be specific. These are realm which are beyond the modern scientific realm that just limit itself in the physical nature. The scriptures also provides a systematic methodology to validate such knowledge. The validation process itself is known as self realization. In the process of self realization the living entity shall be the subject as well as object of experiment simultaneously. Where as in our modern scientific method subject and object are two different entity. In this article, our interest is to understand the ANANDA or bliss property of the living entity. We have to note from here that the bliss or happiness is the fundamental nature of living entity. The happiness and identity interact with each other as happiness is driven by identity. 

When a living entity misidentifies itself with the matter its enter into the realm of erroneous identity. In

the following section we discuss about this erroneous identity realm and the remedies to revive our original identity. 

Human form of life is for inquiry into absolute truth:

When a living entity misidentifies as matter, the matter takes over and dominate the spiritual nature of the living entity. While the living entity perform various activities in the erroneous identity realm it assumes a different forms of matter. In this prolonged erroneous identity realm, the living entity also get a form what we call as a human form of life. All these enormous process are supervised by the Nature according to the basic laws setup by superintelligence.

The scripture reveals that the human form of life is meant for the inquiry into the absolute truth. From

scripture we learn the following: 

[Srimad Bhagavatam: 1.2.10]

"kamasya nendriya-pritir labho jiveta yavata

jivasya tattava-jijnasa nartho yas ceha karmabhih"

Translation: 

Life's desires should never be driected toward sense gratification. One should desire only a healthy life,

or self-preservation, since a human being is meant for inquiry about the Absolute Truth (Ultimate Reality) Nothing else should be the goal of one's work. 

[Vedanta Sutra: 1]

"atatho braham jijnasa"

Translation:

Now, therefore, one should inquire into the nature of Brahaman, the Absolute Truth, or GOD.

There are exemplary personalities who have demonstrated through their life the way of human life as it  is revealed in the scriptures. There could be no more further evidence than these examples on the subject presented here. The modern science need to rise above the realm of physical reality to perceive the realm of a different kind. 

Human form life is unique and its goal is to inquire about the Absolute Truth.

--

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

.... Because we are sorrounded by so many good people.

Remain thankful to all of you!

It gives me immense pleasure to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all those who have kindly helped me in carrying out this research work. I am very much thankful to Prof. Virendra Singh, IIT Bombay and Prof Matthew Jacob for their guidance throughout the research. From the very beginning of my Ph.D. days, Prof. Matthew and Prof. Singh have been guiding me in all the aspects of my research. I am particularly thankful to Prof Virendra Singh for he has kindly welcomed me to IIT Bombay and ensured my stay and research in every visit to CADS laboratory. Prof Matthew has been constantly monitoring my progress which helped me pursue the research even when I used to feel moral weakness. Prof. Matthew has provided me several technical inputs although my research area is slightly different than his usual area of interest, the inputs have latter resulted in the publications.
Prof. Matthew has been very much accommodating in various situation particularly for my visit to IIT Bombay. I am thankful to MHRD, Govt. of India and Indian Institute of Science for supporting my entire research by institute scholarship.

It was my pleasure to share and discuss some our ideas with Prof Shankar Balachandran, IIT Chennai. I respect his quick ideas and suggestions, many of our work got good shape partly because of his suggestions.

Prof Kewal Saluja of the University of Wisconsin for all of our works has given many valuable suggestions and reviewed our ideas on Joint-scan architecture. In the starting of this work Prof. Saluja has given us a good motivation to look into the architectural aspect of Joint-scan. Prof Janak Patel, University of Illinois, UC, used be our frequent guest at CADSL, IIT Bombay. Many of our ideas which sprung from our daily meeting are strengthen by Prof. Janak Patel. He often boosts our moral in pursuing research with engineering attitude. Prof Janak has taught us how by taking care of minor aspects of research work, the larger problem gets a better understanding. 

During my stay at IISc, I have met with some of the fine professors whose words are filled with inspirations and encouragements. I thank Prof Y Narahari for his support in each and every difficulty of my IISc research life. Prof Narahari is one of the professors who understands the student's di culty
from the rst person perspective. Prof M Narasimha Murthy has always helped me and ensured my timely research and completion of the thesis. I am very much thankful to the current chairman of our department Prof. Jayant Haritsa for he has always pushed me for early completion of the thesis, Professor has officially ensured all of my visits to IIT Bombay for research to happen in fast track.

I would like to acknowledge the help I got from the technical staff member of ALTERA laboratory at Department of Electronic System Engineering, IISc in using Synopsys and other CAD tools. I also would like to thank my colleagues at VLSI Design laboratory, EE, IIT Bombay for providing me access to Synopsys and Cadence tools. I acknowledge the collaborative work with LSI Logic where we could perform several experiments on peak power issues.
Many of my friends have contributed to our research work. I am extremely thankful to my co-authors who have actually experimented with many of our ideas. My colleague Deepak Malani has contributed in several aspects of our work on worst power estimation. Thanks to Alok Malakar for conducting a lot of experiments on  flip-flop design, building libraries, doing place and routing of the proposed architecture. Thanks to Binod and Nehru for exploring and experimenting on Dynamic and Bombay scan. Our friend Satyadev has done a work for which I am really thankful to him. We have
designed a set of  flip-flops for high performance and low power scan test. Thanks to Rohini and Nihar for extending the work on worst power estimation. I am thankful to Suryakant Ji and Toral madam for their constant support in several technical diffi culties. Our research atmosphere has always been kept vibrant by several of my friends at CADSL, I thank Newton Singh, Prashant, Sandipan, Nitant, Karthik, Virat, and Vijay for always keeping me encouraged in doing research of some or other kind.

IISc campus has always been a place of quest. Though I am an ordinary researcher but my friends have always kept my quest alive for knowing the laws and principles of Nature. I thank Hrishikesh, Ramesh, Ashish, Thulasi Raman, Ramana Reddy, Govind, Dipti Bhai, Tanuj, Rahul, and other friends  for helping me on several occasion for several reasons. We have always cherished the discussions on the topic which great scientists sometime feel reluctant to discuss. Especially I thank to Ramesh and Ashish for sparing time for me to make me understand the CAD tools and the detail concept of VLSI technology.

Staying in Bangalore has always been pleasant for me. The due goes to my senior brothers of Bhaktivedanta Institute, Bangalore who have always provided me an opportunity to explore the diff erent horizon of life.

The love and care that I have received from my parents can not be acknowledged formally, those are priceless. I pray to the lord Jagannatha that may I ever serve them and keep them in a happy life.

Saying is that without the mercy of supreme lord even a blade of grass does not move. Lord, you are the great, may your greatness be always echoed in my mind.

PS: This is acknowledgment for the thesis which I submitted recently to the Computer Science Department at IISc, Bangalore.

Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India