Why am I here?

This is an idea that just occured to me right now and is based on the book "Lessons from History" by Will and Ariel Durant.

It's trying to find a reason why there are so many human beings on this planet, who seem to be useless. They live and die and they go unnoticed. They just care about finding food and shelter for themselves and their children, or about enjoying their time, or any other "simple" aims, or others who also try hard but fail and also go unnoticed. Why are there many who debate democratically about an issue, but the debate is in vain and the issue remains unsolved?

Maybe it has something to do with nature and evolution ... take for example the fertilization of an ova which needs round 100 million sperms ... to ensure that one event takes place, nature requires 100 million contestants ... The large number of human beings is to ensure that the shere number is there, so that one (or few) can bring an advancement here, some others a new idea there. It is just the way nature works to bring about development and evolution (and I belive that evolution is still going on, not physical, but mentally!). Me, you and you are there because of the statistic necessity for evolution. Every millionic bunch of us are walking sperms, with one of us reaching the ov, or nature's goal (not his or our goal, i.e. accumulating money or getting a better job are not nature's goals) to achieve a certain developmental (or evolutionary) step, and the rest will die trying!!

By the way, this is not in support for the cynical groups beliving in the superiority of the few and that we need to develop the "Superman" from this few. As I said, the shere number is essential due to the statistical need.

Ich beherrsche die deutsche sprache aber sie gehorcht mir nicht

عظماء الدنيا وعظماء الآخره Great characters of this world and the after world

Wish we had someone like him today!! ... He was great ... I remember how I loved the theme of his program ... I always used to think that the music coming from the flute was like a sublication to God ... that the flute player was simply praying. It was and still is marvellous. I also remember how I used to hear his voice coming from the TVs of many neighbours ... he simply had an excellent "viewing quota".

God bless Dr. Mostafa Mahmoud.

How we decide

Here is a review of the book "How we decide" ... it's a very interesting thought-provoking book that I highly recommend.





Why did the author write this book? What does he want me to do, believe or experience?

The book was written to give us more insights about how we make decisions. This is a complicated process with 2 main players, the subconscious brain and the rational brain. The author stresses the fallacy of the common belief that a rational decision should be devoid of feelings. He proves that both reason and feelings are necessary and we should listen to both while making decisions.

The subconscious mind has the capacity to deal with large data inputs, and can analyse them and detect patterns quite rapidly. It then delivers a message to the conscious brain in “sign- language”, namely as positive or negative feelings. This is our “gut feeling”, which is usually based on past experiences, and learning from mistakes. Morals and aesthetics belong to the realm of the subconscious mind. Seeing a painting or a moral question, one knows instantly if it is good or bad. In many cases, one would not really know why. It just “feels” good (or bad), right (or wrong).

However, our feelings might also be wrong and unreliable, as in the case of panic or in new problems which we didn’t encounter before. Additionally, we tend to escape from losses (or pain), and to overvalue immediate gains. This is when our rational mind should jump in and take over to really weigh the benefits against the losses.

The rational brain is however limited and can be overwhelmed by information in complicated problems. If the problem cannot be reduced to few important parameters, then the gut feeling can help with those multiparametric issues. Another problem arises with random processes, since our brain always tries to find patterns, so it ends imposing ones which donot actually exist.

Certainty (fanatism, stubbornness) is usually due to adopting a preconception without allowing the effective communication between the different parts of the brain. One accepts information that justifies the preconception and ignores the rest. The rational brain comes into play not as a scientist, but as a lawyer justifying this, actually irrational, position.

Healthy decision making is the one that allows the effective communication and interaction between reason and emotions. In important decisions, one should listen to emotions, but in some instance also let reason test if those emotions are right or wrong. There are rarely simple questions to complicated answers. Effective communication, weighing alternatives and embracing uncertainty should help reaching the correct decisions. Finally, mistakes are to be embraced as opportunities for learning … “Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process”

Did he succeed? am I convinced?

The book is attractive and interesting ... it has many anecdotes which are well used to deliver the message and explain the point. The suthor succeeds in sheding light on the process of making decisions, and graps attention due to the many "surprises" which he describes, that feelings are important for rational decisions, that uncotrolled feelings could be problemating, that too much reason can be counterproductive. This is all presented in a simplified scientific manner, ornamented with anecdotes.

The only problem was that the thoughts or transitions between chapters did not seem to follow a logical sequence. It was, to a degree, disorganized.

What is the take home message?

1) Healthy decision making is a combination of listening to gut feelings and reason. One should be aware of the decision making process.
2) Mistakes are necessary for effective learning.
3) Surprise (unexpected patterns) are the best methods to raise attention.
4) Our brain always tries to find patterns. They are however lacking in random processes.

Stumbling on happiness

Here is a review I have written about the book "Stumbling on happiness" some 2-3 years ago. I wrote it on a facebook application, but I though I'd better write it also here ...

The book handles many aspects of happiness. It shows the difficulty of defining something so abstract like happiness, and tries to alleviate this by identifying different types of happiness. It then goes on showing the shortcomings of our imagination, or rationalization, in short, our great expectations which turn out to be irrationally based.

At the end, the author concludes that instead of depending on our imperfect imagination, we can depend on others' experiences. He says that each one of us thinks he/she is so unique, when actually he/she is not. He says that science has provided lots of information about the average person that it's possible to predict how he will behave. If we depend on the experience of others, we can save ourselves the trouble, because it will also fit us.

Now to my opinion about the book. The author has done lots of effort to prove his point with scientific evidence. I wouldn't refute most of what he said. I have to say that there wasn't much new in this. That we make irrational and unwise future decisions based on incomplete information or defective imagination or biased rationalization is something that one knows, either from experience or reading.

However, the idea that we can use the experience of others as surrogate is not really quite convincing. Human beings are different, with different tastes, experiences and mental paradigms. It is not sufficient that a certain test shows that the majority of human beings would do something, because it is simply not ALL. And, if a group of human beings is tested for a group of different things, I don't think that you will find the same persons doing the same things in every test. if the majority is doing something in one test, it will not be the same majority in each test.

The author once mentioned that bad scientists use biased experiemnts to come up with the results they originally forecasted. I'm afraid he also resorted to bad science when he used the fact that when the majority of people behave in a certain manner in one situation, that this alone is a good reason to use this previous information for future decisions.

Alqemny ... his books and pize!

I read the last chapter of Al Qemny's book "Alostorah wa altorath" (The legend and the herritage) ... the chapter was called "Alnaskh fe alwa7y, mo7awalat fahm" .... according to Al Qemny, one should see quran and sunna in the light of the accompanying circumstances and events ... he has however a fault-finding attitude, so that he's picking the contradictions and magnifying them. His theory explaining the leniency of quranic verses in Mecca against non muslims, vs. its stronger stance against them in Madina pictures quran and the prophet as opportunistic, showing a humble face in case of weakness, but an aggressive one in strength. The feeling that one gets after his thesis about alnasekh wal mansokh is that there is some inconsistency, and that there were mistakes carried out by Othman and alsa7aba that put quran, and the activities associated with collecting and writing it, in question.

One point which I sometimes think is true, is that religion in many cases is not about logic! ... for instance, in the fight between David and Guliath (Talot and dawood vs. Galoot), the believers were ordered not to drink form the river despite the fact that they were thirsty to death and they were about to fight a stronger army ... The prophet Ibrahim was ordered to slaughter his son .... Noah was ordered to build a ship in a land far away from any source of water .... the famous story of the (yellow) cow that the jews were asked to slaughter to resurrect a murdered guy so that he would say who killed him .... Moses' mother throughing her son in the river ... the story of Moses and Alkhedr ... all these and many other stories in Quran simply say that prophets (and normal persons like ahl el kahf and the stories mentioned with Alkhedr) sometimes receive orders which simply don't make sense ... they are just illogical, but the aim (or among the aims) is to test the fidelity and piousness of the believers (perhaps this is indeed one way to test fidelity, that we have to do something that we might think doesn't make sense ... I mean if everything just makes sense, then doing it might be simply a "logical" consequence ... doing something which doesn't make sense at a first sight might be a better test!) ... anyway, the point is religion is not always about logic .... this makes it difficult to scrutinize and say this point is logical so I'll accept it, and this is not, so I'll abondon it.

As someone who adopts and believes in the scientific method and in analysing everything, I do believe that there are many things that we can't take as is from our islamic herritage, simply because they don't make sense anymore (they might have been logical 1400 years ago, but not anymore) ... the problem is how to draw the line between what we can change because it doesn't make sense any more (for instance Omar ibn alkhattab did stop working with some verses of quran like giving zakat to almo2allafato klobehem), and what we cannot change (even if it doesn't make sense), simply because it is meant to be a test ... I believe drawing this line would be crucial to the future of Islam.

Back to alqemny .... In humanitarian (or soft sciences), it's really difficult to judge the validity of a theory or a thesis, simply because you can not test it in an experiment ... one can test the premis, references and line of thinking, but this might be deceptive, and the sophistry were an old and well known example for that .... But in order to say whether he really deserves to get the prize or not, I'm testing the output of his writings, (the influence on the readers) to see the value of the theories he comes up with ... he leaves his reader skeptical and inconclusive ... putting everything in question is not a feat, everyone can do it ... finding answers is more important ... if there were nobody in Egypt better than him (which I doubt), the prize could have been withheld.

I'd do anything for you

We can still do it!

2 days ago, I payed a visit to Gelita and RP Sherer in Eberbach. The first is specialized in producing gelatin for food and Pharma use, the latter is a market leader in producing soft gelatin capsules.

It was really interesting to see the whole process, from gelatin production, till the manufactire of the high value capsules. What really amazed me was the relatively simple process of gelatin production. It is a very old process, and it must be hard for Gelta to keep the production in Germany despite their high prices and the strong competition with China and India. As I heard the description of what they do, it was clear to me that it's the quality of their products that allowed them to keep the production sites in Germany. More importantly, the know-how, experience, and progresses which they developped over the years. For instance, they have 200 different types of gelatin! I also learned that they can't say at the begining of the batch production that this batch will have these and these properties. Instead, batches are mixed to give the required properties. For this, they measue 30 different characteristics for each batch. It's clear that they have developped lots of experience over the years.

Building a gelatin producing plant is relatively easy, but developping this experience is not easy. However, we can stil do it! We can reach their level, if only we had the funds and the time. It's only a matter of a good and strong collective/political will!

The answer?

A couple of days ago I had a discusssion, probably with mum, where she mentioned the importance of bringing to the world good and pious children. She said that many regard their life as useless, when it can be of the greatest meaning if they can bring up their children to be good hearted and good believers.

I wonder if this is the real sense of life ... to be a good believer ... that's all what we are supposed to do to bring meaning to our lives ... is this the answer o the immortal question?

Being a teacher, again!

Long time since I last blogged ... I'm coming back mainly due to an inspiration by Mr. Ahmed Shams, who asked me to write my experiences so tha he might use them to tell his students ... who knows who can benefit from them one day!

As I'm reading now "Tuesdays with Morrie", I feel I need to teach one day ... to work as a teacher and to transfer my experience ... maybe it's human, or it's flattering, but I feel I need to do it one day ... maybe as a visiting lecturer, or may be by returning back to Academia one day ... I still donnu, but I need to keep this in mind.

In thinking of teaching, the seminars by Andre Radusch came up to my mind ... we were only 7, and the seminars were always based on questions, which I found quite intriguiing and thought provoking ... they were not based on recalling what we learned, but on testing whether we did understand it or not, and they were always in the form of a discussion ... I really liked those seminars a lot and I was the best student participating in them ... I hope I can do something similar one day ...