I was talking to a friend of mine at IISc. He was telling about IISc being a smoke free campus. There are no cigarettes being sold in the IISc campus. The nearest shop in any direction atleast over half a kilometer from IISc. A friend of his professor’s was visiting india (obviously another professor), and wanted to spend some time at IISc carrying some of his research (amazes me as to how the only thing the profs there can think of is their work. This guy comes all the way from netherlands, on a holiday and yet he wants to spend time on research while on his vacation!)
The professor (lets call him “our dude”) lands at IISc, and gets his routine in place for the next 15 days (or whatever time that he is here for). He is a smoker, and he needs his cigarettes. A few days pass by and out dude is asked where he gets his brand from. Back comes the reply “The same place where everyone else gets theirs.” My friend is surprised, how did he know?
Our dude goes to Tea Board, where everyone go to have some grub. He picks up his snack and is wandering around. He notices a few people gathered around near the campus compound. He sees them, and the next thing you know, he is handing out some cash to the hawker on the other side of the compound for cigarettes. This is a place where cigarettes are sold at IISc (technically, outside IISc) and there’s where everyone gets it. Our dude, on the second day at an alien campus, in an alien country, without anyone telling him, manages to figure out where cigarettes can be obtained!
I am sure anyone else in a similar situation would figure out how to get what they want without anyone having to tell them. Its the sheer power of human perception. It amazes me as to how the human brain is able to carry out such astounding associations with so little information available. Imagine trying to build a machine that can do that. We are decades away from such possibility. And to think humans use less than 10% of their actual mental ability!
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