Molyneux's question

Frankly I had never heard of either Molyneux or his question before today morning. In brief, Molyneux wondered whether a man who has been born blind and who has learnt to distinguish and name a globe and a cube by touch, would be able to distinguish and name these objects simply by sight, once he had been enabled to see.

The question has been debated by philosophers for 300 years, and lately neuroscientists have become interested in it as well. According to Dr. Pawan Sinha of MIT, the question relates to how perceptions are formed in brain [1].

"Do the different modalities, or senses, build up a common representation, or are these independent representations that one cannot access even though the other modality has built it?"

While there has been some indirect evidence, no one was able to perform a direct test because of lack of test subjects. In rich countries, curable congenital blindness is identified and cured in infancy. Dr. Sinha realized that this was not the case in developing countries. In 2003 he conducted a study in India where he identified 5 young adults with curable blindness. By measuring their ability to discriminate between shapes first using touch and then sight, he was able to experimentally recreate the conditions posed by Molyneux.

The short answer, it turns out, is no. Although after restoration of sight, the subjects could distinguish between objects visually as effectively as they would do by touch alone, they were unable to form the connection between object perceived using the two different senses. So we do not have a central memory where information from all the senses in stored.

This makes me wonder how does brain cross-reference data from different senses in form one coherent version. Maybe the versions are not coherent. What if one version dominates over others and so we end up with a less than true version of reality!


[1] http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/molyneuxs-question-gets-answered-after-300-years/story-fn5fsgyc-1226037177460
[2] Held, R.; Ostrovsky, Y.; Degelder, B.; Gandhi, T.; Ganesh, S.; Mathur, U.; Sinha, P. (2011). "The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt". Nature Neuroscience. doi:10.1038/nn.2795

Journalism and Ethics

Today I read a very interesting article that highlights the ethical issues of journalism. Question is: at what point it behooves a journalist to stop reporting and sympathize with victims? How does a journalist best serve the society; by reporting the story in the most thought proving way or by reacting humanely?

Recently a photograph captured by photographer Paul Hansen, was chosen as the best International News Image at the Swedish Picture of the Year Awards. The subject is a 15-year-old Haitian earthquake victim Fabienne Cherisma who was shot in the head by the police for looting two plastic chairs and three framed pictures.

The image is striking. To me it signifies the scale of destruction in Haiti, the desperation of the poor, and psychological scarring of children. To others it may throw questions about police brutality, ethics of stealing for survival or the unfairness of life. But what we can all agree on is that the picture captures all that is sad about a phenomenal tragedy. Pictures like these force us to empathize with victims at a very personal level, and are instrumental in raising awareness and money for rescue and relief efforts.

But there is another side to the story. Here is a photograph by Nathan Weber, showing a group of photographers crowding around the poor girls body. Sadly, the media circus continued even in front of the bereaved family.

You can't help but wonder at the intentions of these journalists? Is it all about getting a big story? Do they even care about the victims? In fact is it their job to care about the victims? Don't they best serve the society by just doing their job? What about individual right to privacy? Why should anyone profit from a victims misery? And finally why should such controversial pictures be awarded top prizes?

Phan Thị Kim Phúc in Trang Bang, Vietnam
by Nick Ut/AP, 1972 Pulitzer Prize

Emaciated girl, Sudan 
by Kevin Carter, 1994 Pulitzer Prize

The debate is old. From Vietnam to Sudan, there have been photographs that make you question professional ethics. The problem is particularly severe for reporters because unlike professions like engineering or medicine, there is no objective measure of repercussions. A doctor can be sued for bad judgements on the operating table and an engineer can be tried for a faulty bridge. But how do make journalists accountable? In most democracies libel laws tend to side with the press, and rightfully so. The lack of negative feedback has led to a situation where there are no repercussions for screwing up. It is acceptable to run a story that is in bad taste or is false. Somebody's life gets ruined and all they can hope for is a one line retraction in the next issue. In some sense lawyers suffer from the same problem. It is part of the job to help acquit a serial killer on a technicality!


What do you think?

One Liners..

Saw a good post today. It was about interesting one liners. Some of my favorites are:

1. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
2. Before you insult a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you insult him, you'll be a mile away, and have his shoes.
3. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
4. Depression is just anger without enthusiasm.
5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

Physical Fitness

Growing up in an education obsessed middle-class Indian family, physical fitness was never a priority. Interestingly, this is a new phenomenon. Even as late as my father's generation, youngsters were encouraged to be active. My uncle played basketball at the national level and my father swam for 4 hours everyday. Unfortunately by the time I was born, India had changed.

Rate of population growth outpaced growth of opportunities. College degrees became more important than physical fitness. Studies trumped sports. Focus was always on doing well in school, nothing more was expected or encouraged. My father was not particularly happy with the change but economics always wins out. Consequently, by the time I got to IIT Kanpur I could barely run a mile.

But this post is not about sports in India. It is about my slow realization that fitness is also important. Having a working set of knees at 60 is a worthy goal! The change started late in undergrad but took a firm hold when I came to US. I ran a marathon in 2007. It was probably the first time in my life when I felt fit and it was a nice feeling. Since then I have dabbled in squash, weight training, and lately yoga.

During the time I have learned a few things. Some of them are:

1. Human body is very quick to react to a fitness regimen. All it takes to run a marathon is 16 weeks of supervised training! Regularity is the key. Find a regimen no matter how easy but stick to it.

2. Balanced workout is very important. You can't attach a jet engine to a car. Workout only the arms and you will get injured. Try improving your running times without strength training, you will get injured. If done in isolation. routines like "100 pushups in 6 weeks" can be harmful.

3. Stretching is not very useful for runners. This is especially true for static stretching. At best it it should be done after workouts, and not before. Warm ups, strength training are known to work for runners, stretching is not.

4. But flexibility does have some injury prevention benefits. Active stretching is the way to go. I have found yoga to be very fun way to increase flexibility.

5. In strength training, machines are useless and nothing beats barbell training. Exercising isolated muscles is neither healthy nor comprehensive. Normal physical activities use many muscles, not just one. So developing only one muscle at a time does not train them to work together.