Nirmukta » Q & A

How Does Complexity Lead to ‘Agency’?

Vinod K. Wadhawan — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:25:34 +0000

Greetings from Saskatchewan Canada!

I am thoroughly enjoying your articles about complexity and thermodynamics! Thank you for writing and providing your excellent thought-provoking explanations.

As I read, I am trying to find an satisfying answer to the following cluster of questions:

As every living organism I consume energy to “fight entropy and stay away from a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.” I have trouble understanding the evolutionary step from being merely a passive complex product of a thermodynamic system to being a willful, goal-oriented agent within the system. In your view, how has agency evolved? Or do you conclude that agency is a psychological illusion?

Thank you very much!
-Peter Jonker

Thank you for your comments. Your question can be split into two parts:

1. Why and how did life evolve out of nonlife?
2. Why and how did the so-called ‘consciousness’ evolve?

I am using the words ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’ in spite of the fact that both are ill-defined terms.

1. If you have read all my articles in the series, or if you have read my recent(2010) book ‘Complexity Science: Tackling the Difficult Questions We Ask about Ourselves and about Our Universe’, you must be aware of the emphasis I have placed on the work of Stuart Kauffman. The thermodynamic conditions have been so favourable that life just HAD to emerge as a mere link in the chain of events in the relentless evolution of complexity with time. And complexity evolves (generally increases, at least locally) because of the nearly inexhaustive supply of free energy or negative entropy. Negative entropy is equivalent to information, so information builds up with time (at least locally). And anybody can see that a living organism is truly an information-laden system compared to, say, a crystal.

2. There can be innumerable forms of life, but they cannot all coexist and survive because the resources available are limited. So there is competition, and only the fittest can survive and propagate. Even the most primitive life forms APPEAR to be goal-seeking agents. But this is really no different from why a crystal grows out of a fluid when the conditions are right.

Only those organisms can win the battle of survival which are better at ADAPTING to changing conditions. This constant need for improvement finally led to the evolution of humans with a large brain.

Brain science is not as developed as, say, physics, so there is plenty of room for disagreement and debate. When even the experts do not agree on some very fundamental issues, the best that lay people can do is to have an open mind and suspend judgement. Naturally, many issues also become a matter of opinion. My opinion about ‘consciousness’ is in line with that of Marvin Minsky. I have explained all this in some detail in my book, and also in this series of articles.

I hope I have been of some help. Happy New Year!

Dr. Vinod K. Wadhawan’s series, Complexity Explained, can be found here.

Ayurveda Question, And A Story About Akhilesh Sharma

Ajita Kamal — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:05:08 +0000

This question was sent in by Roope Kasvi and has been selected for this month’s Q & A.

Hi,

I’m an openminded sceptic from Finland. One of my friends (also Finnish) is an Ayurvedic consult and spreads all kinds of crazy stuff in Facebook.

Recently in the comments section of one of his rants he said that there are many diseases that Ayurveda can cure or treat better than modern medical science. Needless to say, I am sceptical about this claim and wondered if you guys knew of any studies that could point me to any direction at all.

He just gave me his first link after consulting his “professor” in India: http://www.ayurveduniversity.com/peerjournal.php

He also gave me this:

http://www.indianetzone.com/5/classification_disease.htm

Waiting for more details.

Ok, the second thing, this goes back a few years, but anyways, again with the same friend. It’s just an interesting diversion, but imo well worth knowing about.

One of his Ayurvedic stories concerned the NBA All Star player Alonzo Mourning.

His guru, Akhilesh Sharma, spreads a story to his followers and students that goes like this: first Alonzo had sent Akhilesh a letter where he would be interested in trying Ayurvedic medicine since the “western school medicine” could not help him with his career-destroying kidney problem. Akhilesh then sent him some Ayurvedic medicine, and, in a few months time Alonzo replied that the medicine seemed to work, and asked Akhilesh for more. Ok, Akhilesh sent some more medicine. In a few months time he received another letter from Alonzo which stated that the Ayurvedic medicine had totally cured Alonzo from the kidney disease and had saved his life, the letter also included a VERY substantial cheque in appreciation of the Ayurvedic treatment Akhiles gave to him. Akhilesh turned the cheque down.

Ok…this sounded very suspicious and that’s exactly what I told him. But he was 100% that his had happened in real life, his guru does not lie. And of course Ayurvedic medicine works better than the “chemical western school medicine”. Ok, I went home, opened Wikipedia and saw this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Mourning#Kidney_transplant

Kidney transplant

On November 25, 2003, Mourning’s cousin and a former U. S. Marine, Jason Cooper, was visiting Mourning’s gravely ill grandmother in the hospital. Mourning’s father was present and informed Cooper that Mourning was retiring that very same day from the NBA because of a life-threatening kidney disease, focal segmental glomerular sclerosis, the same problem that Sean Elliott had in 1999. Cooper asked if there was anything he could do, and began to contemplate donating one of his kidneys to his estranged cousin, who he had not seen in 25 years and whom he only knew through basketball. Cooper was tested for compatibility, along with many other family members and friends (including fellow NBA center and good friend Patrick Ewing); as fate would have it, during his grandmother’s funeral, Mourning received the good news that Jason Cooper was a match.

Mourning received Cooper’s left kidney on December 19, 2003.

Not a mention of Ayurvedic medicine or Akhilesh Sharma, not a single hit in Google either. The closest it gets is that Alonzo does Yoga. But not a single hit with the words Ayurveda, or Akhilesh Sharma and Alonzo Mourning. I called the Ayurvedic practitioner and asked his comment on this. He was surprised and called immediately to his guru. After a while, he called back and informed me that the guru was pretty busy and couldn’t talk long, and changed the story drastically, now it had happened after the kidney transplant, but the guru was too busy to go into details this time. I was very skeptical to say the least.

I was wondering if you know anything interesting about Akhilesh Sharma or would be interested in looking further into this case.

Sorry for the long post and thank you for the wonderful site, much respect from the Finnish rational community.

All the best,

(Roope Kasvi)

Hi Roope,

I will try to answer your excellent questions by first stating some basic information on how ayurveda is promoted and then discuss how we can try to reason with believers in ayurveda. I will also refer you to some literature on the subject.

Ayurveda is a pseudoscience. This is not to say that one cannot study and establish the validity of specific claims made by practitioners, using the methods of modern science. There are sure to be some specific ayurvedic claims that are true. What I mean is that Ayurveda proponents refuse to subject their claims to rigorous double-blind studies, and to publish their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Just as with other worldwide medical pseudosciences such as Homeopathy and Chiropractic, Ayurveda is pushed onto the public as a genuine science, using manufactured consent. A whole support system has been built to sustain this system of beliefs by those benefiting from peddling the label ayurveda. Colleges, universities, institutes, research facilities and entire hospitals have spawned up around ayurvedic “medicine”. Here are two excellent articles by Meera Nanda on how postmodernist Hindus have established a false narrative about their core ideologies by pretending that their religious beliefs are actually scientific.

Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science’

Science and Hindu Nationalism
How Postmodernism Aids Vedic Science

Meera Nanda is a really good thinker on this subject. Her book (co-authored), Ayurveda Today: A Critical Look, is a comprehensive read.

It can be really difficult to reason with people who believe in pseudoscientific belief systems. The first thing to remember when dealing with someone who claims that ayurveda is scientific is that this person does not know what science really is. These claims are part of the propaganda perpetuated by those who wish to hitch primitive knowledge systems to the legitimacy of the scientific process. So it may be useful to start with explaining a few things about science to your friend. I know this is no easy task, but that is the price of reason.

Once you are certain that the person understands what science is, then the metaphysical claims of ayurveda must be pointed out. This demonstrates how ayurveda is not really scientific. In fact, the actual basis of ayurveda is so completely crazy that most practitioners will not talk about the core beliefs involved.

Many practical aspects of ayurveda are observation-based. In pre-scientific times many medical issues were observed and categorized under this system of practice. In modern times, the ayurveda promoters have co-opted the actual scientific knowledge about these medical issues. For example, mental illness was originally thought of as demonic possession. Today, the ayurveda promoters are trying to portray the superstitious exorcism practices associated with this aspect of ayurveda as the original form of psychiatry. That is, they are pretending that they had a naturalistic interpretation of mental illness all along, when in fact they believe in all sorts of magic.

When your friend makes the claim, “Ayurveda can cure or treat better than modern medical science”, what source does he provide to back up this claim? If the source is an ayurveda journal or an ayurveda “institute”, pointing out that there are scientific journals established to publish medical research may be a good idea. Remind him that science is self-correcting. That is, if there is any truth to an ayurvedic claim, it will make its way into the medical literature.

There are bound to be a few ayurvedic concoctions that actually have a beneficial effect. The problem is that there are many others that don’t. The only way to bring the ones that work into science is to subject the claims to rigorous scientific tests. Meera Nanda says:

“The desire to appear scientific while desperately seeking to affirm pre-scientific traditions has led to a deep and wide-spread confirmation bias in research on traditional medicine and other traditional sciences. That is to say that those studying ayurvedic remedies tend to look for and notice only what confirms their existing beliefs, while they either do not look for, or ignore and explain away the evidence that contradicts their beliefs.”

Finally, the dangers of Ayurveda are very real. Studies have repeatedly shown toxic quantities of heavy metals in these drugs. A 2004 study demonstrated that ayurvedic drugs sold online had toxic amounts of arsenic, lead etc. A more recent 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association had similar results. Added to this is the enormous costs in resources and time that could go into seeking proper medical care for easily curable diseases.

Here is another excerpt from Meera Nanda’s article that I quoted above:

“Indian scientists have tended to use the supposedly “holistic” nature of traditional Vedic sciences to reject the central pillar of modern medicine, namely, double-blind clinical studies. Double-blind studies are designed to ensure that the reported benefits of a medicine are actually coming from the active ingredients of the medicine itself, and not from the biases of the patients and doctors. These studies require drugs and medical procedures to be tested in randomly selected test and control groups, in which neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is getting the drug and who is getting a placebo (i.e., a treatment that looks and feels like the drug being tested, but lacks the active ingredient.)…

…Having avoided double-blind tests for so long, traditional Indian medicine has a big problem at hand. The problem is that traditional medical formulae and recipes, many of them thousands of years old, have never been put to a systematic test for safety and efficacy using the best available scientific knowledge, methodology and instrumentation. Their claims for curing diseases are entirely based upon traditional lore, anecdotal evidence and the authority of gurus and other “holy” men and women. Intellectuals and scientists in India have been too ready to simply find analogies and fanciful equations between advances in modern biology with the traditional concepts of body and disease. As a result, many obsolete and even harmful chemicals, methods of diagnosis and procedures still continue to be prescribed. What is worse, many of them are presented to the public as if they have been validated by advances in modern science and medicine.”

I really believe that there may be some truth contained in the ‘wisdom of the ancients’. The problem with ayurveda is that it forms a dogmatic belief structure that defends all aspects of this system. If ayurveda is not so ideological and is willing to open itself to scientific analysis with the intention of vetting the claims made by it, then there is room for it to contribute to the modern scientific/medical effort. Without that it is just another dogmatic ideology that protects its flaws by restricting critical thought.

Regarding Akhilesh Sharma and Alonzo Mourning, I have heard of neither. If anyone else can shed some light on this issue, please do!

Thanks for asking the hard questions, and for keeping a rational and skeptical outlook. I wish you and the Finnish rationalist community a splendid future.

Question for Prabir Ghosh

Sumitra Padmanavan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:30:02 +0000

QUESTION

To Mr. Prabir Ghosh,

How are you? I actually stumbled on your website when I tried searching for the contact details of the kerala rationalists association, which I couldn’t find. My name is (Suraj) and I live in a place called Sreekrishnapuram, Kerala. I was born and brought up in Chennai and moved here 2 years ago. My parents were already settled a year prior to my arrival here.My parents, more so my mother are die hard godmen fans. The reason my folks moved here was they met one god man called Muralikrishna Swamy( his cult even owns a website). He is around 28 years of age, very charming and intelligent, a very potent comboination for a god man. He comes from a very poor family but now he owns a fleet of cars, properties all in the name of a trust the cult runs. We actually met him in a resort in a hill station in kerala that we visited 4 years back. Since then my parents have been slaves to this man and actually moved here to be near him. My parents think he resembles my younger brother who died in an accident in 2001.

In fact all his followers think he is divine and people have started coming in from bombay and the gulf. All that remains now is for some gora goris to turn up to validate his divinity. My father died in december but my mom is still under the clutches of this guy.He calls my parents his parents as my folks were among the first ones to come from the educated city dwelling middle class. He has grown tremendously since then and he has restricted his darshan here in his home town and gives more darshans in more lucrative areas like bangalore, chennai and calicut. He travels frequently to the gulf these days. He calls me his elder brother and told me that I need not consider him as others do and should merely treat him as my younger brother. He had actually requested my mom that I never enter the darshan he gives daily, as he has read me completely and is worried that I might cause mischief. His followers are in the lakhs now and he has branches in calicut, bangalore and tamilnadu.Every now and then when we meet I ask him embarassing questions to the irritation of his followers including my mom. One of his divine miracles in the recent past has been the manifestation of holy ash on his photos in his bhakts house. My mom is sad that the ash has not manifested in his photos in our house. How can they appear when I am here?

My mother has always been under some swami or swamini all her life. This is because my dads financial success was always up and down. Added to the fact that my brother died has made her all the more weaker. I have tried my best to get her out of this but I am losing everytime. I shout at her and I regret later thinking that she is 62 and shes got only a few more years to live. I am clueless as to what to do. Should I let her be? or is it my duty to bring her to the truth? How can I expose this guy? Looking for some practical guidance and do you have any idea how to make ash appear suddenly on the photos? I have an idea of clearing her superstition through superstition. Any suggestions very welcome and yes keep up the good work. JAI HIND!

Cheers,
Suraj (Name Changed)

ANSWER:

Hi Suraj,

Your mail was interesting and sad at the same time.
After she lost one son and husband, it is more likely that your mother will fall prey to these men.
Our suggestions :–

- Do not irritate the man in public. Keep a low profile. Look for victims who have been fooled in some way. Then contact us again.

- Do not shout at mother. She needs to understand things herself. Tell her the story of Swami Amritananda Chaitanya ( KOCHI), who was recently given rigorous imprisonment for 16 years for swindling huge sums of money from foreign residents and other rich men, and for sexually abusing young girls in kerala.
He was also a popoular ‘guru’ who quickly rose to fame and power. But finally exposed ( Shown in channel ‘Headlines Today’, on 17 May, 2008. Rationalist views were given by Sumitra Padmanabhan on TV ). His real name — Madhavan. Lots of dirty CDs were found in his house. He was arrested last year. Punishment was declared on 2nd May 2009 in Kochi.

- You be calm and try to smile at her weakness– by commenting mildly on how these religious gurus appear at regular intervals. Even the famous ones do not last more than ten years. Madhavan and his likes, get caught even faster. Others slowly lose popularity and are forgotten.

- Regarding Bibhuti ask her not to be sad. You can make bibhuti at home. Smear her guru’s photo with a chemical ( Lactic acid ; you’ll get them in liquid form in medical/drug stores). Don’t tell har what you are doing. Starting with that slowly do it on other photos too. When her excitement is at the top, do it on your own photo.
Laugh loudly– and tell her the secret in the end.

- Make fun of the whole issue, making all the disciples look like fools. Do not overdo or hurt by making personal comments.

You can introduce mother to the pleasures of music and good books. She can join some social work groups too. If she can do something positive and pleasurable — this craze will subside.

Thank you
Keep in touch

Sumitra Padmanabhan
(for Prabir Ghosh)

Ayurveda Question, And A Story About Akhilesh Sharma