5/10/2021 Part 2.71
Reasoning
The next and most essential requirement to thinking in cognitive learning is reasoning. Reasoning implies clarity, use of accepted methods, experience, knowledge, logic, analysis, and an answer or conclusion in the end of reasoning.
while thinking can be open ended, reasoning has a purpose-
to find out about an element, entity, or occurrence or actions using enquiry;
to discover truths about an event or statement;
to decide upon actions to be done.
to select a good option based on many criteria
consider the most important occurrence today – covid virus and its impacts.
people, not only experts are confused and want answers to many questions.
how does it come?
how does it spread?
what are the symptoms?
who are affected and why and how?
what are the treatments?
what are the preventive measures? Can we eliminate it?
how do we reduce its impact?
what are the after effects? etc.
Similarly, you reason to decide on your purchases of major items, equipment etc.
so, we need to use reasoning in our learning process especially when we learn a concept in order to analyze it or apply it or simply understand it and its impacts.
A good and proper reasoning problem may be second law of thermodynamics in order to understand it . normally the first step in reasoning is to define the concept clearly and in detail. then we choose an approach – logical, linguistic, mathematical – to find its truths.
let us see the definition and explanation of reasoning first.
Reasoning is the generation or evaluation of claims in relation to their supporting arguments and evidence. The ability to reason has a fundamental impact on one’s ability to learn from new information and experiences because reasoning skills determine how people comprehend, evaluate, and accept claims and arguments.
Reasoning is a central and important thinking skill: thinkers need to be able to support conclusions with structured reasons and evidence, make informed, reasoned decisions and make valid inferences. … These are creative thinking skills, enquiry skills, information processing skills and problem-solving skills.
Philosophers used to reason on various aspects of earth and nature through enquiry and discussions. remember the approach used by Yagnavalkya 8th century BC and Socrates. Public enquiries and discussions are encouraged.
Yagnavalkya uses interrogations and discussions to clear doubts on many issues. His discussions with his wife Mytrayee are well known. It looks like he is the first philosopher to reason. As i said earlier, there are several approaches to reason and find truths in Indian Philosophy. the oldest is Sankhya. it means numbers. even yoga is also used as a beginning method of calming the mind and concentrations. Hindu philosophy encompasses the philosophies, world views and teachings of Hinduism that emerged in Ancient India. These include six systems (shad-darśana) – Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta. these deal with primarily getting truth from statements and observations. The basic concepts that form the cornerstone of Indian philosophical thought are: the self or soul (atman), the formless brahmam, jnana (knowledge), works (karma), and liberation (moksha).
The Nyaya school holds that there are four valid means of knowledge: perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana), comparison (upamana), and sound, or testimony (shabda). Invalid knowledge involves memory, doubt, error, and hypothetical argument.
The Nyaya-sutras is attributed to Gautama, who was at least the principal author.
the basic factor to ascertain truth is Pramana, (Sanskrit: “measure”) in Indian philosophy, the means by which one obtains accurate and valid knowledge (prama, pramiti) about the world.
5/12/2021 Part 2.72
The next question is how to inculcate good and deep thinking and sound reasoning? This will not happen by a lecture.
Let us look at what happens in reality with people even in jobs.
Let me start with a question- do people think clearly and independently and reason on many aspects and happenings even events related to them?
It looks like it rarely happens even with professionals and the so-called intellectuals (when one is called as an intellectual, it is casteism and feudalism. why not those called intellectuals’ protest?). our thinking is mostly straight jacketed and fixed (does not vary dynamically) in most people. we carry a ton of beliefs over a period of time – some based on experience, some from parents and some from society and some from professions and jobs and education). Our thinking is guided by these beliefs and our learnings and experiences. This happens even in work places. we follow the standard practices religiously. This aspect of following rigid and standard procedures and looking inward has led to industries being demolished due to disruptions happening outside. If someone questions the practices, he or she gets a bad label and will not be part of the system and may lose promotions. I see this with teachers also. we teach the same operating systems for the past more than forty years, the same databases, the same software engineering. that reflects on our non-thinking approaches and the rigid caste system in academics – professors in IITs are superior, next is professors at NIT, next professors in universities and last professors in private colleges. others are not in the consideration. There is such caste systems in industries also managers above all; designers above production; production people above marketing persons and engineers above clerks and workers.
All these are due to a mindset built on us by an environment. It becomes difficult to change it and create an open free thinking and reasoning mind. That is the complexity of the situation. not simple, not easy.
Before we proceed further, we need to discuss the concept and implications of mindset as built and tutored by the intelligentsia.
A person’s usual attitude or mental state is his or her mindset. Sometimes, a mindset spreads between people in a group and builds the entire group’s outlook — psychologists call this groupthink. The noun mindset was first used in the 1930s to mean “habits of mind formed by previous experience.”
A better way of looking at it is:
One’s mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how he or she make sense of the society, world, employment, practices, and oneself itself. It influences how one thinks, reasons, analyses, acts, feels, and behaves in any given situation. Even professional work is affected. It becomes myopic.
According to Dweck, there are two basic mindsets: fixed and growth. If one has a fixed mindset, he/ she believes and assumes that one’s abilities are fixed traits and therefore can’t be changed. one may also believe that talent and intelligence alone leads to success, and effort is not required.
On the other hand, a person with a growth mindset, will believe that talents and abilities can be developed over time through proper learning, thinking, reasoning, effort and persistence. People with this mindset don’t necessarily believe that everyone can become Einstein or Mozart just because they try. They do, however, believe that everyone can get smarter or more talented if they work at it.
how is your mindset created in the first place? Dweck’s research reveals two primary sources: praising and labeling, both of which occur in early childhood.
In a landmark series of experiments, Dweck and her colleagues found that kids behaved very differently depending on the type of praise they received.2 They found that personal praise, or praising a child’s talents or labeling them as “smart,” promotes a fixed mindset. It sends a message to a child that they either have an ability or they don’t, and that there is nothing they can do to change that fact.
Process praise, on the other hand, emphasizes the effort a person puts in to accomplish a task. It implies their success is due to the effort and the strategy they used, both of which they can control and improve over time.
Here’s an example of how they’re different. If your child gets a good grade on a math test, personal praise might be, “See, you are good at math. You got an A on your test.” Process praise, on the other hand, might sound like this: “I’m impressed by how hard you studied for your math test. You read the material over several times, asked your teacher to help you figure out the tricky problems, and tested yourself on it. That really worked
This is a narrow view looking at education, not one’s future or success in life. We will look further in the next post.
5/14/2021 Part 2.73
mindsets – discussions continued- belief mindset
Dweck’s description looks at only one aspect – that of motivating a child to learn. Remember this attitude of “can do” won the US Presidential election for Obama. It is important, but does not answer our question of thinking and reasoning. we need to understand that it is your mindset that makes up you and your entire self – behavior, attitude, habits of thinking and deciding, your outlook etc. The mindset makes you to accept some conditions, allows you to work to the satisfaction of your superiors and peers, makes you to decide on various challenges and selections in your daily life – some minor and some major. In brief, your mindset controls you and your successes and happiness. so, it is extremely important. The mindset is a collection of beliefs, axioms, office procedures, societal and family procedures and values, experiences everywhere – house, street, restaurants, shops, online activities, banks, trains etc., not just office alone – good and bad -, advices from people whom you like/ trust and who matters in your life and learnings not just from schools and universities but from the open world. So, it is several tons of information packed and stored in your mind that forms the mindset. This decides your behavior, habits, actions, decisions, and reactions and acceptances of changes.
So, mindsets are normally closed and fixed. Mindsets are formed not intelligently or independently. You are influenced by many. Well, on some aspects, a fixed idea and opinion may be good – like believing in time tested axioms -, but not on several other aspects where a fixed mindset may lead to failures and even disasters. A well calibrated mindset is necessary for leading a good and purposeful life. That means we need to decide which beliefs are good, which needs to be changed and which needs to be discarded. We need to think and reason out on our beliefs, procedures, techniques, methodologies and habits and come up with an appropriate change or many changes in our mind set. Hence, because of the dominance of beliefs, I will call this kind of mindset as belief mind set.
As I have discussed earlier, I have seen a rigid mindset with even many good academics at IISc. When digital computing was coming up in 1960s and numerical methods were used to solve many problems, many at IISc did not accept it. Discussions will go on and when I said analytic solution of inverse of a matrix of large order will lead to a very large round off error leading to meaningless results, they don’t accept it. Still the fight will go on. Many good programmers had blinkers and wrote code without thinking and analyzing leading to their spending a lot of time debugging programs. A simple error by a person to name some non-integer variables as LAMBDA or MU in FORTRAN, led to wrong answers and he was struggling for days till I told him the error. Thinking was missing.
Many people are inward looking and they are comfortable with known solutions and approaches. So, their mindset becomes rigid. When disruptions occur, they are not able to handle the changes and adapt themselves. They are left behind. It is a serious problem. Entire life style goes for a big toss in some cases. Examples are COBOL programmers. Many lost jobs in eighties itself. Many in big IT companies refused to use databases. Those who were using network databases did not understand relational data bases. In one case, I shifted the DEC 10 user accounting at IISc to file system and saved days of connect time and compute time. A data base researcher proposing a file solution led to amusement at IISc. So, adaptability and choosing appropriate solutions lead to success. We can visit old technologies and use them if it is good for a specific situation, but we should not use it everywhere. Thinking, reasoning and adapting will lead to good mindsets.
let me complete this by quoting Darwin, the man who looked at several species and proposed theory of selection –
It is not intelligent or hardworking species that survive, but adaptability and collaboration are the necessary traits for survival.et us look at a desirable mindset which needs to be actively and dynamically cultivated.
5/16/2021 Part 2.74
Startup mindset
The question we see is : what is an active mindset?
We have heard of several mindsets like – clerical mind set, bureaucratic mindset, academic mindset ,etc.
The best way is to call active mindset as a startup mindset which is understood by most of us easily.
Our normal not natural instinct is to follow others or books or procedures. We suppress the natural instinct – curiosity found abundantly in childhood. We are easily influenced- mass mentality. We are conditioned. We need to go natural human way. We saw covid virus brought changes in our life – work from home, online learning, virtual meetings etc.
We adopted to many changes due to the necessities. It shows we are resilient.
I am quoting from a recent interview by Adam Grant. He wrote a book originals: non conformists move the world” . The title is relevant in our discussion. According to Adam Grant, a best-selling author and Wharton professor specializing in organizational psychology, we need to use the approach of scientists more than we do.
Grant outlined four mentalities we often adopt when approaching problems. They are preacher, prosecutor, politician and scientist.
When we’re in preacher mode, we’re convinced we’re right,” Grant said in an interview, according to Inc.com. “When we’re in prosecutor mode, we’re trying to prove someone else wrong.”
In the politician frame of mind, we are trying to win someone over, while as a scientist, we examine data and see whether something is right or not. The latter bit results in a more accurate analysis of a situation, or ourselves.
“I think too many of us spend too much time thinking like preachers, prosecutors, and politicians,” Grant said. “In preacher and prosecutor mode, I’m right and you’re wrong, and I don’t need to change my mind. In politician mode, I might tell you what you want to hear, but I’m probably not changing what I really think; I’m posturing as opposed to rethinking.”
I will take it forward further.
Scientists build strong barriers and mostly work in a focused manner, going deep into a problem. They don’t look outside. A startup won’t work without breaking the barriers and looking at the world in a holistic way. This leads to not a siloed, unified thinking but a divergent multi-viewed thinking. That creates a mind which is not set.
Let us at more critiques and requirements for the mind.
5/18/2021 Part 2.75
Many people believe in the proverb: Ignorance is bliss. This will not work in the present-day situations to at least 20% of the population. Fixed mindset is not good now. People need to go for active minds.
Experts claim AI will replace jobs of 80 % of people. That means it is more intelligent than 80% of the population. The burden on a very good percentage of population is that majority need to move up the intelligence level moving from moronic state to an active and aware state. This applies to farmers, teachers, entrepreneurs – small and big-, industry persons, bankers and financiers, engineers, doctors, paramedics, lawyers, and a host of many people in many jobs and professions. It is needed for creative and innovative activities like music, arts, movies, research, design, architecture etc. So, we need to create this mind software in more than 50 % of the population. Let me repeat mind set is not autonomous. It is influenced by many including parents, neighbors, teachers, peers, organizations, industries, and governments.
There is another problem we need to address: Wittgenstein, a famous scientific philosopher calls these as limitations – of language, of mathematics and logic. These also condition our mind and hence our work. We know limitations of language and misunderstandings due to ambiguous statements. But we believed mathematics will solve all problems and give true results. Both are not true. Results depend on models and approximations and solvability depends on acceptable accuracy. I want to give one example here on what happened in 1967 at IISc. A senior faculty worked for his thesis on nonlinear control systems. He saw an IEEE transactions paper on solving power flows by linear programming. He asked a student to work on it. Later on, he asked me to look at it. I saw the fundamental mistake on assumptions. He applies Taylor series and takes the linear terms and ignoring higher order terms. Remember the functions are strong second order. So, linearization gives erroneous results. This is in a published work in a worshipped journal.
So to err is an author and a journal and a believer. The problem becomes more pronounced with machine learning. We can’t explain the results, nor prove their correctness. So understand that even science has limitations and use semantic approaches along with quantitative and logical approaches. Don’t ignore languages.
Why do I call it as a startup mindset?
Because we need the following qualities:
Awareness – know what is happening in your domain of interest and in general. Also look for predictions. Learning continues throughout life.
Unlearn
Challenge your beliefs, habits, values,
Alertness – how do we prepare to change ourselves according to disruptions happening regularly? In my life, I have seen about eight major disruptions in energy systems and computers and several minor ones. I got a major jolt of mind change – ecology and environment. Now corona virus.
Introspect and reflect on past decisions and actions and look for improvements
Understand limitations of language, logic and mathematics.
Language clarity, communications
Analytical, logical and mathematical thinking
Open mind – break silos and borders; look outside; have an eagle’s views;
Diversified and divergent thinking – broad, holistic, 360-degree views, borderless approaches, problem orientation, eco conscious approaches.
Active mind – look back on what you did and how to improve it, visit important and informative web sites say of big universities, read for an hour, write an abstract, critique yours and others writings and speeches, reflect, think, analyze, reason out, discuss with others, look at disruptions and adjustments needed, etc.
Regularity of the above actions at frequent intervals.
5/20/2021 Part 2.76
There are several comments and queries on mindsets. Let us see them.
Prof Ashok Kumar from TCE Madurai raised a point on Adam Grant’s views.
“Dear Sir
Greetings
I am new to the four mentalities. Excellent information. But, Based on the real scenario in terms of success, recognition is there any way to order these mentalities from one to four. Whether all human will exhibit these mentalities or it will reflect from a mind based on a situation.
Thankyou”
I am glad you feel these four are approaches to understanding a problem. Depending on situations, we can follow any of these approaches. A person can create multiple approaches to his mindset and use appropriate ones. A person’s mindset need not and mostly will not use one approach. It is possible to cultivate few approaches or avoid some. A clever person will have a stock and use what is good for a situation. He or she can decide on an approach to be used in a particular situation.
There are not only four approaches. We talked about more – clerical, administrative, managerial, research etc. We cannot rank these. You may use a research mindset while solving a technical problem. But you should use it while handling most situations. Use of political or priests or prosecutors’ minds be avoided. So cultivate a holistic and adaptable mindset. I called that as startup mindset. You may shift to a religious mindset while doing a prayer for you may even use a superstitious mindset or a mix of these. ISRO scientists use a lot of science and technology to design a satellite and then pray to Lord Venkateshwara at Tirupati for successful launch and operations – nothing wrong.
The application of mindset happens when we are faced with situations. These situations arise due to many events happening in our personal, or family, or professional life. It can be natural like floods, earthquake, destruction of properties, etc. or it can be personal like education – selection of a college, course, discipline etc. – or jobs or marriage, or it can be financial needing money / taking loans/ savings etc., or family oriented or medical or it can be due to society – agitations, violence, – or pandemics. There are also daily situations like deciding on food, dresses, purchases, commuting etc. Most involve decision making which means thinking and actions. You use your beliefs and behaviors and interests in decision making not mathematics alone. You may do some calculations to help you. But the solutions in most cases depend on your thinking based on beliefs, your perceptions, your discussions with others, your observations and your database. A school goer will have a lot of open-mind compared to a middle-aged professional. As one ages, one adds to the existing database and connections in the brain and develops mindsets and acts according to these.
Prof Vasudev Parvati from SDMCET, Dharwad, has similar observations:
“The above propositions about mindsets brings to my mind the question about education systems and mindsets.
If the above four categories exist inherently, as proposed by Grant, it seems education can only fortify them, if rightly approached or weaken them otherwise.
So is it possible to convert one type of mindset to another through education? This is especially important as the preacher and politician do not seem to play any constructive roles in society!
If such conversion is difficult, then could people be identified early in the education pathway and trained for skills according to mindsets?
Can this help build a better aligned and more skilled work force which in turn signifies a better education system?”
My response
A thought-provoking look.
My quick answer is we can forget Grant. We can build and convert mindsets. Education does it. Parents, teachers, and society do that. Aptitude is understood to help a student to choose a skillset, but there are two issues. One even aptitude can be adjusted or cultivated. Two, one is not always aware of one’s aptitudes. So, it doesn’t help a lot. Remember the companies particularly IT ones conducting an aptitude test and rejecting many in the 1980s. It was a failure. Can we define what are the aptitudes needed by a programmer or analyst or architect? No clear answers are available.
To explore further, let us start with the question:
What is a person’s mind?
It is a mix of beliefs, facts, axioms, data, knowledge, experience, observations and behaviors, plus randomness. Brain is where the actions take place. It is the hardware. Brain and mind are connected, but we can see the physical brain but only feel the virtual mind. Mind handles thinking, perceiving, reasoning, analyzing, visualizing, imagining and inventing activities. Our actions depend on the mind and brain.
From a computer scientist’s perspective, we can visualize the mind as a knowledge base system with a growing volume of data and knowledge, a number of actionable software units- procedures or karakas as Panini called-, a thinking and analyzing system, a random thoughts generator, a controller, a perception unit, a belief unit and a thinking unit to create more data. Mindset is imbedded in the knowledge base and actionable software. This KB system keeps growing over a period of time increasing facts and additional software units. When one encounters a situation needing a decision and action, mind goes through thought processes and reasoning to get results.
The controller calls in appropriate routines and executes them in a sequence. How this work is not fully known. How do we create random actions and imaginations? Mistakes are possible. The results for the same problem – like selecting a course – will be different for different people. Hope this brief description helps in understanding mind and mindset.
Open minded persons will do lot more thinking, and reasoning, will be analytical, curious and innovative in approaches and depend less on beliefs. Our job is to inculcate the habits I listed in the previous post. We need to convert the system and delivery methods to create an open enquiring mind with logical mindsets in our students. That is our responsibility.
More comments in the next post
5/22/2021 Part 2.77
Mr Aravind from TCS compares with six hats approach.
“Sir, wonderful to hear about Adam Grant’s thinking modes. I recall attending six thinking hats session on ideation, where we were given a different perspective –
Divergent Thinking. Early-stage divergent thinking takes the form of generative cognitive activity, where the quantity of ideas is more important than quality.
Emergent Thinking. new connections, mix-ups and ideas are sparked from the pile of ideas generated
Convergent Thinking -closing off these sessions by sifting through ideas, grouping them into themes, picking out common threads and ultimately deciding upon winners and losers. This may not yield out of the box ideas or disruptive ideas”
I don’t have any response except agreeing to his views.
Mr Bala Ajjampur talks about AI.
“Sir, advent of AI and its perceived notion of permeating our lives like telephones, televisions and internet cannot be discounted. The bane of internet is the propagation speed of either the truth or the falsehood, either the news or the fake news. Hence, the chaos resulting from uncertainty will only become magnified for immediate solutions or abused for immediate gains. Please tell us how we can prepare not only ourselves, but also the community that we depend on to survive.”
My response
As I said robots, drones and AI will displace about 80 % of jobs in both operations and administration. So, we need to start a massive skills program. We need a plan. We can delay the impact but can’t avoid the onslaught of AI. India should have tough regulations for displacing people from jobs. We need to go slowly in steps. Otherwise, there will be serious poverty issues. Governments are getting lesser revenues and companies will increase profits. So, inequalities will explode. This can lead to instability. We need to avoid it.
But more serious problem is control going to AI from humans. It will lead to disasters. Security and safety are also equally important. Drones when armed can destroy people and properties. These are micro wars. We go back to technologically advanced feudal state seen in England and India in Middle Ages when dukes and pale gars ruled ruthlessly without any concern for humans. So, we go backward. These major issues will reduce peace in the world. Micro wars in large numbers are again distinct possibility. So we need a totally different police force. Is it possible and workable? Both intentional and erratic behaviors of robots and AI will make us live with fear. Do we need this? A slow pace is a strong necessity for us to survive.
It will be worse than the pandemic. Will everyone sleep until they see the effects and then start firefighting operations? That will be dangerous. Impacts of technologies from electricity to computers were seen over a long period of time. That is because the absorptions were slow. It too several decades to reach many sectors and impact people. Job generation was lot more than job losses. We need a lot of caution and a well-defined and well-planned strategy to introduce robots, drones and AI. We need restrictions and controls. Will we allow nature to take its actions? It will be cruel. Let us pray and be prepared and take advance actions. We need to build pressure groups and awareness campaigns. Remember the concerted actions on use of nuclear bombs – banning even tests and putting in place a nuclear nonproliferation treaty and implanting it relentlessly. There is a concern on genetic reproductions, but not very effective. Remember the climate treaty. It has a long time period to implement urgent corrections. In addition, it is torpedoed by US. We need 100 times more effort to stop the use of armed drones, and control the production of robots, control and audit of software for these and create strict protocols for slow and proper application of AI- making it beneficial. Each AI application needs an impact assessment to be done similar to EIA – more rigorous, lot more detailed and conducted by a multidisciplinary group including public. When job losses are in millions, we need to consider whether the corresponding application needs a public voting by all? and take a proper decision. It is tough.
I am sure all these suggestions will meet with violent oppositions. Many European countries will welcome robots, drones for delivery and AI, since they don’t have human power. They are happy with technologies. We are at the opposite end. We can’t indiscriminately automate tasks.
We increased jobs by millions by introducing securities to buildings, through employment of people in construction, tourism, couriers, house services, garment manufacture etc. I am not looking at clerical manpower. If all these go through automation, what is the impact. Some say new jobs will come. They did not give any details or quantitative estimates. They show the past instances. But can you live on conjectures. AI is advantageous to west and china. They can supply technologies to us and take money. There are several tech optimists who will welcome all these. They believe in Gita: whatever happens is good; whatever will happen, it will also be good. Should we believe in fate and wait for tsunami strike? The other option is to go for minimum basic income to all to be given by government so the impact of poverty due to loss of jobs is reduced. Some object to this. See the complications in this problem in order to find a balanced and pragmatic solution to this huge problem.
5/24/2021 Part 2.78
Mr Aravind TCS has four questions. Let us look at them. I will take the first question today.
“Sir- Four questions I have for you, for which there is a ton of material, but wanted your view top 4 points on the following 4 questions
a) What are key changes in the Education system here needed
My response:
This is not a simple question and changes are difficult. They may be accepted. I feel that the new education policy is a good starting point, if implemented properly. It is a pious document. As it is, we are seeing wrong directions in implementation.
What to teach?
The first step is to move away from the west oriented and rote learning process.
Let me ask what should we teach first? Write A B C D or history or Hindi?
The answer is no. We should start from home base. The first thing to teach is proper breathing practice every day. This will strengthen the lungs . Similarly create awareness about our body, problems and solutions. This will go on for years. Next, teach how to calm the mind. Many yoga practices are good. But teach meditation practices. School should be a peaceful place ,a place one goes every day with joy not as a duty. Next we guide the students to concentration . This is not easy. Lots of effort is required. We follow this with topics on health, food, nutrition, nature, agriculture, local society, living, good habits etc. One may say we are teaching some subjects mentioned here. These are not realistic and text book centric and global not relevant to local villages and towns. All other subjects will come later. Give choices to students. Don’t force everything on them . Let them learn at their pace. Innovate on how to learn? This needs a mindset change of high magnitude in every one.
Who is a teacher? The grandmother was a great teacher; parents, neighbors, friends , the artisans, farmers, are all teachers. A trades person learnt a trade from a trader. See how auto repairers learn – through apprenticeship in step by step and at a slow pace. Same is true with carpentry, Smithy, tailoring, etc. These people didn’t learn through a school. Involve them in teaching -not in doing home work alone. That will increase the number of teachers. Kill the teacher ego. Build trust in local people . Let students teach others – peer learning is quite effective.
How to deliver? Teaching is not one way traffic. A wise teacher telling students what to do . That is not the way Indians particularly the Guru kula system followed. We believed and practiced a two way discussion mode. It was very effective. It made students attentive , made them think and we can practice reasoning. This will take us on the path of cognitive learning.
Create interest. Identify a lot of local problems, water, rivers ,drainage, garbage, poverty, equity, food, nutrition, health, happiness, good and evil, superstition, castes, diseases, transport, festivals, religious and social practices, trade , banking, money, natural resources, pollution, fuels, lighting, electricity, etc. Form groups to discuss these and come up with understandings. That will lead to a good grasp on local activities and problems.
Create a large number of activities , design simple projects.
Create a habit of exercises for an hour , reading for an hour , writing on one’s thinking and reasoning and what is learnt as a main part of curriculum. Give credit for these.
Teach access to online resources.
The belief text book as Bible should go. As Rig Veda says get knowledge from all sources. This where I said make many as part time teachers. You get tremendous amount of local and practical knowledge through these.
Abolish regulation. It must die. Millions of people are in education departments doing clerical jobs. Regulation introduces mistrust, fear, and bureaucracy . Teaching should be pleasant and innovative. Why transfer teachers? I don’t understand this. Outcome based approaches may be used.
I have dealt with reforms on examinations in detail. Stop marks, stop failing a student ,stop punishing a student, . Treat them as associates.
There is a bigger problem of bringing children from poor and disadvantaged families to schools and phenomenal dropouts as primary level. 60 to 70% percent children don’t get education at all. That is a huge social problem.
Can we rename school, or coin a new term to move away from the image school creates now? School should be an open and transparent and pleasant place not a punishment prison.
What about uniformity? Do we need it? Can we reduce it to only language and communications, mathematics and sciences and leave the rest to local people.
Produce a lot of localized content on various topics using multimedia and distribute to schools.
This will fail if we don’t train the teachers. Teachers will be happy if transfers , exams, uniform syllabus , inspections are removed. So they should be happy to co-operate not go on strike.
Focus should be on individual character building, thinking , creativity , concern and good citizenship.
You will say that there are too many points ,not four . But it is a complicated situation needing a holistic look. It is difficult to do an A B C analysis. All points are important and needed for success of reforms.
5/25/2021 Part 2.79
Research mindset
Prof Vinod Vyasulu has a comment on research mindset:
“Excellent. I’m enjoying reading these posts. In this post you’ve discussed the need to change mindsets. Could you elaborate on how this works in a research mindset? Some research is standard science, to use Kuhn’s term. Then come scientific revolutions and new mindsets. Scholars need a good deal of scepticism.”
Let me start by giving some quotes of Einstein first:
“The greatest scientists are artists as well.”
“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”
“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.”
“The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.”
“I believe in one thing — that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.”
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.”
“My interest in science was always essentially limited to the study of principles … That I have published so little is due to this same circumstance, as the great need to grasp principles has caused me to spend most of my time on fruitless pursuits.”
“Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.
“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”
I felt these quotes show his multiple dimensions .
Let us look at research mindset.
The aptitudes for research or requirements are
1. As you said, enquiry is the first essential component of mindset. As Einstein says keep asking questions and look for directions to move forward to discovery. I see very few researchers have a questioning mind . Very unfortunate. This has led to extension or delta research. More than 90% of research belongs to the extension research category. Both faculty and students are happy with it. That is why most research does not produce outstanding outcomes. This needs to be broken. New areas are started by some great researchers and many coming from industries now. This is a global situation. Curiosity and enquiry are twins. Curiousness leads to questions. Holistic Thinking and reflection are essential for these and for good research.
2. Know the limits of skepticism : Scientific American used a term long back – skeptical enquirer. Questioning alone is not enough. We need to be skeptics. Don’t believe even IEEE papers. Do your own thinking ,reasoning , analysis to get at truth. Early philosophers practiced this vigorously through thinking and discussions and arguments. A good dose of skepticism needs to be developed and practiced. This is possible for every one just like querying. Minimize beliefs; question beliefs. We had a researcher who questioned Maxwell’s equations. He didn’t succeed. That is another matter. Lots of efforts are needed to disprove a law. Einstein did it with Newton’s laws. We need a starting base for any research. Some research like those in behavioral sciences start ab initio. I feel sad that biology has been advancing slowly. Just as periodic table structured elements and chemistry moved forward with reactions, we need to formalize enzymic reactions. We need to build frameworks . This is not happening to an appreciable – break through – level. DNA was a great breakthrough.
3. Imagination – Einstein is a believer in this. Straight jacket thinking won’t get a good research outcome. Move away from what researchers are told – focus on your problem. You get a penny worth outcome with this approach. But it is a standard approach. But my first request is look outside as well as inside. Outside can be any boundary less / multidisciplinary viewing. It gives lots of ideas. Land ,discoverer of Polaroid, says best research happens at intersections of science and humanities. I can give several examples. Computer science research galloped because people from many disciplines – engineers, linguists, psychologists, physicists, social scientists – participated and collaborated leading to many new developments at a fast pace – big data, languages, knowledge representation, IOT, AI, networking, quantum computing, interconnections, GPUs etc. So Imagination is limitless. Start with dreams. Dream big. Kill instinct is lacking in many researchers. They don’t go deeper to the end. Many research works are shallow. We will get satisfaction of a good solution or a breakthrough or a failure. We have a lot of problems still to be attacked to find solutions. Health has enormous opportunities. Poverty reduction needs more ideas and imagination. Sanitation, resource usage, climate change, etc provide a lot of opportunities. Test tube (?) agriculture is a need for tomorrow in may be Mars. The book by Peter Diamonds on Abundance is brimming with ideas for original path breaking research. When do we move out of extension research in well beaten areas and topics?
4. We need multiple views. Think holistically with 360 degrees views. Look outside not just your discipline not just science but look at society at large and see what is happening. Optimization was initially mostly mathematical. Then heuristics came in to get solutions to large problems. Optimization has been based on common sense. Steepest ascent or dissent is purely commonsense usage while climbing hills. Then looking at a flock of birds flying ,we got particle swarm methods. A look at ants gave us ant colony optimization. So looking out side will break your path of thinking. Otherwise one becomes a frog in the well. Most researchers are frogs in the well – mired in their areas. Both birds eye view and worms views are important. Don’t ignore one of them. Nature can give us surprises.
5. Understand Limitations : As I have been saying , mathematics , language and logic have limitations. We have unshakable faith in mathematics . But you need to approximate a problem too much and find a useless solution. Initial optimal control research is a good example for going away from reality. One professor told me : you have a problem. You know circles have solutions. So convert your problem into a circle and solve equations of a circle. Your results will be useless. We should know when to use a technique . We should know interpretation also. If you think you can’t model mathematically, go and create an integrated model using equations, logic, black boxes, social and ecological constraints in language form and find a solution. Not just simplify and approximate. It is feasible today. You can build learning cognitive models to solve real life problems. But I don’t see many applications.
6. Flexible and open mind . Don’t have fixed minds. Research creates new knowledge and you can’t get it through conventional and fixed paths. Go into unknown paths
Hope you remember the research on wood stoves by Prof Kumar and Prof Lokras. Most heat transfer researchers were familiar with simple models and mocked at the problem of improved stove design . Geller put in thermocouples and did measurements. He estimated the losses. That helped in designing high efficiency ASTRA ole. People are not comfortable to look at tough problems affecting people. We were mocked at for doing research on biogas plants. Even when problems are staring at us, we don’t study them. Statistical analysis is done easily and most gov that way. Experimentation is going down in engineering research.
To conclude, we can cultivate ,build and practice research mindsets. It is not necessary to be IISc to do research. We can do it in a college also. We need motivation.
5/26/2021 Part 2.80
b) If AI and Machine Learning are considered the future, what would be the kind of skills required to be taught to master them?
It is difficult to predict. Recall I started these posts with a title ” behaviours determine technology”. So it means that technology , and programming take a back seat. Focus is not on mathematical or computational problem solving , but social problem solving. That means we may have to focus on humanities, behavioural sciences, poverty, biology , health, food – Asok krish’s book and articles will open our eyes- , nutrition . We need to focus on man AI interactions. These are crying for attention. Not IT.
The skill sets are
Understand humans ,their behaviours, needs, their approaches – nudges of Prof Thaler-, their interactions ,their speech and communications etc. Communications skills are emphasized now. We need skills for trust, collaboration, cooperation, negotiation, understanding people and behaviours, etc. This is more important and ignored now.
Learn human AI physical systems interactions. This will avoid unpleasantness and accidents.
Put AI for proper use in educating all. F C Kohli was interested in this. But the focus was teaching alphabets not knowledge. Reach relevant education to all.
Security is a serious worrying aspect. Robots can kill people randomly. We need to understand how to control that. AI is lot more tougher to control. Humans will loose control to AI. How do we solve this problem.
Also we need to teach AI the good habits , values, ethics etc. This doesn’t look like a priority. Like IT services ,this also will become a service area. That means a new area – teach AI systems to behave.
Cyborgs become a reality. So we need to study human parts and nano units and design better systems.
We need to learn AI philosophy and apply it in our jobs. Philosophy will play an important role.
Statistics and interpretation. Not just black box approach. But building sensible applications. Know the semantics of the problem to interpret.
Learn cause effect approaches. ML today lacks explainability. Humans need to do separate analysis and build explaining models.