VR UTOPIA
•March 28, 2009 • Leave a CommentIn philosophy, the brain in a vat is any of a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. It is drawn from the idea, common to many science fiction stories, that a mad scientist might remove a person’s brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives. According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating a virtual reality (including appropriate responses to the brain’s own output) and the person with the “disembodied” brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without these being related to objects or events in the real world.
The simplest use of brain-in-a-vat scenarios is as an argument for philosophical skepticism and Solipsism. A simple version of this runs as follows: Since the brain in a vat gives and receives the exact same impulses as it would if it were in a skull, and since these are its only way of interacting with its environment, then it is not possible to tell, from the perspective of that brain, whether it is in a skull or a vat. Yet in the first case most of the person’s beliefs may be true (if he believes, say, that he is walking down the street, or eating ice-cream); in the latter case they are false. Since, the argument says, you cannot know whether you are a brain in a vat, then you cannot know whether most of your beliefs might be completely false. Since, in principle, it is impossible to rule out your being a brain in a vat, you cannot have good grounds for believing any of the things you believe; you certainly cannot know them.-WIKIPEDIA
Modernity is inseparable from its ‘own’ media: the printed text and, subsequently, the electronic signal.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 24
A lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utalitarian needs, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity.
…
Lifestyles are routined practices, the routines incorporated into habits of dress, eating, modes of acting and favoured milieux for encountering others; but the routines followed are reflexively open to change in the light of the mobile nature of self-identity.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 81
‘Taking charge of one’s life’ involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 73
Regimes are modes of self-discipline, but are not solely constituted by the orderings of convention in day-to-day life; they are personal habits, organized in some part according to social conventions, but also formed by personal inclinations and dispositions. -ON GIDDENS.
In the tunnel at the fork in the road:
Mae caught up to Susan and peter and looked in both of their eyes. She didn’t even let either save face.
‘Something happened here? Right?’
‘I…’ Susan began.
‘You nothing…how can I even move through this trouble when I can’t hold anything in my heart for five minutes?’
‘It is not something that we can control after years of this layering…’ started peter.
‘One of the objectives would be to try to control it…. something caused a collapse and I don’t even know. I don’t need to know. This spirit is one of them. Every chance to grab fruit from the tree…right?
‘It just happened…I couldn’t, or didn’t weigh it against what w had already experienced…’ said peter.
‘You…you are taking advantage of us…we have that amnesia and I feel you are using you knowledge and memory to watch us behave without a history.’
The guerilla looked sheepish and glanced ahead at the light that was rounding the b end of the advanced party. Here were the two women facing off.
‘Listen…we can pick this up later…at night…you all can decide who to lie with…it is obvious that none of you last in a plan for very long…. you are a liability for me.’
‘And what will make it all worth it for you…?’ Susan turned on the guerrilla. These tunnels could collapse and then we would be assigned to oblivion…isn’t that right peter?’
‘One would think…but as I remember, the farm has a way of recovering the DNA…a gps on your cell phone…something like that. The issue is that even in moving we can ‘win’…. the horrific pyramid schemes born out of a scarcity of the material are over…perhaps over. Big temples, blood as mortar…the works. How you leave your good and beautiful work other than your dank is mystery.’
‘You fucking bitch…’ Mae started on Susan…
‘Listen woman, it isn’t like these pricks are in short supply. There are six or seven of them and two of us…just adjust your heart. There are more…’
‘Listen’…said peter as he looked at the curve of Mae’s brown breast’s through the top buttons of her white oxford shirt…’it is so simple for both of you…’ he glanced at Susan’s lively face with her high cheekbones echoed in her triangular shoulders. ‘Me and him…what is your name…’
‘Timothy’…
‘…Have certain objectives we have to reach even before nightfall…you two could go to bed with the idea that the slightest peccadillo from ‘your man’ and you would change him in an instant…you already have…’ he said indicating to Susan. ‘This is your mo in a world of scarcity…or…perhaps…you attractiveness creates a type of abundance….’
‘Abundance of solutions…’ said Susan coldly.
‘ The judging animal…. I have always…in my past…. found it extremely interesting that there is only judgment from women as attractive as you….’
‘Listen…’ continued mae…’you have the advantage of memory…short and long. Men have a way…I think…of calling a woman fickle, loose, and faithless, as their easy way out…the first sign of you two going alone you will try to consummate this passion…I know it…what is awful is that I will be part of the blame…at least to you.’ She pointed toward Susan.
‘We have solutions here, no problems. This is born from the fact that there are hostile intruders coming and every second left here on earth for us is a gift. Why don’t you two consider it a gift to know this man?’ Interjected peter.
‘And do you think that if we consider our beauty we would really want to be down here…. we would have a better time of it above.’ Susan continued. ‘You, peter, you live in hearts like tunnels I think…. you jump from one of them to the other if you could…if you could. We, she and I, would be out in the sunlight and exposed to the greatest number of people if we could…like a party…. yes…we would probably be better at a party…here…it is like a type of squandering…. fickle assholes for men who feel that they can exercise their power of fickleness…. it helps you explain and uncaring mother. But, where you think we have an objective of safety in mind we have one of thriving…not merely surviving. You would make us hunker down to the most minimal of concerns…
‘I agree…’ said Mae.
Peter looked at the women and considered this pause in the plunge through the tunnels. They were both beautiful ad therefore he considered that they…if exposed to other men or even in an abstract way, held beauty and commanded observation wherever they went. This is power and a liability. The liable part is the over exposure. Underground they wouldn’t be judged. Or…
All three cell phones rang at once. Timothy looked up and at all three. Peter answered his ‘hello?’
‘Yes…answer it…’ he said to the two women who then said hello almost simultaneously.
‘It is my voice…!’ Said Mae.
‘Yes. Mine too…’ Susan interjected.
‘I knew this would happen…’ peter listened in to his phone:
‘Hi,’ his voice said…’there is a type of store room to the right take the tunnel to the right all four of you…in the room are a number of mini fridges and some canned goods. Food. You need that about now. I know the women are now upset and that they are squandering their beauty underground…gender roles? No. These are their assigned roles by their former selves…look at them…they are listening to a very different message on their calls. It is a voice of their own also with thousands of their recorded memes from blogs, and vlogs, and epistles, and quotes, and journals, and hopes, and poems, and pleas in the middle of the night for freedom from fear and eternal youth. I am the composit of those memes. I am the best mother you will have. Period. I, as a matter of fact, am the best intimate that you will have. Lover? Brains in vats…. and mutual masturbation. Listen now: you are all worried about the best route to survival…you will have to trust both me and your instinct on that. Like a good lover entrusted with the memory of some forgotten bliss. It is funny how we can never remember a good fuck, eh? Then, you will have to take that best route and think that you are surviving. With hope. You will die. Hope that there is a demigod that will revive you and you’re dank but this is like a vitamin pill: it helps you move. Just as Mae said that it would help her strength to know that there is one who is intimate with her beauty…she doesn’t mean that of course. Her beauty is really for the highest bidder…you know that in your heart…what is left of it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the other…of course you could mix her beauty with the idea that she is your intellectual equal…. it will all melt down to equals and then you will have the most common bourgeois polarity…stasis. What is intellectual and carnal equality? Nothing. That is not thriving. That isn’t even surviving. New rules. That is what this packet of your former memes would like to see…. make no mistake that I am not still the sniper…I can judge in an instant. Even down here. You will find out how. A woman’s beauty allows them to thrive every second…not merely survive. That is the difference with the ‘plain Jane’…. there is something else with a man…. it is in your experiential ability to stay in your skin, enjoy each door and the right door you choose, and to enjoy and then leave each room. Of course women acquire this gift too but not without looking in the mirror. Now at the end of the hall there is the right door and the right room for now. Don’t trust me because trust has very, very little to do with building utopia, thriving, or even surviving. Trust has been overrated for eon. Live through each door and each room.’ Then the cell phone hung up….
Peter looked at the faces of the two women and the confused guerrilla in the dim light. He scoured the landscape of the other two beautiful faces. Yes. They are getting very different messages.
…ANOTHER.
•February 19, 2009 • Leave a Comment
A TAKE ON THE NEW HYBRID SPACE…aphroditehephaestusb-copy
cold reading
•December 9, 2008 • Leave a Comment
The Minotaur would try to elicit as well as to share. Termites. Vengeance and guilt. There would be non-when this guy is gone. He is guilty of nothing because he was right in the long scheme of things: there was no harm putting the information online. Was the world shrinking or was it expanding? The secret life of commodities clamped down with an iron logic that extended to the air breathed. One couldn’t even tell what would be free or an entitlement: friends would surround other friends and help them out in times of trouble yet nobody knew the exact number that humanity would take on. Everyone had suspected the great die off to begin and didn’t know what form it would take.
He looked over at the Faustian brewing another cup of coffee. They wouldn’t be able to tell either but their motion of back casting might. One didn’t have to be afraid of the examples of entropy in their lives…they were, for the most part, small and in the vigor of life they would go by unnoticed for months if not years. Health. Why be afraid of what is inevitable? He said his prayers to this mission: to find this guy and make an example of him. Would this woman next to him be the vehicle for the example? Is that why she is here also? cold-readingb
The grey cold morning would foreshadow the big die-off. He could only think of the behavior of those surrounded with war and plague and starvation. The fight against the corrosive entropy was the little creative act each day…. something of a type of love. It was pointless to go on describing it to others or to validate it.
phillipbaldwin.com 