Why was it the worst service ever?
1) The waiter never once asked if we needed a highchair or booster seat for the baby
2) The waiter said, when finally coming to the table to take our order: Okay, folks, let's get this over with
3) He did not have many people to serve, but acted flustered, rude, and like our presence was interrupting his smoking break or something
So yeah, he got a bad tip. I just want to know, how does anyone get away with that? Did his turtle die that morning? Good God.
Monday, July 17, 2006
The Most Important Post I've Ever Written: We are not machines
I just heard this dude Ray Kurzweil say the following things on NPR's Talk of the Nation:
1) At some point soon, he believes we won't have bodies anymore, we'll just be inside computers
2) He thinks in a few years, we'll have machines whose intelligence exactly matches that of humans, and we won't be able to tell them apart
3) these machines will fight for their rights
4) Human intelligence and biology is just "information processing"
5) We'll be able to deprogram disease and aging, the same way we program computers
Okay. I don't know if anyone here in America has seen the British show Dr. Who. If you have, you probably thought it was way too cheesy for viewing pleasure -- afterall, we tend to like cynicism and sarcasm in our media. But there's a playful, incisive innocence to the show that I've come to love, and one of the recent episodes features Cybermen, who are created by turning humans into machines. How does this happen? Human emotions are removed.
And because emotions are removed, the Cybermen are
1) all alike, and
2) easily programmed, and most awful of all,
3) easily programmed to kill other human beings.
I guess what I'm getting at is this:
1) Without emotions, we're not human
2) Without bodies, full of chemicals and hormones and physical reactions tied together through a brain, we don't have emotions, so therefore
3) Without bodies, we're not human, and therefore
4) Without bodies, we can't have intelligence.
I suppose one could debate what exactly "intelligence" means... but instead I'll offer this: intelligence, true human intelligence, is not cold, hard reason. It's warm, lumpy thought. It's the knowledge and wisdom and understanding we get from mixtures of sensation and experience and emotion and turmoil and adolescence and birth canals and dreams and disappointments, from disease and aging and war and giggles.
Scientists, people, men, who are cut off from their bodies, are, in short, pricks. They get ideas in their heads that have nothing to do with real life happiness, and they invent distortions of desire, shaped and packaged as utopian ideals, which they promptly sell to the rest of us, only to ruin us in bits and pieces.
Having a conscience, having empathy, having foresight and hindsight, having imagination -- these activities of human intelligence form our ability to make good choices with our creativity. They form the basis for a true intelligent lifeform.
If you don't believe me, go read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I'm not decrying science at all, mind you -- I'm not debasing the drive for knowledge. I'm repulsed by the infantile want to dispose of life, which is made up of life and death, which is made up of inconstant flesh.
I'm disgusted by Cartesian dualism marring contemporary ethics and infusing futurists like this yucky dude.
I don't want my daughter living a virtual life inside a laptop. I want her to feel wind on her skin, soak sun into her skull, smell salt, taste liquor, wince at onions, cry at funerals, even mine.
Mr. What's His Face thinks we won't be able to tell the difference between machines and humans. He's an idiot. We'll be able to tell them, because they won't know what it's like to have a mother and a father, they won't be able to offer love to anyone, and we'll be staring our extinction in the face.
1) At some point soon, he believes we won't have bodies anymore, we'll just be inside computers
2) He thinks in a few years, we'll have machines whose intelligence exactly matches that of humans, and we won't be able to tell them apart
3) these machines will fight for their rights
4) Human intelligence and biology is just "information processing"
5) We'll be able to deprogram disease and aging, the same way we program computers
Okay. I don't know if anyone here in America has seen the British show Dr. Who. If you have, you probably thought it was way too cheesy for viewing pleasure -- afterall, we tend to like cynicism and sarcasm in our media. But there's a playful, incisive innocence to the show that I've come to love, and one of the recent episodes features Cybermen, who are created by turning humans into machines. How does this happen? Human emotions are removed.
And because emotions are removed, the Cybermen are
1) all alike, and
2) easily programmed, and most awful of all,
3) easily programmed to kill other human beings.
I guess what I'm getting at is this:
1) Without emotions, we're not human
2) Without bodies, full of chemicals and hormones and physical reactions tied together through a brain, we don't have emotions, so therefore
3) Without bodies, we're not human, and therefore
4) Without bodies, we can't have intelligence.
I suppose one could debate what exactly "intelligence" means... but instead I'll offer this: intelligence, true human intelligence, is not cold, hard reason. It's warm, lumpy thought. It's the knowledge and wisdom and understanding we get from mixtures of sensation and experience and emotion and turmoil and adolescence and birth canals and dreams and disappointments, from disease and aging and war and giggles.
Scientists, people, men, who are cut off from their bodies, are, in short, pricks. They get ideas in their heads that have nothing to do with real life happiness, and they invent distortions of desire, shaped and packaged as utopian ideals, which they promptly sell to the rest of us, only to ruin us in bits and pieces.
Having a conscience, having empathy, having foresight and hindsight, having imagination -- these activities of human intelligence form our ability to make good choices with our creativity. They form the basis for a true intelligent lifeform.
If you don't believe me, go read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I'm not decrying science at all, mind you -- I'm not debasing the drive for knowledge. I'm repulsed by the infantile want to dispose of life, which is made up of life and death, which is made up of inconstant flesh.
I'm disgusted by Cartesian dualism marring contemporary ethics and infusing futurists like this yucky dude.
I don't want my daughter living a virtual life inside a laptop. I want her to feel wind on her skin, soak sun into her skull, smell salt, taste liquor, wince at onions, cry at funerals, even mine.
Mr. What's His Face thinks we won't be able to tell the difference between machines and humans. He's an idiot. We'll be able to tell them, because they won't know what it's like to have a mother and a father, they won't be able to offer love to anyone, and we'll be staring our extinction in the face.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
To Crank or not to Crank
Ok, so I got called a Crank recently, and I want to say, Ok, fine, I embrace it, I won't deny it, I do get cranked up about things. The question is, should I try to be un-Cranky? Decrankify myself? Write sweetly in praise of the half-full glass of moonshine in my hand instead of yapping about the ridiculous trivial waste It All Is? Get drunk on honey, not vinegar? Smile, instead of grimace?
Well, I do both, is my answer, and to legitimize myself, I shall now praise Charlottesville because last night the downtown mall was swell and smashing and lots of fun. Sure, the fake-German circus freaks juggling flamed torches were more funny than mystical, and yes, most of the art on exhibit was less than impressive (the Disturbing Lettuce series seriously made me want to retch -- which may have been the desired effect, I don't know) and I do want to know who thought playing rap music was a good idea -- though again, perhaps some other bitter goof wanted to watch all the white people and their babies trying not to flinch too hard while the barrage of hard beats battered their ears... (it was indeed amusing to watch little toddlers dancing to what I thought was pretty terrible rap 'music')...
But other than that! there were so many people of all different sorts, balloons and babies and dogs and singers and musicians, it was just a lot of fun.
The best exhibit was the series of photographs from Katrina from the Building Goodness Foundation (now how can I be only a crank, if I can like them??). The picture of a shattered statue of Holy Mother Mary was an incrediblly interesting, arresting image. And the photos from Haiti were not your typical "look how impoverished and sad they are, you fat white bastards" but showed distinct colors and vistas and eyes for a beauty that was hard to turn away from. This exhibit was also the best in terms of food and drink offerings (the rest were scanty).
The love letters invitational was okay. There were a few really interesting pieces. But love is a hard thing to write or paint about, and most of the attempts either tried to be obscure so as not to be sappy or tried to over-sap so as not to be obscure, and very few really hit something essential and real and soulful. My favorite piece was the fake billboard. I usually find things like that stupid in their conceit -- one fountain toilet per century or two is enough -- but this one had threads of narrative woven through distinct and repeating messages, which became like a game, and made me not only enjoy the piece, but want to go hunting out similar connections in the real world. Now that's art -- something that points to and reveals something about the world beyond itself...
I also rode the trolley last night, which was terribly refreshing -- being clustered with strangers in a jerkily moving vehicle is one way to jostle your brain out of egocentricity.
So, I'm happy with Charlottesville today.
Go, Charlottesville, Get Busy. Put your groove on.
Well, I do both, is my answer, and to legitimize myself, I shall now praise Charlottesville because last night the downtown mall was swell and smashing and lots of fun. Sure, the fake-German circus freaks juggling flamed torches were more funny than mystical, and yes, most of the art on exhibit was less than impressive (the Disturbing Lettuce series seriously made me want to retch -- which may have been the desired effect, I don't know) and I do want to know who thought playing rap music was a good idea -- though again, perhaps some other bitter goof wanted to watch all the white people and their babies trying not to flinch too hard while the barrage of hard beats battered their ears... (it was indeed amusing to watch little toddlers dancing to what I thought was pretty terrible rap 'music')...
But other than that! there were so many people of all different sorts, balloons and babies and dogs and singers and musicians, it was just a lot of fun.
The best exhibit was the series of photographs from Katrina from the Building Goodness Foundation (now how can I be only a crank, if I can like them??). The picture of a shattered statue of Holy Mother Mary was an incrediblly interesting, arresting image. And the photos from Haiti were not your typical "look how impoverished and sad they are, you fat white bastards" but showed distinct colors and vistas and eyes for a beauty that was hard to turn away from. This exhibit was also the best in terms of food and drink offerings (the rest were scanty).
The love letters invitational was okay. There were a few really interesting pieces. But love is a hard thing to write or paint about, and most of the attempts either tried to be obscure so as not to be sappy or tried to over-sap so as not to be obscure, and very few really hit something essential and real and soulful. My favorite piece was the fake billboard. I usually find things like that stupid in their conceit -- one fountain toilet per century or two is enough -- but this one had threads of narrative woven through distinct and repeating messages, which became like a game, and made me not only enjoy the piece, but want to go hunting out similar connections in the real world. Now that's art -- something that points to and reveals something about the world beyond itself...
I also rode the trolley last night, which was terribly refreshing -- being clustered with strangers in a jerkily moving vehicle is one way to jostle your brain out of egocentricity.
So, I'm happy with Charlottesville today.
Go, Charlottesville, Get Busy. Put your groove on.
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