This week, me and Andrea were at Barcelona, visiting the town for a week and what impressed me the most was the Casa Batllo, a house designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. In my trips through Europe and elsewhere, I've seen several beautiful momuments and buildings, but this house had something more, it was not only beautiful, but also practical. All ornaments had not only its place in the house's sea world theme, but also its function in mainting either the rooms and halls illuminated, ventilated or something else.
This is exactly what research is all about: finding beautiful symmetries in theories that are also useful in, say, computer science. A theory that is only beautiful lacks the same as a theory that is useful but ugly. Gaudi, indeed, achieved perfection in his research field.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
It is a matter of respect!
One does not need to search too far to find stupidity and foolishness out there. I've already given some examples in previous posts such as religion and extreme nationalism, but many more can be found in the same category: obedience to any authority, like to the state, to your boss and even to your parents. All of these examples have a common factor: respect. For example, people respect their priest, without even questioning if the respect is truly deserved.
Deserved. That is the key word, when I think about respect. To obtain my respect, one must deserve it, by demonstrating that he/she has noble thoughts and more importantly that he/she acts accordingly to those thoughts. There is no such thing as respect your boss, or respect your priest, or respect your parents, or respect the elder, etc. This is simply brainwashing, as in religion, or, as brilliantly put by Baltasar Gracian in his book: The art of prudence; people are just being prudent. For example, it is probably most of the cases that a soldier shows "respect" to his/her superior, so that he/she does not suffer any consequences such as punishments, or maybe having his/her career progression blocked.
In any of these cases, namely of brainwashing or of prudence, the respect given is not really a truely deserved respect. In the former case, brainwashing a person to respect something or someone is not really making him/her to think that respect derives from a logical reasoning of the merits of the respected person or object, but only from an almost dogmatic perspective. In the latter case, respect derives not necessarily from merit of the respected, but from the utilitarism of the one that respects. So the next time someone tells you to respect someone else, ask him why should you do so.
Deserved. That is the key word, when I think about respect. To obtain my respect, one must deserve it, by demonstrating that he/she has noble thoughts and more importantly that he/she acts accordingly to those thoughts. There is no such thing as respect your boss, or respect your priest, or respect your parents, or respect the elder, etc. This is simply brainwashing, as in religion, or, as brilliantly put by Baltasar Gracian in his book: The art of prudence; people are just being prudent. For example, it is probably most of the cases that a soldier shows "respect" to his/her superior, so that he/she does not suffer any consequences such as punishments, or maybe having his/her career progression blocked.
In any of these cases, namely of brainwashing or of prudence, the respect given is not really a truely deserved respect. In the former case, brainwashing a person to respect something or someone is not really making him/her to think that respect derives from a logical reasoning of the merits of the respected person or object, but only from an almost dogmatic perspective. In the latter case, respect derives not necessarily from merit of the respected, but from the utilitarism of the one that respects. So the next time someone tells you to respect someone else, ask him why should you do so.
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