The Stream of Consciousness Revisited

A couple years back, I wrote about one of the philosophical questions I have about life. Suppose strong AI (I'm fascinated with AI.) were achieved as a computer program living on my computer, and I were to start its life on my terminal. The same questions I brought up about humans earlier would apply to the AI program. If I send the program a ^C and then start the program back up again, is it going to be the same being, the same stream of consciousness?

The thought occurred to me today that it might not matter whether or not it is the same stream of consciousness. As each instant passes, the old being is left behind. It's gone forever. I am a new person with each moment. Even with this thinking, though, I think I've reached another unanswerable question: Why does my existence seem so coherent? This is one of those that makes my brain hurt, like trying to think of how long eternity is...

With each moment that I am aware, I am confident that I will still be aware in the next instant. Time slips by, and I hardly take notice. But if you were to knock me out, clone me, copy my memories over to the clone, then wake both me and my clone up in different rooms, my clone wouldn't even be aware of the fact that he didn't exist previously.

Micro-Blogging

Well, I've gone and done it. I've created a Twitter account. At first, I resisted. Actually, I was kind of put off by the entire idea of Twitter. I've caved, though.

When it first came out, it seemed to me a blatant rip off of the Facebook status. Why in the world would I need Twitter when I have Facebook status? I mean, I don't even use Facebook status! I think I have set my status a total of once ever! My Facebook home page was filled with old high school classmates spouting off things like how much they enjoyed their tea this morning, how rockin' some concert was (miles away from me), or that omg they <3 teh gift someguyidon't know gave them thank you thank you. Trivial and irrelevant, I just didn't care to read this stuff. Many of these friends on Facebook are worth keeping since Facebook is the easiest way to keep track of them, but I just don't care to update myself on the daily details of their lives. As such, I learned to largely ignore the status updates of other people, and I never bothered to post my own. If I didn't care about other people's statuses, why should they care about mine?

And who is going to have the time or motivation to walk over to a computer and log onto a social networking website to type something in before actually doing it? I mean, am I really going to type that I am making coffee and taking a shower every morning?

Over time, technology improved. Text messaging became increasingly popular, which is one method of Twittering. Then the iPhone came out, and people are constantly on the web wherever they are. Even though I don't have a text messaging plan or an iPhone yet, this might change in the near future. This would make it very easy to update my status on the go.

Then Facebook finally implemented functionality for filtering the feed on the home page. I could actually get only the updates from the people I cared about. Now I actually read people's statuses and see that they can be pretty interesting!

Alright, so what does Twitter offer that Facebook doesn't? Well, Facebook is sort of "private" by default. I can only see what my friends are thinking. Twitter, on the other hand, is like a thought hub. It reminds me a little bit of how the Borg might operate, but without the negative Star Trek cannotations. A collective repository of consciousness. The idea intrigues me...

We'll see if the site lives up to my expectations. In any case, I've been assimilated.

Life Nov 2k8 - Apr 2k9

Thien spent this past Christmas with my family and me in Texas. Christmas morning has always been a meaningful time for me, and I have always regarded it as my "family" holiday, so it was great to have everyone that I loved most together in one place.

This spring, work at ICF started to get really interesting. I really like my job. I like how I am involved in so many things, and I see room to grow. In fact, I just got finished interviewing my first candidate! It was exciting!

This weekend, my dad is coming over to help me finish the repairs on my ol' Mustang. Should be fun. We will celebrate his birthday and Thien's mom's birthday, as well, on Saturday night.

Thien and I are making plans for after the summer. I'll defer the specifics until the time is ripe, however...

Time is flying by so fast. I am enjoying life, but I can blink and a month will have gone by without anything meaningful happening. That isn't wrong, I guess. It just means that I don't have much to write!