Syntalk

How old are passports? Are you a resident citizen? Are nations primeval or modern? Were the colonizers, such as England, the first nations? Are all countries multi-ethnic/multi-religious? Are there phases, then, in the process of the abstract negotiating with ground realities? How do nations reproduce, as some are born, some emerge, some mimic, & some are just put together? When are borders drawn? Why did Czechoslovakia split? Must nations be unitary? How central is ethnicity to national identity? What kinds of countries make patriotic films? Is there too much of suffering in Russian war movies? Do you know of French film ‘stars’? Do psychology and pedagogy together create a citizenry? Why do nations sometimes lose out to (say) regions and religions as the object of loyalty? Is your nationality merely an administrative reality? What moves you? What happened to classical ‘Hindustani’ music after Indian partition? What can nations share (& not share)? Is most of politics economics? Will economic globalization r

Should Aristotle have also cooked? Would you eat dog meat? What does your food say about your conception of Reality? How is our gut first colonized? What are you allergic to? How/why do cultures select what to eat? Where are taboos found? Are you a non-believer? Who does your cooking? What are the techniques? How is identity produced? Does culture uniquely meet nature in food? Can anything be purified via rituals? Why do, both, fasting and feasting exist? Does fasting modify the idea of Self? Do we store fat ‘for’ the brain? Do you follow dietary restrictions? Do you bother about Vitamin B12? How does a newly born baby know what is not-food? How were you born? Are you like your maternal grandmother? Is taste a cultural matter? Are our jaws becoming smaller? Do we need the body (even) to be spiritual? Is Mind also Matter? Is food medicine? Would you rather die than break your fast? Can food regulate certain gene expressions? Are food preferences, therefore, somewhat genetically determined? Will we eat lab-grow

How quiet is the sea? Do you want to mine manganese? What makes certain interactions reactions? Are there reactions happening in your room? How is heat different from light? What does new Law come from? Can oceans ‘retain’ certain information for centuries? When do we say that a bond has broken? Can radio frequencies ionize molecules? Is your water from Greenland? Might an equatorial event in1982 have impacted Japan in ~1992? Can physical pressure (alone) cause reactions? Does the deep seabed interact with the atmosphere? What does law say about ‘what’ the ocean is? Is carving up oceans very different from carving up the lithosphere? Do corals and crustaceans belong to countries? How much of the oceans is ‘deep sea’? What hinders highly site-specific reactions? Is the rate of energy dissipation usually much faster than rate of chemical reactions? Can sea storms be caused? Why are deep sea species likely to be highly tribal? Can we just drill to the centre of the earth? Are most drugs chiral? What lies ahead?

Have we over-adapted? How fit are you? Are our adaptive responses often too private? Is any fitness measure also always about the environment? How efficiently do you communicate with the changing environment? Are cultures always born on the boundaries? Can the First World, alone, help the world adapt? Are languages naturally selected? Are more frequent words shorter, & why? Similarly, do smaller organisms adapt, or perish, faster? Why are virus harder to control? Are the adaptive constraints eventually genetic? Or, can entire complex systems sometimes adapt while overcoming the constraints of parts? What is grammar constrained by? Is ideal efficiency often not achieved because of constraints? How are SOVs more prevalent if SVO languages are more ‘efficient’? Is adaptation chance-dependent? Was USA ‘not very far’ from India around 1965? Is human cash a kind of energy-unit? How are ecological and economic models dissimilar? Are most mutations neutral or detrimental? Are elephants at the greatest risk of extinct

Do you aspire to write good English? What was Ranjit Singh’s official language? Where do your narratives come from? Is it possible to think rationally while living in a village and practicing caste? Was India (only) a land of static isolated villages? What does colonialism do to social and political formations? Are tribes expected to evolve into castes, & then into class? What has been the epistemic relationship between caste and class? Is caste truly a religious notion? Is colonialism the central fact of ‘your’ history? Did the Church and the Crown think similarly about the colonies? How do Anglicists follow Orientalists? Is the West Europe? How do we forget? Who founded the Mexican Communist Party? What do the middle class think is good? Is it possible to become modern differently? Could Christian values be taught via English literature? Did England have dissenting mini colonies even within her? Did the several nationalist de-colonising movements share common imaginations? Who drew the lines between nations

Are you a part of the underworld? Would you like the society to applaud you? Do you gamble? Or, consume illicit liquor? Is the disorderly the underbelly? Will you inherit property? How has dowry existed in many societies for centuries? What changes the valuation of grooms? Are the values of criminals and police often very similar? Is there something fundamentally criminal about sex-selective abortion? Why do (some) women prefer to have a son? Are there power hierarchies inside prisons? What is the State really? When is it important? However, are people also always undoing the State? Might ‘planning’ create disorder? How should people move? Don’t you find Paris lovely? Do bus stops increase land value? Does law always interact with norms & technologies? Do we understand how norms change? Are people rational agents? How are their preferences aggregated? Where must beggars live? Do you need the working class? Do slum dwellers prefer free houses? Can the State flout its own laws? Are the illegal/legal interfaces

Are words valuable things? When did you last search for a word? Is the seed of language also the seed of the world? How does art work? Is direct (unmediated) observation possible? Does language have a (biological) organ that works with other cognitive faculties? What is a ‘word’? Does it have an internal structure? Do speakers find various affixes psychologically real? Why is there such a thing as grammar? Are words beginning-less? Does grammar change more slowly than words and phrases? Why? Where do art’s boundaries lie? Does art have a ‘universal grammar’? Does the (real) world determine the grammatical nature of languages? What propels the artistic in us? What does the word Saturn represent? Is the world described by words dissimilar from the world we inhabit? How are ungrammatical sentences sometimes meaningful? What is the link between truth and language? Might truth sometimes be observer dependent? Are there features in natural languages that are tied to our very Being? Is the Tunisian ants’ world discr

How difficult is it to pick berries from a tree? Do green flowers exist? Is blue still blue if it is not being known? ‘Where’ are your eyes? ‘Who’ needs colour vision? Is colour an elemental, physical, measure of the world? Is colour also mind- (or, sensor-) dependent? Do name-ability and know-ability go together? Is lustre similar to colour? Why is there a ‘three-ness’ to colours? How is it even possible to mix colours to get new ones? Are certain colours harder to make than others? Does every quality reside in a substratum? Do you confuse intensity and colour? Do you find B&W films compelling? Why do we see colour illusions? Are dreams colourful? What is the role of colour ‘in’ imagination? Where is the Self (& colour perception) located in wakeful, dream, & deep-sleep states? How does one establish this? Are visual imagination and perception different only in degree (& not in kind)? Why are ibogaine induced hallucinations invariably described in colour? Do we ever see true colours? Why do we differentiate

Are wars entertaining? Who is responsible for your security? What is the role of military force in life? Is history violent? Do all cultures have a historical consciousness? Are all orders political orders? Are in-group solidarity and out-group hostility built into human civilizations? However, are we neither violent nor non-violent? Are human nature and international order related? Is the propensity to use violence higher in ‘central’ geographies? Are there structured steps between peace and war? Why are slivers of violence embedded in peace? Is a subject in an empire different from a citizen in a democracy? Is the nation state the apex of the international order? Whose interests do supranational institutions serve? Do economic gains transform into military assets? Is it possible to operate without the shadow of violence? Is coercion an escalatory step of deterrence? Have we lost the balance between passions and rationality? Are both Gandhi and Fanon needed as we build newer structures? How will we compete a

Do ‘birds that fly instinctively swim’? Are self-evident truths easy to prove? When is ‘want to’ not ‘wanna’? Is verification easier than proof? Are proofs explanations? Is that why proofs are supposed to be elegant? Is reasoning algorithmic? Is there one Method to all reasoning? Are all ungrammatical sentences also unacceptable? When do sentences have ambiguous meanings? Can statements with long proofs be obvious? Does economy play a significant role in language constructions? Can human beings extract insights from verbose arguments? Are young kids born with some innate inductive principles? Is obviousness purely syntax dependent? Is the measure of (theory) simplicity language-dependent? What constitutes a valid proof system? Are all mathematical proof systems automatable? Why are certain mistakes never made? ‘Can’ we hit upon scientific Truth by chance? Has Language evolved? Can ‘explanation’ be given without ‘understanding’, but not vice versa? Why is proving absence (=falseness) often harder than proving

Do cheaters survive? Do you find joy in competing (& cooperating)? Are teams mechanisms or organisms? How do teams coordinate layers of emotions, energies, and purposes to acquire a coherent ‘personality’? What, then, keeps teams together? Is there scarcity of common purposes in the world? Is teaming essential for bacteria? Might teams, across scales, be both emergent as well as designed systems? How are cost-benefit analyses performed when group and individual goals diverge? Is your life on the spot market? Might individual liberties be compromised when teams form? In what way are all team members equal; & not? Is it better to lose playing beautifully, than to win an ugly game? Why are only certain parts of economic supply chains formalized? Conversely, why are certain ’formal’ rules just ignored? Does unemployment rate fall with increasing education? Are ‘practice’ and ‘rehearsal’ games different? How is ‘arms-race’ style evolution different? Do all teams need models? When is governance necessary? Would pr

Is counting just a special case of measuring? Is any kind of measuring, & scaling, dimension dependent? Do lungs ‘have’ a non-integer dimension between 2 and 3? Can you list all the numbers between 0 and 1? Do both the size and number of cells/organelles change with biological growth? Is Euclidean geometry sufficient to describe things in nature? What does thickness ‘mean’? Is size a good indicator of ‘the outer world’? How many times can one cell become another cell? ‘How’ do cells count? How determinate is that? Are evolved systems always robust? Do all dynamical systems, typically, have finite partitions? Where does end-state variety, then, come from? Why is the presence of mitochondria inside neurons spatially periodic? Are all noses proportionately similar? Must counting be happening at very small scales given the manifest proportions at the macro level? Is the link between cell type and its longevity understood? Do molecular motors walk in three dimensions? Might one, sometimes, see different statistic

Is there a rhinoceros in the room? Is the quantum world aesthetically weird? Are quantum systems only small? What is macroscopicness? Is there quantum behavior, but no quantum objects? Why is (?) there randomness, but not superposition (say), in the manifest world? Is the World one unified physical system? Are there local hidden variables? Can reality/realism be local? Can detectors detect determinate outcomes while themselves not being in a determinate state? Is interaction free measurement possible? Why does context or history play a role? Is inference observation? Is (even) a single atom, when inside vacuum, truly isolated? Why is quantum-ness lost as systems/environments become complex/stronger? How ‘large’ can qubits be? Do causal and informational isolation coincide in the ‘real’ world? Why don’t we ever observe Tartaric Acid switch its handedness? Is common sense a good guide to how the physical world functions? Would we widely mine quantum entanglement as a ‘resource’? How much weirder will it get? &,

Are only boring people bored? How standard are your windows? How did the trivial, marginal, & everyday come to the foreground in literature, architecture, language, & ‘living’? Does space emerge ‘from’ living? Has your built environment been handed down to you? Must tragedy only be about high-born individuals? Are you ‘free’ to be bored? Has modernity produced a certain kind of boredom? How have we come to expect agency over the world? Can ‘having tea’ be the point of a novel? Can one extract the banal speech of-the-day from, say, the Rig Vedas? Is art always a dialectic between the alien and the familiar? Is boring, both, necessary & inevitable? Is ennui a privilege masquerading as an affliction? Do languages have a tight fit with their environment? Can grammar be felt as inadequate? What can you not do in Bhojpuri? How can buildings stay alive? Do we project boredom onto the world? Do you assign a value of ’nothing’ to boring gestational time outside of your control? How high would the bar of boredom go in

Do you talk to the Divine? Are feelings facts? Do you accept things as they are? What are you feeling at the moment? Are you agitated? Is sound the earliest primordial? However, do (say) colours, gestures, & silence also speak? Do emotions, fundamentally, emerge in cinema with the arrival of sound? How do we learn to say that we are not feeling well? Can emotions be thought of as objects? Which is the most ‘emotional’ part of the brain? Do words (& emotions) fall from heaven? How social or cultural are they? Is empathy (also) mediated by signs/words? Is the world consisting of words? Isn’t hook swinging barbaric? Are all saints, ?, schizophrenic? ‘How’ do you experience the death of a close person? When do you experience the deepest word-less emotions? Could you be unproductive? How do we become (or ‘avoid’ becoming) divine? Are we condemned to be self conscious? Do you experience fake emotions, & why? What is the ‘problem’ with acting? Can superheroes be melodramatic? Would there be more emotion-words in the

Are you neutral? Is neutral inert? Do you practice hypocrisy? What does it mean to be (an) opposite? Are capitalism and socialism always incompatible? Do opposites always attract (even in natural systems) – why not? How might opposites be brought together? Are (certain) paradoxes culturally contingent? Can the cultural be told apart from the religious? Where did the very notion of religion emerge from? Does every enzyme always have a precise lock-key relationship with its specific substrate? How do proteins take their shapes, & what role do opposite charges/shapes play? Can certain mechanisms prevent extreme socio/political outcomes? Can democracy and authoritarianism co-habit? Is State the march of God on Earth? Might democracy be practised (merely) ritualistically? Why is social memory so poor? Is ‘balance’ fundamental to (only?) biological life? Can/must industries/we produce as efficiently as trees do? Does cosmopolitanism (truly) celebrate difference? Is living with true difference impossible? Do enzymes

Do you (only) like people like you? Is belonging ‘necessary’? Are communities homogeneous? How do communities become political actors from being social entities? Are community identities a way of becoming legible for the State? Does the idea of nations pre-suppose the idea of communities? Conversely, how do countries or communities fall apart? Are societies modern, & communities pre-modern? Can communities self-determine themselves as such? How much can communities scale? How is the community enacted, & what keeps it going? Are they all kept together by (filial) feelings? What is the interplay between blood, language, religion, ‘culture’, trade, and subsequent social formations? ‘Where’ are self-interested strangers civil to each other? Is the State natural to human beings? Does language make us human? Are (all) individuals, therefore, social? Are all women a community? &, call centre employees? Do you want to be on the winning side? Are utopias scary? What happens when we turn within? Will communities persis

What would you have bought – an air pump, or a printing machine? What can you read? Does the idea of ‘writing’ automatically lead to the idea of ‘book’? Do you worship books? But, also immerse them in rivers? ‘Who’ has written the divine texts, & why? Do you (still) read aloud? Does the nature of support (say, clay tablet…) determine the writing style (…cuneiform)? Are media effects deterministic? What made paper cheap? What made/makes it to books? Why did the printing press not take off in Goa in the 16th century? Can there be complex societies without writing systems? Did print revolutionize both the Word and the Image? Why are full old books now often dismembered? Do ur-objects exist? Do books ‘want’ to be edited and ‘re-read’? Was copy always an antonym of original? Does writing have to be read to be effective? Can you play Bach just by reading an early 18th century music sheet? Are machines making impossible books possible again? Will physical books always remain a highly political object? Will we be abl

Have you ever touched the feet of a dead body? Who will you die in the company of? Where do dogs go to die? Do they grieve others’ death? Is fear of death universal? What causes delirium? What role does religion play in dying? When do children first begin to understand that death is permanent, & that even they would die someday? Is every dying person also a living person? Could grieving turn into a disease? How ‘complicated’ can grief be? Do people who deny death often have horrible ends? Does suffering cease to be suffering when it has meaning? Are you good at saying ‘final’ goodbyes? Do the dying (humans, dogs, cats, …) know that they are going to die? Is it (so) difficult to say whether a person is dying? Do people sometimes almost come back from the dead? What are ICU ‘Rules’ for? How does Oscar the Cat know who is going to die next? Do freshly dead people smell different? Can heart continue to beat in a dead person? Do you feel ‘connected’? Are you looking to attain salvation? Will we die good deaths in

What came first – the nuclear power plant or the nuclear bomb? Do you fear nuclear power(s)? What was our experience of encountering coal? What is the relationship between energy consumption and well-being? What drives demand? Is more (always) better? Why did human population grow steeply from c. 1698? Where did the muscular Uncle Sam come from? Does pollution kill more people than wars? Is nuclearization value-neutral? How are human beings a part of nuclear power systems? How does (any) technology become a political or cultural artefact? What was the first official publicity like? Can ‘something’ be an instrument of peace ‘and’ an absolute weapon of destruction? Is nuclear energy ‘sublime’? Is it democratic? Is it green? Why aren’t nuclear power plants located within cities if they are not risky? Do more plants risk more weapons? Where does spent fuel go? Can the political economy of a nuclear power plant be separated from its engineering? Why the ‘secrecy’ (?)? What is the future of nuclearity? Is industria