tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19116502261220862202024-03-13T00:51:06.455+00:00Something More WeeklyA personal blog set in South London. Something More Weekly documents my thoughts and experiences. I also use the blog as a place to share creative writing and philosophical ramblings.Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.comBlogger464125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-40834174822972331302023-05-09T20:57:00.012+01:002023-05-28T20:45:15.861+01:00#506 The disappearance of Rich Campbell<p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">I started following Rich back when I started playing WoW again, in 2018/19. A few things have changed since then.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">The full version of my reflections on his disappearance is available <a href="https://bit.ly/3ppBzl4"><span style="color: #cc0000;">here on Medium</span></a>. Please don't read it if the topic disturbs you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">Why publish my feelings about someone who was accused of a serious crime?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">I believe in the potential benefits of sharing thoughts and feelings. I find Rich's disappearance intriguing. I had to leave a significant job at a big company and embraced WoW and Twitch at around the same time that he did.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">I've seen people making their own minds up about the allegation. I guess they're free to do so. I haven't felt like it's my place to arrive at a verdict. And I certainly haven't felt like it's my place to arrive at one publicly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">Is it helpful or harmful for me to express thoughts and feelings online about someone who has allegedly done something awful? I don't know.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">I don't think it's just about Rich. Him and Asmon were a team, for example. I used to enjoy watching Allcraft. And if there's never another episode, perhaps writing about some of my memories from that time will help me to close my internal book on a part of a chapter of my own life.</span></p>Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-16833205707230943452023-04-17T17:22:00.019+01:002023-05-10T00:06:35.239+01:00#505 An audio journal<span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">
I've made an audio journal on YouTube, which is available here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je2rhUq3-sk"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Audio Journal</span></a> </span><div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;"><span>I started with one entry and my plan is to expand this to ten entries. </span>The journal is largely self-reflective and deals with themes of encountering mild challenge, helplessness and motivation. Parts of some of the posts were recorded while I was walking through woodland.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">The entries are, I hope, in some sense self-therapeutic, which is to say that I hope that they allowed me to reflect on my own thoughts and feelings and move toward a greater acceptance and understanding of them. I'm not sure to what extent I accomplished this.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">I've always enjoyed both walking and journaling and while I haven't ever previously combined them, I recently found that I had some matters on my mind that I particularly wanted to process and this gave me the time and space in which to attempt that.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">Where I've felt a desire to linger on a particular detail, such as a question about what to say, or why I'm saying it, I've let myself do so. This has allowed me a degree of patience with some thoughts and how I express them, that I wouldn't normally be able to indulge in, either in regular conversation or in conventional therapy.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large;">How satisfying.</span></div><div><br /></div>Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-73449622346792365202020-03-08T21:23:00.001+00:002023-04-30T19:22:52.748+01:00#504 Inferior peanuts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">The large Sainsbury's was 30-40% lower in all stocks of dry food and household items, with many products completely unavailable.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">I'd heard that shoppers were "panic-buying". That they were all being stupid. Was that really what was happening?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">I knew some people were concerned. There'd be employers issuing guidance on isolating or working from home as a contingency plan. Japan had shut its schools.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">I thought about individuals carrying out their weekly shops. Why not pick up a few extra items? Just in case. Afterall, I'd end up getting them in due course anyway. Who likes trudging around the shops every week? Come to think of it, why don't I buy more of these things regularly?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">It only took a minority of shoppers to think like this for the shelves to start looking less full. Once it was noticeable, the chain reaction started. People who hadn't even thought about it suddenly became aware their favourite products might not be there next week. So they filled their trolleys.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">I was able to get the items I'd gone in for but had to switch brands for most of them and came out with BBQ peanuts instead of chilli.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">At the time, walking around depleted shelves had felt like an amusing novelty. When I got home, I heard that the Italian stores were out of pasta. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "merriweather";"><span style="font-size: 17.6px;">It wasn't long before I found myself wondering if the panic-buyers had the right idea afterall. Would it be the same next week? Could it even be worse? Maybe I should've got more peanuts.</span></span></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-78932270321858308662019-07-27T11:10:00.001+01:002020-03-08T21:21:29.751+00:00#503 Exhaustion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was exhausted. For five months I'd been logging my sleep patterns. What time I woke up, when I went to bed and how tired I felt.<br />
<br />
I used crayons to shade in the days on the Year Planner at the back of my diary. Green for feeling fine, orange for a bit tired and red for very tired. The first few months had been an even mix of all three.<br />
<br />
You could probably extrapolate that pattern back through my whole life. Even when I ran the marathon, I once went to bed at 1am and ran sixteen miles the next day on 6 hours' sleep. I wasn't in my twenties anymore though.<br />
<br />
Last weekend, I'd turned 35. I couldn't celebrate. Actually I did meet my dad and sister for pancakes but I'd been trying to think of something I could do for myself. Nothing came to mind. And I was exhausted. I hadn't had a green day since May and had only had one orange day since June. I didn't really know why.<br />
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There'd been a run of nights earlier in the month where I'd stayed up later than I should have. Then I'd had a week off work and continued with the late nights. For a week following all that, I'd been really disciplined and had gone to bed at a reasonable time and slept reasonably. Yet I hadn't caught up. For some reason, I was still tired. Physically and mentally. All the time.<br />
<br />
After missing two days of work, I decided to see a doctor. I knew she'd suggest a blood test. I feared doctors. I feared blood tests more. But I went and did it anyway. My GP was a real peach. In fact the first two letters of her first name and the first three of her last name actually spelled the word "Peach". It was written on the blood test form. She asked me a few questions, including whether I had any friends, in case it could be psychological. "No", I replied, enthusiastically. I almost wanted to ask Dr. Peach if <i>she</i>'d<i> </i>be my friend but that seemed a little direct, plus I didn't have any energy.<br />
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She sent me for three tests. I'd asked her if they could all be done in the same jab and she'd said yes but then later in the hospital, I reacted nervously to the first one. I sweated a lot and my vision went a bit blurry. I had to take a few minutes to cool down. After a while, I went back to the room but couldn't bring myself to get back in the chair. The nurse suggested I come back tomorrow.<br />
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So the next day I went back. It was easier the second time. I asked her to draw one sample, just as before, and she agreed but then sneakily took two while I wasn't looking. I felt very pleased. Her explanation was that she didn't want to see me again. Now I was waiting for the results. Googling things like "What if I have severe kidney disease?" and "If I find out I'm terminally ill, is it less painful to starve myself to death?" Apparently the answer's yes.<br />
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I'd messaged a few people, including my parents and my boss, to fill them in on how I was doing. My landlord was aware. My chores were taken care of and I seemed to be eating and drinking OK. It wasn't like I had <i>zero </i>energy, just not very much.<br />
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The weekend came and as Saturday lunchtime approached, I realised that I had about a day and a half of time ahead of me before Monday, when I would either go back to work if I felt better or continue lying around the house if I didn't. I wasn't quite sure how to spend it. Probably quite unremarkably. I'd watch some YouTube, maybe do some journalling. Perhaps walk to a cafe for some food. I sent my ex-girlfriend a message. It had been over a year since she'd decided to stop contact. I knew she might not reply. </div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-54842942187947248482019-05-11T18:37:00.000+01:002020-03-08T21:21:16.802+00:00#502 Bona Vacantia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"There are three old ladies on a park bench" Mendel started. I continued typing for a moment, then whirled around my wheelie chair to face him. "The first one says 'It's windy!'. The second one says 'It's not Wednesday, it's Thursday!'. The third one says 'I'm thirsty too, let's have a nice cup of tea!'".<br />
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My colleague roared theatrically with laughter. "That's very clever Mendel" beamed Laura, placing two Kit-Kats on my desk. "His talent's wasted here Dan isn't it?" she asked me. "Definitely" I replied and thanked her for the chocolate.<br />
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"Do you think I'm wasted here too?" she teased. "Laura you would be wasted everywhere" I replied. "Aww" she cooed and then went back to work.<br />
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It had been a year since I'd started temping in the grey government outpost. The building itself was situated at an undisclosed address in Croydon, due to the sensitive nature of the work. The irony was that Croydon, despite its numerous rail connections and shopping centres, was so scummy, that you'd have to be more or less destitute to end up there voluntarily. Yet among the scores of members of the public with whom we spoke between the hours of ten and four, destitution was not uncommon.<br />
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The journey was a pleasure. Being one of the few people weird enough to commute from zone two outwards, I was frequently the only passenger in a row of seats and sometimes in an entire section. I tried eating a takeaway on the train once but a passenger happened to pass through at the time and began talking to me about the smell of my food.<br />
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Bona Vacantia was a Latin legal term that meant ownerless goods. This was the place where, if a business bit the dust or a person popped their clogs, any valuable properties or unclaimed dosh could be promptly appropriated by the Crown. For, you know, safe-keeping.<br />
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It was the kind of of work in which a person could quickly build up unique expertise, since among the UK's six million hard-working and some not so hard-working business owners, virtually nobody had the slightest clue what would happen if the Registrar ever saw fit to strike Dave's Autos Limited or Sharon's Sheffield Salon off the register of companies.<br />
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Which was fine so long as Sharon and Dave were filing all their returns on time and never kept personal funds in their business account. And less fine when their health failed or their accountant failed or the post man failed and Companies House couldn't get through to them. Until eventually the owners realised their bank accounts had been frozen. And called the bank. Who told them to call Companies House. Who told them to call me.<br />
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I didn't mind the conversations. Years working on companies that had gone bust meant that I knew how to give people difficult messages. In fact, I almost liked it. Most of the time, they were grateful for the guidance and I occasionally found myself staying on the line when someone really needed a human being to listen to them. It wasn't glamorous work but I could do it comfortably, with minimal overtime. I wore a shirt and trousers each day even though I didn't have to. That way if I ever got another job that required it, the change wouldn't bug me.<br />
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Then there were my colleagues, Laura, Mendel and Gemma. They were so friendly and supportive. We didn't talk much as my role didn't require it. But every time I got a chance to catch-up with one of them, it was like a refreshing dose of humanity. It made the whole of my work life feel much more enriched. And made me feel less like ownerless goods myself.</div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-14365080041135556632018-04-11T00:01:00.001+01:002023-05-09T23:59:37.767+01:00#500 Thank you Fizzfan et al.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Thank you Fizzfan for all of your wonderful comments. It's been an absolute joy seeing your responses every day. I remember standing on a cold station platform last year at the height of the miserable house hunt and feeling reassured by your uplifting messages. </i><i>I'm sure I will continue picking up the phone to check them out of habit for a while to come.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I'm looking forward to finding new ways of spending the extra twenty to sixty minutes every day such as staring out the window of trains or in the case of the tube, looking blankly at the overhead map and trying to avoid eye-contact with the other passengers.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>When I started blogging five years ago, I originally considered writing daily but quickly imagined it would require immense dedication and opted to write something more weekly instead. Contrary to that expectation, at no point did writing over two hundred daily posts feel too taxing. I think a part of me must have needed to do it and found it therapeutic. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I tested out my ability to keep up the posts beforehand by writing for ten days in a row and found that fine. I thought perhaps I would write daily for a month or two, then it became a daily ritual and I carried it on. Now I've reached a point where I would like to see what else I can do with the time.</i><br />
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<i>Thanks also in no particular order to Hetal, Cath, John, Liz and my family, who I know read at times and anyone else who has taken an interest during the last eight months and the years before that.</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-62884767222896366242018-04-10T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-29T21:22:23.277+01:00#499 Winds in the east<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The day after finishing the dust ball series, I sat down to write a blog post as usual. Something was different.<br />
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I'd been writing daily for eight months. The series itself had been a change in direction, preceded by a week's worth of posts on the theme of searching for a blog like mine. Which followed another week of posts about the university strikes. I'd started writing posts under themes because I felt like I wanted a change. Now I wanted another.<br />
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The journey through the blogosphere earlier in the year had highlighted the rarity of personal narrative blogs without a strong theme. They existed but were hard to find, at least among the ranks of the popular pages.<br />
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I wanted to explain that if I carried on blogging daily, the blog wouldn't grow and neither would I but I didn't know that. I wanted to say that the daily practice had become repetitive and that life wasn't supposed to be repetitive but I didn't know that either. It was what I liked to call playground logic. The kind that seemed to fit but was only half-true.<br />
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Maybe I just didn't want to write about my own life publicly anymore. Of course nobody <i>just wants</i> anything. I'd have my reasons. Boredom. Lack of reward. Lack of growth. Lack of change. A desire to do other things.<br />
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Bukowski famously said "If it doesn't come bursting out of you despite everything, don't do it." I'd felt guilty reading that but had done it all the same. Until I felt an urge <i>not</i> to do it. That was where I was at. I'd keep writing in some shape or form but for now, I only knew one truth. It was time for the blogging to end.</div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-78277591680781393332018-04-09T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-09T00:01:02.977+01:00#498 Road Rash<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was pleasant riding the 176 across the thawed tarmac along Walworth Road into the city this morning. Rays poured in through the top deck windows. The intermittent, gentle but authoritarian sound of the prerecorded female destination readouts let me know I was on track and on time. It was slightly boring though.<br />
<br />
A cyclist banged hard on the downstairs side panel with his hand. His way of letting us know we weren't the only road user. I'd met newbie London cyclists who still thought Road Rash was a skin condition. The reality was closer to the 90's Sega Genesis version. Machines raced aggressively down hazardous routes. The clang of fists on metal. Hurling insults, tasting smog and taking chances. Cycling anywhere in the city was taking chances.<br />
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The first time I rode a bike in London, I got hit and tumbled over the handlebars. The back wheel bent at a right-angle. I was ten. My dad leaped over the bonnet of the car and he and the driver exchanged swear words until a police officer came. As an adult, my bike hadn't suffered a scratch until that night I left it at Peckham Rye station. It was chained up but I should've known better.<br />
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I'd never replaced it. As I sat there on the top deck this morning, a part of me wished I was down on the concrete, heaving and weaving. Hammering the pedals, glancing back every so often to see what four-wheeled monstrosity I was competing with. The underdog of the road. Risking life for fitness and a more invigorating ride home.</div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-58472662213139644242018-04-08T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-08T00:01:27.057+01:00#497 Notting Hill Library<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My back was sweaty. This always happened. I moved the rucksack to my right shoulder, then took my arm out of the left side of my hoodie and did the same with that. Wonky shoulders in retirement were a small price to pay for ventillation.<br />
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The walk to Notting Hill Library had seemed like a good idea at Bond Street. I was tired. Though, ironically, that was the reason for the trip. In an effort to maintain my recently-improved sleep patterns, I required a good book to read before bed. In the absence of any more appealing recommendations, I'd decided to try and emulate Jordan Peterson. I was off to get some Nietzsche.<br />
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I'd found JP's description of the late author's work to be unsurprisingly correct. Upon picking up a copy of Beyond Good and Evil in a bookshop earlier on, I'd at once agreed that it was far thicker than most other books. Not in its physical dimension but in its succinctness. The damn thing actually came with a warning that it was hard to read.<br />
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I wasn't out to kid myself, I wouldn't get half of what this guy had written but I had managed to understand some of it back in the bookshop. At least I thought I had and it made me so happy that I decided to make the trip to the library to rent it.<br />
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It was a win-win situation. If I enjoyed it, the bedtime reading would help me sleep. If I didn't, I'd make another long journey back to the library to exchange it and the walk would help me sleep. I looked again at the first chapter and found its opening lines disappointingly accessible but then flipped to the preface and saw a caution that the text might appear easier to understand than it actually was. I probably should have looked for a book about the book, rather than the book itself. I decided that would be my back-up option if the book proved too much to handle.</div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-91781100337465892752018-04-07T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-07T00:01:36.632+01:00#496 Reflecting on the dust ball series<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During the earlier part of this week, I thought back to the dust ball series. Light and dark. The beginning of Genesis. Making the distinction. The first eye. That was what it did. It only saw the difference between light and dark. It was like a parallel between science and religion. I kept thinking about eye as the first sensor and how it could be scaled up into a robot with five senses and a whole lot more besides. It was the beginning of being. I'd write up the series into a story and continue to work on it.<br />
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I read somewhere that the eye was the same width as the sensor in a 35mm camera. We had more megapixels though. 576 to be exact. Cannon were prototyping a 250 megapixel camera. There were differences though. The human lens worked differently. We sensed light differently. We had a brain. </div>
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The dust ball series had been a way of getting my head around Dan Dennett's idea that both the body and the mind were products of evolution. As a scientist, among other things, Dennett tended to avoid getting into the more spiritual side of things unless he was making reference to the evolution of religions. This was understandable. He'd spent his life in universities. Yet universities weren't the only place to learn about the human condition.</div>
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Further east, the Indian gurus had been meditating upon the nature of their existence for centuries and had come up with similar conclusions to Dennett. <i>"If you spend enough time observing yourself, you'll discover that you aren't what you think you are. That also goes for free will and your religions"</i>. Like Dennett, the gurus had spent their lives looking inward at the mind but through very different means. Then Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, had come along and retold stories about where meaning came from, or at least what kind of behaviour was conducive to it. How could I get the most out of my own behaviour and find more meaning?</div>
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When I'd stopped seeing Sarah, I'd told her I would put together a toolbox of things that could help a person out if they ever felt off-track on their journey through life. I still hadn't done it. The infinite possibilities of what form the toolbox could take and what to put in it stretched out in front of me. I was tasked with collapsing them into a single thing. A thing that held resources. I didn't know what that thing would be. If it would be anything. Maybe just my own brain. I did feel more resourceful these days. More able to sense what needed doing. Strangely, it felt like writing the dust ball series had helped.</div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-87681210216122063732018-04-06T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-06T00:01:29.099+01:00#495 Interview prep<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had most of it figured out. Check the organisation's website. Check the interviewer's LinkedIn page. Other accounts if they have them. Skills. Why I'd be a good fit. Questions to ask. How they could improve their site. Some prepared competence answers.<div>
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The Reed website had a list of typical interview questions and textbook answers. It was the week after Easter. Lectures were over for the holidays and I was using the time to meet recruiters and brush up on my question responses.</div>
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From the bottom of the Reed page, it was clear that not everyone enjoyed competence based interviews. A variety of professionals had left comments cursing the process, venting their experiences of defeats they'd suffered at the hands of the merciless questions.</div>
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It was understandable. Some of those people had worked long and hard for years without ever having to get good at talking about what they were up to. Now they were losing out to people who could. Perhaps in some cases, to impostors.</div>
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Their resentment wasn't helping them though. They were so full of suspicion about the integrity of their competitors. They talked as if they <i>knew</i> without a doubt that everyone else was lying and because they were bad liars, they were losing out in interviews.</div>
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I considered myself a cynic but not like those guys. Their grievances made no sense. If everyone in the world lied, that would mean the interviewers were also expert liars, which would mean they could detect it when they saw it. Why would they hire someone they knew was dishonest? </div>
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Competence questions weren't easy but did the complainers really think that they could get away with not being able to explain what they did for a living? They weren't losing because they were bad liars, they were losing because they sucked at telling the truth. Probably. Unless the companies they applied to really were full of dishonest people, all lying to each other. Who would want to work in a place like that?</div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-4805879274906179712018-04-05T00:01:00.002+01:002018-04-05T00:01:20.915+01:00#494 A dietary change<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'd never been into protein bars and shakes. They seemed like something a person should only have before hitting the gym. Or after hitting the gym. Or while chilling out at the gym. I didn't go to the gym though. When I wanted to exercise, I ran. And runners didn't need extra protein. Or so I thought.<div>
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I'd always been a self-confessed carb monster. I loved them. I could pile my plate full of pasta, load thick slices of buttered bread on the side and never put on any weight. The only problem was the energy flux. I'd feel fine until about 2pm and then plummet into a carb coma. Not literally but I certainly wasn't taking any names after lunch.</div>
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I came across the right advice by chance. A YouTube video about something else that happened to mention loading up on protein at breakfast. It seemed worth a try so I had a power bar one morning and the rest was history.</div>
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The first thing I noticed was that my mood was more stable. I got hungry at lunch time but wasn't desperate for it. The most remarkable thing was when I tried having only chicken and vegetables at midday. There was no afternoon slump at all, it was incredible. My focus was like a laser beam.</div>
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I didn't care if it was a placebo, I was sold. My next step would be to stock up on protein-rich breakfast foods and keep them at home. There was enough to choose from. I wasn't keen on jerky and the drinks still seemed like too much quick-release sugar, so the bars seemed like the best bet. Or nuts. I used to love peanut butter toast in the mornings. Apparently it didn't contain enough though. I never thought I'd wave goodbye to peanut butter but things were different now. It was 2018. Even peanut butter might have to make way for progress.</div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-78843041388404552572018-04-04T00:01:00.001+01:002018-04-04T00:01:02.114+01:00#493 A less lazy Sunday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Peckham Rye park really was perfect for running around. Any time, day or night, the silhouettes of between one and five joggers could be seen bobbing along on the horizon, on one of the park's three sides. Maybe not any time. Most times.<br />
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The friction between my thighs was new. I'd never experienced it in my twenties. Clearly I was getting fatter. Which was all the more reason to run. I'd barely been out this year. All the lectures and Barbican visits had taken up hours and hours. I wasn't about to start blaming the snow. That would be no more than a half-truth. In fact, it deserved its own paragraph.</div>
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<i>NOTHING about the human body prevents it from running in the snow! Or the wind or rain or sun for that matter. The fact that anyone in the UK could dare to claim that it was too... anything... outside to go for a run is completely and utterly preposterous unless said person is in ill health or otherwise incapacitated.</i></div>
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Two runners overtook me. It was ok. Five years ago, I'd have chased and raced the cyclists along the side that ran parallel to the main road. Now I let them pass. The wire from my headphones dangled and flapped against my side as I slowly bounded up the path. </div>
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A lap was just less than 5k. Three laps were 10k. That was what I told myself. If I was going to run just a lap, I must be unfit and would need encouragement, so I rounded it up. If I was going to run three, I felt good and was clearly in need of a challenge, so I rounded it down. Like an advanced feature of a running app. It had been seven years since I'd first run around Peckham Rye so I felt quite advanced myself. The setting was just the same though. Running round it grounded me. Travelling just that short distance around the park was like making a longer journey back through time.</div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-32584144978515530432018-04-03T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-03T00:01:14.590+01:00#492 Life as a pool table - part 15<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="line-height: normal;"><b>Closing remarks</b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: normal;">During this fifteen part series, of which this is the last part, I have attempted to describe an imaginable sequence of events that tell a story about the development of a population of robots from some balls of dust.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: normal;">I feel as though they have now reached a point where any further development would be either difficult or irrelevant. However I would be happy to respond to any questions about the series.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: normal;">One question could be whether I think there's any truth in the story. I like to claim that I try not to hold any beliefs. That claim could probably be debated by those who know me and I generally enjoy participating in such debates. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: normal;">I do think that with an open-mind, a person can see some truth... and some untruth... in just about anything.</span></div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-33408572891267880402018-04-02T00:01:00.000+01:002018-04-02T00:01:05.722+01:00#491 Life as a pool table - part 14<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of religion</b><br />
Robots that thrive tend to do so with the aid of beliefs. Similarly, societies of robots that thrive tend to do so with the aid of more beliefs. This is where the superego comes in. It assists with the maintenance of organised structures, from the likes of which both the robots and their societies are made. It does so through the propagation of particular abstractions such as powerful stories and rituals that are adopted as a means of education and form core parts of the robots' societies' cultures.<br />
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An individual robot anticipating a meal may imagine it more or less exactly as it will look once it has been prepared. However the impact of the superego within society at large dwarfs the daily concerns faced by the individual robot in both scale and complexity. The abstractions of the superego must therefore take forms that appeal to the robot but which are less representational in nature. Symbols and stories are ideal.<br />
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The robots enjoy the stories. They feel compelled to participate in the rituals. They identify with their traditions and sense that they are deeply important. Their knowledge of themselves is not yet sufficiently advanced for them to fully understand the differences between the stories in which they believe and the physical realities in which they exist.<br />
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Many treat the abstractions as literal, physical truths and accept them in a similar way and with a similar conviction as the beliefs that they hold about the physical world. Such dogmatism is extremely common among the robots. This is partly due to the fact that the robots' brains evolved by responding to physical events and use the same internal mechanisms to deal with the abstractions of the superego as they've been using for millions of years to deal with the more immediate threats and rewards of the physical world, although even their grasp of that was limited.<br />
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Eventually, many of the robots become increasingly educated and develop their understanding of the physical world around them, changing many of their long-held beliefs about it as they do so. In contrast, many robots' religious beliefs remain relatively unchallenged despite their obvious incongruence with their own observations. This is because the superego continues to play a role in moderating the behaviour of individuals within large groups and for that it must continue to use non-representational symbolism.<br />
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The robots who do abandon their traditional beliefs often replace them with a set of equally dogmatic beliefs that are formed through their analysis of the physical world. In doing so, they may overlook both the functional necessity of the traditional beliefs and the lack of inherent social cohesion of their new analytical findings, chiefly because their brains remain predisposed to dogmatism and will reach for any belief that looks and feels solid, grabbing on to it long before they have examined it properly. To their brains, it feels somewhat as though they were drifting helplessly in a stream and then found a log to hold on to.<br />
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-9276555891880987492018-04-01T00:01:00.001+01:002018-04-01T12:08:26.248+01:00#490 Life as a pool table - part 13<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of beliefs</b><br />
The robots' memories grow, allowing them to develop beliefs about the world around them. For instance, the belief that food should be eaten and that predators are to be avoided. There is no truth in these beliefs beyond the minds of the robots. The predators, for example, believe that it's the <i>robots</i> that should be eaten. However the beliefs, like other concepts that we've introduced so far, become an inheritable feature of the robots because they help with survival.<br />
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Specifically, beliefs allow for a wider range of responses to situations than would be the case if the robots relied on their mechanical drives alone. For example, the belief that a robot should drink water when it's ill - even though it doesn't feel like doing so - allows it to stay hydrated.<br />
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<b>The concept of societies</b><br />
However, it's not just the robots' own needs that their beliefs promote. Each robot has a fairly direct experience and understanding of the most important things that it has to avoid and pursue in its own life. Its interactions within its society on the other hand, are less clear and less easy to represent.<br />
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This is especially true when the robots start operating within groups of a larger size than that of the average family. They have not physically evolved to do so but by chance, smaller groups can meet and merge to form a new larger entity, in just the same way that the first two dust balls met and combined back in part one.<br />
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-28440250740769683382018-03-31T00:01:00.000+01:002018-03-31T00:01:03.113+01:00#489 Life as a pool table - part 12<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The acceleration of cultural evolution</b><br />
In part 11, we saw how each robot had finally gained an identity and some understanding of its place within a small group thanks to language and cooperation becoming essential in the pursuit of food.<br />
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Experiences, which are like combinations of senses, can now be encoded using representations such as words, pictures, music and text. These representations can then be transferred between individuals and are therefore able to reproduce and evolve far faster than any of the robot's physical features, which require physical reproduction to be passed from one robot to another. Therefore, mechanically, the robots remain much the same over the next few thousand years, however a rapid evolution in culture and knowledge ensues, allowing each robot to expand its inner map of the world it inhabits.<br />
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<b>The concept of emotions and emotional restraint</b><br />
Back in part 10 when morality started to emerge through the game theory that governed the interactions of individuals, there was still mass violence in the robot world. The robots' emotions, being physiological responses to the sensation of significant events, made the robots prone to frequent aggressive outbursts which overrode the neural circuits which would otherwise help to determine their dominance or submission in the company of other robots.<br />
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Once the robots' brains develop sufficiently to accommodate the next level of awareness and the superego described in part 11, the tendency of each robot to comply with the will of the superego sufficiently to minimise violence within the group in which it inhabits becomes an inheritable feature. The superego acts as a moderator in this respect.</div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-60782323540877039532018-03-30T00:01:00.000+01:002018-03-30T09:07:45.744+01:00#488 Life as a pool table - part 11<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of sweating</b><br />
At around the same time that our robots start to talk, they find themselves living in a particularly hot part of the world. They're also now consuming large quantities of other lifeforms who inhabit the same area, rather than the dust they ate back in previous parts. To catch those lifeforms, they must chase them over long distances while working in small groups. Most animals have a tendency to overheat when running, therefore any developments that aid the robots' thermoregulation, such as sweating and hair loss, are inherited, as are any tendencies towards same-species cooperative behaviour. The robots become pack hunters, vanquishing their prey by running it to death over distances up to and exceeding fifty miles.<br />
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<b>The concept of deliberate speech and the superego</b><br />
The robots' new protein-rich diets fuel brain growth to the extent that they don't just sense sounds but they also <i>sense that they sense them. </i>Parts of their brains are now able to act upon this new level of sensory awareness and issue responses, creating basic group discussions. At the same time, individual identities are articulated within the groups, whose voices act as an external echo chamber for each individual's sense of self, while also comparing it and categorising it relative to the senses of selves of the other group members.<br />
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The relaying of the comparisons and categorisations back to the individual provide it with a superego in the form of stored memories, most of which the robot is unaware but which produce within the robot sensations that might conflict with what would otherwise be its own tendencies in certain situations.<br />
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At a biological level, the activity of neural circuits have been governing the status of individuals within local groups since somewhere between parts 8 and 9 but now each individual has more awareness of its own position.<br />
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<b>The concept of cultural evolution</b><br />
Back in part 1, we started out with an environment. A windy, dusty slate. Within that environment, the dust got blown around and started evolving. Now that the robots are able to communicate, we can focus on a whole new environment comprising the air through which their voices travel, as well as the mouths, ears and brains that create and process the sounds they make, translating them into thoughts and ideas and then back into words again.<br />
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In this new environment, new combinations of words and sequences of words representing ideas and sensations can evolve. Those that aid the robots in some way survive by being passed from robot to robot although there is also room in this new environment for words and ideas that do not benefit their hosts and yet will replicate nevertheless due to their own fitness within the environment, in the same way that the robots might not necessarily benefit the slate they walk on. They just have to leave it in good enough condition that they can continue walking on it.<br />
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-73694713925118941922018-03-29T00:01:00.000+01:002018-03-29T09:21:37.580+01:00#487 Life as a pool table - part 10<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is the tenth post in a series that describes a thought experiment covering a simplistic emergence of what we might call conscious thought, from unconscious processes. I will start this tenth part by listing the concepts covered so far:<br />
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Death, growth, survival, mating, reproduction, light-sensitivity, eyes, sight, sight-related movement, inheritance, colour vision and increased freedom of movement, responsibility, robots, emergent properties, memory, decision-making, a sense of self, an ego, language.</div>
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<b>The concept of morality</b></div>
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As the robots go about their business, they can't help but interact with one another repeatedly. Such interactions become an opportunity for trade, in the widest possible sense of the word. If a large and particularly strong robot were to meet every other robot only once, its optimum strategy for each encounter would be try to take advantage of the other robots to the point of destroying them. However because the interactions are repeated throughout the robot's life, cooperation becomes the most sensible strategy in order to reap continued benefits over time. <u>Sens</u>ible is an appropriate word to use here because our robot doesn't yet understand its actions. It's reliant on its senses and memory as well as its inherited neurological circuits, which are by now sophisticated enough to act as another kind of memory that is passed between generations.</div>
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Obviously the robots aren't capable of thinking strategically, however it's at this stage that their morality develops. The juvenile robots will play together to learn movement coordination. When one robot is paired with another robot but the other robot is 10% bigger, that's enough to achieve dominance, so the bigger robot wins the first play-wrestling contest. </div>
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What happens next is the subordinate robot has to come back and ask the larger robot to play again. However if the robots are paired repeatedly, they will continue to play only if the big robot lets the little robot win at least 30% of the time. Out of these interactions emerges an implicit morality among the robots even though they don't yet understand their own behaviour.</div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-52165314652687304952018-03-28T00:01:00.000+01:002018-03-28T00:01:15.166+01:00#486 Life as a pool table - part 9<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of an ego</b><br />
Let's imagine that as well as our robots reproducing, their cells reproduce too. In fact if I'd explained the development of the robot and its cells properly, this would be a given because we know that the robots is made of dust and we know that the dust reproduces (see previous parts). The addition of brain cells is generally useful to the robot insofar as they allow it to behave in more complex ways that aid its survival and reproduction, therefore they're inherited. We reach the stage where the robot has about 250,000 neurons, which is about as many as a fly.<br />
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We discussed previously how a slug could make a decision using just two neurons. With 250,000 neurons, things become more interesting. Our robot's brain can effectively decide to play a mini lottery inside its own head to determine which neurons respond, resulting in unpredictable outcomes. The reason for this is clear. If the robot behaved predictably then its predators (which we've never introduced but let's just say there are some) would have a much easier task of catching it.<br />
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The robot can now sense a lot more of what's going on both inside its own body and in the world around it. It also has a relatively good degree of decision-making ability, at least compared to a sea slug. Yet it has no intent or forethought. It doesn't know what it's doing. As outsiders, we can certainly explain its behaviour because in terms of our own understanding, the rationales for many of its decisions are clear but they're not at all clear to the robot.<br />
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<b>The concept of language</b><br />
The growth of the robot's brain continues. Having seen the robot acquire its senses in part 5, we know that it can hear sound. Assuming the robot has a mouth, a windpipe and some lungs, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that one or more robots might start to produce sounds that can be heard by itself and other robots. Such sounds are produced completely unwittingly and without any intention, yet they attract the attention of other robots, making it easier to find mates to reproduce with, which makes the ability to make sounds an inherited feature.<br />
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In our earliest population of dust balls, those that survived were the ones that rolled around most easily. That is to say, those that were most easily transferable from one place to another, the reason being that the quality of transferability increased the dust ball's chances of reproduction. The same is true of the robot's earliest spoken words. Without any intent or planning, those sounds that are most efficiently and effectively produced and transmitted to other robots are the ones that are in turn picked up and reproduced by those other robots. Still without understanding and without reason.</div>
Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-46343787875766814052018-03-27T00:01:00.000+01:002018-03-27T00:01:01.642+01:00#485 Life as a pool table - part 8<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of decision-making</b><br />
So far we've been describing the development of robots from balls of dust. At present the robots don't have brains although they do have nerves and memory and are able to respond to stimuli. This puts them in the same league as jellyfish, which have around 6,000 neurons. In order to develop them further, we'll have to give them a basic brain, which will put them in the same league as slugs, which have around 20,000 neurons.<br />
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Slugs have often been used in brain studies because unlike humans, whose neurons are microscopic, the neurons of a slug can be up to a millimetre in length and can be seen with the naked eye. Studies have shown that inputs from as few as two neurons in a slug's brain are sometimes used in making a decision about how to pursue food. One neuron picks up and transmits a signal about how hungry the slug is and the other picks up and transmits a signal about how far away the food is. The two signals can then be sensed by the slug's brain. The brain is made up of six clusters of nerve cells, which mediate and moderate its reactions and bodily functions. In this case, some are used to sense the signals from the two neurons and will determine how much energy the slug uses in its pursuit of food versus other bodily activities. The more desperately the slug needs the food, the more energy will be allocated to its pursuit.<br />
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<b>The concept of a sense of self</b><br />
Having covered the principles of feature acquisition and development in previous parts, we can probably imagine how, bit by bit, our robot could acquire a basic slug-like brain. Does the robot have some sense of self? It's another yes and no answer. No because it wouldn't recognise itself in a mirror. Yes because when its brain makes a determination about how hungry it is, a part of the robot really is sensing another part of the same robot. When our dust ball first developed light sensitivity, it had no sense of self. All it could sense was a change in light or dark. It then responded to that change. However, when the robot's brain is checking to see if it is hungry, it's sensing a change in itself. It's sensing itself, in about the most basic way imaginable.<br />
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But it's not <i>much</i> of a sense of self. It pales in comparison to our own sense of self to so many orders of magnitude that I suspect many people would be disinclined to call it a sense of self or to make such a comparison at all. In any case, there are still more developments that we can make to our robot.<br />
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-53196281265490278232018-03-26T00:01:00.000+01:002018-03-26T00:01:06.644+01:00#484 Life as a pool table - part 7<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When we left our dust robot, it had developed the ability to detect and pursue food but it was far from having what we might call a mind. How can we imagine that it develops such a thing?<br />
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<b>The concept of memory</b></div>
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In order to give our robot a mind, we should probably give it some neurons and a nervous system. We essentially did this earlier in the thought experiment when we gave the dust ball a pebble that was reactive to light-sensitive particles and in response to their movements upon sensing light, pushed itself out to the edge of the ball to make it roll faster. Neurons, similarly, are tiny things that respond to a stimulus and transmit an impulse from one place to another. </div>
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One of the most basic forms of memory found in nature is in a sea slug, which, when squirted with water for the first time, closes its gills but when squirted with water many times, eventually stops closing its gills. This is because a neuron can eventually transmit less impulse over time when exposed to the same stimulus. The reason for this is that neurons exist for the purpose of detecting a change in the environment but when that new change becomes the norm, it's no longer a change and so the neuron no longer needs to detect it. This is known as neural adaption. We've already explained in principle several times how a dust ball or robot can acquire useful features, so we don't now need to go through the laborious process of explaining how or why it acquires a memory. We can simply imagine that it acquires one.</div>
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<b>An important distinction between types of reason</b></div>
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When I explained above that the reason for neural adaption was because neurons existed for the purpose of detecting environmental changes, I was intentionally lying to demonstrate how easy it is to imagine that a function was intelligently designed rather than that it evolved by natural selection. What actually happened was that for no reason other than a chance encounter, one day, one robot acquired something a bit like a neuron and it happened to benefit the robot so it became an inheritable feature. The fact that having a memory allows the robot to detect environmental changes is in actual fact, a consequence, not a reason.</div>
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So far, our robot can sense things and remember things. In order to develop its mind further, we'll have to give it some more functions.</div>
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-65469334297629383152018-03-25T00:01:00.000+00:002018-03-25T00:01:12.596+00:00#483 Life as a pool table - part 6<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The difficulty in explaining the evolution of mind</b><br />
The idea that a mechanical robot can be created, or in this case become assembled and develop naturally over a long period of time might seem, if not plausible then at least imaginable, which is what I've tried to exemplify extremely crudely in parts 1 to 5.<br />
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The development of a mind however is much harder to imagine. The reason for this is that most people, myself included, have next to no detailed knowledge of how their mind works. I couldn't tell you off-hand, which clusters of my neurons and other bits of my brain are involved or even how they are involved, when I imagine eating ice cream, for example. I certainly don't feel or see those neurons doing their thing. I only have an imaginary experience that is somewhat analogous to eating ice cream. Also, strangely, I can imagine eating ice cream even if I'm out walking in the countryside where there's no ice cream. What's the point of that?<br />
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<b>The reason for the evolution of mind</b><br />
The point of the human mind is a good place to start when trying to explain it. We might not know how a dust robot could acquire a mind but we can certainly see how, if it managed such a feat, it would be helpful to its survival. For example, it could imagine future scenarios and start planning its actions in advance as well as imagining how the experience would feel. The more realistic the imagined experience, the more likely the robot would be to plan effectively. It might think to itself "I really feel like I'd better get this right!" and it would sense, using its senses, that the matter was important.<br />
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<b>Comparing the evolution of the body with that of the mind</b><br />
When I started writing this, I didn't know how a ball of dust could become a sophisticated robot. Instead, I took the basic features of the robot and one by one, tried to imagine how a simple dust ball could have interacted with its environment in ways that would lead to its acquisition of useful features one by one. Could we take the same approach with the dust robot's mind? We could have a go. But does that mean reducing the mind to little more than a bundle of neurons, dendrites, axons, electricity and water? No. The mind, or at least our experience of it, is much more than the sum of its parts.<br />
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<b>The concept of emergent properties</b><br />
An emergent property is, put simply, a property that a collection of things has but which the collection's individual parts do not have. For example, most of us understand the basic ingredients of a cake. We know how to combine them and have watched them come together to create a cake. Is a cake nothing more than a bundle of ingredients? Well, yes and no. Yes because it's only made from those ingredients and no because the experience of eating cake is completely different from eating a raw egg, a cup of flour, some milk, some sugar. You get the idea.<br />
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What does a single grain of flour taste like? Pretty much nothing. What does a single brain cell think like? Pretty much nothing. What does cake taste like if an ingredient or two are absent? A bit like the full version but not quite the same. What is your mind like if some of your memory or reactions are absent? A bit like the full version but not quite the same. Note that this goes for both the experience and the functionality. What's it like to be a dog? A bit like being a human but not quite the same. What's it like to be a mouse? A bit like being a dog but not quite the same. I'm talking theoretically here, before you accuse me of never having been a dog or a mouse...<br />
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-56021686235965510182018-03-24T00:01:00.000+00:002018-03-24T08:17:37.510+00:00#482 Life as a pool table - part 5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of responsibility</b><br />
In part 4, we saw how a dust ball could acquire a new feature, such as the ability to see in colour, which might not be that significant on its own. However, the moment that another part of the dust ball happens to react to the new feature in a way that helps the dust ball, the new feature becomes part of a process that is more likely to be inherited. The dust ball now has some ability to respond to the things it encounters. In other words, it has acquired some new response-ability.<br />
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<b>Limbs and other senses</b><br />
Limbs. Let's give the dust ball some limbs. A baby dust ball is, by chance, made with a tiny bit that sticks out, which happens to aid its movement in a way that makes food and mating more likely. Thousands of years later, almost all dust balls have limbs and one of them happens to get affected by a reaction that happens to a part of the dust ball that's connected to its eye and the dust ball acquires the ability to move the limb in response to what it sees, in a way that is helpful to it. Over a vast period of time, the dust ball develops four new senses in the exact same way that it developed its sight. It also develops a second eye, which gives it the benefit of depth perception.<br />
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<b>The concept of dust robots</b><br />
The continued improvement and acquisition of features gets us to a point where our dust balls are no longer dust balls at all. They're dust robots. They've become dynamic shapes that are superbly suited to sensing and moving towards things that are good for them while avoiding the perils of their environment. For the purpose of this thought experiment, we might now consider their physical development complete and move on to their mental development.<br />
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911650226122086220.post-42615521304854824032018-03-23T00:01:00.000+00:002018-03-23T17:31:04.861+00:00#481 Life as a pool table - part 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The concept of sight-related movement</b><br />
Scattered about the piece of slate are some smooth pebbles of various shapes and sizes. Some of the pebbles are small enough to interact with the light-senstive particles. A dust ball with a light-sensitive particle crater rolls over a pebble and the pebble sticks to it, becoming embedded in the dust ball, near the crater. Now, when reflected light from the surface dust causes the light-sensitive particles to react, they in turn push the pebble out to the surface of the dust ball. Having a smooth pebble on its surface makes the dust ball roll fractionally faster. It rolls a greater distance over its life span, increasing its chance of finding food, mating and reproducing.<br />
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<b>The concept of inheritance</b><br />
Whenever two dust balls mate and reproduce, pieces of whatever features each ball has, are likely to break off and form part of the new baby dust ball. That baby dust ball will have whatever features it inherited from its parents, plus any new features it acquires during its lifetime.<br />
<b><br />Colour vision and increased freedom of movement</b><br />
The features that a dust ball is born with might undergo improvements during its lifetime. For example, one of the light sensitive particles might be jolted and deform, so that it becomes sensitive not just to light itself but a different wavelength of light. This alone, isn't that significant until, by chance, the dust ball rolls over another type of pebble. A spiky pebble that reacts to deformed light-sensitive particles. When a deformed light-sensitive particle reacts to the new wavelength of light, it pushes the spiky pebble out to the surface of the dust ball, changing the direction in which the dust ball is rolling. It so happens that the new wavelength of light is reflected by the walls at the edges of the piece of slate. The dust ball is now able to change direction rather than smashing into the walls and becoming damaged. The new feature is inherited because it's helpful to the dust ball and improves its chances of surviving and mating.<br />
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<i>To be continued</i></div>
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Profound Familiarityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12327758193177032803noreply@blogger.com4