Re: Nukkad-76

[member_22733]

This is a topic that fascinates me:

Coming from the corporate world, I have tried to understand the west's rise by means of the following questions for a specific case (General Theory of Relativity :- GR):

1) How many man hours or intellectual labor did it take for something like GR to occur?
2) How many people were involved that lead to its culmination in GR?
3) How much exchange of information, in terms of papers, books, etc happened between people that laid its foundation?

One thing that stands out to me is, post renaissance the amount of information exchanged between western thinkers exploded, in every field. Newton and Einstein were not a intellectual Islands, they stood on the shoulders of the work that was done before them.

In every imaginable field, the number of man hours that were put in to produce knowledge and to analyze it increased and with it the tools to explore knowledge and create knowledge exploded as well.

The rest of the world was completely cut out from this phenomenon. I do credit the Church for this "movement". The reason is, the church created the need for people to be systematically educated. It laid the foundation for mass education for the middle class. The education initially was propaganda material by the Church. It did so with tyranny in the beginning, but the reaction to tyranny, the renaissance, used the same mechanism to increase and expand knowledge.

The Church is also based on the concept of spiritual scarcity and salvation, a concept that makes one turn to reading and the books in search for the "truth". All this is in stark contrast with the essence of Hinduism.

India never had the "right material" of scarcity, tyranny, bookish/cultish religious education spreading through the middle classes and a large constant war machinery that made the elites use whatever verified repeatable information (aka scientific information) to their own advantage in wars.

Unfortunately Islam has this same "genetic" code, only that there has been no renaissance for it.

Compare that with Hinduism, it is an open system where a relaxed spirituality and positive philosophy is the basis. In such a case, being content spiritually is possible in this life, there is no burden on the person to seek salvation. Unfortunately independently verified and repeatable information : aka "science", is optional in Hinduism.

I maybe wrong somewhere in my assessments. Expecting Brickbats

[member_22733]

Having said the above, we need to now understand what it would take to actually BEAT the west in their own game:

1) How can we adopt science in such a way that it works WITH our cultural ethos and not against it, i.e. a change in behavior depending on a scientific understanding of a subject should be mass support instead of being imposed by someone from "above" (like a colonial govt. used to do)?
2) What are the structural and ecosystem changes needed to create and analyze information faster than the west can do it?
-- I strongly believe that PeeChaaddiii university system is a byzantine approach to this problem and wont work in Indian context, we need out of the box solutions that optimize BOTH speed and quality. Throwing money after creating a "university system" is also not a way forward.
3) What are the economic structures needed to achieve the same, how do we tie in this knowledge producing ecosystem with our industries.

All these are tough problems, but we need to crack them if we are ever going to be free of the west.

[Tuvaluan]

LokeshC, India has to first solve the crisis in primary school education and high school education (scrapping the despicable RTE would be a great start) but the NaMo govt. seems to be just as blase about the whole thing like all previous governments, inspirational speech notwithstanding.

[member_22733]

Completely agree.

Access to education and cleaning up education sector from the vultures of scarcity (of both the "donation" and "missionary" kinds) should be a priority.

[Neshant]

Biggest issue for India is that per capita income is very low.

There is not enough capital for the vast majority of people to start up innovative ventures or to even have the tools to begin the process of innovation (which starts at a young age).

No matter great the innovative or entrepreneurial potential a person may have, no matter how high his IQ may be, he is ham-strung by that limitation from birth.

Our resource to population ratio is extremely small. By contrast, both US and Russia started off with resource to population levels that were extremely large. Their base wealth was built upon the backs of the resources their lands provided, great minds like Nikola Tesla migrating from foreign shores and gifting them with earth shattering inventions and tons of slaves they grabbed from Africa in the case of the US and from gulags in the case of Stalinist Russia. India has no such luxury of living off the land to establish a base level of wealth for all before jumping to the next stage of development.

A few things India has going in its favor :

1) Real democracy - which means the system can take huge political shocks and not crumble
2) A largely patriotic population - who despite getting little from the govt still loves the land
3) Our own cultural identity - which moves to a rhythm of its own beat and is not a copy cat
4) An intellectual class - which loves books, scientific/technical knowledge & philosophy
5) No major external rivals that can challenge our rise at least in South Asia and our extended 'hood
6) Good relations with the US & West more or less

[sudarshan]

Off track. But couldn't resist the temptation to make a wise crack. What you need is a spell as sub-editor at one of the mainstream print media to spot subtle differences in the written word!!?

Are you talking about my confusing Ambar with Amber G? Or did I miss something in my reasoning about the epsilon value or the statement about "anybody can try their own data?"

If the former - I can usually guess the poster from the post, but this time I seriously thought I had responded to Amber G, until I read back the post and saw that the part I had quoted was from Ambar. amar_p was a wisecrack, just pulling his leg.

If the latter, please do elaborate in that thread.

EDIT: anishns, just didn't want to continue a potentially OT discussion in another thread. This one is confusing though, it says Nukkad - 76, but inside it says "Technological rise of West and Soviets?" Maybe the admins don't want this thread to be Nukkad either, will delete my post if so.

[anishns]

Wow Nukkad has been resurrected???