Tag: freedom

Spiraling Death Syndrome

crimson

I’ve worked in IT for a very long time. “Spiraling Death Syndrome,” or SDS, was a problem that occurred to some dial-up modems whereby they would reduce the connection speed in order to accommodate issues on the telephone line, but not recover. That is, the device would connect your computer to the Internet successfully, and full speed initially, but as you used your connection, it would progressively become slower and slower until it was unusable. Technically, this sort of technology still exists to this day, but because connections are so bleeding fast, and so much more reliable, no one ever really notices.

It’s simple. The device connects and starts pushing data through the pipe as fast as it is able to. Occasionally, something disrupts the flow of data, so the device slows itself temporarily until the disruption has passed. Disruptions in the connection are generally short lived, so this is all status quo. Once the disruption has passed, the device picks up the speed again, returning to its top speed after that. With SDS, just one part of that process fails: the device never picks back up. It drops its speed for the first disruption, and then again at the next disruption, over and over until it is operating at the slowest possible speed, which is very, very slow. I believe they would go down to about 300 baud, or 300 bits per second. This translates, roughly, to about 30 bytes per second, or to use modern equivalent terms, 0.03 Kbps or 0.00003 Mbps. Considering my current connection was just measured at 7 Mbps, that is very, very slow indeed.

Technical side note: Briefly, “bps” is “bytes per second” and “bips” or “baud” is “bits per second.” The standard for connections and throughput is to use bits per second, while for storage it is bytes or bytes per second as appropriate. Unfortunately, like so many things in our world, these details have often been lost to obscurity, and so most modern speed tests will give results in bits per second, but present the units “bps,” which just confuses everyone. It’s like how a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes and not 1000 bytes, but again it depends on who you ask.

So why bring up this old, outdated term or problem? Well, it is not only digital connections that suffer from this problem. In my life currently, I am observing this effect occurring in many other places. In particular, if a person is trying to go about living their life without disruption, we might suggest they are operating at something like 100% of their capabilities. Something like top speed. But if something happens to them, disrupted by some outside influence or event, they will be forced to slow to accommodate the event. Their efficiency will drop below that 100% as they now have to deal with the disruption. Think about working your job and a co-worker comes along and wants to ask you a question. You were working hard, but now you need to practically stop in order to answer their question. You slow, briefly, to deal with the disruption, and then hopefully are able to get back to work once they leave, having had their question answered appropriately.

Thus, I am suggesting people go through a similar process. They do what they do, pursuing their projects as quickly as makes sense for them, and will periodically be disrupted during the course of their pursuit. And I think for most people, once those disruptions have passed, they will eventually return to their pursuit, operating as quickly as they did initially if they are lucky.

The clear issue one might immediately think about is how one deals with many more than one disruption. If one is disrupted and unable to recover from the disruption, then they may be forced to slow even more for the next disruption. And if there are many, many disruptions, then they may be stalled entirely until all disruptions are resolved. This is the sort of thing that happens to me in IT occasionally, where I come into work and never get any progress on any of my projects because there are “fires to put out,” to use the colloquial term that we often use. My entire day is simply dealing with disruptions, and so I get no work done on my main projects.

This is the nature of the situation I find myself in at present. For the past several months, I have been mostly unable to work on any of my own personal projects, as I have been inundated with disruption after disruption. In my personal life, I have been unable to recover because of the sheer magnitude of those disruptions. I will not go into detail, as I would like to avoid giving too much of my personal life information here, but I will say that each and every appliance in my home has required some sort of work or effort put into it (some a significant amount), and many other attempts at regular activity have been thwarted by the resurgence of the pandemic.

Technical side note: the pandemic has not ended. Contrary to how the people around me are behaving, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be an issue, with newer variants being discovered all the time. In fact, my partner and I received our most recent vaccinations just last week. And I am continuing to isolate at home, not going out nearly as much as I might like.

It does not really matter the precise reason for what is happening to me. The details are less important. What is important is that I am unable to refocus on my own personal projects at this time. As much as I want to do certain things, pursuing education and changing careers being rather high on my list, I am unable to really pursue them presently because I am inundated with countless other tasks and chores that require my attention.

For those who actually know me, I admit I am lying a little bit here. That is, I am about to engage in a pursuit of education despite the fact I ought not. I will be abandoning my partner in her time of need in order to take a class that I signed up for several months ago. It was not an inexpensive class either, and canceling my enrollment is not really a reasonable option. And so, I continue to prepare to go to this class, despite the fact I ought to be spending more time dealing with things at home.

So in truth, it is not I who has been inflicted with SDS at all. It is my partner. And that is the crux of my issue right now. She has been dealing with the brunt of all of this disruption, and she is the one who has been unable to recover. Every time she tries to pursue a project of her’s, she is the one who is thwarted. And she is the one who has pretty well ceased functioning at this point.

I don’t know why, or how, I am able to keep going right now. But I think it is because of her. It is that old passage from Aristotle that I continue to be unable to locate that I think describes the situation best. From his Politics, Book One, Part VII, translated into English: “…those who are in a position which places them above toil have stewards who attend to their households while they occupy themselves with philosophy or with politics…“

In other words, what he clearly believed was that, in order for some of us to do the things we want to do, others have to do the things we do not want to do. This is a reference to masters and slaves. The masters can only do the sorts of things masters do, such as pursuing philosophy, because the slaves are attending to the things they do not wish to do, such as cooking and cleaning. This is the description of wives to their husbands. And of most blue collar laborers to the owners of the companies they work for. Of the privileged and the oppressed.

Again, I will not dwell on the particulars of why our world has become as it has. But it has changed. And the progress that had been made over the past several decades, trying to give voices to those who did not have voices, is being eroded. Those who previously had choices are now finding those choices have disappeared. There are very few options remaining, and people are being forced to make do with things they never wanted to make do with.

Looking back at what I’ve written, it is clear to me that without those personal details to support my arguments, it sounds more like the ramblings of a mad man. And I am mad. And I am privileged. To be able to write all of this in the first place. To be able to take my class. To be able to continue as I have, despite those around me being unable to do so.

I think what I want most right now is to apologize to those who are not as privileged as I am. To apologize to those whose shoulders I am standing on, even now. I have tried as hard as I could to make her projects a priority. I’ve tried to leverage my privilege to her advantage. But it isn’t working any more. Maybe it never did. Maybe I’m about as useless as it appears.

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.

Asymmetry of Freedom

crimson

My posts are becoming more sporadic of late. Too much going on in my personal life. More getting out, as the pandemic is becoming less prevalent to the people around me. Not that the pandemic has left us; simply that people have decided to move on with their lives regardless.

Over the past few weeks, I have come to realize the significance of asymmetry. Specifically, I was considering the nature of freedom and how it is something that simply cannot exist for everyone. When the Freedom Convoy drove to Ottawa to fight for freedom, the question of who’s freedom stuck out in my mind. After much personal deliberation, I have come to realize that there is no scenario where everyone can be free. In fact, it seems to me that very few can ever truly be free.

The primary driving force in this though is the fact that when I express my freedom, I automatically remove the freedom of those around me in the process. Perhaps this is where Jean-Paul Sartre ended up in his own deliberations, resulting in his model of freedom as being adversarial. A war between individuals trying to dominate in order to practice their own freedom while removing the freedom of others.

This is not to say that I disagree with Simone de Beauvoir in her description. Honestly, I still side with her over him in this debate. I prefer to think about freedom as being something we cooperate with in order to practice. However, even in the act of cooperation, one or both parties must make concessions regarding their desires. At least one person will not entirely get what they want. In a true compromise, likely both parties will have given something up in order to gain a greater whole in the end.

Herein lies the asymmetry of everything. If I wish to express my freedom, others must give up their own freedom in some way, either voluntarily or by force. If I am not the one who is expressing my freedom in some unrestricted fashion, then I may be the one who is making the sacrifice. In fact, I know that I often make sacrifices during the exercising of my freedom. This observation is typically flowing from an acknowledgement of my empathy.

Empathy seems to me to be the primary motivator to resolving conflicts relating to expression of freedom. I recognize you as a free, autonomous entity, much as I see myself. I see you as thinking and feeling much as I do. I cannot know that you do, but I assume that you do. I am choosing to disagree with the likes of René Descartes; mine is not the only consciousness in existence; all of you are not merely very convincing robots.

This is itself an exercising of my freedom. The very act of deciding that there are other free beings around me, practicing their freedom and autonomy, is itself an expression of my own freedom. By deciding this, I am generating a foundation for my relations with those other entities. It flavours how I interact with other people. I am not interested in using others and disposing of them when I am finished, because I do not like it when others try to do this with me.

Thus, I try to be very careful in the practicing of freedom. I have my desires and projects, and I do try to complete those projects, but in my pursuit of progress I always consider how my progress will affect others. In many cases, I will adjust the particulars in my pursuit so as not to unduly affect the pursuit I see others making. As such, I also never truly express an unrestricted freedom either.

I also must acknowledge that in my pursuit there certainly exist cases where I did crush another’s freedom in the process. There have certainly been cases when I steam rolled over another’s practice, removing their freedom by force. Sometimes those other people have appreciated my efforts, adjusting their world views and deciding that my way is the better way. However, more often it has led to painful interactions and hate. After all, having one’s freedom undermined and outright removed is a painful experience itself. This is why there was a Freedom Convoy in the first place.

The model we see here is of a world with constantly shifting borders and boundaries. A world where there are many people attempting to realize projects, and most of those people failing in their attempts. Or perhaps it is better to say that they are not failing entirely; an individual can abandon their project, or they can chose to change and adjust it in order to realize a similar project in the end. This is the heart of compromise and collaboration.

All this said, there are still clearly cases whereby an individual (or group of individuals) have chosen to steam roll over many, many others’ freedoms in order to realize their own projects. We often refer to this as oppression, as in the case where the indigenous peoples of North America have been oppressed by the invading Europeans for many hundreds of years now. The indigenous peoples have been unable to practice their freedom for a long, long time. It may look like they are finally getting that chance, but upon closer inspection, it should be clear they are not. At best, they are pursuing highly adjusted projects that barely conform to the existing superstructure held in place by the settlers.

This is the way it must be. Not necessarily that the indigenous peoples must be the ones who suffer. But someone is going to suffer. A lot of people must necessarily suffer for the remaining few to be able to express their freedom.

The Matrix Resurrections and Being Trans

crimson

Yesterday, I was a fool…

It takes time to understand a Matrix film. All of them do. To be perfectly honest, I still uncover and discover things about the original films today. It has been 22 years since the first film was released and I am still discovering things. This is what makes a Matrix film a Matrix film. Reflection and revelation.

No, I’m not trans. This is not me coming out. But in some sense, I am trans as well. What I just realized is what it means to be trans. What it means to affirm your own identity. To claim yourself, despite what the world and others wish you to be. It is about making a choice that really isn’t a choice at all.

My journey has been a long one, and it is by no means over. I expect I will still uncover and discover things about all of the Matrix films 20 years from now. More hidden meanings and hidden messages. Though, the irony is that none of these messages or meanings are hidden at all. They never were. That is what makes these films so brilliant and yet so heartbreaking.

In virtually every human culture, once we are born, we are told who and what we are. On some level, this is necessary. Baby humans cannot survive on their own and require assistance. In most cases, it is their parents who provide that assistance, at least over the first five or so years. Others are often involved as well, such as doctors and other family members. At five (or so, at least in my culture) you are thrust into the system in an official way: you go to school. Kindergarten or maybe Grade 1. You are taught all the things you need to know in order to eventually become a “productive member of society.” You are taught how to properly be who and what you are, as indicated and supported by your birth.

The first 20 years of your life are devastating. I believe this is true for everyone. Whatever you may think or feel must be shaped during this time, and so at any time you try to think or feel things that you are not supposed to think or feel, you are disciplined. You are corrected. You are not supposed to think those things, or feel in those ways. The discipline can be hard. The discipline is often violent. But it needs to be. Otherwise, you might start to think that being yourself is acceptable, and this can put you in serious jeopardy.

Discipline comes from everywhere. Not just your parents. Not just the teachers in school. It comes from your peers as well. The other children that are in the same situation you are in. You learn that if you support the system and help correct others, you are usually rewarded. They say that the best way to learn is to teach.

You are lucky though as well. Before you are declared an adult if you make missteps, the discipline, as hard as it is, is still light in comparison to what it will be as an adult. Becoming an adult changes the game entirely. As an adult, the same missteps can get you killed, quite literally. And some missteps are so severe, you don’t even need to be an adult.

This is the path all humans take. We are told we have free will, but we are never given an opportunity to express it. We are told that once you become an adult, you will get to express it, but by that time it is already far too late. You’ve been indoctrinated into the system. Your identity well established. Who and what you are, as decided at birth, are instinctually programmed. You can not make a free choice, even if you wanted to.

This is a pretty lofty claim. Many who read what I have written will likely find fault with it in some way. The easiest attack is the claim “all humans.” After all, there must certainly be exceptions. I have yet to see one. And in the 46 years of my life that I’ve had to ponder this, I have found no way out. Because I have pondered this all my life. At least as far back as the time I asked my mother where “man” came from. (I am told I asked this question before I was 4.)

The trans situation is the same as this; only there is a focus on particulars. The who and what in this case are sex and gender. Are you a boy or a girl? Will you grow up to be a man or a woman? It is this declaration at birth that decides the path of your conditioning. Are you blue or pink? Do you get a truck or a doll? Do you take Industrial Arts or Home Economics? Which washroom do you enter?

The question I asked during my training was why? Why do I have to have a preferred colour? A preferred toy? A preferred vocation? Should these things not be something I can decide for myself? Exercising my free will? I was told that I was allowed to express myself, but if I chose incorrectly, I was corrected.

I’ve mentioned the beer issue in previous posts, but I think this is the right place to raise it again. I don’t like beer. This is my free will expressing itself. But once I came of age, as I was declared a boy at birth, my dislike of beer was challenged over and over again. Men drink beer, after all. It is a manly thing to do. My friends, my peers, who were sympathetic, made attempts to correct me. One even told me that, “no one likes beer, we all just get used to it.” Is this not precisely the point I’m trying to make?

The part of trans culture that I generally disagree with is that I see people dismissing one side for another. I am not a boy, I’m a girl. I don’t exhibit the traits and features of one category, I exhibit the traits and features of the other. It is the established and confirmed categories that I detest. During my upbringing, I was essentially offered a choice between two pots to pick from. No other options lay before me. Do you like blue? Do you like pink? What if I want to say green?

I know about non-binary. I know about both and neither. And if I were trans, that is where I’d stand. But I detest those categories. I see the depth of their artificiality. I see the depth of their insidiousness. I see how their influence taints the very fabric of our reality. It is why I was so moved when reading “In and Out of Harm’s Way” by Marilyn Frye. The idea of the Arrogant Eye. The idea of oppression.

The largest issue I face with all of this, the point I’ve made in previous posts, is that if I don’t like this system of categories, I ought to offer an alternative. I don’t have one. Or, my suggestion is that there be none. No men. No women. Just people. Just humans. But then I’d also have to establish what sort of training all babies are supposed to get. I’d have to pick and choose the correct colour and toy and vocation. At least, that is what I’m led to believe.

Maybe that too is the point. Maybe the establishment of colour and toy and vocation is itself also part of the problem. The system of conditioning. The training. Maybe it all has to go. But then how would those young humans learn to exist in the world?

We circle back and start to eat our tail at this point. What does the world look like presently? What sorts of skills and abilities work best in this world? What sort of training would be best to offer a young human in order to afford them the greatest success in this modern world? Clearly, the training of boys and girls is most suited to this environment. This is a world of men and women, after all. Even if it is not desirable, this is the world as it stands presently.

An appeal to tradition. We are as we are because we were. Change is slow. Slower the more humans get involved. And there are 7.7 billion humans right now (according to Google). That’s a lot of people. Change is going to be so very slow.

The latest Matrix film has been a roller coaster for me. First fighting for room. I had to defend my position that I didn’t dislike the film. It’s strange to me to have to defend such a position. “How can you not hate this film,” people would scream at me. “This film is a steaming dumpster fire!” Simply not agreeing with them seemed to suggest I was in serious need of discipline. Like when I was younger.

But I did what I always do. I tried to be patient. I talked to people. Especially people who I didn’t agree with. I learned long ago that it is those you don’t agree with that will offer the greatest insights. Even though many of those people seemed to want to crucify me, I knew they could offer me answers that those who agreed with me could not. So I persevered.

I told everyone I would take a break. After about two weeks of going to war each day, I said I’d gotten as much as I could, and I needed time to digest. I think we all did. Time for those who haven’t seen the film an opportunity to see the film. And for those who had, time to think about what they saw. To reflect.

It didn’t take very long. The film was released only 18 days ago. It only took 18 days of discussion and reflection for me to get here. Enough time to realize what this film is. Enough time to now say that this film may be the best of the series. Greater even than the first.

Please do not misunderstand. I fully expect to continue learning and evolving over time. I expect to continue to uncover and discover things related to this film for years to come. But in this moment, I think I understand. I think I understand enough to say, I like this film. Enough to say, this film is amazing.

This film, among all the other things that it is, is a trans story. It is a brief glimpse into the process I described above. It is about how we are told who and what we are, despite anything we may feel inside. The film engages directly with this. So much so that it can be uncomfortable to watch.

But don’t look away because you are uncomfortable. Keep looking. Keep watching. You are supposed to feel uncomfortable. Because it is uncomfortable to be told who and what you are, especially when you feel something else entirely. If the film punches you in the face, it isn’t random and it isn’t with malicious intent. It is with love. It is there to help you. Change hurts. Change is incredibly painful. This film knows this.

Why this film is brilliant is that unlike so many other films (including its predecessors), this film is not afraid. This film isn’t subtle. This film is there getting in your face. Invading your space. Forcing you to deal with everything. Calling you to action. Working you into a frenzy.

This is why there are so many people expressing hatred. This is why those same people cannot help but try to discipline and shame me. The film insults them. The film offends them. The film challenges their very being. There should be absolutely no surprise that some people would have these reactions.

In the last review I watched, just before writing this post, the commentator described this film as beautiful. I agree with him. Like me, he is not trans either. But he did his research, and he watched the film with a Loving Eye. He was patient. He reflected. And I think he is right.

Imperfection in the Matrix

crimson

I like the Matrix story. I have written many posts regarding aspects of the story that I think are quite well done and thought provoking. However, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that there are also issues with the story. Some can be overlooked. Others are quite substantial.

To be clear, I still like the story. It is still one of my favorites. I consider the nature of the story to be such that one can overlook much and still gain from its viewing. A fundamental feature of the story is that it plays with the idea that we have a tendency to feel like something is amiss, almost all the time. In the case of the Matrix, this thing that is amiss is often the fact that the characters are trapped in a simulated world, unable to escape; unable to really detect on a conscious level that they are even trapped. This feeling drives many of the conversations and debates about aspects of the story. This is a good thing. The stories many imperfections can be overlooked as a result.

That said, there are some huge problems as well. In this post, I will raise two major problems with the story. One significant and straight forward problem relates to the scorched sky. The other, much more subtle problem, relates to the obviousness of the orchestrated “path of the one.” One of these problems, I believe, will be quite easy to see by most. The other may not.

At various points in the films and supplementary material, it is explained that the sky was scorched by the humans in an attempt to defeat the machines in a great war. The machines were, at the time, quite dependent on solar energy to sustain themselves. It was believed, by the humans, that blocking this source of energy would bring a quick end to the war. This assumption clearly failed, and the events that precipitated the creation of the Matrix simulation follow. The machines decided to use human beings as a source of energy to sustain themselves, considering this to be a viable alternative to the previously abundant solar energy.

Unfortunately, on this planet, there is no source of energy as abundant as solar energy. In fact, most other forms of energy we utilize are indirectly generated by solar energy. For example, the currents of winds in our atmosphere are, by and large, generated by the solar energy being absorbed by large land masses, which in turn heat up the atmosphere near the surface. The air rises, as a result of being heated, and this causes the air above to be pushed around. This isn’t the only manner in which the atmosphere moves, but it is probably the most significant. This is also why the melting of the polar ice caps is such a big deal related to climate change. The ice caps, by and large, reflect this solar energy, meaning the energy is sent back off into space. Less ice caps mean less solar energy bounced away, and more absorbed by the Earth and atmosphere, which in turn causes more green house effect.

In the world of the Matrix, if the sky has been scorched in such a way as to take away this abundant power source from the machines, it has the (likely) unintentional side effect of removing this same energy source from the humans as well. Without solar energy making it past the black clouds, none of that energy will reach the Earth to raise temperatures or offer other processes the energy required to continue. The movement of atmosphere is likely to stagnate. Furthermore, there is now no energy to allow plants to synthesize sugars or oxygen. After several hundred years, what sort of oxygen levels will remain for the humans to continue respiring?

It is often suggested that geothermal energy is utilized (at least by the humans) in order to power their last city. I will have to assume it is utilizing this energy source to produce the oxygen and other necessary life continuing elements for the humans. Growing crops deep beneath the surface of the Earth, using artificial light sources. Or perhaps there are no crops, and technology is such that the required food sources are manufactured, though from what I cannot guess. Visions of Soylent Green come to mind.

It is a fact of our “real world” that no conversion process is ever 100% efficient. That is, when converting mechanical energy into electrical energy, there will always be some energy lost in the conversion. This is often due to such things as friction (mechanical) or resistance (electrical), both of which end up producing a byproduct of heat. Are we to believe that either the machines or the humans in our near future will somehow resolve these efficiency problems? The swinging pendulum will eventually stop if not maintained by small pushes during its swings.

The biggest problem with scorching the sky is that it does not only present a significant problem for the machines, it presents an extinction level event for the humans as well. Without the abundant solar energy that our “real world” depends on, life cannot be sustained. Perhaps there might continue some small, strange creatures in the depths of the oceans where their respiratory processes are virtually alien to our own, but human life is pretty much impossible without the sun. To be quite blunt, without the sun, both the machine civilization as well as the human one will simply die out over a period of time, as their collective energy reserves are depleted. I would have given them perhaps one generation, but considering the energy requirements to maintain a war, perhaps I am being too generous.

The scorched sky problem seems to place a firm nail in the coffin for this story, but it is certainly not the only major issue. Another large theme in this story is the idea of free will. It is suggested that choice is a problem the machines are unable to resolve within their human farms. The earlier iterations of the Matrix did not properly account for the free will of the occupants, and disaster followed. And so, it was decided that humans had to have a say (however small) in the playing out of the grand simulation. Choices were programmed in, at a near unconscious level. Just enough to allow the humans to accept the program, though with a growing probability of disaster from systemic anomalous code brought about from the free will problem.

Essentially, the story is suggesting an incompatibility between the hard determinism of the machines and the free will of the humans. I will continue with this perceived false dilemma, but take a moment to point out that determinism and free will are not mutually exclusive. It may be true that we, as a species, have not found an entirely satisfactory explanation of how free will might possibly fit inside our seemingly deterministic universe, but this does not suggest that these alternative viewpoints are incommensurable. The story is making a bit of a leap here to suggest that one or the other must prevail. (And also that one of the two is somehow superior in the process.)

In the story, the solution to this problem is the creation of a prophesy: the path of the one. The anomalous code within the simulation culminates in the emergence of the One. That is, after a time, the progressive collection of all the doubts of all the occupants within the Matrix over time swells and manifests through an individual who we call Neo. Neo, in this case, is the key representative of freedom, unburdened by the rules of determinism. He is special. He is an exception. The rules of the Matrix do not apply to him. He doesn’t believe in all this “fate crap.”

And so he and his friends follow the path of the one in order to save humanity from the prison that is the Matrix… Wait, what? His key defining feature is that he believes determinism is fundamentally wrong, and he is going to follow a predetermined path in order to make his point? This is what prophecy is. It is fate. I would say it is fate repackaged, but it isn’t even that. Prophecy is fate. Okay, prophecy is the foretelling of fated events, whereas fate is the manifestation of those events. However, they are not separate things. They are clearly linked quite tightly.

In other words, the protagonists in the story of the Matrix are following a predetermined, causally established sequence of events in order to demonstrate how free will exists and will save them all. Neo will simply choose the path, over not following the path. His choices amount to making the correct choices, lest all fails and the world ends. It isn’t nearly as clear as a scorched sky, but am I to accept this really?

The characters insist that this free will exists and is why there is a problem. The system works as hard as it can to accommodate all these choices people are making, including the choices of the one himself. The path is a method to do this. After all, he has to be given these choices, even at a near unconscious level. Every conflict and event he encounters is a test, where he must make choices in order to progress the storyline and plot. He could always choose not to progress the plot, but lucky for us he does.

The Oracle does suggest why this is the case. For her, it isn’t about what choices he will make, as she suggests “you’ve already made it [the choice]. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.” For her, the choices are already predetermined. The issue is not making a choice, it is understanding why a choice was made the way it was. This is not an argument in support of freedom, this is an argument against. This is an argument suggesting that free will may look like it exists, but in fact it does not. It is all an illusion.

Neo may not want to believe in fate, but his actions persistently present an opposing belief. Morpheus is even worse in this regard. When the protagonists encounter each strange being with incredibly and ridiculously contrived instructions that are meant to allow them to prove that free will exists and free humanity from their enslavement in simulation, they quickly get in line and progress the plot as expected. The Merovingian himself makes a joke about this; about how understanding is power, and so understanding choices makes one powerful. He even offers the protagonists another wild goose chase in order to progress the plot.

Then note how Morpheus later suggests in the elevator that “what happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.” This is the furthest thing from an argument in favor of free will. The characters entrench themselves in incredibly convoluted plans, like crazy Rube Goldberg machines, because it is this level of complexity that seems to suggest something greater. It seems like complexity is the key to freedom. The more complex a system is, the more it is believed to be representative of freedom.

As a very poignant example, when the Keymaker is telling the protagonists the precise plan that is required in order to allow Neo to open the door and enter the Source, and there just so happens to be all the things in place that are needed to accomplish this insane mission, Morpheus doesn’t pause and suggest a problem, he suggests it is providence. Instead of recognizing that this latest heist plan is simply too ridiculous and coincidental, he suggests the prophecy is coming to conclusion.

There are many such examples throughout the story. The characters are oblivious. They simply cannot see that these complicated procedures are orchestrated by a higher power. They take it as being fate. The audience similarly follows by the nose and doesn’t question it either. No one asks the natural question that ought to be asked: “who comes up with this stuff?”

My point, if it isn’t clear, is that making something hard to follow and complicated does not equate to breaking out of the chains of determinism. Just because I cannot see all the causal connections between two events does not mean those connections do not exist. To argue in favor of free will simply because I cannot understand, myself, how something could possibly come about. To do so seems to demonstrate a significant level of ignorance. It is like suggesting that “features of living things are too complex to be the result of natural selection.” Complexity is poor evidence in support of an argument toward Intelligent Design, or any other conclusion.

I am a limited being, with limited capacities. While I can know much, I will never know everything. In fact, the amount I am able to grasp at any given moment in time seems incredibly small when compared to all there is to know about everything. It is a fact of my existence that I will not have the complete picture of things all the time. I will be forced to make choices with insufficient information quite frequently. I do the best I can, given my particular circumstances at any given moment. This does not mean my choices are themselves unpredictable. This does not mean that there was no causal chain connecting my situation to my choices. It simply means I do not know how it is connected. This is very different from saying that it is not possible to know, or to say that it is entirely unpredictable.

It raises the question regarding what precisely free will or freedom might actually be. Human brains are incredibly complicated. Does this suggest that freedom exists in brains, as a result of the fact that I do not understand how brains operate? That because I cannot predict something, that something simply cannot be predicted by anyone or anything? It would be like suggesting that because I dislike a certain flavour of ice cream, that flavour must be disliked by all. If that were true, one might ask the question “why make that flavour of ice cream at all?”

The Matrix story isn’t without flaws. Even simply taking a moment to discuss a couple of its weaknesses can generate very interesting discussion. This is what makes the Matrix so interesting. This is what makes the Matrix story so enjoyable. It isn’t about how perfectly or imperfectly the The Wachowskis wrote their story, because they definitely seemed to overlook some significant things. What I think makes more sense to focus on is the questions and discussions raised by their story. This is what makes the Matrix interesting.

The Rarity of Free Will

crimson

What could possess me to make another post so quickly? An epiphany. A revelation. Many years in the making. The adjusted belief that perhaps freedom does exist, but it is simply so very rare.

In the beginning, about when I was in high school, I started to doubt the ideas of free will. More specifically, the idea of an effect without a cause. I would play Dungeons & Dragons with my friends, and I considered the randomness of rolling a die. When one throws the cube, it bounces around before settling down with one of its six faces showing up toward the person. The epitome of random. But is it really?

In high school, I took physics classes, and perhaps it was due to my novel education that I considered the situation carefully. Were I to know the precise velocity that the die was released, the effects of the atmosphere on the cube as it flew through the air, the imperfections in the surface as it struck down, the coefficients of friction, and all of the various minutia of the events, using a bit of math I could probably predict which face would end up showing. Sure, to know all of these details may not be feasible; I am merely human with limited capacities. But if I could have somehow acquired all of this knowledge, I feel quite confident I could do it. I could predict this random event.

But that becomes a contradiction, does it not? Part of what is baked into the definition of random is that it is unpredictable. To be truly random, no amount of knowledge should ever be sufficient to perform such a calculation. Certainly there is a conflict here. Either my idea is incorrect, or there are not as many random events in our universe as I believed. In fact, what if there are no random events at all?

I’ve been working on computers for most of my life. Computers can generate random numbers, can’t they? Well, as it turns out, no they cannot. The algorithms used by computers to provide seemingly random information can be exceedingly creative, running up against the feasibility concern I’ve raised above. But the results are still not truly or purely random. The use of seemingly unpredictable events from the outside environment (the passage of time, the manner in which I move my mouse, the choice and patterns I employ when utilizing my keyboard, etc) are called entropy and are used to seed the random number generators in our favorite electronic devices. It’s random, but really, it’s not.

There is a marked difference between something that is entirely unpredictable because no amount of knowledge could ever be acquired to predict a result, and something that could be predicted given enough time and effort. The question I posed to a philosophy group this past summer was to suggest that were I God, with an omniscient and omnipotent nature, the feasibility issue might be overlooked. God, I said, could predict these unpredictable events. Unfortunately for me, the suggestion of being God simply overshadowed any attempt at a reasonable discussion after that point.

However, this is the point I am making. For something to be truly random, even God would not be able to predict the outcome. If God could predict the outcome, then it isn’t truly random. Does true randomness exist in our universe? Or does everything bow down to the law of causality, with every single effect being caused by some other event? It seems impossible for us to ever determine such a thing.

If I exist in a hard deterministic universe, where all things follow causality, then there seems to be another very serious problem. There are other things I cherish and value that seem impossible. True creativity seems impossible as well; anything I may want to call creative is simply the reorganization and reassembly of other past things. Perhaps I might want to include the idea of accidents promoting creativity, but as with the previous discussion of randomness, accidents are simply expected events that may not feasibly be predicted either.

Freedom is another such thing. I am speaking of the sort of freedom that includes unpredictability as part of its description. The sort of freedom that I assume God would have, and that I hope I too have. The free will that allows me to break out of a purely deterministic universe by injecting something like an uncaused cause into the mix. If true randomness and true creativity cannot be, then neither can true freedom it seems.

I told my own mother my discovery one day, telling her that I could not believe in free will. Fate, I said, must be how things operate (using the term as I wasn’t aware of the term deterministic at the time). Her response was both passionate and quite surprising to me. “Go step in front of a moving bus,” she said, “if what you say is true, then you will not be harmed.” I was shocked. Of course I would be harmed I told her, but the discussion simply became ridiculous. I could not, for the longest time, understand why she had suggested such a thing.

Later, I realized that what she was suggesting wasn’t quite the same thing as I am discussing here. For her, I think I sounded pompous and arrogant. Like perhaps I felt I had divine protection and influence, or some other equally unlikely blessing. I think I understood the reactions Joe Bauers in Idiocracy was receiving from people after having been frozen for 500 years. Like Joe, I was not trying to impress or sound special. I was simply stating things as I understood them. Communications can be quite challenging at times.

As a result of that interaction with my own mother, I decided it would be best to broach the subject differently going forward. I would say that I don’t believe in free will, but I am open to the possibility. If ever someone was able to convince me of the possibility, I would take the argument seriously.

Fast forward now to the years of the pandemic. Marvel releases the television show Loki. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is a multiverse. That is, there is not one universe but many. There is not one me, but many, each just a little bit different than the others. In each case, the differences are typically caused by my exercising of my free will. When an event occurs whereby I can choose between more than one option, in truth I actually choose ALL options. Each option I choose forks the universe into another parallel universe. In one of these universes I chose the vanilla ice cream, but in another I chose chocolate.

One issue I found with the show was that there seemed not to be as many Nexus events (these free will events that fork the timeline) as I would have expected. After all, I am faced with numerous free will choices every day. Possibly each hour, minute, or even second. The administration of the timeline, trying to address the multitude of Nexus events caused by me alone would be untenable, let along that there are literally billions upon billions of other individuals with free will causing as many other Nexus events across time and space. So, in the show, why are there only a few at a time? The Time Variance Authority (TVA) seems pretty calm, simply sending out their teams occasionally to address these problem events.

The show never addresses my concern, but I have a theory: perhaps the reason Nexus events are so rare is that free will is not so prevalent as I would like to think. What if I am not expressing a free will when selecting between ice cream flavours, as my selection perhaps follows a more predictable structure due to my preferences and past experiences. If this is true, it may even be possible that not all individuals are even capable of expressing a free will. Perhaps free will is an extremely rare occurrence.

The Loki television show may have sparked this thought process, but it has been the immanent release of The Matrix Resurrections that has truly pushed my mind to think about this outside the box. Specifically, not the upcoming film itself, but rethinking about the previous films.

In particular, a person on Reddit posted a question regarding what would happen if two people inside the Matrix were to mate and have offspring. They wondered whether the offspring would be a computer program or somehow connected to a physical human outside the Matrix. Initially I laughed, but then I thought about it, and the question is absolutely brilliant. The answer is both surprising and depressing at the same time.

The Matrix is a simulation. Any individual who connects to the simulation will experience their own personal perspective of the simulation. While the simulation can offer the opportunity for individuals to interact with other individuals within the simulation, ultimately the bulk of any one person’s experience is being provided by the simulation itself. The simulation is what controls the environment and all things that the individual can interact with. If a bird flies by, the simulation will control that bird (unless the bird is an occupant jacked into the simulation, which is likely not occurring very often, especially in the storyline of The Matrix).

The answer to the above question is that any offspring would be a product of the simulation. The offspring would be a program, or part of the simulation’s program. Simply code. Similarly, if a physical baby human is born and immediately connected to the simulation, the simulation itself will have to provide virtual parents and all the other necessary elements to attend to the new life. Even if one thinks for a moment that those running the simulation might decide to take a moment to try and find appropriately similar parents or children to connect to the strange virtual relationship, aside from the most ridiculously complicated procedure that would render the simulation untenable, they would be mistaken. If the point of the Matrix is to sedate the occupants of the simulation in order to facilitate leaching energy off those occupants, a process attempting to maintain the connections between the occupants in this manner would use up all the available energy acquired in the process. It wouldn’t make any sense, because it is unreasonable. It isn’t feasible.

In other words, most of the “players” in the simulation must necessarily be controlled by the simulation and not be occupants. What is often refereed to in games as Non Player Characters or NPCs. There would be far more NPCs in any simulation than individuals connected to it. In fact, it would even make sense for there to be only one individual to be in simulation, with ALL other individuals being NPCs. To be in simulation is to enter into a sort of solipsism.

To further expand on this situation, consider the possibility that I am in simulation presently. It has been suggested that if a civilization develops the capacity to perform ultra realistic simulations, they are likely to run many, many such simulations. And if there are so many simulations in existence, the likelihood is quite high that I am within one of these simulations. To have so many simulations seems quite similar to the description of a multiverse.

If the probability is high that I am in simulation, then it is similarly high that any individual I encounter is an NPC. In fact, yes, it is also possible I am such an NPC as well. In any case, even if I am not an NPC, there are still going to be an incredibly high number of NPCs in this universe I find myself in. I could possibly be the only non NPC as well.

Finally, if I make the assumption that an NPC will NOT have free will, then I can now explain why free will would be so incredibly rare. With so few non NPCs in existence, even across so many simulated universes, the number of Nexus events in the Loki television show would be quite small and very manageable. And in my “real world” that I occupy right this moment, I can provide a reasonable explanation as to why free will itself would be so incredibly rare, to the point that it may not even exist.

Weaknesses in the Freedom Argument

crimson

Recently, I witnessed an Anti-Vaccine Protest. I have often observed at these protests recurring themes and recurring arguments that are meant to support their cause. It is often claimed that they are “Critical Thinkers” and that their logic and reason lead them to conclude that taking a vaccine is a bad idea. Further to this, they will often argue that it restricts their right to freedom if they are coerced or forced to get vaccinated. With the pandemic still going strong, there seem to be many such protests going on.

In this post, I will discuss what I will refer to as the “Freedom Argument,” the argument that suggests getting vaccinated (or being coerced or forced to get vaccinated) goes against their right to freedom. To begin, I will need to clarify what those presenting this argument mean by freedom.

On this website, I have spoken about freedom and free will at length. My understanding of freedom typically relates to an idea of unpredictability; something that is not a part of causal chains of events, like and uncaused cause perhaps. The Freedom Argument’s version of freedom is very different than my understanding.

Having listened to many discussions from protesters, it is my belief that what they mean by freedom is more akin to their perceived right to be able to act as they desire without being restricted in those acts. That is, if one wishes to eat ice cream, they ought to be able to eat ice cream, and that if anyone interferes with that desire, they are restricting the person’s freedom to eat ice cream. With this understanding, freedom would seem to be intimately related to egoism and hedonism, as it seems intimately tied with one’s desires.

In the first case of egoism, I am suggesting that an individual is acting in a self-interested manner. In the case of the Freedom Argument, one is intended to be free to act in self-interested ways. To prevent an individual from pursuing self-interested actions, one is restricting that individual’s freedom. The Freedom Argument will suggest that this is a bad thing.

In the second case of hedonism, I am suggesting that an individual is pursuing fulfillment of their desires, especially pleasure. In the case of the Freedom Argument, one is intended to be free to pursue their own desires and pleasures. To prevent an individual from pursuing their pleasures, one is restricting that individual’s freedom. Again, the Freedom Argument will suggest this is a bad thing.

There is often one additional caveat that is added to the Freedom Argument, though it may be unspoken in many cases. The idea that to pursue one’s desires and self-interest is considered acceptable (and even desirable) in all circumstances, so long as it does not infringe upon the freedom of others. That is, if my action affects only me and no one else (in any significant way), then I ought to be free to pursue that action without restriction. To put this another way, if my action will not cause any negative effects on those around me, there is no reason for others to restrict my action.

It is this last point that muddles up most of the argument, I think. To be self-interested and to pursue one’s desires within and of themselves seems unproblematic. It may even be argued that all people are already self-interested and pursuing their desires presently. There are complicated arguments that suggest helping others is simply a pathway to self-interestedness and that such actions may, in fact, lead to individual pleasure. However, in the pursuit of desire and pleasure, especially in our modern world, it is frequently incumbent to make others suffer.

I imagine the last statement I made will be met with a great deal of resistance. One might suggest that the act of eating ice cream, for example, causes no suffering to any one. However, I would raise the question of how one might gain the opportunity to eat ice cream. The ice cream must be generated by some means. Someone will have to milk a cow, or similar mammal, accumulate the dairy product, process it, reduce its temperature, mix in other ingredients, (these other ingredients will have their own story to tell regarding how they come about as well), stored, presented, sold, prepared, and numerous other activities. My point is that the process behind the generation of ice cream is quite long and complicated. There are many things one might consider along the path of that process, including the well-being of the cow (or other mammal), the people who partake of each step of the process, and the eventual process of acquisition. Are we so certain that no one in that entire process suffered so that one might enjoy ice cream?

In our modern consumerist world (at least the part of the world where I reside), it may be suggested that working toward the production of a product does not count as suffering. After all, the people partaking of the process of manufacture are provided compensation for their labours. While I might agree that some people may truly enjoy their work and receive arguably appropriate compensation for that work, I have often observed that this is not the case. That many people are not very happy with their employment situations, and that the conditions in which they work under are less than ideal. Furthermore, compensation is frequently much less than what those people deserve. This last point, I admit, is my opinion; there is no objective measure of valuation that one can rely upon to ensure that compensation for labour is fair.

My ice cream example does, I admit, seem a little taxed. If the cow is sustainably and ethically farmed, if the farmer and his family are happy, if everyone in every step of the process is not unduly taxed during the process, it seems unproblematic for one to eat ice cream in a manner that does not cause suffering. Can the same be said regarding all other aspects of our lives? Are our clothes all so easily manufactured? Or our homes? Or our smartphones?

It might seem I have gone off on a tangent here, but I assure you I have not. Those individuals who participate in the process that eventually results in the shoes you place on your feet are frequently unable to exercise their freedom in the manner I have outlined above. Their suffering is a result of poor working conditions as well and a severe lack of appropriate compensation. In some cases, they may even be forced to work, not having any other live options. Similar situations occur in most aspects of Western Society. There is a great disconnect between those who utilize products and services, and the sources of those same products and services. The greater the disconnect, the less likely one may feel the associations that exist between their actions and the consequences of their actions.

This all may seem quite preachy and contrived, so I will provide a much, much simpler example that I observed during the protest that I referred to at the outset of this article. During the protest, one of the protesters had a megaphone and decided to exercise his freedom by walking down the middle of a busy street. Through the megaphone, he indicated that he was exercising his freedom to walk upon the street, and that if anyone were to prevent him from doing so, they would be restricting his freedom. It was his way of presenting his evidence of his Freedom Argument.

Unfortunately, there resulted a long line up of cars behind him as he walked. Numerous vehicles, occupied by numerous individuals, who were simply trying to exercise their freedom to drive on the street. The protester’s actions, while possibly a manifestation of his own freedom, incurred the suffering of others. Was his freedom somehow more valuable or important than the freedom of the drivers on the street?

In our world, we often live within societies with laws and rules. Those laws and rules are, I think, intended to provide a vehicle for cooperation between people, as well as an opportunity to allow each participant in the rules to manifest a limited freedom. That is to say, it required quite a cooperative effort by many, many individuals to produce the street that the protester and drivers all were trying to use. No one person owns that street; it belongs to all those who helped build it, which included all the tax payers. With the street being essentially a shared resource, coming up with a set of rules to govern its use seems a fair way to ensure that all those who partook of its creation can all enjoy its use. (I will admit that the precise nature of the laws and rules may require some adjustment to ensure fairness across all individuals, but the idea of having laws and rules I do not think is in dispute).

The protester walking down the middle of the street infringes on the rules of the street’s use, namely the protester is “jaywalking.” By choosing to break the agreed upon rule governing the use of the street, the protester is suggesting that his freedom to walk down the street, in spite of the rules, is more important or more valuable than the freedom of those driving their vehicles on the street.

Ultimately the point I am trying to make is that the exercising of a freedom by one, often restricts the freedom of others, unless the freedom being exercised somehow does not affect others. In the case of a pandemic and vaccination, the purpose of vaccination is to collectively provide defensive measures to mitigate the spread of the virus. When individuals decide not to get vaccinated, they are not only affecting themselves, they are affecting everyone around them with their choice. Their decision to exercise their freedom and not get vaccinated actually restricts the freedom of others, including those who chose to get vaccinated.

The largest weakness of the Freedom Argument, in my opinion, is the lack of consideration of others. For me to be free, others must have their freedom restricted. A better argument might suggest that we are all not entirely free, but free in a limited capacity. I allow my freedom to be restricted in a small way, and you do as well, such that we both can share a similar level of freedom. A compromise of a sort. It seems to me to be better that we all share a limited freedom, than for some to hold onto an unrestricted freedom while many receive no freedom at all.

The Arrogant Eye

crimson

Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge that the term I have used as my title today is not my own creation. I’ve borrowed it from Marilyn Frye, specifically from the book “The Politics of Realty, Essays in Feminist Theory.” My discussion today is heavily influenced by Frye’s ideas and words, as well as the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and others. Of women.

I recently watched the 2020 film “Promising Young Woman.” This is an amazing and impressive work whose underlying critical thoughts are likely missed by most of its viewers, especially the male viewers. I would strongly urge you to watch this film, if you have not already done so. Do not read any synopsis of the film ahead of time; the synopsis I found and read actually took away from the charm of the story (the synopsis had spoilers in it). Instead, I offer this description of the film:

A troubled young woman goes around luring men to take her home under the guise of being blackout drunk. In truth, she is stone cold sober every time, and uses the opportunity to confront the men who are simply trying to take advantage of her for their own pleasure. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that she may not be as troubled as is initially assumed.

I was not raised a woman or a girl. I do not have the experience nor conditioning that accompany such an upbringing. Instead, I was raised a man. Much of my conditioning and experience was focused on presenting the world to me in such a way that “the world is my oyster.” I was raised to oppress and control. I was raised to seek ownership and possession of all that is in my purview. I always had troubles with these ideas, seeing the inconsistencies and flaws in such a world-view. Unfortunately for me, being aware has not always been enough to stop be from doing the things I ought not do. But I try to this day to be more than I was raised to be.

Today, I must speak from my perspective on this topic, because that is the perspective I have. I cannot speak for women, as I am not a woman. I did not have those experiences. I do not fully understand where my insight came from, but it is here nonetheless. I hope I can do justice to and properly convey the idea I have planned to convey.

In my last year at university, I had an ongoing discussion with a friend of a friend of mine. A young man who considered himself “woke.” A young man who believed he treated women well. A “nice guy,” to borrow a term used in the film mentioned above. We discussed a number of topics, but one of them recurred frequently. The idea of approaching a woman in order to pursue a relationship with her. He would come to me suggesting the best and most appropriate manner in approaching a desirable woman; a manner that he considered to be properly acknowledging the woman’s autonomy and status as a free conscious being. Every time, I had to tell him that I believed he was mistaken. His approaching a desirable woman (for any reason really) is already flawed before he begins. This is what I will explain, and I hope to make it clear why I am correct.

I will first break down the process that leads him to approach the woman. His method of approach matters little, as you will see. First, he sees the woman. Then he decides she is attractive. In finding her attractive, he desires to pursue a relationship with her, which leads to the question of how best to approach her in order to realize this relationship. Presented more susinctly:

[1] Man sees woman (this is discovery: he comes to understand that the woman exists)

[2] Man judges woman (from [1] and using his world-view, he assesses the qualities of the woman)

[3] Man finds woman attractive (from [2], man determines that woman’s qualities are desirable)

[4] Man desires to possess woman (from [3], man wishes to exercise his desire by possessing the desirable thing)

[5] Man tries to determine best course of action to achieve [4]

Of course it is always possible that after [2] the man determines that the qualities of the woman are not desirable, and then [3], [4], and [5] do not come about, but this simply exacerbates the situation and emphasizes my point further. I will return to this later. For now, I will address the situation where the man does find the woman attractive.

Step [1] above is the ONLY step that is not wrought with sexism or other negative ideas. It is basic discovery in the world. To be clear, the sort of thing I have in mind here is the most basic, primitive form of seeing. Before this step, the man is not aware that the woman exists at all in any way. After this step, he is aware of her existence, simply at the most basic level. Enough so for him to proceed to step [2]. One cannot begin to judge a thing until one is aware that there is a thing to be judged. Basic awareness of existence.

Step [2] begins the first, and in my opinion most insidious, problem with the situation. We all judge. It is part of our nature as free conscious beings to do so. We assess our world, deciding the value of everything around us. It is possible that I might borrow a valuation offered to me by others, such as the systems in place in society, but it is still me who applies and exercises that valuation. In the case of the woman, the man assess her qualities (whatever qualities he is able to glean by seeing her). If her qualities measure up to the valuation he has established (a.k.a if he thinks she is beautiful based on his pre-established valuation of beauty standards, which are often given to him through his upbringing in a patriarchal society), then he finds her attractive. This is the first problem, and one could stop here if one wanted to.

Step [3] follows from step [2]. If the woman’s qualities are such that she is valuable, she is then desired. He desires her, for she has value to him. It isn’t any more complicated than this. He sees her as a commodity with value. He has objectified her. One might argue the objectification occurred at step [2], and I would not really argue against that. However, I would point out that when I judge, I do so to everything in my world, indiscriminately. I cannot see my world without judging ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I see. On some level, I have decided the value in everything around me, and a woman is no different than a stone in this regard. Even my own body is subject to this judgement. This is what it means to be embodied, as Beauvoir might agree with me; simply having a body subjects me to judgement and assessment. To have a body is to, even if just in part, be objectified. The trick is to not allow this objectification to overwhelm the other possible interactions I might have with a particular body, such as an acknowledgement that the body is more than a mere body, and may also include a free conscious being with its own desires and projects.

Therefore, it is at step [3] that the majority of problems occur. Sexism rears its ugly head and establishes the nature of the relationship between the man and the woman even before the woman knows what is happening. Specifically, the man decides the woman’s value is merely in her embodiment. The man has reduced the woman to a mere object, without regard to any other aspect she may possess, including her own desires. Ironically, if he decides she is unattractive, the same is still true, as he has reduced her to a valuation which has made her undesirable as well. He has still disregarded any other possible aspect to her as a free conscious being when he dismisses her.

This is why we do not even need to proceed to step [4] or beyond. Step [4] is simply the man deciding to pursue the woman in order to possess her as a valuable object, or to dismiss her as an object with little or no value. In other words, If the man decides he wishes to pursue this woman at this point, he does so simply in virtue of her objectivity. Any attempt he makes to approach this woman is tainted by a stain of desired oppression. And, as I was reminded by my partner, her desire to be or not be approached is also being dismissed.

Put another way, his reason to approach the woman is flawed at the outset. There is no determining the best way to approach the woman because the simple desire to approach the woman is the problem. It is all about the “why.” Why does he want to approach the woman? If he does so because he is attracted to her, then he is already at fault of expressing sexism. If he wants to pursue a relationship with her, then he is objectifying her. He has chosen a course of action rooted in his valuation of her. One might even argue that what he desires is not the woman at all, but his perception of value that he believes the woman possesses. That is, what he desires is the abstract qualities he believes have value, and he has subconsciously assigned to the woman. He desires the idea of the woman. Either way, he has disregarded her as a free conscious being, having her own desires and projects.

This is, as I see it, one of the major issues women face in our world. The thing is, this analysis can be just as easily applied to racism and other forms of prejudism. It’s in the name itself. To judge before one gets to know the other parts or aspects of the entity in question. To base one’s opinions, and especially valuation, upon simple visual qualities. To judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. To establish that the value of a person is somehow based on what they look like, or other features of their appearance. And to dismiss even the possibility that they may possess other features that one cannot see. Or, if you prefer, to dismiss the significance of those other features, giving inappropriate weight to those features that are seen through the arrogant eye.

Silence

crimson

It is not like me to have nothing to say. Talk to anyone who knows me; I am notorious for talking at length about almost anything. The fact that it has been nearly three weeks since my last post seems strange, at least to me.

This blog is for me. It is for me to write what is on my mind, when I wish to write. Perhaps I simply do not wish to write? I don’t think that is the issue. Honestly, I think it is a question of priorities. Many of my priorities have changed over the past few months, even the past few years. Those things I considered particularly important have now become much less so. Last year, I graduated secondary school, earning my first degree. This blog was, for me, a way to continue practicing and exercising my logic and reason. A way to continue writing. However, since graduating, I have slowly been sliding back into other areas of interest.

From a very young age, computers have been an integral part of my existence. I started programming at about five years old on a Texas Instruments TI99/4A. I learned to program in BASIC back then, a very slow and clunky language intended to make programming easy for people like me to learn. BASIC is very basic.

Among the reasons I think programming appealed to me was the fact that I could control something. In my life, I have observed that there is very little I have actual control over. My parents were a bit overbearing, and definitely overprotective. I had very few opportunities to express a freedom, assuming such a thing even exists. I am not surprised that I doubt the existence of free will when I consider my upbringing. I find it strange when my parents disagree with me on the topic of freedom; I guess they were on the other side of that equation.

I find myself frequently thinking about oppression and slavery. About situations where people are in some way forced to make certain sorts of decisions and choices. When I think about this long enough, I realize that everyone is a slave to determinism. That is, all the choices I make are influenced (heavily) by all the things that have come before. The insidious chain of cause and effect plays its part on all the choices I make, as much as I try to avoid it. Like an adversity to touch hot stoves, my upbringing led me directly to the point I am today. Not only was this situation I find myself in inevitable, but I really could not have done otherwise.

This is the point of contention I expect most people to dispute. This is the point my own mother argued against vehemently. As she suggested, if fate ruled then I ought to walk into the street in front of a moving bus; her reasoning was that if fate truly ruled, I’d somehow not be hit. Unfortunately, it is my belief that my mother did not truly understand what I was saying. Of course I would get hit by a moving bus were I to jump in front of one. It is just silly to suggest otherwise. After all, cause and effect is just as valid in that situation as any other.

However, I try to understand her point of view in this. I think she was trying to suggest that I don’t have to jump in front of a bus. After all, I understand the consequences of such actions, and therefore I can choose to do otherwise. That is what I think she was trying to suggest. Unfortunately, this simply reaffirms my side of the argument: I would never step in front of a moving bus because I KNOW that I would be hit by it. It is really no different than the hot stove at all, and my knowledge of how cause and effect works has already made my decision before I am aware of it. Like when the Oracle tells Neo that he has already made his choice, he only now must understand why he has made the choice. “Know thy self.”

This is why I am so passionate regarding recognition of the structures of society. This is why I fear patriarchy and consumerism. I KNOW that their influence has a hold on me, and on all those around me. I KNOW that when I feel the urge to control another person, especially a woman, it is patriarchy that has deemed that I do so. I KNOW that when I feel the motivation to make lots of money and buy lots of things, consumerism is behind it. I am smart enough to understand that control over other people is pointless, as is the accumulation of stuff.

It is at this point that I always remember what my professors told me during my education: if you don’t agree with the way something is, you need to be able to provide an alternative if you plan to argue it coherently. I can suggest that patriarchy and consumerism are the worst inventions that have ever been, but unless I can suggest an alternative system to exist under, my point is mute. What would life be without patriarchy or consumerism?

I hurt people, unintentionally, when I work my way down this rabbit hole. When I tell my wife that it is not her appearance that impresses me, but her empathy, she seems both happy and sad at my statements. I think she is happy because I see her, in the way Marilyn Frye suggests women should be seen. She is not a stage hand, she is the star of my show. However, I also think she wishes I looked at her as being the most attractive woman in the world, in the way that she exemplifies the eternal woman of patriarchy. She seems often depressed at her inability to attain the perfect hourglass shape and incomprehensible weight, the statistics fed to her through all the mass media we are exposed to. So when I indirectly suggest her appearance is not important to me, I think she might interpret it to mean that she is unattractive. Like how people, when trying to be polite about an ugly person, they suggest that the person’s personality is what is important. It is a veiled insult. I swear that is not what I intend at all, but we are all part of that same system, and so those sorts of interpretations are common.

What is the alternative? I cannot say. I don’t know. When I consider myself, all these systems and structures stripped away, it seems to me I would be nothing. That is, every aspect of my being is infused with these structures. One way or another, I am a victim of my conditioning. I am a slave. I see no escape from it. Only one thing ever remains in my deep thought: my raw consciousness.

To be clear, it is not the consciousness most people would think about. When René Descartes strips away everything he can doubt in his meditations, he suggests the only thing that remains is his existence: “I think, I am.” There is debate as to whether this actually works, but I will give him this. What comes next as he travels back to the world is where I find myself disputing. Because he follows a path brought about through his conditioning, conditioning brought about through his lived experience. He would not consider such things if he had not first lived and experienced the world, in some fashion. The very idea of God comes from lived experience.

For me, what I mean by raw consciousness is that there is this thing I have, or I am, that I cannot really describe or explain. The other term I often use is my “first person,” a term to denote that it is my perspective on the world. I recognize that this raw consciousness is fed information through the incredibly flawed interfaces that have been provided: my eyes, my ears, etc. I know that even those interfaces could have been hijacked, through something akin to simulation theory. In fact, unlike Descartes, I don’t even agree that my exercising a thought is sufficient to suggest I exist, as a particularly good simulation might be doing the work of thinking for me.

The best I can sort of suggest is that I am like a passive observer, receiving all this information from somewhere. And due to the causal nature of everything, even my choices and decisions could have been (likely are) also hijacked. I feel like the “job” of my formal consciousness (the consciousness that most people think of) is to tell stories. That is, stuff happens and I make choices (which are predetermined by causality), and my conscious mind finds a way to justify and explain what happened and why I chose as I did. My mind tells a story to explain the occurrences in the world, and the occurrences in my mind as well. That I am simply a story telling machine.

The story goes something like this: I am a raw consciousness, a passive observer of experience. I, in some fashion, inhabit this body and this mind, both which provide for me experiences to observe. But this body and this mind both are subject to a deterministic universe, where causal relationships have been playing out for some time. I have no control of this mind nor this body, I am simply a passive observer. It is sort of like watching a very long film.

It is even possible that what I think is my body, and what I think is the world, both do not exist as I think they do at all. It is possible that the experience information I receive is fabricated by some massive system, as in simulation theory. However, if this is true, it matters little. A fabricated reality is still a reality. The rules and laws of one universe don’t need to resemble the rules and laws of another, so long as there is at least some consistency. To be honest, even the question of consistency is irrelevant.

The purpose of my mind is to tell a story. Using the faculties of reason and memory, my mind tells a story about how things have come about and why, when it is able to consider a why. When a why is unavailable, magic often suffices. This is definitely why I can do something without good reasons; it simply means my mind is failing me at telling a good story, or perhaps even a bad one. If the story is unconvincing to me, then I am a hypocrite and a liar. If it is, I am honorable and trustworthy. As a person, I am really only as good as the stories I can tell.

In the end, I am always left with one thing that could possibly be me: this raw consciousness, this first person passive observer. Strip away patriarchy and consumerism, and the countless other systems and structures that exist, and I am nothing more than a remote feeling. A slave with absolutely no control over anything at all.

The Dead of Winter

crimson

It has been more than two weeks since my last post. As I’ve said in the past, I do not wish to write unless I have something to say. These past two weeks haven’t entirely fallen into this situation. Not that I did not have something to say, but perhaps more that I didn’t want to blindly rant with no focus or end goal to my post. Honestly, this post may still be similarly unfocused and random, but I feel like writing at least.

So much has happened in the past two weeks. Probably the most noteworthy item is the acquittal of Donald Trump from his impeachment trial. This particular item has been quite taxing on me personally. It is very difficult for me to resolve what I “know” about the situation and the results of the situation. To be very specific, it seemed to me that the impeachment was unquestionable; there was no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump was guilty of inciting violence against his own government. What’s more, I also agree that his choices and actions are not restricted to the events of January 6, but to his choices and actions for several months previous. I would even agree that his actions and choices from as far back as four years ago also played their part, and even beyond that.

To be quite frank, I find Donald Trump to be a very disreputable individual. If I had to describe what sort of person he was, I would begin by suggesting he was a textbook narcissist and egoist. That is, his world view is focused like a laser on his own life and immediate environment. Not necessarily that he is choosing to harm other individuals in the world, but that he is mostly unconcerned with other individuals in the world. Given the opportunity to speak with him in person, I would not be surprised if I found him to be a solipsist. If I am correct, it would certainly go a long way to explaining his choices and actions throughout the time that I’ve been aware of his existence.

So why might all this be important to you? It certainly is important to me, mostly because I choose to value this situation in and among all the circumstances I find myself in. But you are not me, I’m pretty sure. So you might not decide this is as important to you as it seems to be for me. I do not believe I am a solipsist. In fact, as per Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity, I would not only like to believe that you exist as your own conscious entity with similar freedoms and projects to my own, but I would like to cooperate with you in realizing your freedoms and projects. If I didn’t, I do not think I would have much reason to write this post at all.

When I was younger, I did sometimes think and feel as though I was the only being in the universe. Like Rene Decartes, I would look out the window and see hats and coats moving about like strange automations without an internal “soul.” Even to this day, I cannot find a significant amount of compelling evidence to justify a belief in other consciousnesses, as I am unable to access those consciousnesses directly. And, as I find more disturbing, I cannot share my consciousness with others either. For a period of time in my youth, I actively sought out a telepathic individual, simply so that they could hear my thoughts and could then validate my own existence. I have since realized that it might be best if I never find such a telepath, as I’d be dooming them with the exposure to my inner world, a punishment that I believe might be an incredible harm.

It was my choice to believe in a world outside myself. It was faith, in the truest sense of the word. I need to believe that others exist in this world. For others not to exist, for me to be truly alone, would suggest that I should kill myself right at this moment. I have absolutely no reason for being if I am to exist entirely alone. I serve absolutely no purpose in the grand scheme of the universe. At least, that is how I feel. I know of a great many people out there who would passionately argue otherwise.

Thus, even without sufficient evidence, I choose to believe that there are other consciousnesses in the world beyond my own. They may not be precisely or exactly the same as mine, but they are similar enough that I ought to treat them as their own, with freedom and projects of their own. For me, it is this very fact that has overshadowed all my choices and decisions in my life. It is very much the reason that virtually every job I have accepted has been one where I support or assist others in realizing their projects. I am at my most comfortable when helping others, even sometimes at my own expense.

It has gotten to the point that I don’t really have my own projects. Not really. All my projects are extensions of other people’s projects. Those things I try to accomplish are really just parts and pieces of other people’s projects. I don’t mind this fact at all; I even cherish it. For I see no reason to quibble over the things in my own life. Would I like to live a life of luxury and ease? Perhaps, but I’m just as happy not to. I don’t need excessive things. At this very moment, I am actually rather cold and uncomfortable. My home is a bit drafty and old. Where I lived before this was much nicer and so much warmer. I admit, there are days (like today) where I regret having moved.

However, I moved with a purpose. My wife. My partner. She is the most important person to me. I love her, as is my choice to do so. And so I moved with her so that she might pursue a project that she had. To help her realize a dream she once had. I do everything I do for her. Ultimately I do. Because anything I do for myself serves no real purpose. Sometimes, I wonder if there is something that is the reverse of solipsism; a situation where perhaps I am the only being that does NOT exist in this world.

This idea of reverse solipsism is not new to me. After reading Immanuel Kant’s first critique, when he suggests that time and space may simply be forms of our intuitions, I took some time to consider whether the world itself might exist without such things. That is, could space and time be simply descriptive concepts, where they themselves do not exist in themselves. Of course, to truly make any headway with such things, it is best to consider the alternative. What would a world without space or time be like?

As you may already realize, I’ve been pursuing the question of whether time exists as a thing in itself since I began this blog. I even ran across another incredible YouTube video that further pursues this question: “When Is Now?” by “It’s Okay To Be Smart” (https://youtu.be/3WRgikuVZpQ). To be fair, the video is focused more on the existence of “now” than of time, but his analysis is still quite compelling and I enjoyed watching it very much. Time is still very much up in the air for me, but what about space?

For an essay I wrote about Kant, I realized that there existed a world that used space as a descriptive element, but that space was not a fundamental feature of that world. I admit, when I brought this to the attention of my professor, it became the point of a heated debate, but I believe I am correct in this. Consider the idea of simulated reality, similar to the world that existed inside the Matrix (from the movie series of the same name). That simulated reality is described using space, but itself does not exist in space. Sure, we might argue that the memory storage devices that “contain” the information regarding the Matrix themselves necessarily exist in space, but the information itself does not exist in space. Or, to look at it in another way, the information that describes the world of the Matrix is not itself organized spatially. As the films are very fond of expressing, the Matrix “code” looks like this:

source “How to build The Matrix”, TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/how-to-build-the-matrix/)

As you can see, putting aside how this “code” is presented to the viewer, the code itself that is describing the Matrix is itself not spatially organized. If anything, it might possibly be more closely related to time, in that there will be code that comes before, and code that comes after, but otherwise the code does not subsist next to itself. Like a typical computer program, a fact that is often obfuscated by many people fond of discussing Object Oriented Programming.

To clarify my last point, in the case of most popular programming languages presently, where you generate a window and a bunch of widgets that each cause something to happen, the program is still running linearly. There is the main loop, a routine who’s purpose is to simply repeatedly watch for events to take place. Did the user press that button just now? How about now? No? I will then check again in a moment. Over and over and over again. It is still a linear program, it’s true nature hidden from us by libraries and other bits of code that we use, so we don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” each time.

As I am fond of reminding people on a regular basis, computers are simply machines that are very, very good at doing very, very simple computations (such as addition and subtraction), very, very fast, and that is all. It is tempting to think that a computer is much more than this when, by performing millions upon millions of these computations each second, it appears that the computer has generated a beautiful piece of art or shown us a complicated video of a film, or even by generating that magnificent 3D video game environment which we enjoy playing in. In the end, by doing a tremendous amount of calculations on simply numbers, the computers have shown the result. It is not that dissimilar to how Deep Thought, Douglas Adams famous super computer, determined that “the answer to life, the universe, and everything,” was simply 42.

It is tempting to apply meaning and value to things simply because they are complicated, especially when that complexity reached a level that we are unable to explain. Like modern neural networks, using thousandth order polynomials with thousands of coefficients in order to seemingly interpret handwritten numbers into their equivalently intended numerals, we humans do not actually understand what those polynomials are “doing” in order to accomplish the task. In the case of neural networks, does our lack of understanding suggest that the polynomial has gained sentience, and will soon start expressing a freedom and pursuing its own projects?

This finally brings us back to my original point. There is no more evidence to suggest that humans actually have freedom or free will than the case of the neural network I present above. For all we know, we are simply the most complicated machines that we have encountered, performing incredible amounts of computations and other operations each second, giving us the illusory appearance of consciousness and sentience. We want to believe in souls, the unmeasurable part of the human being, likely responsible for the free will we “must” possess that provides for us an escape from the hard deterministic structures that our science not only suggests is the only thing that exists, but cannot do otherwise.

If I bow down to the actual evidence, I must conclude that I am the only being in existence, for it is only my own consciousness that I have access to. Mine is the only consciousness that I can “feel” or “know.” I have no access to any others. For all I can determine, all other seemingly free beings are simply incredibly complicated, deterministically following organic machines going about their preprogrammed tasks each and everyday. I can “inject” something out of the deterministic order, or so I want to believe, but the evidence does not support this. My choice to write this blog and share this with you was predetermined in my youth when my father purchased a Texas Instruments TI99/4A for me. And, to be fair, even his decision to do that was further predetermined by events from his past as well.

My only real recourse in this situation is to have faith that others exist. That, despite my not feeling or experiencing other consciousnesses, I will choose to believe they still exist. I choose to believe my wife has a consciousness similar to my own, with the same sorts of freedom and projects I have. And it is beholden to me to cooperate with her in the pursuit of those projects. It is beholden to me to do this for everyone around me, as much as I am able to. For that at least is something like a purpose. That is something like a value.