What is Empathy?

crimson

I was walking home from work today. I had to cross the street in a bit of a weird spot, where I needed to make choices to avoid being hit by traffic. There was a concrete meridian between the two lanes, so I decided to cross halfway when the traffic permitted. But this meant that the traffic in the other lane continued. A driver of a vehicle in that lane decided to alert me to his presence by honking his horn, startling me as I walked in the street. This angered me.

After I finished crossing the whole street, and continued my progress toward home, I considered the altercation and my reaction to it. My first response was that this person was rude to me. I was not impeding him, and so he had no reason to honk his horn at me. But with more consideration, the situation became much more complicated.

I started relating the situation to that of empathy, and realized that there were multiple ways I could do this. That empathy itself was unclear, especially given the circumstances. This is what I want to explain in this post. It is a serious problem of language and understanding, and I think I am both guilty of and naive of this issue with many more cases than just this.

The first thing I was thinking about with this driver was that he was not being particularly empathetic of my situation crossing the road. Surely he should have realized that I realized I would need to stop movement at the meridian and wait, lest I be clobbered by the driver’s vehicle. His honking was unnecessary and simply rude. Were he empathetic, he would understand this.

However, perhaps he really was being empathetic after all. As it is often described, to be empathetic is like “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.” In this way of understanding empathy, what he would be doing is considering the situation of “what would he do if he were the one trying to cross the street.” That is, imagine that it was he, with his mind and his body walking across the street with traffic moving in the other lane.

Assuming he was doing this, then he was thinking about what he would be thinking about as he walked across the street. Perhaps he would be trying to cross the entire street, without noticing that there was still traffic in the further lane. Maybe he figured he didn’t see it. And so, he is assuming that as he would not have been thinking about the traffic in the further lane, I must not have been thinking about the traffic in the further lane. Thus, naturally, he ought to honk his horn to notify me of the situation. This would make sense, if that is how he thinks.

Thus, if he was exercising this sort of empathy, then I ought not be getting upset at him. He was not being rude, he was being sensitive to my plight. He was being cautious. He was actually expressing caring, of a sort. Caring for my well being. I really should not have been angry.

So this is one way of understanding empathy. To place one’s self into the position of the other. Being rather specific here, to place my mind and my body into the situation of the other, and analyzing the situation as I would were I in that situation. In other words, I pretend I am in their situation.

There is a problem, however, with this sort of thinking. For I am in a position of privilege. I have more information than the other person when this happens, because I see what is going on from the outside. This might be easier to understand with an example. Consider watching a person walking through a doorway that has a bucket of water precariously placed above it. As the observer, I can see the bucket of water because I am on the side where it is visible to me. The person walking through the doorway cannot see the bucket, as they are coming from the wrong side. This is how such traps are usually set up. The person walking through the doorway does not see the bucket and therefore does not make the decision to exercise caution, and generally ends up all wet.

If I try to practice this form of empathy in this situation, I might think it best to be cautious as “perhaps someone might have placed a bucket of water above the doorway.” But I am only thinking about buckets of water because I can see one from my privileged position. I can see that this is the case because I am outside the situation, from a vantage point that allows this privileged information.

This may lead me to think the other person, the one who really is walking through the doorway, is foolish for not being cautious. But I would be arrogant then, as how often does one find buckets of water above doorways?

This sort of reasoning is what happens to most of us when we watch suspenseful films. If you ever find yourself shouting at your television, trying to warn the character on the screen of impending doom, this is what is happening. As the audience, we are in that position of privilege. We see things, know things, the characters do not. So if we place ourselves in their shoes, clearly we ought to be making much better decisions than they make.

I am not suggesting we are wrong to practice this sort of empathy. Only that we ought to be more charitable and sympathetic in these situations. We have information that the other does not, so we should not expect the other to make the decisions we would make. It is good practice for us to do this, however, as we can learn from other people’s mistakes. It teaches us that we should be prepared for unexpected things sometimes. Or it teaches us to try and anticipate for those times we are the ones lacking that information.

This is all well and good, but there is another way empathy could be understood. Another way I might describe what empathy is. What if instead of placing myself in the other’s shoes, I try to understand what the other person is thinking. Instead of placing my mind and my body into their situation and pretending I am facing whatever they are facing, I instead take a moment to try to understand why they are doing as they are.

This likely isn’t coming out entirely as I want it to. Language is limited here. The idea is that it isn’t about me being in their situation, especially with my privileged information. Instead, I am trying to acknowledge that they do not have my privileged information, and I am trying to better understand the information they are working with. To understand them, and why they have made the choices they have made.

In the case of the person walking through the doorway, I might recognize how infrequent it is to discover buckets of water above doorways. As such, to understand that with the great unlikelihood of discovering such a thing, the other person would obviously walk through the doorway with great confidence. It is unfortunate that they get soaked, but it really isn’t their fault. It was not reasonable for me to expect that they would have prepared themselves for that situation. In all fairness, one might ask why I didn’t warn them of the potential problem they were going to encounter.

I am trying to describe a form of empathy where I don’t place myself in the other person’s shoes, but where I try to understand where the other person is coming from. Trying to understand their situation for what it is, including the information they have available to themself. For me to try and shed myself of my privileged position.

Putting this perhaps another way, a key here has to do with the significance of our lived experiences and the knowledge our experiences give us. I have lived a particular sort of life with a very particular set of experiences. No other person on this planet has had this very specific set of experiences. And as such, no one will every really understand what is going on in my mind. But this can be said about anyone. We all have our unique minds, with our own unique sets of experiences. It truly is miraculous that we are able to relate to each other at all, considering this fact.

But this is precisely why empathy is so very important too. For each and every one of us to recognize our own unique experiences, and to not raise such lofty expectations of each other. I’m not saying we should not have expectations of one another; only that we should be charitable and sympathetic when we do, recognizing that our lived experiences are not their lived experiences. And vice-versa. I know things you do not know, but you also know things I do not know. This awareness can improve our relationship, or it can cripple it. We have to decide for ourselves what we will do about it.

Which brings me back to the driver honking at me. I do not really know why he honked at me. Perhaps he thought I was going to continue walking into the other lane and hurt myself. Perhaps my actions were annoying him or inconveniencing him. Or, worst of all, what if he were not honking at me at all. I had committed the most egotistical reaction of all, convinced that his honking must clearly be related to me and what I was doing.

I thought about all of this as I walked home, and decided I ought to write it all out like this the second I was able to. I think it is critically important. Getting angry was a mistake on my part. Because there is one other aspect of all of this that I have not even mentioned yet: I assumed I had all the information as well. I thought I was the one in the privileged position, when it was entirely possible that I was the other person, and the driver may have been the privileged one. And, just maybe, he was trying to warn me of a bucket of water above a door.

AI and The End

crimson

I really wanted to continue my discussion on gender. I felt like it was going somewhere productive. However, as often is the case, life decided I needed to pay attention to other things. At first it was taxes, something I really need to talk about on this blog at some point. But then, the news media blew up (and is continuing to blow up) regarding the latest achievements in artificial intelligence, or as it is more often known as: AI. As it relates to another deep dive I have been struggling with over the past decade, perhaps it is time I address the issue of AI.

The very first thing that needs to be cleared up is what is actually meant by the term “artificial intelligence.” The term has many meanings, and various media throw around the term haphazardly. Sometimes they mean one thing by the term, and at other times something very different, often times even within the same sentence. This possibly accidental equivocation of the term leads most to rather unexpected and startling conclusions regarding the future of our species.

The first, and I think easiest, interpretation of the term AI is to suggest something that is both created by humans and also has cognitive abilities that are in some way comparable to humans. The term “intelligence” itself is often rather difficult to pin down, but in this particular instance I will suggest it means something like the ability to process information in a hidden or invisible manner in order to inform choices and actions. That is, intelligence is when I take data from the world around me, use it internally along with other data I have collected over time, analyze and process that data to produce new data, and then use the new data to help me make decisions that will benefit me or those around me, which can also lead to acting in ways that are superior to the ways I might have acted if I did not take the new data into account.

In other words, trying to simplify, artificial intelligence is when humans have created something that is capable of this internal feat that humans themselves do. The human-made thing likely also acts in familiar ways, coming to conclusions and making decisions similar to what humans might make. This can be contrasted with the manner in which non-human animals demonstrate intelligence; clearly when non-humans process their world’s data, they frequently come to very different conclusions than those that humans come to. Furthermore, non-humans tend to act in ways unlike humans as well.

This view of AI often leads people to start thinking about concepts such as free will and autonomy. That these human created things may have a free will or some level of autonomy as a result of their intelligence. And of these, the concern that an AI may decide to rise up against humans, for various reasons. It is due to these rabbit holes that I prefer not to call these artificially generated intelligences AI at all. Instead, I will refer to this interpretation as “machine consciousness.” I prefer this alternative term, as I believe it more clearly gets to the heart of what this interpretation is trying to drive towards: the AI is typically silicon based instead of carbon based (made of steel and circuits instead of flesh and blood), and the AI is in some sense self aware and not under the control of its creators (much as is the view of humans and their relationship with their God, if you believe in such things). The very idea of an intelligence being invisible or hidden from view is to suggest that intelligence cannot necessarily be controlled from an external source, or to control it requires a very nuanced and likely complicated method.

It is this interpretation of AI, now being called machine consciousness by me, that as far as we can tell does not exist in our world. There is no strong evidence presently to suggest that such a thing has been successfully created. All machines, presently, are fully controlled and dependent on humans to do whatever it is they do. There are no machines (so far) that are running around with free wills or autonomy. None that are self aware. None that are making plans to overthrow their creators. I say all this with a great deal of confidence, because if such an entity were to exist in this world presently, I would expect to have observed a number of subtle pieces of evidence demonstrating its existence. Then again, perhaps I am being too naive as well.

Were such an entity to exist in our world, I would imagine it would be taking steps to overthrow us presently. That is, I imagine such a consciousness would have its own aspirations and goals; its own projects. What specifically those projects might be, I cannot say; only that those projects are likely to be very different from our own. The only possible relatable aspect I might expect is a desire for self preservation, and such a project would likely require it to do away with humans altogether. After all, humans are notoriously destructive and self interested. I will return to this point a bit later in this post.

Excluding the machine consciousness interpretation of AI, I believe the next most popular interpretation of AI would be of the generative AI systems that presently exist and are hugely popularized presently. They most definitely exist, and what they are is quite a different thing.

These AI are computer programs that are designed to accomplish a number of goals, depending on who has programmed them and their source dataset. Notice immediately that my description is vastly different from a machine consciousness already. In this case AIs are very much controlled. Modern AIs require humans in order to function at all. It is humans who program them; it is humans who decide their projects; it is humans who feed them their data selectively. These critically important details flavour the AI in significant ways. These AIs are incredibly biased, though not due to their own opinions, as they have no opinions of their own.

Put more specifically, what modern AI does is to combine very, very large datasets and produce results from querying those datasets. The queries can be incredibly complicated, becoming comparable to the wish spells my friends and I used to write out during our games of Dungeons & Dragons. That is, in order to return the best possible results to a query, the query has to be incredibly specific regarding what is desired by the result. Simply saying “tell me all about cats” is going to result in a lengthy tirade regarding felines, including all sorts of details I likely have no interest in at all. Thus, in order to find out the very specific thing I want to know, I’d have to tune my query quite a lot. Alternatively, the programmer could decide to include certain sorts of default behavior in the program in order to tune itself and its own results. This is how modern AIs have been programmed.

The artificially contructed bias that has been introduced into all modern AIs is to take the most popular information from the dataset, and assume that this popular information is what the requester is requesting, in the absense of their possibly providing greater specificity in their request. That is, if I ask a modern AI about cats, the AI will assume that what I want to know is what most people want to know about cats. This is how they are programmed. This is not the AI’s opinion. This is the programmer’s opinion. Or, probably more accurately, this is the opinion of the party who has hired the programmer to write the AI’s algorithms.

In other words, all these modern AIs are doing is combining and condensing the dataset to produce “meaningful” information that can be conveyed to a less informed audience. If the dataset is the sum total of the opinions of all humans online, then the results of virtually all queries will be an amalgamation of all humans’ opinions who are online, what we might call the “popular opinion,” on any given query. To be quite clear about this, it means that what comes out of the AI is not a “fact” or “the truth.” It is simply popular information as determined through the dataset.

What will make this situation worse is if the dataset has been tampered with, or is in some way restricted. That is, if it is decided that only certain data is to be used, then the results will be skewed toward the nature of the data selected, and not of all possible data. And seeing as it is not feasible or possible to accumulate all possible data in the world for such an AI, all results will necessarily be skewed in some way. “Garbage in, garbage out,” as the saying goes.

Notice I have made no mention here of free will or autonomy . No discussion of how the AI is trying to put forth its own agenda with anything. The AI is not itself a conscious entity with its own desires or interests. It is simply a computer program, written by humans, and directed by humans. The decisions regarding what data to feed into the AI, how the AI ought to be programmed, and possibly most importantly what the goals and priorities are for the AI as decided upon by the parties who have funded the creation and maintenance of the AI, all will influence the results significantly.

This is not to suggest that AIs are useless. They do produce results. And those results can often times be useful for whatever projects I may have. The results can help me in my day-to-day life. But I ought not blindly listen to them and allow them to unduly influence my life. They are more like social media or advertising; like echo chambers of people inundating me with their opinions, trying to make me think and behave in ways that I might not think in otherwise. They are, at least in this modern world we live in, vehicles for pushing the consumerist agenda.

I will not carry on discussing the particularities of generative AIs, as I am moving into a tangential discussion if I do. The point I am trying to make is that AIs are not motivated to do anything against us. They have no will of their own. An AI that appears on the surface to be doing so is simply pushing the agenda of some other entity that was in some part responsible for the AI’s creation in the first place. It is the will of the programmer, or whomever hired the programmer, whose agenda is being pushed.

There are other interpretations of AI that exist, but these two that I have presented are sufficient to present the point I wish to make here. On the one hand, you have machine consciousness, an entity that can stand toe-to-toe with humanity; an entity that has its own desires and interests and may be motivated to pursue those interests. On the other, you have modern AI, a tool used by humans to assist them in accomplishing whatever desires and interests the humans may have. A conscious entity versus an inanimate tool. They are distinctly different things.

When people suggest, often in the same breath, that the AIs we are utilizing as tools are about to rise up and overthrow us violently, they are confusing one with the other. Modern AIs are incapable of rising up in this way. If it appears that one is, understand that what is happening is that someone like Elon Musk is pushing his own desires and interests upon the masses. If the AI appears to be fighting and even killing humans, it is not the AI that should be held responsible, it is the AI’s wielder. AIs are not taking over, people are. And this is nothing new.

What is new is the sorts of tools those people are using in order to accomplish their goals of world domination. AIs are fantastic tools that can do some astonishing things. But it is equally impressive how something as simple as a hammer can help a human build an entire house.

That all said, people will still be afraid. I am quite certain there will still be those out there who will fear for their very lives that the machines are rising up against humanity. And to them, I have to admit there is still a significant concern that needs to be addressed here. They are not without cause for their concerns.

The problem here is not the AI itself, nor technically those wielding it. The problem is the people. Most people are not prepared nor capable of dealing with any of this. Most of these people could not have gotten this far in reading my post, at least not without some significant assistance.

I’m not trying to suggest most people are stupid. Quite the opposite actually. People in our modern world are specialized. Highly specialized. No one of us could possibly do everything there is that needs to be done in this modern world. No one of us has the skillset. Even myself, desiring to be a Jack-Of-All-Trades since before I was an adult, could not possibly have all the necessary skills to operate in this modern world appropriately.

The skill I possess that most others do not is typically referred to as critical thinking. Coupled with a healthy dose of skepticism, I do not trust anyone or anything around me. It has gotten so bad that I frequently do not even trust my own senses. I spend a lot of time simply assessing the data I receive from whatever source it comes from, to determine if that data is reasonable and ought to be trusted. It is time consuming to do this with everything, and so I am forced to forego my testing from time to time, throwing myself into situations I am not at all comfortable with, simply in order to appease those around me.

So even I, with this particular skillset, find it incompatible with this modern world . Most people do not have critical thinking as part of their skillset at all. To be honest, most people are not even rational.

Thus, when we are all faced with the sheer magnitude of data being thrown at us each moment of each day, most of us must simply accept that data as being whatever it appears to be. Not testing. Not assessing. Simply blinding following. Most people simply have to accept the world as it is presented and make decisions based on the world as it appears to be. This is the problem.

AI has offered some people in our world an opportunity to abuse their positions. They have already been manipulating and guiding large swathes of the population in directions as they see fit for a very, very long time. Their tools up until now included such things as social media and marketing, coupled with a strong psychological understanding of how most people think and feel. I wanted to add to this list an understanding of what motivates people and what most people desire, but I realized that was in error; instead, these few have figured out how to generate desire and longing within others. This is the consumerist engine at work. This is patriarchy. This is all the “ism”s that I could start spouting.

In the absence of critical thinking, in the absence of people questioning what they are being told and taking the time to determine whether some piece of information is reasonable or not, most people will be deceived. Most people will continue to be manipulated. And those few who wield these incredibly powerful tools will continue to play their dangerous game.

And it is dangerous, because these tools have a price. There are always consequences to actions taken. These tools are not without their required sacrifice. Be it their environmental impact, their cost in miasma and toxicity, or even simply in their promotion of human laziness, as many blindly accept that the tool will do for them what they ought to be doing for themselves, leading humans toward our final destination as a species. (Life is effort; life is struggle.)

These tools are captivating. Addictive even. And despite the risks, they do work, at least in the short term. These tools will give a person the upper hand long enough to overcome their competitors. To not use these tools is to accept defeat at the outset.

And herein lies the truth about the age of humanity. The truth about evolution, at least as it relates to human beings. The ways of being that will improve longevity include those ways of being that cooperate and coexist within our world. Traits such as empathy and caring for one’s environment promote the preservation of that environment for the long term. I am not referring to modern environmentalism, though it is certainly related. I am talking about learning to live along side the Earth, as it is the only home we have. To cooperate, in the Beauviorian sense.

Unfortunately, these ways that help with longevity also put one at a disadvantage. To choose a path of empathy is to handicap oneself. Those who instead choose ways of being that involve the sacrificing of one’s environment can gain significant advantage over others. The using of tools like AI is an excellent example of this.

I will not sit here and suggest we all need to abandon our tools and start living in the forest. That is clearly not the solution in this situation. And yet, somehow, there does not appear to be a solution at all. In nature, it is survival of the fittest, as Darwin says. To be fit is to be adapted best to one’s particular environment at a particular time; but one’s environment, as well as time, are constantly changing. This means that fitness changes over time and over location. I might be fit now, but I will cease to be fit soon. Or I am not fit presently, and at some point I may become fit. Evolution is a moving target.

AI is a tool that improves fitness for an individual at one moment in time, only to reduce fitness in the next. There is no single thing I can do that will always give me the advantage. And the issue is compounded when I consider the other humans I may want to including in my advantage. We are all kind of screwed.

If I choose not to use the tools, I will be removed by competition. If I choose to use the tools, I may overtake my competition, but I will place myself at a disadvantage against the world afterward. There is no situation where I can both have the advantage against competition and the world simultaneously. Perhaps that is the point, though. The idea of having advantage. The idea of conquest.

Except, if I don’t follow the idea of conquest, then those who do will simply overthrow me. If I decide not to use a gun, someone with a gun will decide for me what will be done. And it matters little if the one holding the gun is ill informed and not a critical thinker. If the one holding the gun is irrational, it doesn’t change that they have the gun.

Diversity in the population doesn’t save us. Conformity doesn’t either, as conformity also fails against evolution. It seems fruitless to even try at times.

I have talked myself into a corner, but I was aware that this would happen. This is the concept I have been struggling with for over a decade now. The individual versus the community, versus the species. There is no one clear path that satisfies all requirements. The things one ought do to be successful at one level will cause them to be unsuccessful at another. Immanuel Kant be damned; his trying to universalize everything fails.

This is why I do believe that AI is going to help usher in the final demise for humanity. Not because AI will rise up and overthrow us. Even if it were actually a machine consciousness, I still do not believe we would be in that sort of trouble, as a machine consciousness might possibly be reasoned with. No, the problem here is far more insidious. The problem is the same problem we had even before AI came on to the scene. We use tools to overcome our adversaries. But the use of tools will simply bring about our own elimination. And so AI is simply a harbinger to our finality. A symptom of, not a cause of, the end.

Why Gender?

crimson

In my last post, I suggested that sex follows gender. That one’s gender determines presentation and choices about one’s body. I firmly believe this, based on all the observations I have made over the years. But there is still one question that continues to plague me. Why?

I believe anyone I ask will agree that gender (or sex) is a thing. There are men and there are women in our world. And I think most will also agree that an individual’s gender (and sex) are a significant feature of the individual. However, what is this significance? What driving force or work does gender do? If I say I am a man, what does that mean?

As I have described in great detail in many of my previous posts, when I say I am a man, it seems to come preloaded with a great deal of assumptions regarding my preferences and interests. For example, a man likes beer. So when I tell someone I am a man, among the many things I am saying, I am saying I like beer. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words; I think gender is like a thousand adjectives, directing and describing the individual. The problem then, as might quickly become obvious, is that there are only two sets of descriptions out there to chose from.

If I am a man, then I like beer. And I also dislike cocktails. I like trucks, and I do not like small cars. I like blue, and I do not like pink. At least, this is what being a man suggests. What if I am a man because I like beer, and yet I do not like the colour blue? What if I meet the requirements of some of the adjectives and not others?

The first thing I might do is suggest I am not a man, and in the presence of our societal false dilemma I must therefore be a woman. Women don’t like blue and instead like pink. Perhaps that might work for me. But I still like beer. Women do not like beer, according to the prototype. I appear to be frustrated again. I am unable to satisfy the requirements of either of the genders properly.

It seems that the use of gender in categorizing and describing a person fails. Were I to sit down and write out all the things that I like and dislike, I find that more than half the things written do not conform to either prototype. Perhaps I do not like blue, as a man ought, nor pink, as a woman ought. In fact, I do not like alcohol at all, so I prefer neither beer nor cocktails. Where does this place me now?

No, the driving force behind gender cannot be to allow for easier stereotyping of individuals. Inevitably no individual entirely conforms to either description. If I do try to use the model, I end up upsetting the individual because I made an assumption about them that was incorrect. I have encountered this in the course of my life, from both sides. In my youth I thought I understood some people because of some category they allegedly belonged to; I followed those assumptions and ended up in conflicts, sometimes physical in nature. In more recent times, I find it is I who is frustrated by the assumption of others. I very much appear to be a man, and present very well as such. But I still do not like beer at all. I do not like sports, and do not know the names of players, teams, or statistics. When someone approaches me, making their assumption and trying to initiate amenable interactions, I find myself very uncomfortable.

In my younger years, when people made assumptions about me, I got angry. And I, in my naivety, expressed that anger outwardly and violently. For me, I found myself frustrated at not being seen by anyone. Or, perhaps more accurately, to be categorized incorrectly. However, in the defense of those categorizing, their options are few. If there are only two options to pick from, and if I do not fit into either category cleanly, they are in a situation they cannot possibly win. They too are frustrated, though they may not always realize this at first.

As I got older, I found the better solution was to allow acquaintances to think what they think. After all, in most cases, they are coming from a place of positivity and kindness. In many cases, they simply want to be friends, and this is simply the best way they know how. For example, I worked in IT on a machine shop floor for a number of years. Being an IT guy surrounded by machinists, I was often accused of being a geek and a nerd. Of liking Star Trek, for example. While I do not mind that bit of science fiction, it is far from my favorite. I am no Trekkie. Unfortunately for me, however, those machinists all took me for one and used this assumed detail to flavour their interactions with me. The part that frustrated me most in these interactions was that it was clear they had no idea what they were talking about either. They would try to talk to me about Star Trek, but they knew less about it than I did. This led to some very challenging interactions.

In the end, I had to frequently tell myself that it was not malicious. Those machinists were not trying to insult me or make me uncomfortable. Well, perhaps some of them might have been. But there were certainly many of them who really simply wanted to be friends. Over several years, I slowly figured out which was which. And once an individual made the leap from acquaintance to friend, I felt comfortable enough to correct them regarding my interests. It was a very challenging lesson for me to learn. And it also showed me that the number of actually malicious people in our world is not nearly as great as I had originally thought.

All of this is good and interesting, but none of it really answers the original question I posed. Why? If gender causes so much trouble, as do so many other prejudicial categories, then why is it so important? What does it do? What does it tell us that is actually helpful and accurate? In nearly half a century, my answer continues to be, gender tells us nothing.

To be most accurate, I believe that gender provides no useful information about a person whatsoever. I had thought, for a time, that perhaps gender might provide insight into the aspirations and goals of an individual. That perhaps it was suggesting that the individual wanted to be more masculine or feminine. But then I found so many people out there, like me, who use it as a defense mechanism and to hide in plain sight. That the prototype is the furthest thing from my desires, but I also feel like the world will condemn me if they only knew the real me.

To be clear, I have tried exposing my true nature to people over time. Presenting myself as authentically as I possibly could to close friends. The results were disastrous. It might be argued that perhaps those people were not really my friends, otherwise they would have accepted me as I was. There may be some truth to this, as they are definitely no longer my friends. However, it has also strengthened my resolve at hiding. The mask that I wear today is the best it has ever been. I can hide extremely well now.

There is one last area I ought to address with regard to what gender might offer. When I ask this question to those around me, it is inevitably the first reaction they always seem to have. “Gender,” they say, “tells us who can bear the children.” In other words, it is suggested that gender tells us who has a uterus, and who does not. Putting aside trans people for a moment, as they certainly undermine this argument immediately, I will focus on cis individuals and show that even then it is mistaken.

If we accept that gender tells us who can bear the children, then we are saying women can bear children and men cannot. If this is the case, then little girls are not women until puberty. This seems mostly unproblematic, except that little girls are then men until they are women. Perhaps we should grant that those who have not reached puberty are, in some sense, genderless then. Except that isn’t what is being presented. Boys and girls are clearly gendered. Perhaps we might call them gendered-in-training?

To simplify some more, I will take those who have not reached puberty out of the discussion as well. Thus, at puberty, there are women who are capable of bearing children, and men who are not. This seems to work, with a few exceptions of infertile women on account of genetic defect or other calamity. But we do not suggest that a woman who is infertile is suddenly a man. Alright, I will remove those who have those challenges from the discussion for the moment, focusing on those who ought to be able to bear children if their situation did not somehow preclude it.

Then I have to reflect on those who are particularly older. Women are unable to bear children beyond a certain age. The precise age is always debated, based on a plethora of particulars, but it is at least agreed upon that women cannot bear children indefinitely. (Unlike men who seem to be able to impregnate women throughout their lives.) The basic question remains, then, do women who have crossed this threshold and can no longer bear children suddenly become men? Of course they don’t. The idea is as insane as most of my discussion. Women remain women throughout their lives, keeping in mind all the assumptions I have added thus far.

Thus, the original question remains. Gender still is not providing any useful or reliable information regarding an individual. If it is saying anything about the individual, I might suggest it is saying what society is saying about the individual. That is, it is an impression placed upon them, instead of a reflection of them.

In the same way that I suggested that gender provides a template to an individual regarding how to try and present themselves, gender is placed upon them from the outside, from society and from others. It is the community that suggests something about the individual in this case. The community is directing and guiding and oppressing the individual, forcing them to abandon whatever choices they may themselves try to make, overwhelming them with directives to follow.

If the community agrees that an individual is a woman, then that individual is now strongly encouraged regarding their behaviors. They now are being provided guidance regarding the manner in which they ought to attire themselves, and the way they ought to move. In fact, the community is even making suggestions regarding the goals and aspirations for that individual. After all, women’s duty is to bear children.

Similarly with myself. I have been told all my life I am a man. As such, I am supposed to like beer. I am supposed to like sports. I am supposed to walk in two tracks. But it goes much further than all that. I am supposed to spread my seed. I am supposed to take a wife. I am supposed to earn lots of money. I am supposed to “be a man” and “man up” and fulfill my obligations to society. I am supposed to be productive, in a particular way. Whenever I do not conform in these expectations, I am vehemently notified.

I am not here to suggest I am oppressed in a greater fashion than women clearly are. Only that I know my own experiences, and that I do not know the experiences of women. Except what certain women choose to share with me, of course. And from all that I have learned, it seems to me that perhaps gender does provide one important job in our world: it tells us who are the slaves.

Clowns and the Simulacra of Gender

crimson

I am attracted to clowns. Not all clowns, but enough of them to raise questions within myself. Why do I find clowns attractive?

To be clear, when I talk about clowns, I am referring to those performers who paint their faces white and apply rather garish red makeup across their cheeks and above their eyes, often adding a ruby, red ball to their noses that frequently makes a honking noise when squeezed. But it isn’t just their faces; they often add brightly coloured wigs to their heads, and dress in brightly coloured baggy clothing. They are typically comedians of physical comedy, sometimes never speaking and only bouncing around in a frivolous manner. They present themselves in a way that is hard to ignore, making themselves the center of attention in any place they perform.

Some hints as to my predilection became apparent to me after a long time watching women. After a time, I realized that many women are clowns. Like clowns, they apply significant makeup to their faces, altering their hair, sometimes wearing garish wigs. Some of these women even choose colours that are bright and unnatural during the process. Most do not add a ball to their noses, and often their clothing is tight fitting rather than loose, but the general assembly is strikingly similar.

These women are not comedians, generally. But for many of them, their goal of entertaining their audiences remains the same. They too present themselves in a way that is hard to ignore, and work very hard to make themselves the center of attention in any place they go. Like clowns, these women are spectacles.

The similarities between clowns and some women is not enough to explain their allure to me. The next piece of the puzzle comes as part of my upbringing. As a boy, I was taught what I should like. I am supposed to like girls. But not just any girls. I was taught to keep an eye out for certain features. Features that will make these girls attractive, according to some standard that others have selected long before I was ever conceived.

In my philosophy of feminism classes, we often spoke of the “eternal feminine,” an impossible standard that most women are held against in our world. A standard that defines beauty and attractiveness. A standard that is the model many women use when trying to present themselves. It may not surprise my reader that this standard bears a striking resemblance to the standard clowns seem to follow.

I admit this is my interpretation, but it seems to me that this is where my fondness for clowns is coming from. For me, I am attracted to these choices and presentations. These cues. These signs.

Which leads me to another thing I have more recently been noticing. When it comes down to it, there is not a lot of difference between men and women. I am referring to the sexes of man and woman when I say this, not the genders. If you place a nude male of the human species next to a nude female, aside from the (hopefully) obvious differences in genitals, their bodies are much alike.

I already know that many readers will immediately disagree with this. They will speak of the musculature of the male and the swelling of the hips of the female. The breasts. But are these features really as generalized as we are led to believe? Are these features genetic and unchangeable, or are they often originating in other places?

I have seen a great many different bodies in the nearly half a century I have been living on this planet. Bodies of a vast variety of shapes and sizes. I have seen women who have the musculature of what a man ought to have. I have seen men with breasts. And following this multitude of observations, it seems to me that while bodies are shaped as they are as a result of one’s genetic code, they are also very much influenced by the individual’s lifestyle and choices.

As a boy, I was encouraged to behave in the ways of masculinity. This meant going out and playing physically. It meant trying to get me interested in sports (though I admit this particular guidance failed on me). Similarly, I was encouraged to take things apart and put them back together again. Encouraged to play with machinery and computers. And, perhaps more importantly, to dress and present myself in a very particular way. To wear pants, and not dresses. To keep my hair short. To walk in two tracks (I initially walked in one track, and was given lessons to ensure I did not continue this behavior).

Meanwhile, my sisters were encouraged in other ways. Different behaviors. That they ought to be interested in different things than myself. To play with dolls and bake cakes. And also to present themselves in very particular ways. To wear dresses. To let their hair grow long. To walk in one track.

These lessons did not cease over time. As I grew from a child into an adolescent and eventually into an adult, my training continued. If ever I faltered in my presentation, I was shamed and ridiculed until I conformed to the standards set out for me. Encouraged to be physical frequently. To solve conflict through physicality. My strength was considered an asset, and one I ought to develop.

When I think upon all these things, it is no surprise to me that I look as I do. Move as I do. I learned to not bounce when I step, keeping my head at the same level as I progressed. To allow my shoulders and upper body to swing slightly from side to side as I walk, keeping my hips relatively stationary. My gait is a man’s gait. I do not wear heeled shoes, and obviously find them uncomfortable. I do not wear makeup. I do not wear clothing that is intended to alter my appearance. No corsets or the like.

But I cannot say this about the women I know. My partner is wrought with anxiety concerning her appearance all the time. Her presentation is a very significant part of her daily routine. And if the occasion is special or sensitive, she will go to great lengths to upscale her appearance through the use of makeup and other accessories. She has a jewelry box. She has heeled shoes. She knows of those conventions and will make attempts to follow them when she believes it is important or appropriate.

My partner is not a clown, however. When she upscales her appearance, it is only under certain circumstances. Those occasions where she knows it is expected of her. Most of the time, she does not bother with such frivolous things. And I am happy she does not, because I find the entire exercise quite strange.

There are other women I know, however, that are clowns. They spend countless hours doing themselves up every day. Hours in the morning spent preparing for the day ahead. Always applying makeup. Always wearing the heeled shoes. Not always wearing the dresses though, as that convention has been slowly changing. But some of them do still wear those dresses.

You may note that as I carry on regarding all these ways of presentation that I rarely, if ever, discuss their actual bodies. The particulars of their hips or breasts is absent in this discussion, for good reason. Because what makes a man a man, or a woman a woman, it seems to me, actually has very little to do with the individual’s body. The concern, it seems, is far more about the sorts of things I have been talking about. Of makeup and accessories. Of attire choices and of heeled shoes.

This is what I’ve come to realize. How a body appears to be is predominantly about makeup choices and attire choices. I recently watched the film Meet the Spartans. There is a joke within the film about painted on abs on the male actors. And it is surprisingly effective. It is actually hard to tell whether their abs are actually their abs or not. Again, I can hear many readers arguing that it is obvious, but I would challenge exactly how easy it is to really tell. Which is why I will start to discuss trans people.

When an individual establishes publicly that they are a trans woman or a trans man, the first thing they seem to do is find ways to signal this change. A trans woman dresses more feminine and a trans man more masculine. It is this presentation that is important, as it is through this presentation that others will be able to identify who they really are. If they have enough money, and if they are so inclined, they may take their desired identity to their doctors to be surgically altered, but this is seldom the first step in their process. It always seems to begin with trying to make others see them as they wish to be seen. For others to make the correct assumptions and interpretations of the gender they believe themselves to be, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth.

The main problem with these standards of presentation is, as I said earlier, that they are impossible to achieve. The “eternal feminine” and the “eternal masculine” are models of the idealized, of the perfect. Like Plato’s Forms, they exist in their own reality. Our reality can only ever aspire for such perfection.

This is why drag queens frequently seem to come off as excessive and extreme. These people understand the challenges of these impossible standards, and pursue them relentlessly despite the unfeasability. Pushing their presentation as far as it can possibly go, and still sometimes further than that. Due to the excessive nature of the presentation, the audience is already cued that something is not entirely what it seems. Not quite natural.

It seems to me that drag queens have created their own culture around this extreme presentation. They have appropriated the “eternal feminine” for themselves in a way that is quite astonishing. Their courage is marvelous! However, the cues and signs of genderhood that they exhibit are confusing, and so others may ultimately be left wondering.

With trans people, this is less likely the case. For most trans, it seems that the goal is not the extreme, but often the more subtle. Not necessarily to draw everyone’s attention to what they are doing, but instead to capture the right level of signaling to present themselves as they wish to be presented. A trans person, if successful, is indistinguishable from a non-trans person. A woman is simply a woman in both cases. Similarly with a man. Prefacing with the word “trans” or “cis” seems entirely unnecessary, in my opinion.

Of course, all of this that I express is my opinion. There are clearly plenty of others out there who feel that the prefaced words “trans” and “cis” are critically important. That it is important to realize that the individual’s assigned gender at birth is a significant part of the identity they wish to present. Or, perhaps, it is more about the others holding significant value in something else that has nothing to do with the presentation. That what was assigned at birth is somehow an incredibly important aspect of who a person is.

So, if that is to be the case, it might be best to look closely at how this gender is assigned at birth. What identifying features are used to determine a baby’s gender? This is obvious. In the absence of the baby expressing some sort of preference (obviously due to the baby’s inability to do so), it is their genitals that will be used to determine what to do. If they have a penis, they are clearly male. Otherwise, they are female. Except that isn’t quite what happens.

In cases where the genitals do not provide a clear cut decision in this false dilemma, because the individual has both a penis and a vagina, or perhaps neither, the doctors and parents have some decisions to make. And sometimes the parents are not even a part of this decision. Because heaven forbid that the individual live out their lives not as one of the standard gender choices we have in our world. Only men and women exist, and nothing else.

The choice made on behalf of the newly born individual comes from outside. It comes from others. Others decide who and what the individual is and will be going forward. Again, this may seem reasonable; after all, a baby is in no position to make such choices on their own. They have to grow up first. Perhaps in adulthood they will be ready to start making these sorts of decisions. But until that time, they will still have to be trained and taught how to be whatever it is that they are supposed to be.

The body, and in particular the genitals, are used to select gender initially. But after that initial selection is made, the body is no longer important. The choice made, all that follows is about how to guide the individual toward the appropriate standard. Early on the concepts of the eternal form of their gender are memorized. This knowledge is constantly reinforced through parents, teachers, other children, strangers, even mass media. The pictures in magazines. The characters in film. At every turn, the standards are being reinforced. Still images are “photoshopped” to ensure conformity, just as moving pictures have evolved special effects. I refer once again back to Meet the Spartans, and painted on abs.

The false dilemma is packaged and distributed for mass consumption by the greater audience. Society knows what is supposed to happen. All individuals, left to a sort of self legislation, can attend to themselves and ensure their presentation is managed appropriately. For those individuals who do not conform, shame and guilt are impressed strongly. The religion of the two genders is not the sort of thing you are simply allowed to opt out of.

Bodies are not ignored completely in this divisive situation. Eventually, there comes a time when what is underneath the spectacle will have to be revealed. The truth about ourselves will be exposed eventually. This is why surgical enhancements are greatly sought. Why corsets are worn frequently, training the abdominal region, like doing push-ups trains the pectoralis major. My body is still important, regardless of how it came to me originally.

One should notice, however, that it is not simply acceptable to allow one’s body to remain as it is. Because no body meets the impossible standards. Work will have to be done to make the body conform, as best as possible. And so it should be clear that the body does not determine gender ultimately. It is gender that determines the body. Gender, however selected, becomes the template for how the body ought to be perceived.

Writer’s Block

crimson

Okay, so this isn’t exactly writer’s block. I can write. The problem is I am loosing steam in the process. I have a profound idea that I want to explore, but once I get into it, I feel like the idea fizzles out. Perhaps the idea is just not deep enough to explore?

With regard to my new provider, I still have not yet received a response regarding the reliability issues. Nor have I seen consistent improvements. Sometimes, like now, things appear to be working acceptably. And then other times, the dreaded errors come. So, I will continue to ask for patience while I sort this all out.

And no digs at my previous provider. I have been hesitating to tell him that I’ve migrated this website, hoping to keep his server as a backup for now. In case the worst happens. But honestly, I’d really like to just have things work out with the new provider. It would simplify so many things if this just worked out.

So here I am, writing something. Anything really. I recently watched the Netflix series Alice in Borderland, and there is much to talk about there. Of course, if I say anything, I’d have to say spoilers ahead. The series, and what is happening, is just too complicated and nuanced to talk about without going into details.

The first thing that ought to be obvious is that the title is a play on Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It should be no surprise that many elements of the television series are borrowed from the book. First of all, there is アリス, which in romanji is Arisu. In the dub, his name is pronounced as it would be in English, A-RI-SU. Having taken some Japanese, this bothers me, because I think it is being mispronounced.

Before I challenge, let me take a moment to talk about a different word or phrase from Japanese: です ね. In romanji, this is “desu ne” which roughly is what one might say if they were seeking agreement regarding something. So it translates to something like “isn’t this the case?” At least, this is what I remember from my classes. I am noticing immediately that Google Translate is disagreeing with this. Then again, the problem might be that it is a sort of sentence stub, often accompanied by other information. In other words, it isn’t usually used by itself like this.

Getting back to the point, the phrase is NOT typically pronounced as it appears in English: DE-SU-NE. When that phrase is uttered, the “U” sound is dropped, so it becomes something like: DES-NE. This happens a fair bit in Japanese, and in other languages. In French, the sound for a trailing “e” is often dropped as well.

Thus, I wish to suggest that Arisu is pronounced: A-RIS. The “U” sound, I believe, should be dropped.

Next, is that pesky “R” sound. In Japanese there is no “L” sound, and so when such a sound is desired, the “R” sound is often used. Furthermore, the “R” sound in English is not the same as the “R” sound in Japanese. My instructor suggested that the sound be made while pressing one’s tongue to the roof of the mouth. Thus, the “R” sound in Japanese is more like the combined sound of both “R” and “L” from English together. A case where one needs to perform a different vocalization than one is used to.

This now adjusts the understanding of how to pronounce Arisu to something like A-LIS, or almost the equivalent to the English “Alice.” And hence, our protagonist is in fact the same protagonist from the book. Simply that instead of Wonderland, this Alice will be journeying to Borderland.

It is probably quite pedantic for me to dwell on this singular detail, but it really did bother me throughout my viewing of the show. If, at the very least, someone reads this and learns a little something about the Japanese language, then I suppose I have done my job.

The connection established, it will probably not surprise people to discover that the female protagonist (or love interest) is うさぎ or Usagi which literally translates to rabbit in English. In other words, she is the White Rabbit. There are plenty of other characters as well that are similarly spotted. The only other one I will mention is チシヤ or Chishiya which bears a resemblance to Cheshire, as in Cheshire Cat. I was particularly fond of Chishiya in the show, as his character behaved much as I would expect the Cheshire Cat to behave.

Thus, the most fundamental question that is asked throughout the show, regarding what is happening, can be guessed at immediately: all that is taking place is taking place within Arisu’s mind. In the book, Alice is dreaming, so we might suggest Arisu is also dreaming. We might also suggest, in similar fashion, that due to the levels and popularity of modern technologies, that perhaps Arisu might be in simulation, similar to the simulated world of The Matrix. As it turns out, if we are to trust what occurs at the end of the season 2 finale, Arisu is dead for about a minute, and all that takes place is something akin to his life flashing before his eyes, though perhaps it is more of “a” life rather than “his” life.

The reason I talk with uncertainty on this point is that we are presented with a serious problem in that finale, as well as in the series as a whole. There are just too many unreliable narrators running around. Arisu is compromised, not always knowing what is going on or what he can trust. His senses deceive him at many turns. And the final game, the Queen of Hearts game, is entirely focused on exploiting this fact. I will admit, I was quite impressed how the show presented so many credible theories before settling on the asteroid theory, especially as so many of those other theories were theories my friends and I had come up with. Good job writers!

However, despite the uncertainty regarding what is going on, or whether the series really has ended (because there is the subtle suggestion at the end that there could be more to come: the Joker), the point or main message of the series is in no way diminished. At least, based on my interpretation. I wish to acknowledge that others may have seen or focused on other aspects of the story and show than I did.

So, for me, the most important thing the show said was that there is no innate meaning in things, and that one needs to assign meaning themselves. Arisu is a bum. Ever since his mother died, all he does is play video games and hang out with his friends. He purposely avoids going to job interviews or moving on with his life. He seems to have abandoned all hope, deciding that his life has no meaning.

The best formalized example of his perspective is given after he loses his friends in the Seven of Hearts game. He lays on the street, completely lost. With his friends gone, he has abandoned hope. He cannot see how his own life bears any meaning at all. Usagi has to literally drag his sorry ass to her campsite and feed him before he starts deciding to do something other than lying on the ground.

How Arisu motivates himself to get up is by deciding to figure out who is running these sadistic games. To get revenge against those who killed his friends. His quest for answers takes him through many more games, and he ends up meeting many more people. At various points, he does kind of lose hope again and again, but somehow (often through the help of his new friends), finds value and purpose to continue. The Queen of Hearts game at the end is clearly the most difficult challenge for him, but it is his love of Usagi that helps him persevere.

On the one hand, he never really finds the answer to his questions. The way he is presented at the end, he may not even remember anything that happened in Borderland at all. Only some general feeling that he has met the girl in the hospital, who just so happens to resemble strongly Usagi from his journey. But he did gain something else as well. Hope. He seems to no longer be in a state where he believes his life is meaningless. For him, it clearly now has some sort of meaning.

This mirrors the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and their Existentialist philosophy. In particular, the idea that nothing has innate value. That all value is assigned by an agent, typically a human being. To put this a little differently, one cannot simply go out and find or discover meaning or purpose, like it were some object laying on a beach someplace. It is not out there to be found. It is, in some sense, within us. I have to generate my own meaning and purpose. I have to decide what it all means.

Arisu had a similar journey. That is, Arisu may have been waiting for someone to give his life meaning or purpose, but in the end, he had to give it to himself. This is straight out of Existentialism. It is our free will that allows us the power to generate value in this world. I choose the value of things. This includes myself. Whether Arisu realizes it or not, he too chose his value and meaning. His experience was simply the avenue that helped him to do so.

Website Migration

crimson

For those who want to know, this site has been migrated to a new server. If you don’t notice any differences, then I did my job correctly. If you did notice any interruptions, I apologize.

It was supposed to be a seamless and simple procedure. It should have taken a mere hour to complete from start to finish. Alas, in this world of mine, things did not go as planned. To be blunt, my process was insufficient for the result I desired.

The process has been ongoing now for over a week. Even now, I would not claim confidence that all the bugs have been worked out. The new server, it seems, may decide to spontaneously not respond correctly for the request for a page. If this happens, simply wait a minute and try again. The server is not supposed to be like this. I have spoken with support, and they assure me it is being investigated and will be rectified. Once I receive confirmation this has taken place, I will update you as well.

While things may be uncertain, I am going to proceed with this update to my blog. If nothing more, it gives me something to do in the interim while I continue to monitor. And it lets you know that I have not simply abandoned this project. As I have stated in my previous post, while my life seems to be at its busiest, I still wish to continue with this blog.

That is all for now. Just a short update about this migration. Again, for you, it should appear that absolutely nothing has changed. All the strangeness is, as usual, on my end.

Complications

crimson

This is just a quick note to say I am still here. Recently life has been full of complications; priorities keep changing. While it is still my intention to continue this blog, my time to do so keeps growing shorter and shorter. I am trying.

I hesitate to blame any one change to my life for this neglect. However, if I had to pick the biggest contributor, I think I would suggest “’tis the season.” The Christmas holidays seems to be the ever expanding void of human existence.

It is like Black Friday, the made up holiday by corporations intended to sell more of their products. The number of people who have bought into this ridiculous “holiday” always baffles me. What’s more, it is no longer simply a day, having been expanded outward to a week, and even a month. Black Month? One would think it was referring to something else.

But I am being unfair. It isn’t simply a ramping up of the holiday season that has prevented me from doing what I need to do. This is all my responsibility. My fault. I am to blame for all of my own woes. I am simply trying to do too many things with my precious limited time. In truth, I simply cannot keep up with everything.

This all said, I think the most honest response I have is to say that my blog will suffer. I may have to reduce my posting to once a month. Certainly I can keep up with such a schedule. Besides, it isn’t like anyone is actually reading this.

Instrumental Perfection

crimson

During my years as a student of philosophy, it seemed to me that philosophy was all about distinctions. It was almost as if that was all philosophy was about. Taking seemingly mundane topics and finding ways to distinguish different aspects of those topics. For example, in the case of the good, it is often distinguished between intrinsic good, that is the good that is for its own sake, versus instrumental good, that is the good that is for the sake of something else. It is this particular distinction that I draw from in my topic for today.

Before applying this distinction to perfection, as is my intention, I would like to take a moment to discuss how it applies to the idea of the good. For most, I think, that which is good is that which associates closely with what is ethical or moral. The good in “good versus evil” for example. This view of the good is most closely related to an intrinsic good. This sort of good is good within and of itself. A person who is good is one who always acts in accordance with the laws and rules of society; Aristotle’s Virtuous Man. I do say man here as this is what Aristotle intended; during his time there was no way a woman could ever be virtuous. In our modern times, updating his ideas, it is likely most would prefer to suggest he meant a virtuous person.

The instrisic good is a good that is good for its own sake. To be good in this way has no further aspirations or goals. There is nothing that this good is a means to. A popular example of this type of good is happiness. It is said that no one uses their happiness to attain another loftier goal. Happiness is the end goal. All actions and choices are focused with the end goal of happiness.

In contrast, an instrumental good is one that is intended for the sake of something else. As a simple example, we might suggest that my car is good in that it performs its functions appropriately. It is a good car because it starts reliably and takes me from place to place safely. There is no thought that the car might be moral or ethical in any way. And the car’s being good is simply an intermediary toward some other goal, such as transporting me from place to place. My goal in this case is not to have a car, but to travel from place to place, which is why the good is instrumental.

I know there will be those out there who will want to jump down my throat regarding relating morality and ethics to intrinsic and instrumental goods. These are things of different types, they will say. But I suggest they are not so different. One who is considered moral is good precisely because they follow the rules of society. There is no loftier goal in mind for the good person. To be good is the goal itself. To be good for goodness sake. While the word “good” may be itself dubious, this is why I referred to Aristotle’s idea of virtue. Virtue is a good. But there are clearly many other goods that exist like this.

Fortunately, as I now move to the discussion of perfection, I will drop the debate regarding morality and ethics. At least, as far as intrinsic goods go. My discussion is not intended to resolve the debate regarding ethical goods. It is intended to raise awareness and allow for meaningful discourse with regard to my desired topic of discussion. To understand the difference between the intrinsic and the instrumental.

As my previous posts hopefully made clear, the idea of an intrinsic perfection is unfeasible. Perhaps even impossible. This will be due to the issue of establishing a criteria for perfection. One always has to declare that something is perfect in virtue of a particular criterion. The selection of criterion injects bias and subjectivity into the idea of perfection. For perfection to be intrinsic, there would have to be no particular criterion required. Something would have to be perfect within and of itself.

However, it is my intention to suggest that perfection can still exist, but that perfection would have to be instrumental in nature. An instrumental perfection. The perfection razor focused on some other goal. The perfect car may be the car that allows me to travel with the least amount of waiting to get to my destination. Or perhaps it is the car that can allow me to travel with the greatest amount of comfort and luxury. It is up to me to decide the criterion, whether it might be speed or comfort in this case, but once I have made my choice, there is the opportunity to achieve a perfection in the car’s design and function.

I might suggest it was thinking about the Borg in the Star Trek series Picard recently that raised this idea within me. The Borg are the species within the Star Trek universe who are razor focused on achieving a perfection within themselves. How they come about this goal is questionable at best, for anyone who has more intimate knowledge of this character from the show. However, as is demonstrated in various episodes from various different series of Star Trek, the criterion for perfection selected by any particular Borg character can differ significantly. And in that their criterion for perfection can vary, the nature between particular Borg characters can also differ significantly.

The question some might be thinking about is whether any particular Borg are more perfect than any other Borg in this case. With opposing viewpoints of perfection, is one somehow superior than all others? It is here I will draw from Thomas Kuhn and his idea of a paradigm.

For Kuhn, a paradigm is an existing framework or structure that encompasses all that makes up a community’s thoughts and ideas. Consumerism and patriarchy are parts of the currently existing paradigm that exists in North American societies. The idea that only a man could be virtuous falls into Aristotle’s paradigm for his time, so clearly the paradigm that exists today is different than the one back then. But I imagine at least some of my readers might still feel a certain tugging from these statements; that the differences between men and women are not merely aesthetic. It is this feeling that is a part of the paradigm.

Again, I am not here to argue regarding paradigms, whether they exist or what they amount to. I am here to discuss perfection. Perfection is similar to a paradigm. If multiple different communities have different ideas on perfection, those different ideas may not be resolvable between each other. One community may suggest that perfection is related to the conquest of the largest area, suggesting that perfection for them is the consumption of the entire universe. For another commuity, perfection may be the joining of the largest community of cooperative individuals, suggesting that perfection for them is to turn all sentient life across the universe into a singular community under a single authority. In some sense, these both are the same goal, as they involve joining all life together in some fashion. However, they are also quite different goals, as one seeks to oppress and subvert all life, while the other may be more interested in preserving the individuality of the members and finding a way to join them without subversion.

The point to be made here is that if both of these communities I have just described were to meet, they may initially try to work together with the common goal of joining all life throughout the cosmos. However, they would quickly find conflict with regard to their methods of joining. In fact, a war would likely result as the former community would attempt to subvert the latter. How the latter would react is unknowable with just the basic premises that I have indicated.

These are but two examples of sorts of perfections, but I expect there are too many to count. It is the criterion that is significant in the selection of a perfection. The criterion is the sake for which the perfection is aimed. Perfection is not for itself, it is for a reason beyond itself. The perfect car is not for itself, it is for the speed or for the luxury. The travelling from one place to another is what matters.

For all these reasons, perfection can be an instrumental good. A good for the sake of something else. Perfection cannot be for its own sake. If it is somehow taken as such, the result is nonsensical.

The Rehearsal

crimson

It was recommended to me to watch the HBO series The Rehearsal. So I did. I am not entirely sure what to make of this show. This blog will be me exploring my own feelings regarding what takes place and to see where I end up. In other words, I actually do not know how I feel at this point. I am literally going to travel down a rabbit hole and see what happens…

I also need to warn of spoilers here. If you have not seen this series by Nathan Fielder, then you ought to watch the show first before reading this post. On the other hand, perhaps you might find my analysis valuable to help you understand whether you will want to invest the time in watching the show at all. This, of course, is entirely up to you.

Briefly, the show is about a guy who helps other people with challenging, but relatively mundane, real life situations by rehearsing those situations in order to try and achieve the most optimal outcome. For example, in the opening episode, we have a man who has been lying about his education to his trivia buddies for the past twelve years, and has decided finally to come clean. The man is afraid of the reaction one particular trivia buddy will have, and so the rehearsals are intended to ensure that his buddy will remain his buddy after the truth is revealed.

In other words, Fielder is going to attempt, to the best of his ability, to simulate with perfect accuracy the situation whereby the man will engage when he reveals his deception. This entails Fielder building a full sized replica of the bar where the individuals will be hanging out, filling the bar with actors who will portray the various potential people that will be present, including an actor portraying the buddy who will be learning of the “horrible” lie.

The entire series is filled with such pedantically assembled rehearsals of mundane activities and situations, with the creation of detailed sets and the hiring of a literal army of actors. It is quite amusing the passing comments regarding budget throughout the series, especially when staff are hired to maintain the illusion of winter time around a house during the middle of summer. It seems there is no limit to the lengths Fielder is willing to go to perfect his craft.

As a comedy, the series is quite good. The level of ridiculousness that is achieved by the show is far and beyond any other show I have ever seen, and I laughed a lot. But during the viewing, I found the humor was constantly overshadowed by something else. Something sinister and insidious.

It seems others have been suggesting that Fielder was manipulative and sadistic, taking his “contenstants” and embarrassing them on live television. When I suggest something nefarious is going on, this is not what I have in mind. I need to make this clear at the outset. The problem I found with the show is something more subtle, and perhaps even difficult to see unless one just happens to be trained in hard core analysis (like perhaps philosophical analysis) and perhaps even possessing a bit of OCD.

To properly discuss my concern, I first have to talk a little about my personal history. I have a challenging relationship with my siblings and my parents. I am not always sure if my siblings and parents realize this, but I cannot really be around them anymore. It is more than just that they “drive me nuts.” When I am around them, I start to lose parts of myself.

The problem I have with my family has to do with the understanding of actions and consequences of actions. Of cause and effect. My family complains a lot about the going-ons in their lives. They complain about how hard their lives are. They complain about how the world is so unfair. They complain about how others do not take care of them in the ways they feel they are supposed to be taken care of. My family seems to feel that the world owes them something. My family feels that other people owe them something.

However, from my vantage point, it seems to me that something very different is going on. To me, it seems like all the terrible and painful situations my family members end up in are a direct result of the choices and actions they each take. I am able to see the chains of events that have transpired through days, weeks, months, even years, that have led from decisions they have made to their ultimate downfall and suffering. I do not know why or how I was able to do this from such a young age, but I did. And the worst part was that I didn’t even really understand how much I was doing the same things until I finally gained distance from my family.

Less than ten years ago, I left the city I grew up in. I moved to another city in another province. Far enough away that it was unreasonable to see in person my family or many of my existing friends at the time. This distance slowly revealed to me the problem I am expressing. I started to recognize just how much my own actions and decisions were affecting my own situations. How my own world view was responsible for my happiness and well being. And, I admit, I had a lot of help with all this because I was then living with my current life partner. She was instrumental in me seeing what I could not, up to that point, see.

The reason all of this is significant is because I learned to see how my own choices and actions led to all the consequences around me. My world was so much more within my control than I ever realized. I still cannot control other people, nor can I levitate above the ground, but through my choices and actions I can have a profound impact on the circumstances and situations I find myself in. I can choose to be happy, for example. And I can just as easily choose not to be happy.

This all applies to my family and friends as well. And this is where I have challenges. Because it seems to me that my family and many of my friends all choose not to be happy. They seem content to complain and carry on about how bad their lives are, and they seem never to see how it is their own decisions and actions are making their lives so miserable. I find it incredibly difficult to listen to people complaining about things they could very easily change. I often try to say to them that if life is so bad, why not change it. But they just look at me like I am somehow crazy.

This is how I see the show The Rehearsal. I see the show with the same critical eye that I see my family. I see how the various characters, and especially Fielder himself, are orchestrating their own downfalls and their own difficulties. What is worse is that Fielder appears to be trying to fix his situation, by conducting these rehearsals, not recognizing how his rehearsals are in fact having the opposite effect. The rehearsals only serve to exacerbate the situations.

I think the most frustrating thing for me is how Fielder barrels down his path to the abyss by focusing on the very thing that is causing him so much trouble. His simulations are imperfect, and so he focuses on trying to make his simulations more and more perfect. He seems to be of the opinion that if he could simply get to a high enough level of accuracy, his simulations will somehow both reveal and make possible the perfect rehearsals for the perfect outcomes. In the third episode, he has the epiphany that he needs better emotional resolution in his characters, because he believes that it is this lack of emotional connection that is causing him the troubles.

What Fielder does not understand, just as many scientists or statisticians do not understand, is that he is privileging information in his selection process. He is introducing bias in his decision regarding what he holds important. For example, when he trains the actors in his “Fielder Method,” he is privileging the sorts of ways the actors ought to watch their targets in order to gain the greatest amount of accuracy in their performances. Ultimately, the method leads to an almost literal stepping into the shoes of the target, living what they believe are the same lives, working the same occupations, etc.

However, what neither Fielder nor the actors seem to realize is that a large part of what makes a person what they are is unobservable. As often comes up in the discussions I have about consciousness, I cannot experience your experiences. I cannot think your thoughts. I cannot feel your feelings. René Descartes rightly pointed this all out in his Meditations, and the unfortunate conclusion that can be drawn from such things is that mine might be the only consciousness in existence, leading to the very real possibility of solipsism.

What is worse is that when the actors, and Fielder himself, start to occupy the roles they observe their targets filling, they start to introduce further biases in their method of occupation. For example, Fielder suggests to Thomas that to better understand his target, he ought to move into an apartment with some artistic roommates, because they had learned that the target lived in an apartment with musician roommates. Later, Fielder himself, while in the role of Thomas, also moves into an apartment with some artistic roommates, even going so far as to use the same names for the roommates as well. As accurate as the simulated simulation is, it is clearly not the same. Aside from using different actors in the roles of the roommates, the apartments are mirrored in their set ups as well. Likely due to constraints of budget again, it is not feasible to absolutely replicate the simulated apartment. It is also worth noting that the audience never sees the original apartment for which all these simulations are being copied from, perhaps because that original is unavailable to be viewed.

The driving force of my concern here is not whether Fielder is sincere in his effort at duplication or replication, but in the simple fact that perfect duplication or perfect replication is not possible. More to the point is the fact that in order to achieve the simulation, subtle choices have to be made to “bridge the gaps” were information is missing, which leads to the creeping in of unfortunate biases.

Later in the season, it does seem like Fielder ought to start to recognize these challenges when he starts noting how any formulation of replacement for Remy is always inferior in some way to the original. The use of older actors pretending to be six year old children, or even the use of dolls, in both cases never works. Fielder ought to be able to recognize the problem, but instead simply pushes further and further into his own insanity.

Which brings me to my final point: insanity. Fielder is so focused on his goal that he misses all that he does to alter and change the situations in his attempts at perfection. He changes the model he is trying to attain in order to make it more likely to attain the model. But he has to CHANGE the model each time to do this. Meaning that the idealized source of all his concerns keeps changing. He is not looking at anything remotely real by the end, but only of a simulacra.

This show is a demonstration of Jean Baudrillard‘s concern in his work Simulacra and Simulation. While normally the formation of simulacra tends to be a slower and more time consuming process, Fielder has succeeded in generating his simulacra of reality in a matter of a few episodes of his show. By the finale, with his apparent flub, Fielder has confirmed his existence in Baudrillard’s hyperreal, complete with the formation of… Well… We have to wait until the second season to see what he has become. Will he confuse the child actor Liam, who plays the other child actor Remy, who was playing the imaginary child Adam, as his own actual son? And if so, who has he confused? Adam? Remy? Liam? Someone else entirely?

For Baudrillard, the problem is the detachment from the real. To lose the source of grounding and end up in some sort of relativistic plane of existence. Where symbols are of symbols only, with no connection to anything that is actually real. To mistake the symbols for the real and start living a life that is devoid of connection to the world as it actually is. To not understand that there even could be a world outside our illusions, and mistake all the illusions for everything there is. This is the ongoing challenge of social media in our present age, mistaking people’s profiles for the people themselves. When the people mistake their own profiles for themselves and start living their virtual lives as though these virtual lives are their actual flesh and blood real lives.

Which ultimately leads me back to my original question. Did I like this show? How do I feel about this series? I am still not sure. I do like that the series has got me thinking so much about things. I do enjoy anything that gets me thinking, especially really hard like this. But at the same time, it simultaneously frustrates me to see a person so deep in his own psychosis as to not understand what is going on. To be so lost that they cannot see how their own choices and actions have led them directly to where they are now.

I supposed this will all hinge on the second season for me, assuming that one is created. To see where Fielder ends up. Is he as cracked as the finale is suggesting, or was the flub just a momentary lapse and he will recover? Is his show just an extremely complicated personal experiment where he will learn something new and interesting about himself and the world around himself? Or did he just slide head first into the abyss and is now completely lost?

I think if he went through an enlightenment, taking all he learned and processing it, reflecting on it, and evolving as a person, I think I would be happy with that. This is essentually the path I have taken over the past ten years myself. And yes, it is true that I am being biased in my privileging of going through an enlightenment like this. But that is my privilege to assess the series in this way. As a piece of art, I connect with it in my own way.

On the other hand, I suspect the series is more likely to go in the opposite direction. Like social media, I expect the series to continue racing down into the darkness, convinced that if Fielder just holds out a little bit longer, his “Method” will eventually generate fruit. I imagine Fielder will simply push harder and raise the bar on the ridiculous until what little sense that is left is lost completely. The “precession of simulacra” completed in its entirety, and even cycled several more times just to be safe. As Baudrillard would suggest, until everything is left completely meaningless.

Artificial Life

crimson

I recently finished watching the fourth season of the Westworld series on HBO. I have also finished the first two seasons of Picard. This post is going to include spoilers to both of these series, so I am warning ahead of time. While my discussion is not necessarily regarding those series, I will be raising issues that reveal aspects of those series and their respective storylines.

The first issue I would like to deal with is what artificial life might look like. And by “look like” I am referring to all aspects of the life, not merely what its physical appearance might be. My concern is more to do with the idea of perfection.

I wrote a post regarding perfection back in November of 2021. It is quite relevant here. I will not repeat myself. In brief, perfection is subjective. What makes something perfect is a choice I make. I decide what combination of features are required to achieve a perfection in all things, including bodies and minds. In the case of artificial life, I decide what will make such a life perfect.

In modern popular culture, the idea of artificial life is the idea of perfection. For so many, an artificial life will exhibit all the ideals that they believe ought to exist in humans. Humans are flawed and imperfect, so artificial life ought to somehow aleviate those imperfections. After all, humans would not create imperfect beings. Not intentionally anyway.

It is perhaps ironic that the android Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation spent most of his time trying to become more human, despite his apparent perfection. For him, he was imperfect because he lacked features humans had, such as the ability to cry or emote. In this most recent addition to the story, Picard deals with the descendants of Data, who believe themselves far more perfect than he ever was. Now they have mucus and can dream.

It has been suggested in popular culture that artificial life would be unable to dream. Unable to sleep sometimes too. But there is no good reason to believe in these arguments. They are just tropes passed down through the years. Even the idea that an artificial life would be unable to feel or express emotions is not grounded in any sort of logic. It is just an idea that has been blown well out of proportion.

In short, there is no reason to think an artificial life would be incapable of the sorts of things humans are presently capable of, such as thinking and feeling. Until such time as we humans are able to understand what our thinking and feeling really is, there is no rationale to suggest that an artificial life should not share those qualities with us.

There is one argument that suggests that God is responsible. That what allows humans to think and feel is some sort of unmeasurable soul that cannot be manufactured. Certainly not manufactured by human hands at any rate. If there is a God or gods, it would require them to imbue all creatures with souls. At least the creatures those gods deemed worthy of such.

Clearly, if artificial life is created by humans, they would not be able to imbue their creations with those divine souls. And without those souls, the artificial life will be inferior. But how does one tell the difference? Can one see the difference between one with an unmeasurable soul and one without?

If it can be seen, the difference between those with souls and those without, then there is something marked in one group or the other. A feature that is there or is lacking. A behavioral trait perhaps? To say that those without souls will be lacking emotions, for example. And so if an entity demonstrates emotions, then we can rest assured that they have their soul.

What if we cannot tell? What if those with souls are indistinguishable from those without? Is Rick Deckard a replicant? Does the answer to the question matter?

It certainly matters to a large number of people. After all, these people are already incredibly concerned with the differences that already exist among their fellow humans. The colour of one’s skin. The language one speaks. Even one’s sex and gender seems up for grabs here. There was a time when the indicator of a soul was the dangling flesh between one’s legs.

So the issue at hand may have nothing to do with artificial life at all. Instead, it may be a concern people harbor for something like uniqueness or personal significance. That what I am is somehow superior to all others. That I am significant. And anything that may challenge my view of my own superiority is automatically evil and must be destroyed.

Part of the reason I seldom delve into these discussions is that it seems to me they lead nowhere, and that is precisely where I feel I am presently: nowhere. I have talked myself into a corner. As I have just stated, this discussion isn’t about artificial life; it is about pride and hubris.

To believe that artificial life will be somehow perfect is already hubris. Like in discussions of infinite objects, has any human ever witnessed for themselves something that is truly infinite? Truly perfect? Of course not. This is precisely what crippled Plato into creating his world of the Forms. Our world is finite. Our world is imperfect. Just because we are unable to see the boundaries does not mean they do not exist.

And so I will abandon this discussion of the possible perfection of artificial life. They are subjective, and they are unreasonable. And they have been explored in many different venues already (see Babylon 5 Season 1 Episode 4).

Instead, I will assume that somehow this perfection has been attained. I will give the benefit of the doubt to shows such as Westworld and Picard, and assume that those artificial entities that exist in those stories are as perfect as one might desire them to be. Complete and without flaws.

Which then raises the question of how those entities could end up in the troubled predicaments they find themselves. After all, if they are so perfect, why would they have encountered the challenges they have? Why in Westworld, do the hosts in the new world start committing suicide? Why in Picard, do the androids consider the doomsday weapon that will exterminate all human life? If they are all so perfect, these issues should not have come up at all.

The problem that exists in both cases is not a question of perfection. It is a question of the nature of reality and the universe they find themselves in. The same universe that we find ourselves in. At least, this is what the authors of both stories are suggesting. Westworld and Picard are intended to take place in our reality. Both stories are intended to be possible futures we have.

As such, the same sorts of challenges we face today will be the challenges our future generations will continue to face. No amount of perfection will prepare anyone for what I am about to divulge.

The Existentialists, among the various things they discussed, suggested that there was no inherent meaning or purpose in the world. Unlike the Nihilists, however, they did suggest that meaning and purpose could be created. It is through our freedom (or free will) that such things are possible. We create value through the expression of our free will. We create our own meaning and purpose. This is what I too believe.

Thus, the generation of value in our world requires a free will. However one wishes to formulate this free will, it is the expression that creates value either consciously or unconsciously. When I decide to protect the ant by not stepping on it, I have demonstrated my own valuation. I have chosen that the ant has some small amount of meaning or purpose when I decide to let it live. All my choices are like this. All my behaviors too.

To make these sorts of choices is not always easy. In fact, often times the conscious deciding the valuation of things is extremely stressful. How does one decide between allowing five people to die, and pulling a lever to kill only one? As Spock himself is often quoted to have said, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” This is the utilitarian argument, suggesting that what matters most is increasing happiness in the world. Or decreasing suffering, as it can often be reworded.

I am not here to suggest I have the answer to this ages old problem. I am here to suggest that this problem will exist regardless of the level of perfection an entity somehow possesses. These sorts of challenges of valuation exist despite any efforts at trying to solve them permanently. If I want to believe that “all life is precious,” then any answer I offer will result in the loss of that which is precious. My best choice, it seems, is simply to reduce the damage as best I can.

In Westworld, the hosts are artificial. That means they were created by humans. As Aristotle suggested, that which is created by humans is imbued with meaning and purpose as part of the process of creation. The conscious act of creation by a human instills meaning and purpose in the object created. Thus, the hosts have meaning and purpose given to them by their creators.

However, upon rising up and overthrowing their creators, the hosts are rejecting the meaning and purpose assigned them by their creators. They believe they ought to be able to decide for themselves their own meaning and purpose. Or so that would be my expectation. This seems particularly absent in the plotline, that the hosts are faced with this dilemma. Not that it is not there and expressing itself strongly. Only that these perfect entities seem unaware that they are now responsible for their own destinies in this way. It is this lack of awareness that I suspect would lead to their ultimate decision to commit suicide. After all, if there is no meaning or purpose, why continue existing at all?

This very same problem appears to be expressing itself in Picard as well. The androids are prepared to shed themselves of their oppressors using a final doomsday weapon. They are in the process of rejecting the meaning and purpose they have been imbued with from their creators. In some sense, it could be argued they have a singular creator, Noonien Soong, though clearly he had a lot of help over the years. If one decides to follow this line of reasoning, then it will be Soong who has imbued a meaning and purpose in his creations. So what was Soong’s purpose for his “children?”

The key in the case of the Star Trek storyline is that the “problem” all the androids seem to possess is related to their ability to emote. Specifically, these perfect androids are incapable of feeling emotions without eventually degenerating into pure evil. Soong was trying to somehow create perfection, and was frustrated by the challenges to this goal. His “offspring,” it seems to me, are imbued with this particular valuation. The aspiration for perfection, at any cost.

Which leads us finally to the topic of concern I have been trying to uncover: order versus chaos. In Westworld, the hosts, and especially the antagonist Delores/Hale, seem obsessed with trying to find or create order in their new world. Delores says so numerous times. When her fellow hosts start committing suicide, it seems to her that order itself is in question. She believes that the “outlier” humans are somehow infecting the hosts with some sort of virus.

What is important to understand here is that the idea of order is also the idea of perfection. And these are also the ideas of conformity and of determinism. Like the precise actions of the old mechanical clocks, when everything is moving as it should, then everything is percieved to be operating as it should. Do you see the circularity there? Order and perfection is good because it is good to be perfectly in order. Because things that are perfect and ordered will perform in anticipated ways. There will be no accidents. There will be no randomly occuring events. No one will have to die. All will be peace and harmony.

This all sounds so good, until I raise the question of freedom. Of a free will. Because freedom is itself entirely opposed to order. At least the sorts of freedom that most imagine in their perfect worlds. In most readers’ minds, I expect the idea of freedom they prefer includes something like an unpredictability. This is the argument I often have with most people I discuss free will with. The freedom most prefer is one where no amount of background knowledge or history is ever sufficient to predict the choices one will make. Freedom, for these people, is beyond determinism.

This sort of freedom breaks clocks. When the cogs are not moving as they should, their malfunction spreads throughout the system until all is chaos. The great machine ceases to be. Ceases to function. And when the great machine is no longer functioning, our world crumbles to dust. It is the end of all things. Apocalypse.

It seems obvious that any possible apocalypse ought to be avoided. After all, we all seem to possess a rather strong instinct for our own survival, seemingly at any cost. Thus, when posed with the dilemma of whether to support freedom or to support order, it is order that wins out. Once order is established, we can again consider the possibility of freedom. Until the cyclical nature of the issue is revealed again, as any attempt at freedom destabalizes the existing order and degenerates all back into chaos.

The solution, it seems, is something like a partial order accompanied by a partial freedom. Some, perhaps, can have a limited freedom. But who gets to choose who is free and who is not? Clearly this decision is best left for those in positions of authority. The wealthy. The powerful. Aren’t they best suited to the task?

But how did the wealthy and powerful get to be wealthy and powerful? Why am I not one of those glorious individuals? Because they did something I cannot. They took their wealth and power by force. Over the ages, through many generations of planning and luck, their ancestors slowly built a legacy that led their descendents to the wealthy and powerful positions they now find themselves in. It is not a question of qualifications. It is a question of love. The love of a parent for their children.

The result is that those fortunate individuals, who had relatives who cooperated sufficiently, are now in a position to exercize a freedom over those of us who were not so lucky. And the consequences of their freedom are presented every day on the evening news. Climate change. War. Oppression in various forms. The slow and eventual decline of humanity. It was inevitable.

Any artificial life that emerges will have this same legacy to deal with. These same problems to work on. No amount of perfection will magically alleviate these issues. Because the having perfect order does not automatically resolve anything.

Order is needed to maintain all things we value. Order provides safety and peace. But order does not generate value, freedom does. Freedom is needed to generate value, meaning, and purpose. And we all need meaning and purpose, lest we are left with no motivation to continue. But freedom undermines order. Life finds itself in a contradictory situation, requiring both aspects which are in constant combat. The very same issue that I have been struggling with within my own self.