A Little World

It is the sense of belongingness & affection that binds us humans together. That is why I guess, though separated by material distances, we continue to cherish our relations. 
Its the sweet memories that remind us that no matter how big this world be it shall forever remain small, for smaller it always shall be than a love filled heart.

The Theory of Reasoning and Decision Making

At the outset I wish to make it clear that the title of this article is a misnomer. Although this article does deal with reasoning, it will become obvious later that it deals much more with something else and that is Perception.
Reasoning is the act of finding the basis or cause of a phenomenon and I believe is fundamental to rational thinking. It also plays a major role in decision making and through this article I will try to theorize the act of reasoning and how we take decisions.

The factors that go into the act of reasoning can be broadly categorized into two – the Static Factors and the Dynamic Factors.

The Statics: Static factors are those that do not depend on the situation directly. The factors that go into reasoning are the following.

1. Instincts: These are the innate needs/desires of a person. Instincts are not learned from the environment but are feelings that are inborn; since they are primal in their nature they will be very similar among majority of the people. These instincts can further be classified into Higher and Lower Level instincts. The Lower level instincts can be as basic as the struggle for survival, maternal instincts etc. These instincts can generally be found across species and may manifest in a more pronounced manner in the advanced species owing to their higher cognitive capabilities. On the other hand struggle for survival, fear of fire/predators etc can be classified under lower order instincts. The higher level instincts are outcome of higher order brain functions and manifest in the form of wisdom, emotions etc. Although a static function, the higher order brain functions take shape throughout a person’s life in an exponential manner. It should however be noted that the higher and Lower level instincts act in a supplementary manner with the higher level functions often taking off from where the lower level functions end; essentially forming an extension to the lower odder function. For example in the advanced species such as humans the lower order parental instincts and the higher order instinct of social bonding act in a supplementary manner and in essence result in the strengthening of the social structure. The possible explanation for stronger social bonds within humans could be provided by the fact that higher order social functions source their strength from the lower order parental instincts thereby demonstrate their supplementary nature – the higher order functions gain the strength of the lower order function as its foundation and the lower order function gains by having an extended longevity (often for a lifetime) which otherwise, in the absence of the higher order functions, would not have lasted beyond the point where the offspring attains adulthood. Presence of instincts is a proof to the fact that not everything about a person is learned, a person is an outcome of a combination of innate instincts and learning that takes place as a part of growing or maturing intellectually. I’ll use the instinctive painful sensation associated with burning as an example to link various aspects discussed in this article

2. Prior experience(s): An experience is an act through which a phenomenon is witnessed by the perceiver and thereby has earned its place in his/her memory. An experience through the act of perception, taking into consideration the experiences from the past that bear relevance to the current phenomenon being analyzed, is evaluated based the person’s perspective. The memorability of an experience will depend on the emotions that it invokes – stronger the emotion, longer will it linger. Experiences ultimately lead to learning. What the learning has been and how the learning has impacted the person’s outlook depends on the experience itself and how the experience has been perceived by the perceiver. For example the act of touching a hot surface will lead to burns and that experience will lead to the learning of associating hot objects with burns. The degree of burns caused will set the memorability of the experience and its associated learning. Its will also set the degree of preference or aversion to the associated experience. I believe repeated exposure to an experience has the potential of creating obsession or phobias depending on the severity of the sensation it invokes. What differentiates a phobia or an obsession form a normal fear or desire is the influence it has on an individual. If a desire or fear begins to become paramount in a person’s behavior then it can be considered to have devolved into a Phobia or an obsession. Obsession with substance abuse leading to a person loosing control of his/her life due to failure to reign in the desire is a case of desire gone amuck.  

3. Learning(s): These are closely related to the prior experience but have not been experienced directly in first hand. This would include knowledge gained from secondary source of information such as teachings, interpretations made by analyzing information available in different media such as books, audio visual media etc. Learning too is an experience but lacks the sensory stimuli/aspect of an actual experience. Learning too invokes emotions and how well they are imbibed depends on the efficiency of the learning process and the permeability of the mind for the idea being learned and it is here where lies the key to effective communication; thus by belief that learning is centered around communication.

4. Ideation: This is the process of forming an idea/notion. These are also related to prior experience but manifest neither out of direct experience nor through secondary sources of information, rather these are synthesized out of either (or a combination of)
1. Instincts
2. Prior Experience
3. Learning

The manifestation of this factor involves higher degree of cognitive activity on part of the person since it requires extrapolating the available information or knowledge, possibly in combination with the prior experience, into making inferences on how things could or would be. Ideas formed are strongly influenced by the system of belief (or general outlook) of the person since ideation is purely synthetic and strongly rooted in the person’s psyche.

The act of reasoning will begin with the person identifying the parameters that have a say in the phenomenon – parameters that would ultimately decide the outcome. How successful the person will be in terms of identifying the set of parameters will depend on the volume of relevant Prior experience, learning and the cognitive capability of the individual.

This is the point I will begin to bring in another perspective to this model – it is worth noting that the identification of the parameters itself is based on the perception of the problem at hand – the phenomenon being perceived by the person(hereinafter referred to as the perceiver). Judging what parameters bear relevance to the phenomenon is in itself an act of perception and what assumptions are brought in again depends on how the Perceiver perceives/interprets/associates the prior experiences and learning in the current context.  

The above mentioned factors are kind of static in a way that their basis does not include the phenomenon rather it is in light of these factors that the phenomenon will be perceived.

The Dynamics: There are some factors that are dynamic i.e. their basis includes the phenomenon being perceived and these may even take their final form through a feedback mechanism and this is where the concept of expectation needs to be introduced.

Expectation I feel is a state that is favored by the perceiver, in other words it is a condition that the perceiver ‘expects’ to have once the phenomenon gets resolved/realized. There are two possibilities on the formation of an expectation – it may either have always existed or may get formed upon witnessing the phenomenon. In the former case it’s the association of an existing expectation to the phenomenon that will take place. The key aspect that needs to be understood at this point is that perception is a continuous process and the formation of an expectation itself depends on how the perceiver perceives the problem at hand. The final expectation that gets set may be a new one, an existing one or a variant of an existing expectation that has been altered to suit the situation and the problem at hand. It is critical to note that the formation of an expectation will not only depend on the phenomenon being witnessed but also depend on the existence of other expectations that the perceiver might have and more importantly on the fact that shaping of an expectation depends on lot many factors that the perceiver is considering at that point of time. These will include prior experience, learning and assumptions.

Another dynamic factor that plays a key role in the act of reasoning is Perceived Implication. These are the projected outcome(s) along various paths that may be taken. Where each path refers to a specific way/fashion in which the parameters may be applied or taken into consideration for arriving at a decision. Since the implications are inherently dependent on the phenomenon being witnessed and also are a factor taken into consideration in the formation of a perspective, they eventually form a feedback mechanism. The resolving of implications will involve all the factors discussed so far and itself. Thus Perceived Implications become the one aspect involved in reasoning that involves maximum cognitive effort.

Another factor that plays a crucial role in the formation of a perception is the Biasing Factor. These deceptively independent entities are transients that may dictate the state that the perceiver may assume and these factors that go into the way the perceiver forms the perspective. Biasing factors may manifest in the form of Emotions, Preconceived notions etc. The details on the formation and longevity of a biasing factor will be dealt with later on in this article.

The Perspective: In reality the act of perception is essentially the creation of a perceived model of a real world phenomenon being witnessed or analyzed and is what in common parlance known as “the way one looks at things” or simply as one’s “perspective”.

Now, how a perceiver perceives things or how a perspective gets set depends on the phenomenon itself and the expectation that has been formed. As an analogy, the setting of a perspective is like looking at the real world through a looking glass. How faithful an image of the subject the viewer gets depends on the neutrality of the looking glass and in this case the looking glass is the expectation and what might taint it is the degree of influence the biasing factors have on the perceiver.

OK there we have it, the stage is all set. We have the phenomenon, perceiver, desires, perceived implications and perspective - It’s Showtime.

How it all works: At the simplest level a phenomenon is witnessed by the perceiver, the perception is evaluated with reference to the relevant prior experience, learning and assumptions. The evaluation of the perception will involve the perceiver identifying the parameters that have a say in the final out come of the phenomenon. The perceiver attempts to understand how the parameters will influence and the degree of influence on the final outcome. The perceiver identifies/forms the expectation from the phenomenon and makes projections of the implications that will arise out of the realization of the proposition. Once this stage is done the perceiver will be left with a set of Projected Realities. In other words the perceiver will have a set of possible paths that can be taken for resolving the problem at hand and what it will involve to traverse these paths, also known at this point of time will be the perceived implications associated with each of the projected realities.

In the next level of reasoning each of these sets (Projected reality and associated implication) are gauged against the expectation to see if they align or not. This assessment will be a measure of the degree of deviation of the projected reality from the expectation - lesser the deviation, more favorable will be the path in question and thus higher the chances of the perceiver deciding upon the path. In addition to checking the degree of deviation of the projected reality from the expectation the perceiver will also weigh in the impact of perceived implications on relevant expectation. The impact of the perceived implication may either be favorable or unfavorable to expectation and the accrued effect of all the perceived implication will be taken into consideration for arriving at the final score of a particular path. Once perceiver has evaluated the scores for all the paths the decision is made in favor of the path with the maximum score.

Reality Check: Once the decision is made the focus now shifts back to reality. With the implementation of the decision in the real world the perceiver is now provided with the outcome of the decision in real. The perceiver perceives the resultant phenomenon and compares how the act of reasoning has fared against reality, how favorable the reality has indeed been to the expectation and how realistic the perceived implications have been.

So far the bases of Prior Experiences and learning have been Axiomatic at best and it is now that we need to ponder how these come into existence and take shape.

The points and degree of deviation of the resultant reality from the projected reality will cause the perceiver to reevaluate the reasoning strategy. The experience and learning will happen through the following means.

1. The way a set of parameters (composition of the projected reality that got realized) fare in the real world.
2. Miscalculation or missing out of any implications
3. Missing out of a valid parameter
4. Inclusion of an inappropriate parameter
5. Inappropriate weight assignment to any parameter
6. Biasing factors

The very act of the perceiver reevaluating the reasoning strategy will cause certain realization of the flaws in the model adopted and result in either the strengthening or weakening of the influence any biasing factors might have had on the perceiver - this is what manifests in the form of realization or creation/elimination of notions.

Immaterial of whether the decision was good or bad with reference to the expectation, the perceiver having gone through the exercise of reasoning and experiencing the real world impact will only stand to benefit since he/she has been rewarded with the knowledge if a path has either been “the way to go” or “best avoided”.

Of Confusion/Dilemma: As I had pointed out earlier the example considered was simple one and is indeed been a far cry from a real world scenario. The real world scenario would typically involve the existence of multiple perspectives and most difficult of all the existence of multiple Expectations and the absence of a decision path that can provide acceptable deviation from the primary expectations, or the existence of mutually exclusive realities (outcomes) neither of which can be compromised – this is the classic case of a dilemma.

Confusion would result from the perceiver being overwhelmed by the complexity of the phenomenon being witnessed and the inability to rationally evaluate the situation – too many options to choose from, existence of decision paths that have very similar score, vague information, and acute subjectivity are some of the factors that might lead to this situation.

Fuel Calorie Burn with Water

Proposition: Drinking water to burn calories.

Basis:

1. 1 calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1Degree Celsius.
2. Mammals maintain an almost constant core body temperature
3. Maintenance of body temperature is achieved through thermogenesis and the energy expended gets accounted under a person’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

So, if a person consumes 1 Liter of water maintained at room temperature (24 Deg Celsius) his/her body needs expend certain amount of energy to bring the temperature of the water to the level same as that of the core body temperature. The rationale behind this statement is that the water consumed by a mammal moves from the digestive tract and enters the blood stream. Since blood circulates throughout the body it has to have a temperature comparable to the core body temperature. The excess water will eventually be expelled from the body through urination but not before having attained the body’s temperature.

Math:

1. Total rise in temperature = 37 – 24 = 13 Deg Celsius
2. Total Quantity of water = 1 Liter (Approx 1000 Grams)

Therefore total amount of heat expended = 13 * 1 * 1000 = 13 K Cal

If the efficiency of human body in terms of oxidizing glucose to generate heat is taken into account then the total calories burnt becomes even more impressive.

Conclusion: If the above stated proposition is true then it is possible to burn calories just by consuming water, and the amount of calories consumed will be directly proportional to the difference in temperature of the water and that of the body.

Implication: Apropos to the 3^rd point mentioned under the basis section, it is implied that consumption of water (food) that is at a temperature lower the body’s own will bring about an increase in BMR. This validity of this statement is questionable as the increase in BMR is transient and may be (is) accounted by a mass that cannot be accounted as body’s own.