Martian Death Ray

I’m running a slight fever and can’t sleep,  so I grab the remote and fire up TCM; I watch a short from 1949 that can be best described as hallucinogenic. They have this HUGE microphone named “MIKE” that talks like Bing Crosby and emcees; there’s a western band; Buster Keaton and Johnny Weissmuller are even in it. All the women look like they were cloned . . .

The whole thing is shot outside in Technicolor and they try to make it look like it’s shot on a lot. Incredibly bizarre. And you all thought LSD was invented in the 1960s. For shame.  Hollywood’s been pushin’ that stuff since the Wizard of Oz.

I’d kill for a Bugs Bunny cartoon to bring me back to reality . . .

On an unrelated note, FACEBOOK says I can “VIEW FEMALES ONLINE” - whatever that means.

Me Tarzan. You Jane.

“He taught her how to split and define

But if you study the logistics

And heuristics of the mystics

You will find that their minds rarely move in a line.

So it’s much more realistic

To abandon such ballistics

And resign to be trapped on a leaf in the vine.”

-Brian Eno, “Backwater” from Before and After Science

I’m watching television last night while I eat dinner. It’s a program on science fiction tech, so I leave it on. And there’s a physicist taking about transporters – specifically the type of transporters one finds in Star Trek. This physicist goes on to explore how we might use quantum entanglement to make a transporter work only to dismiss the idea of using quantum entanglement because no one quite knows how it works. It is at this point – sounding like the Dude from the Big Lebowski and startling my dogs – that I shout, “Because the universe is a hologram, man!”

What’s so puzzling about quantum entanglement? Scientists have shown that measurements performed on quantum fields or systems (like electrons) have an effect on other quantum systems at a distance – this is called Bell’s Non-Locality. Now this works even if the particles are traveling in opposite directions at the speed of light like in the famous EPR experiment of 1982. This seemingly violates the universal speed limit of the speed of light set up by Dr. Einstein in his Theory of Relativity. That’s what is so puzzling, and that is why Einstein called it ”spooky action at a distance.”

Now if the universe is a hologram, this might explain quantum entanglement because a hologram cannot be divided into smaller, atomistic pieces. The “pieces” of a hologram are really smaller wholes containing all the information of the larger hologram. The electrons are not “communicating” or “signaling” back and forth faster than the speed of light because the electrons are not separate entities but two aspects of the same reality viewed from beings trapped in the straightjacket of the 4^th dimension. And it is this bit of information that led me to scream at my television and startle my poor dogs.

Now the essence of this argument isn’t new – Lao Tzu understood this and so did Meister Eckhart. Actually it’s a long list: the Sufis, Siddhartha, the ancient Hindus, the Jewish mystics, and even William Blake. Almost every mystic knows this.

This makes me wonder, “Why so linear?”

How do I know I’m right? Call it a hunch. Better yet, call it an intuition. And like it says on my Facebook profile, I have “uncanny intuition, and it rarely fails me.”

This is a revision of a short piece I wrote in 2007.

“Did not your race . . . and mine . . . evolve from such humble beginnings?  Do they not possess the seed of grandeur within their frail, human frames?”

The Watcher, The Fantastic Four, “The Startling Saga of the Silver Surfer” Issue no. 50

A month ago I sat outside at a bar with Mike when he asked me my thoughts on the singularity - the moment when machines become self-aware and perhaps by doing so, acquire their souls.  I remember saying that I’m not altogether impressed with machines performing flops upon flops like Deep Blue and its remarkable performance against Kasparov.  And while Deep Blue’s performance was exceptional, chess is a closed system and closed systems are finite systems; and finite systems are a calculator’s dream.  The obstacle for both Deep Blue and the champions of A.I. is that life as it is lived is more open than closed.

Then I wondered what would a self-aware machine think of religion?  Would it?  Would it probe the meaning of its existence?  What would it think of someone like the Buddha and his teaching?  The Buddha pursued a Truth beyond elocution.  Now this is easier to say than to grasp:  I’ve studied Buddhism on and off since my teens and it took years for me to understand to the marrow of my bones that reading yet another book on the Buddhism wasn’t going to get me any closer to Siddhartha’s Truth.  I’m stubborn and analytical that way so my path has been more difficult than for others.  Perhaps I’m more like a machine than a man in that way?  But in my defense, to say that Truth is beyond words is an odd statement, and implies ways of communicating and understanding that transcend both concepts and language.

When reading the sutras you’ll discover the story of how Siddhartha first transmitted the Dharma; one day - long ago - the Buddha’s disciples gathered in anticipation of a sermon on the Dharma.  On that day the Buddha took his seat, remained silent and in his hand twirled a sandalwood flower.  All his disciples became puzzled but one - Mahakashyapa, who smiled.  The Buddha acknowledged his disciple’s smile as evidence of his profound understanding of the Dharma, and since then Mahayana Buddhists have accepted the transmission of the Dharma outside the holy scriptures and outside the confines of language.  What do we makes of this?  And what was transmitted?  And to paraphrase Wu Men - Chan patriarch and author of the Wumonkan - what the hell would have happened if every monk had smiled?  Ah, questions.  Difficult questions.  Too many questions really.

You could argue that since the Buddha was searching for a means of extinguishing human suffering, a machine might find little meaning in his teachings.  But the assumption here is that complex, intelligent machines would not suffer; I’m unconvinced, however, that this would be the case. Intelligence breeds complexity and complexity often breeds frustration.  Would they be plagued by burdens we can’t imagine?  Would intelligent machines then fare better in systems we assume to be more rigid, more axiomatic?  Would they fare better in the realm of mathematics?  Maybe.  But what if we found something like the sandalwood flower in mathematics?  We did or rather Kurt Gödel did.

In the 1930s Gödel did something remarkable - he inserted a strange loop into the foundation of mathematics and revealed something amazing.  What’s a strange loop?  A strange loop is a statement that violates our assumptions about logic and truth.  The statement “I am lying,” for instance, is one such statement.  If it is true then it is false and vice versa.  And the upshot is that there is no clear dichotomy between truth and falsity.  All this is addressed in great detail in Douglas Hofstadter’s wonderful book, Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. So there’s strange loops in the foundations of mathematics, so what?  What does this mean?  What Gödel seems to show is that in any axiomatic system, there there will be one proposition that is unprovable.  And if you find an axiomatic system in which all propositions are provable then that system is invalid.  This is amazing since it suggests that in a valid, axiomatic system, something  - here mathematical truth - cannot be signified or transmitted in the language of mathematics.  And there are more incompleteness theorems than one!  To paraphrase William Barrett, the American existential philosopher, these incompleteness theorems suggest that mathematics is a function of human creativity and freedom rather than a closed system that exists fully formed outside space and time.   In fact, philosophers and mathematicians cannot agree on the foundations of mathematics.  Let that fact roll around in the cranium for a while twisting your gray matter in knots.

So it would seem that the discipline of mathematics isn’t as iron clad and as transparent as we might have assumed, and this incompleteness may never be resolved or ‘fixed.’  Like religion, mathematics seems to be an open system and as such requires faith.  Now you see why I started with the Buddha?

So it’s one thing to program a computer to play chess and something altogether to create an intelligent and self-aware machine to can function in open systems.  How many open systems exist?  Plenty and far more there are closed systems.  Language is one.  The very nature of using language involves using metaphors, and to use a metaphor is to step outside the literal meaning of words to make intuitive analogies.  Humor is another.  Humor depends on intuition and metaphor and surprise.  In fact, Aristotle so prized humor that he believed is was essential for being human.  And the list and examples go on; Einstein stepped out of the system of classical mechanics when he formulated his thought experiments and analogies that helped him formulate his theory of relativity while working in the patent office.  This ability to step outside the rules is an essential quality of intelligence, and at its extreme, it’s what we call genius.  To my mind, an intelligent machine would need the ability to use metaphors and to grasp and use humor.

Suppose then that humans create an electronic brain capable of operating within these complex, open systems. What then? This achievement may say more for human creativity than it ever will for our electronic creations. Be that as it may, what would this new creature - this electronic brain with an electronic mind - do with this gift? Would an electronic brain want to rule the the world? Would these intelligent machines desire to enslave us like the machines from The Matrix? I would like to think they would be more reasonable than humans, but then again, who can really say?

I suspect they would not wish to dominate us, and they would take their rightful place in the animal kingdom as a new, silicon-based species. And if their intelligence and creativity matched ours, I imagine they would work with us rather than against us; in the end, I see many of these intelligent machines taking jobs they don’t like in order to buy things they don’t need. And I imagine that they would probably go through their days without happiness, failing to find wonder in a spider’s web, a clear blue sky, or even their own existence. Unfortunately, there are too many minds like these in this world of ours already. And minds like these - electronic or otherwise - could hardly be called intelligent.

©2007 Kent Gutschke

I know far too many people who are medicated or self-medicating. And before I begin sounding like a certain ill-informed scientologist, I haven’t a problem with drugs if those drugs enable a person to function in society. But I know too many people who abuse alcohol, pharmaceuticals, and illegal drugs. And when I questioned my friends about their habits, they generally say that the drugs relieve their anxiety.

Unfortunately, anxiety or floating anxiety may be the touchstone of the human condition. It’s a modern concept, but chances are it’s been part of the human psyche since the dawn of homo sapiens. Floating anxiety is a condition where the patient is anxious, but the patient does not know the source, cause, or object of his anxiety. And when floating anxiety throws a party, he invites his good friends fear and insecurity; it’s not their fault—they blame those jokers, human evolution and pleasure principle.

No one wants to be unhappy, and few of us are willing to admit it when we are. Our culture encourages our denial. We wouldn’t want to be a buzz-kill, right? Hey, if you’re life is empty, fill it up with diversions.

Mass media is spectacle and diversion. Hit a viewer with garish colors, blaring sounds, and more jump cuts than the brain can stomach, and they won’t notice the absence of content. And morning radio shows with their “insane” and puerile hosts are the prime example of vacuity. The French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, once remarked that when he visited America, he once witnessed an empty room with a television laughing at its own jokes. Perceptive? Definitely. French academic elitism? Maybe. But maybe Baudrillard’s insight underscores how something so common for us, strikes others as absurd. Is American culture more absurd and uglier than that of the rest of the world? If we are uglier, we are because we have more wealth and by extension, larger production budgets—we do ugly big in America.

And being ugly and obnoxious seems to be the game plan. Listen to talk radio. There’s no dead air. There’s no pause for the listener to gather thoughts or to rebut. I suppose we wouldn’t want anyone to digest the content, would we? Simply fill everything with sound effects and inane samples. Let’s not pause to think. We may not like thinking. We may find that we’re unhappy with our lives, our wives, and our careers. Keep good posture and keep moving.

Good posture is key. And when good posture isn’t enough, there’s drugs and alcohol. You see this combination of posture and poison at every bar. People seem to have fun at bars. They’re nodding in agreement, smiling, chatting, drinking, but their eyes are roving. How many times have you tried to have a conversation at a bar and you’ve manage to make yourself heard over the blaring music only to see the other person’s eyes roving? It happens too often. And I’m guilty of this myself. And it’s shameful.

People pose. And people drink. But don’t drink enough to relax, indulge. Let’s drink enough toxins to vomit our dinner and to incapacitate our reason. And let’s not forget to become a burden to our friends. We’ve all been there. And again, it’s shameful. The charade dissolves when we drunk call at two in the morning. We’re having a great time. We’re having a ball. And we’re so happy that we make a pathetic phone call at two in the morning.

Maybe I’m being to hard on us. After all, it is easier for us to live lies than face our insecurities and our faults. It’s easier to take life numb and stoned, right? A steady diet of booze and naked lunch. But we cannot stay numb forever. And sooner or later, the human condition comes like a thief in the night. And what will we do? Have one for the road, right?

In the words of Les from American Beauty, “Why don’t we all sell our souls and work for Satan?” And if you pause to think about it, he’s right. We already have the job. We only need the title and the perks. And you want to know something? I hear he doesn’t even drug test.

And if that doesn’t pan out, there’s always retail therapy. That always seems to work doesn’t it?

Frankly, I’m disappointed that being mediocre isn’t one of the seven deadly sins. And I’m more disappointed that stupidity didn’t make the list either. Hell, I would have even settled for self-deception.

God, that felt good!

THIS RANT HAS CONCLUDED.

“Never have I sensed such unimaginable loneliness in a living being!”

- Alicia Masters, The Fantastic Four, “If This Be Doomsday”, issue no. 49.

This one is a touch early, but I have electrifying plans for Valentine’s Day—plans that involve a microchip, silicone, a tube of lip-gloss, and lots and lots of whipped cream.

As a matter of fact, these thoughts have stewed in my mind since Friday when driving to the gym, I caught David Levy on the radio speaking about his recent book Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. Since then I’ve been canvassing the possibilities of a robotic lover, and I must say they are not as grim or as horrifying as the conservative radio host and his many callers claimed; in fact, their shock and superiority belie their hypocrisy—who hasn’t been romantically involved with someone, who could easily be classified as an artificial intelligence?

I can only speak for myself when I say that a relationship devoid drama would be a blessing. And rather than wasting time arguing, we could spend our time playing chess. I would probably lose – even my computer beats me at chess – but at least our relationship would be reasonable. And if reason is anathema to the way you live your life – most people are not reasonable people – I’m certain the manufacturer could program your mate with just the right amount of idiosyncrasies so you might still have a little drama in your life.

As for myself, I would take my robot lover to my magnificent rocket ship and shoot for Ares (Mars for you Terrans). And in the arid and attenuated atmosphere of Ares, I would erect a crystal palace for my lover. And there we might make a Zen rock garden complete with a garden gnome to remind her of home. And in the shadow of the Olympos Mons, we might match wits at chess.

At long last there would be life on Mars and intelligence too.

So if you are a female robot who plays chess or even if you are a female who plays chess and makes love like a robot, drop me a line.

Maybe we can match wits?

And maybe later in the evening, we might match parts?

“You see, this treadmill is cosmic ray powered! And it is coordinated with radiation pulses from that cosmic ray clock! When the treadmill goes forward , positive radiation is released—and that sends me into the future!”

The Flash , “The Conquerors of Time!” no. 125, December 1961

Somewhere – out there – there exists an especially strange pair of glasses. These glasses do not protect the eyes nor do they enhance vision. No, these glasses are intended to undo the workings of our minds, and that they do until our minds undo the mischief of the glasses.

You see—the image that our eyes project on our optic nerves is upside down or more precisely, upside down and flipped sideways. Our brains flip this image twice so we see the world “correctly.” In that way we can go about our day accidentally running into tables, turning over glasses, and spilling drinks on our friends without an upside-down image of the world getting in our way.

One day in order to test this theory, someone hit on the bright idea of constructing a strange pair of glasses, one that allows a person to experience the looking-glass world that’s projected on our optic nerves.  And what scientists discovered is that after wearing these remarkable glasses for some time, our minds flip the image and the we see the world correctly once again.

A few nights ago, I lay in bed, staring at a darkened ceiling, and thought about the implications of these glasses, but in regards to time, not vision. Yes, time because one day, should the universe stop expanding, it might collapse upon itself. And in a collapsing universe, time might run backwards. Consider for a moment a universe – our universe – running backwards through space and time.

As I wondered at the consequences of a collapsing universe, my mind wandered to those strange glasses and the workings of our minds. And I wondered to myself, “Would our minds flip backwards time like it does the backwards image of the world?” Then my mind quieted, and after a pause, more questions arose: Would our minds be free to flip time or in a backwards universe or would such a universe be deterministic? Have our minds have any freedom in this, our expanding universe? And if past, present, and future already exist, have we any freedom at all?

Are we the conquerors of time or simply, the conquered?

Then my mind quieted, because for the moment there are far more questions than answers. And I as lay staring at a darkened ceiling I couldn’t hope to see, I wondered.

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