Here is an excerpt:

When the 1860 conference began, chemistry was in a total state of disarray. Although most chemists believed in atoms and molecules, nobody could agree on molecular formulas. Even simple molecules such as water were hotly debated: Most leading chemists at the time claimed that water’s molecular formula was OH, and a minority argued that it was H₂O. More complex molecules were an even bigger battleground: At least 19 different representations of acetic acid were being used in textbooks of that era.

The motivation for the conference is obvious. Read the entire article to understand its significance.

Here are links to various sections of the post, so that readers familiar with certain topics can skip them:

1. Definitions of P and NP
2. If P=NP, the good
3. If P=NP, the bad
4. If P=NP, the ugly (philosophical implications)
5. If P=NP, the irrelevant

Definitions of P and NP

First, let’s start with definitions. What is P and NP? These are terms from computer science that refer to difficulty of solving certain problems. At the risk of oversimplification, P refers to the class of problems that are ‘easy’ to solve (wikipedia has a more detailed explanation). Examples include addition, multiplication, finding shortest path from city A to city B, and so on. NP refers to the class of problems whose solutions are ‘easy’ to verify (but solving the problem need not be easy). For example, consider the game of Sudoku: while solving large Sudoku puzzles takes a lot of skill, given a filled-out Sudoku board, it is a fairly easy job to verify whether or not the board has been filled out correctly. This is an example of an NP problem (wikipedia article on NP). Note that all problems in P are also in NP.

Here I have to pause and emphasize that ‘easy’ in computer science doesn’t mean easy in the vernacular sense, or at times, even in practice. Please read the wikipedia articles on P and NP for a more detailed explanation.

The outstanding problem of our times in Computer Science is whether every problem in NP is also in P. That is, given a problem whose solution can be easily verified, can the solution be easily found as well? The Clay Mathematical Institute is even offering $1M to anyone who can solve it! Naturally, there have been several (unsuccessful) attempts, several views on the subject.

Great! So it is a problem for computer scientists, why should you care? To answer that question, let us look at the consequences for both P =NP and P != NP. [Back to top]

If P=NP, the good

If P=NP, then you could live in a potential utopia. Why? Because may challenging problems in science and technology are in NP and being able to solve them “efficiently” will pave way for things like a very quick understanding of our genome and protein folding. It will enable postal and courier services to schedule and route our packages is the most efficient way possible to minimize their costs and potentially passing the saving on to us. This can enable huge franchise stores like Walmart, Bestbuy, McDonalds, and other’s to manage their logistics so efficiently that 99c for a burger and $500 for a laptop could seem like price gouging! And these are just two examples of many, many more! Great, right! So we’d ideally want P to be equal to NP, right? [Back to top]

If P = NP, the bad

Well, there’s a dark side to this as well. See, as it turns out many of the “secure” encryptions in use today make use of a problem that is known to be in NP but no efficient solution for it exists. This problem is that of factorization. Given the candidate factors for a given number, it is easy to verify if they multiply to given you that number. If for large numbers, it is currently very difficult to find factors. If P = NP, then it is only a matter of time before factorization becomes easy, and all your credit card data, your usernames and passwords, your back account details, practically everything you thought was secure is available to anyone! Cryptography as we know it is dead! Of course, I am sure other methods of cryptography will be invented, but until then, our secrets are all sitting ducks! [Back to top]

If P =NP, the ugly

Unfortunately, that’s the least of the our problems if P =NP! Can you think of anything that is easy to verify but difficult to solve? How about golf? How about Tiger Wood’s ability to play those amazing shots when everyone else around him, despite their best training and skill, can’t seem to match his genius? While we all can verify that Tiger Wood’s golfing shots are masterly, verify few of us can really accomplish the same thing. That is, we can verify if someone is a genius very efficiently, but we can’t be geniuses ourselves very efficiently or quickly. So philosophically speaking, if P was equal to NP, then if we can appreciate a genius, then we can become one! That would reduce a genius to an average person and elevate and average person to a genius! That leaves little to wonder about creativity. Anyone who can appreciate Joe Satriani could become a master guitarists “easily”! How dull would that world be!

Here’s another ‘issue’: How may of you can come up with a new proof for the Pythagoras’ Theorem? How many of you can verify that a given proof for the Pythagoras’ Theorem is correct? See, as it turns out, verifying a proof, even for many complex claims and assertions, is much easier than actually coming with a proof. So ‘theorem proving‘, as it is called, is in NP, and proof verification is in P. But if P were equal to NP, we all could be mathematicians, physicists, and scientists and prove everything (that can proven within a reasonable amount to space, say a few hundred pages). In fact, we could even write a computer program to prove everything about the world. Not only would all of us eventually be out of a job because computer and robots would be able to do everything, even our lives would be boring and depressing because there are no intellectual pursuits left. Computers have solved everything we care about. That would make the entire universe a very dull place, philosophically speaking.

So I am really looking forward to the claim that P is not equal to NP actually being true! [Back to top]

If P=NP, the irrelevant

Ok, maybe I am being a little hyperbolic over this, because there are still many problems that are not only difficult to solve, they are even difficult to verify. Lets take chess as an example.

Given a Chess board in the middle of a game, and it was black’s move. If I told you that “bishop to C6″ is the best move to make, would you be able to verify it quickly? Maybe if it was near the ending, but in the middle of the game, it is very difficult to verify it! Why? Because Chess is even more difficult than NP. So rest assured, even if P=NP, it will still be a while before a computer beats humanity at chess.

But it does bring up an interesting question. Are there multiple levels of creativity? Is there one kind of creativity that allows us to recognize geniuses when we see them because we, as non-geniuses, can verify their creativity quickly (the kind of creativity that is in NP), and another kind of creativity that we cannot even verify efficiently? What does that even mean? Should we just have to take the creative person’s word for it that what he/she produces is, in fact, creative, and that they are indeed geniuses?

I would love your opinions on it.
[Back to top]

S.M.U.T. is famous academics giving you ten minute talks that will alter your perspective on the direction of the universe. Subversive talks bring for dangerous ideas. (Technology is as technology does.) Talks will be interspersed with technology installation pieces (did we say robots?), blooper research video reels, and art displays from local artists.

Here is my take on it: S.M.U.T. is an effort to bring technology to people (and get people to understand and accept it) before technology gets (in the sense of trickery) to people. Yesterday was the second edition of S.M.U.T. at Stafford Main and much like the first, it was very interesting and fairly successful. You don’t have to take my word for it, check out the buzz about S.M.U.T. on twitter.

There were talks on green technology, and how its much more than just windmills and solar panels; robots as truth seeking devices; the nature of privacy online; and the talks, although interesting on their own merit, were punctuated and complemented by some impressive slam poetry.

The first edition had talks on how every time there is a new communication/storage technology, satan and aliens seem to start communicating with us using that technology; experience report by a researcher who worked with Mars rovers; and many more.

I personally enjoyed it, and I think its a great initiative among many to bring an understanding and appreciation of science and technology to everyone. If you are in the Bryan/College Station area, and you are an artist, a designer, a researcher, an entrepreneur, or something who has something interesting, creative, and subversive to share, please contact Tracey Hammond and/or Cody Marx Bailey to be a speaker/presenter at a future S.M.U.T.

If you are not in the Bryan/College Station area, then consider starting one in your own community. I think it’s a much needed effort if we as a society are to learn to use our ever-advancing technology as an agent for progress.

• While going downhill, does it consume more fuel to coast on neutral or in gear? As it turns out, the car consumes almost no fuel when coasting in gear! When you coast in neutral, you consume as much fuel as an idling car, that is about 1 Gallon per hour. Surprised? Don’t take my word for it, refer to the source: Popular Mechanics. This applies to all fuel injected cars because when the accelerator is not depressed, the engine maintains minimal idling engine RPM (which is about 1000) or more. While coasting downhill in gear, if the transmission can provide at least 1K or so RPM to the engine (via gravity), then the fuel injector pretty much shuts off consuming zero fuel. However, when you are coasting in neutral, the transmission is not connected to the engine. So the fuel injector is forced to use idle running engine with fuel like it was stationary.
• Is it more fuel efficient to use air conditioner or to drive without it? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this one. The most concise answer is that if the car interior is too hot, then first let it cool down the old fashioned way by rolling the windows down even before you start the car [source: ezinearticles]. Next, if you are driving in the city, then you are better off will windows rolled down and A/C off [sources: carjunky, bankrate]  . However, if you are driving over 45mph, then the drag created by open windows increases to the extent that you are probably better off rolling them up and turning your A/C on [source: wikihow]. The exact numbers on this aren’t very clear. It depends on how aerodynamic the car is, how old the engine and the A/C compressor are, and so on. Apparently, for newer cars, the fuel consumed by the A/C compressor is negligible [source: edmunds, AASA].
• Speaking of the summer and car A/C, do you have any idea how hot in gets in Qatar? Hot enough to bake cookies in the car! I am not kidding: check out this blogpost by Sybil Knox. She used her car as an oven to bake cookies. She even has the recipe for anyone interested.
• Oh, and would you like to be able to start your car from anywhere (where there’s a cell phone signal)? There’s an app for that (available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry)!
• Remember the flying car from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? This one:
  

  Flying car from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car". Source: http://www.badmouth.net/top-five-flying-cars/

  Well, it’s now a reality.. well almost. Terrafugia has come out with Transition that has been cleared by FAA. But it looks a little different. Like this:

  

  Terrafugia Transition: Flying Car

  For more information on the story behind the car and the technical challenges in designing the car, check out this article in Boing Boing.

  Check out this link for a brief history of  attempts at flying cars shown as a slideshow in Popular Mechanics.

• Moving on, looks like the future cars are going be a lot more audacious than your stereotypical backseat driver. They are being designed to spray vitamins on your face and tell you how to drive, constantly! Don’t believe me? Check out this PopSci article then. Nissan really is building such a car.

I will end this post with a link to the Huff. Post slideshow of the finalists for the Progressive Automotive X Prize. Enjoy!

There are several arguments for why we are not just monkeys. We have the ability to transform our environment; we have an unprecedented level of cognition that has forced us to ask questions like “Why?” and “How?”; we have become the most dominant species on this planet and have established a unique signature on our world (global warming, anyone?); we are capable of generating and propagating information across space and time beyond the confines of an individual, group, or even temporal identity. The list is practically endless. But perhaps the most charming among them is our unique flaws.

Much like any other species, we are indeed flawed in many respects. Yet our intellect, while compensation for many of our flaws, introduces many more. Specifically, consider our cognitive biases which have propelled us into a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral both as individuals and as a species. Everything from the present economic crisis to the quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan can be tied back to these biases. This is often viewed as the burden of intellect, of intelligence. We are too smart for our own good. A plausible argument is that these flaws are symptomatic of the complexity of our environment. Thanks to our intelligence, we have succeeding in creating an environment (being it the stock market, or security backed mortgages, or the concept of nation states, or frameworks for morality and the accompanying dilemmas, or many more) so complex, that we fail to understand it, we fail to comprehend its complexity, and inevitably stretches the limits of cerebral tractability.

Or does it?

Are our cognitive biases really an artefact of the complexity of our environment? This recent TED talk reveals that it might actually not be so! Experiments with monkeys have revealed that monkeys make surprisingly the same rational and (more importantly) irrational decisions as humans when it comes to certain cognitive tasks that involve economic transactions. So may be we really are just monkeys that figured out how to get down from trees, grow an opposable thumb, and speak. A humbling notion indeed!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUd8XA-5HEk

The pope said that evolution is ok by him. So I guess that means that the Catholics can down become evolutionary biologists/anthropologists and such. I wonder what happened in 150 years that changed Vatican’s mind? Given that Catholics assume that Pope has God’s mandate over Christiandom, Pope must have been talking to god on a fairly regular basis. My best guess is that the Pope got a call from God and it went something like this:

“Hey Benedict! Wassaap? Its your old man here. Howz my favorite catholic doin’?…”

“Oh yeah, by the way, Darwin and I had a long chat some time back. He’s a really nice fella. He’s got an awesome beard too. Nothing like mine, but hey, gotta give props where its due right? Anywayz, so Darwin and I were chillin’ out smoking some reefer and stuff… hey, now don’t be judging, I created it remember? So yeah, I realized Darwin’s a cool dude after all. We play checkers all the time now. He’s awesome, he always let me win! So I’ve decided to let him into heaven….”

“What’s that? Oh, the evolution thing? Yeah… well… tell ya what, we are still vetting Einstein to be let into heaven. All the Democratic angels want him in, but the Republican angels are giving him a tough time, with he being a Jew and not believing in my Son and all, but we’ll get there….”

“Why Einstein? Dude! I am sick and tired of there harps all over the place, I need something different, and Einstein’s awesome on the violin. Anywayz, coming back, here’s what you can do, you can tell everyone that evolution is now cool with Me, and that the whole creating the universe in 7 days.. well Einstein here tells me that if I said that I was going at the speed of light when I created the universe, then somehow my watch slows down, and so my 7 days is really billions of years on earth. And that fits nicely with evolution and everything….”

“What?! Me come down and say that myself? The last time I tried doing something like that they nailed my Son to a tree! No way pal! Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!…”

“Look, I know its not going to be easy convincing everyone, but hey, its not the first time! Remember Galileo? Yeah, we managed to get people to be cool with him after 300 years, and this is just half that time. It’ll work out Benedict… tell ya what, you do this for me and I’ll throw in a couple of extra virgins when you get here. How about that?…”

“Sweet! Gotta go pal. The whole global warming crap that people are into is keepin’ me busy.. I got a few more hurricanes to create in the Atlantic, and yeah, I was tardy on the whole ice-sheet melting thing. Apparently it wasn’t as drastic as last year. Gotta make up for that! Jeez, I need a vacation! Anywayz, gotta go, ciao.”

Image source: http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/images/Jesus&Darwin.jpg

(Having said that, I still recommend people seeing this movie. The attempt and effort is legitimate. So are a lot of fears expressed in it.)

Virgin Birth

My opinion of the movie received its first dent when, in Part I, it says that Krishna (a Hindu god) was born of a virgin. I may not know about Greek, Roman, or Egyptian mythology, but I do know Hindu mythology and I know for a fact that Krishna is not believed to be of virgin birth. This gives me good reason to suspect the claims about the stories of Horus, or Dionysus, or any other mythical character that the movie talks about.

Authority of Sources

Going back to the source of this ‘information’ in the sources page, I found that the Krishan’s Virgin Birth assertion was obtained from books by M.D. Murdock (a.k.a Acharya S.). Acharya is a major proponent of the Jesus myth hypothesis, but her works cite other works that are of suspect authority, and provides extremely once sides citations. In fact, most of the sources and books cited in the movie website are all in the style of conspiracy theories, and have suspect authority at best. By the principle of inheritance of authority, Zeitgeist is of questionable authority as well.

What is plausible may not be true

Zeitgeist shows what could be a plausible explanation for Christianity, 9/11, and the federal reserve system, but they need not be true. To assert the truth of any statement, one needs to (a) show that the statement cannot be falsified, and (b) all other statements that oppose this statement can be falsified. Zeitgeist fails on both counts, and hence cannot assume credibility to the statements it makes.

Obfuscation Through Over-Simplification

Specifically in Part III, the description of money generation by the Federal Reserve Bank is over-simplified to a point where its practically untrue. The pathological sequence of events that could lead to a financial catastrophe is true, but the described mechanism of the Federal Reserve Bank fueling massive debts on America is not. A good place to get an idea of how money is generated is the Money Creation article on wikipedia.

Also, as far as massive debts due to interests on loans that serve to feed more loans and so on, go.. well… that’s pretty much how any economy runs. The money has to come from somewhere, and this ‘generation’ of money has to be controlled (to avoid ‘over heating’ the economy and spiraling the inflation), the best means of doing so is to attach a penalty to generating money, and that’s what the Federal Reserve accomplishes by charging interest on the money thats generated.

So that’s my 2 cents worth second thoughts on Zeitgeist. However, I still encourage people to see this movie. At the very least, to see what alternate explanations can be provided for a same facts presented to you. All too often you have access only to the media’s interpretation events and facts. This is great way to see the counterculture argument and interpretations.

The statement on the website says:

Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used / referenced. Soon, an Interactive Transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links so exact sources and further research can be relayed.

…

Here’s the movie for your viewing. Note that the movie is 2 hours long, so make sure you have enough time to watch it. But I guarantee that you will have strong opinions about it one way or the other.
Don’t forget to check out the Clarifications (which dented my confidence in the authenticity of the ‘facts’ in the movie), and the Sources sections.

Without further ado, here’s the movie :)