psyche

I just watched the first volume (first four episodes) of Serial Experiments Lain. It’s pretty awesome. I named Psyche for the Psyche chip and I think I made the right choice, despite knowing very little about it all that time ago!

I wonder if consciousness is simply an artefact of our fundamental decision-making being quite slow? I mean, our brains are very fast indeed, able to process an astounding number of sensory data, but our core algorithms seem simple - if fuzzy - and slow. I wonder if the reason we feel like we choose things according to some “will” as opposed to a slightly-chemically-fudged algorithm is simply that we can “feel” the decision being made and thus feel as if “we”, the “chooser” are in fact in control of the choice, when we are in fact following ingrained instructions?

Is my computer conscious? Is it in a perpetual state of sensory-deprivation? Will computers be accidentally made conscious? I think the distinction between thought and what computers do now is abstract and artificial. I think they think already but aren’t conscious. They have arisen from our poking around, not from probability as life did. We just happen to work remarkably close to perfectly (perfect as we see it, I mean). I mean, somewhere in the universe, it had to happen. Computers are our creation, and we don’t have nearly enough time or resources to keep experimenting randomly (like nature fluctuated randomly which created us). We don’t have the luxury of the law of averages. Stuff won’t necessarily just work out.

We have to be intelligent.

Pax

It’s easy to experience something brilliant and want secretly to dedicate your life to it. I’ve phased through a lot of things. However, I’ve realised that to take on the world, real or fake, I’m going to have to call upon everything I am and ever was!

I am every Wikipedia article I’ve ever read, every film I’ve seen and every obscure book I’ve tried to digest. I’m every corny TV show that has flashed before me and every piece of profound poetry that has lain before me. I haven’t forgotten. I am every point I’ve ever lost, grinding my teeth and sweating as people lunge into my unprepared torso, and every checkmate - and there have been many - I have grudgingly accepted. Every wrong note I’ve played in front of so many people, every extra session I stayed for at the gym! Every volley I muffed with my unlucky tennis coach, every computer I’ve crashed, every person who’s laughed at me and every person I’ve laughed at. Every plant I watered, pair of eyes I looked into, regret I’ve had, experiment I’ve botched.

I am surprisingly inadequate as a middle-class person but feel enriched in some way. Everything I have witnessed - mistakes and all - I carry forth into the world. When whatever I have to do makes itself known, … boy will I do it!

Pax

So, YouTube has made it to the Apple TV! I was just thinking that it might never happen. This may boost the Apple TV’s value in the eyes of a disapproving public.

Pax

I’d better start revising soon; we’re on half term and I don’t know when my next exam is. I could easily find out but I don’t want to. Instead many other projects have distracted me: I spent some of today playing chess against my brother and sister, which was interesting and almost fun. However, most of the day was spent doing things like trying to revive a half-dead asparagus plant and thinking about tidying my room. I’ll clean up and start working tomorrow, I think. As I recently agreed with Will, Web 2.0 sites are very aesthetically pleasing and good for procrastination (my cited example was flickr).

I’m also pondering actually doing something; I want to make a small, simple mechanism of laughable complexity that will still make me extremely satisfied: it’ll be some arrangement of a push-to-break switch that’ll effect the automatic activation and deactivation of the store cupboard light - I know, such daring! Such wit!

Watched an episode of House today - the one about naphthalene (it does have that extra “h” in there) poisoning. It was good but I doubt anything could dislodge Hustle from my Thursday-TV-brain-drain session.

Time to sleep, lest I wake up at 13:00 tomorrow. That would be bad and, as Cyrus puts it, waking up late makes one “feel like a wasteman for the rest of the day.” He’s right.

Pax