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.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Thien,

I know you are having a rough time dealing with your family's bad health. I really do wish that your family would come into better health. I hope that your mom will get well soon, whatever it is that is wrong, and I am very sorry about your dad and will be here for you whenever you need a shoulder to cry on.

However, despite the fact that your family is in bad health at the moment, I want to assure you that you are not "cursed". God has not set his sights on your family as victims He intends to torture. I know I am going to sound strange talking like this to you because your beliefs are not firm, but if you suspect that God is behind this then I must explain to you a little bit of theology. Why do bad things happen to good people such as your family? Bad things happen because there is evil already present in the world.

First, if you believe in creation, you know that God created the world and Adam and Eve. At first, everything was utopia. There was nothing wrong with anything. There was no sin, disease, or death. I believe that if creationism is true, God created mankind for company. We would not be a very interesting race if we all mindlessly followed what he said because we have no choices or decisions to make, no alternatives to take.

God put in the garden a certain tree and told Adam and Eve that they were not to eat from it. This way, if Adam and Eve chose to follow Him, it would be because they actually love Him instead of just a lack of options.

Satan was able to convince Adam and Eve to bite into that fruit, and was therefore successful in his attempt to become an influential force in this world.

Second, if you believe in evolution rather than creation and still believe in God, you should believe that the diversity of creatures is randomly created by evolution. We humans exist not because we live in a perfect world, but because we're good enough to survive as a species. Unfortunately, the human body isn't perfect. Viruses also still exist, and our stem cells can develop into cancer.

Either way, God did not put you into this world just to torture your family. God loves you and put you into a world that is full of beauty despite all of the evil and imperfection that fills it.

You ask why do you suffer from the consequences of the wrongdoings of Adam and Eve? Why does your family, in particular, suffer from sickness when they don't deserve it? Whether creationism is true or not, evil and imperfection already exists in the world. It's like an avalanche that's already started falling, and there's no bottom to its mountain. There's just no stopping it. You were born after it started, and it's nobody's fault. It's just there, terrible as it may be.

You ask why God doesn't just make the world perfect. Is He not powerful enough? Why doesn't he fix what's broken? I believe that if He were to remove all of the evil that already exists in this world, it would be the same as killing us all. We really wouldn't be living anymore. We'd all already be in heaven. He'd have defeated the whole purpose of creating us at all or for our little link in the chain of evolution. We'd just be pawns, and life on earth wouldn't have any meaning. I'm not saying that your life only has meaning because your family is sick. What is happening to you is terrible and shouldn't happen to anyone. It's more evil and bad fortune than your fair share. I know that.

Satan does enjoy spreading pain and suffering. If you believe that you are being intentionally put through these hard times, and you believe some higher power is causing it, I believe that is the one towards which you should point your finger.

Thien, I realize that you must be going through a really tough time. I also realize that I probably cannot comprehend exactly how sad you must feel, since I have not gone through the same situation. I want you to that despite that, I would do anything reasonably within my power to make you feel better. I am here for you. I am praying for your mom's health. I am praying for a miracle for your dad. The world really sucks for you right now, but I'm here for you. Know that I love you. I wish there was more I could do.

Speculation on Life and Artificial Intelligence

Around a year ago (before The Prestige was released), I was studying for my Artificial Intelligence class when some strange ideas wandered through my head. In order to preserve them, I wrote them down on a sheet of notebook paper. I was just going through my notebooks when I stumbled upon these notes again.

Life
What constitutes a soul or an awareness? I can be certain that I exist presently because I am currently thinking and aware. I believe even Descartes can agree with that.

When I go to sleep, I lose consciousness. I am no longer aware. Am I the same person when I wake up? Does the same consciousness pick up where it left of, or does the old one end and a new one take its place? I have read that when we sleep, the section of our brain that is used for long-term memory is shut off. Perhaps when we sleep, we are still conscious, but we simply can't remember much of it when we awaken. I once heard that a person might consider his life just a collection of his memories. That definitely puts sleep and dreams in a strange classification. Is a life defined by a combination of a person's stream of consciousness and his collection of memories?

The same question gets stronger in circumstances such as a brain transplant. Or teleportation. If all of the molecules in my body are disassembled and then reassembled in a new place, does the same consciousness get transferred, or does one person die while a new, identical one is reborn, completely oblivious to the fact that his old consciousness has "died".

AI
A being has a thought cycle. What occupies that thought cycle at a given time is determined by things such as the being's interests and "interrupts" (as in computing) from its senses. I wonder how it breaks its thought cycle to remember something it needs to do.

A being might be given a set of instincts, which is behavior the being is urged to do in a given circumstance. Whether or not the being follows the instinct is up to its decision-making process. After repetitive behavior, that behavior should become more and more instinctive. I wonder how.

I wonder if a being that is given a strong desire to learn and a given set of instincts might be able to find its own instincts strange. I wonder if a being modeled in a human image might find a modified set of instincts foreign.

A being could be created to dislike boredom as a method to gain a desire to learn and gain interests. I wonder how it could discern from a topic that is interesting and one that is not.

Boredom could be a state of mind where there are no current interests or activities to occupy its thought cycle.

Don't just observe life, experience it.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

American Society

Hello again. Today I was doing some thinkin'.... Man, Valentine's Day can be a really depressing day for those of us singles. Heh, I need a girlfiend.

Anyways, I was tryin' to think of why I don't have one. Not only do I not know where to meet any girls, I don't know what to say or how to approach them. Being shy sucks. Then I was thinking maybe I'm just really boring, too. I really don't do much. But I had watched this show on really late night TV the other night where John Travolta was being interviewed by this acting professor in front of an acting class or something. John Travolta had said that every single person is interesting to some degree, it's just a matter of finding out what's interesting. I think that maybe it's not usually the things that I've done that are interesting, but perhaps it's my personality and the ideas that I come up with...

On a completely different note, today was my sister's birthday. I was tryin' to think of what she might be when she got older. What might her major be? Would it be computer engineering, like mine? Or would it be something totally different, like teaching?

Then my thought process went off on some wild tangent. What the heck is there to do in this world for work? As human beings, we need food and sleep to survive. Shelter is nice, too. Now, society has said for a long time that if you don't work, you don't eat. When this philosophy originated, if not everyone helped, not enough food would be produced, and people would starve to death. Nowadays, though, food harvesting is so advanced that not very much manpower is required.

So now we're all stuck trying to find some work to do, and a lot of us have to do stupid, meanlingless, mundane jobs. The point of people's jobs is no longer to contribute to the survival of the community, but it's to make progress for the sake of progress. We're gaining new useless technology every day. The point of this new technology is to save people time and effort so that they can do more useless work in a more time-efficient manner. People's lives are becoming increasingly more and more busy for absolutely no reason!

Also, so many people are influenced by this emphasis on business that the sole reason that some people live is to make money. What the hell is the point of this? If a person grows old and has spent his whole life earning a fortune, does he plan on spending it all before he dies? No, it's so he can live in a nice house and have a nice car while he's working his butt off. In my opinion, this is stupid! He's not increasing the quality of his life...I can almost guarantee that he's too busy to be any more happy than the average guy a few blocks away.

So why am I a computer engineer? Well, partly because I can't "sit on my ass" for a living (like the Office Space guy). Another reason is because I love computers, and yet another reason is because I like critical thinking.... However, I think my ideal job would be just to simply learn. If I could read books and self-teach myself things and teach others what I've taught myself, that'd rule. Yup, I'd be an old-school philosopher. Too bad those don't exist anymore... Who needs them when there is systemized, specialized education...education that teaches people how to play their part in this hellish cycle of life...

Meh. Good night.