(this was written a week and a half ago, I've been around)
So…did you guys check the new wallpaper? Pretty sick right?
Colored it myself.
I am not going to lie, this last week has been pretty
difficult. Never in my life have I had so much free time and yet been so
simultaneously stressed. Is this what they call unemployed? I am staying in
Minnesota for an extra three weeks to attend a friend’s wedding before heading
back to California. What I didn’t realize was that I would only make it three
days before losing my mind. The situation sucks on multiple levels. Level 1, I
don’t get to go back to California. Level 2, I have nothing to do but make blog
backgrounds. Level 3, I have to say goodbye to good friends slowly and in small
amounts, kinda like some form of waterboarding. Level 4, I have no money and
have to buy dinner from the Mickey D’s dollar menu. Level 5, I have to be the
guy who hangs out in a coffee shop for eight hours to go on the Internet
(though this morning I’ve chosen to hang out in the McCafe). If this is what
purgatory is like, I’d rather take the express checkout on the up or down
escalator. Heaven or hell, I don’t care, anything is better than being in the
after-credit scenes of your own damn life. That being said, the kindness of the
people I have met up here continues to astonish me. Thanks for continuing to
lay out places for me to stay, even if I don’t have an exact answer for “how
long are you staying?”
Speaking of, what is more important, a question or an
answer? There is a famous part of A Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy where a trans-dimensional supercomputer computes the
answer to the most important question in the universe to be 42. Unfortunately
the actually question whose answer is 42 remains elusive, and so the
supercomputer designs an even smarter supercomputer to figure out the question.
This supercomputer takes the form of earth, and the curators of the
supercomputer disguise themselves in plain sight as little white mice.
Unfortunately, minutes before the question is to be known, earth is destroyed
by a space-version of an interstate highway. Crestfallen, the mice decide to
just settle on the question “How many roads must a man walk down?” from that
one Bob Dylan song.
Asking a question is a very human endeavor. A question does
more than demand an answer, it frames what is being talked about, and it
implies a direction in which we are thinking. 42 doesn’t mean much to most
people. What is the meaning of life means a whole lot. Anyone can give answers.
The integral part is asking the right questions. If we are going to make
artificial intelligence, we will need it to ask important questions. Otherwise
we might just end up with Skynet. And, I mean, I’ve been a misanthrope out of
the womb, so I’m fine with that. But you might not be.
Getting us to prefer answers to questions is one of the ways
that I think our technology is changing us. In the past answers were hard to
come by. We had gods who kept secret and esoteric their reasons for why things
happened as they did. Our ancestors looked up to the starry night sky and held
elaborate ceremonies in front of giant burning pyres just to ask one question
to the all-powerful gods. Nowadays we don’t even put question marks at the ends
of our Google inquires. I don’t even know if any of you remember Ask Jeeves,
but you actually used to type the question mark into the search bar. Now I go
to Google and type “movie with fat guy from Superbad” and immediately get what
I am looking for. We are becoming the androids while our machines are becoming
more sentient. The question we need to be asking is who is really the machine?
Whatever doe. The revolution will not be televised… or livestreamed, put on
Worldstar, liked on Youtube, etc. The ghosts in the machines will haunt the
houses we are building. Let Hercules
himself do what he may. The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
…
Man I wish I was in my own bed again. California, don’t dry up
completely with drought or break apart with earthquakes before I get back.
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