FUCKED UP BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Rationality,Upper Bounds and Kaju Katli

Prelogue:
GajaBuja Fundas is the name of another blog I have. This piece was initially posted there, and makes an appearance here now since I feel bad about not having written anything here in a long while, but at the same time, am too lazy to write anything afresh.


Why the name Gaja Buja Fundas ? Why not Buja Gaja Fundas ? Could the answer be a rational one backed by logical thinking ?
Yes.
But unfortunately, rationality (w.r.t. the objective theory of self's happiness being supreme) is linked to the ultra-ambiguous 'Free Will'. We shall continue to call it 'Free Will' until we have a more scientific basis as to why we like something and why not something else .
For example, me eating Kaju Katli (an Indian sweet made with cashews) and immediately liking it is free will.Well, yeah, you can talk about taste buds and their correlation with the different molecules found in Kaju Katli, but you really don't know about the happiness part yet.
But if the whole world likes Badam Katli and only you like Kaju Katli, you still buying Kaju Katli every time you go to the sweet shop would be rationality.

So much for a name .
(There is an idea to make this a partnership blog with one more fundoo-ist. I would be Gaja and the other would be Buja. And of course, this blog would then be a collection of our funda-isms.)

Talking of rationality, one of my professors was talking about a modern philosophy called Bounded Rationality.
It goes like this : Each man's ability to take rational decisions has an upper limit,i.e. a bound.

My take on this theory : Yes, but the bound does not in any way imply the defeat of the theory of absolute rationalism. The bound will, gradually, grow outwards and eventually, disappear altogether. Eventually? Yeah, infinite time scale.
Why and How? I feel the bound exists due to what we don't know,i.e. our ignorance. If we knew exactly why(very ambiguous question indeed) we like only the molecules of the Kaju Katli and not the Badam Katli, the role of 'Free Will' gets kicked outta the window.

So, is this state of absolute rationality God? Maybe, maybe not.

5 comments:

chikku said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

actualy there is a mathematical support for your claim that the bound will be removed ....the theroy goes lie this ... the real number line is actually a circle and as the numbers increase and tend to infinity -infinty and + infinity meet eace other...therefore applying the same to your theory ....as there no lower bound ... and upper bound is incrasing ...they wil sone merge:D

Saketh~ said...

GajaBuja fundas

awesome name mate

I remember the train conversation when you mentioned it.. nice to see you finally started it off!

SWATZ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SWATZ said...

Interesting piece...especially your attack against the "bounded" rationality stuff...But humans are such that they can't live without "free will" (at least me!!!) :P

PS- Herbert Simon should rethink his Decision-Making theory again after reading your peice.. lol!!!

Cheers!!!

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