inanutshell

pg's essays give a lot of insight into practical things in life. The corresponding comments are also good, but sometimes not good.I am a regular reader of these essays. So who posts the comments can be restricted, but sustaining HN will be good for the people like me, who learn a lot from it.But it is quite natural that one wants to just post some comments, just for the sake of being a part of the discussion.Once you keep reading good things for quite some time, your fingers itch to type in some comments. Yes, I agree that this is not good and one should observe some control.But please keep up HN, it is very good.

I forgot to add one important thing...the brain cells need something different everytime to propagate and prosper (whatever that means), and the best inputs to brain are not the same recurring patterns but totally new and diversified patterns.

Just I have this thought that if the world is not what it is...and everyone followed basic logic, then the world would have been a dull place to live in. No colors, just everything in black and white based on some accepted commonsense...it is the diversity that gives color to life. I hope your JSH is enjoying this attention and bashing in that forum:-)

Paul's essays are quite objective and plain scientific analysis of things with no subjective emotions attached.They are quite brilliant in that sense. But still life is not governed by plain facts. Emotions are also important and emotions are what differentiate living from non-living.Sense of identity is governed by emotions. But still as I think in some more depth, even emotions appear to be manifestation of the fact that our genes are engineered to sustain itself and propagate. And since in the presence of a given complex external stimuli, it is difficult to take decisions with in the constraint of limited processing ability of the brain, emotions help in coming with some decision. And this decision may or may not be correct. Emotions can be thought of as the memorization of some decisions for some patterns of external stimuli.So finally everything seems to be quite deterministic with cause and effect relationships.So I am just perturbed and want to know whether there is a free will? And as I understand about probability, it just quantifies how much we don't know ( bit amusing in the sense that we quantify something which we don't know...and that is done using statistics which again makes it somewhat deterministic ).