How we understand the billion destinies, to shut out the billion-and-oneth

Or: the seemingly endless process of creating a repository, yet at the very start of which we set parameters for what shall be entered into it?

I could start with simple, reductionist analogies: the world is obsessed with digital and MP3. Yet the first one only means greater control (as of yet), not the richness of an analog content; the second one only means less hogging of memory resources, again not the richness of a WAV file. A computer programmer often creates a look-up table when instead of a binary logic applying to things, there is a particular case for a particular instance: the programming is only done for when and how to access the lookup table, and whether it's a dynamic or static table; whether it may grow or not; and when it grows, what will be the maximum limit before you start removing something, having an overrun? The last question is a crucial question: because every human being is a new story with the richness of his and her world; my experience is not yours, and if you have simulated mine, then you still haven't simulated as yet my daughter's. Or the one that I have not yet experienced.

What is thirst?

I have often grappled with the question and so have many. How to define it? By the words, that you feel parched? By coming up with magic Orwellian words that will tell everyone what does it mean: I wonder what will the thousand words for "love" will be if it comes to that stage of lingual foliation? By the exact knowledge of what chemicals get produced where and which impulses do those chemicals "fire"? Or, dismiss the question saying that it is merely a play-acting, a dream, that no real thirst exists, that it is either a figment of my imagination or Brahma's dream, that I know thirst by imagining it to be real and thus I know thirst - the advaita oneness? Do I? I do not want to define the sensations: I want to know what's that feeling, which if I am thirsty only then I may know (and if in my imagination, then how in my imagination that particular feeling: can I imagine how does a dog feel thirsty?). Objectifying thirst yes does give me great knowledge: knowledge that may help me preventing thirst in someone, that may help me inducing thirst in someone else, that may help me varying its degrees, that may help me play with it just as I can use my computer without understanding the bus cables in it. Will knowing all the signals be actually the knowledge, and thus make it redundant whether I experience thirst or not in life?

Daniel Dennett says, yes. Mary is the omniscient being. Or, RoboMary is the omniscient "someone." She knows what happens to other robots when they see red and thus she knows what will happen to her, by which I assume that she already has perfect knowledge of herself is what Dennett is implying. Or, rather, she doesn't need to know: her brain's simulation acts like a controlled input A and seeing red is another input B (again controlled, because she knows the results on other robots); however, the output is as yet unknown - she will only "know" it once the simulations of her brain and seeing red are run. The following questions arise:

1. The omniscient being is someone who already knows everything. RoboMary can only know about her reaction on seeing red after doing the equivalent of seeing red - running a red-seeing simulation. She cannot anticipate it; she has no way of knowing beforehand what will it be on encountering red. Doesn't contact with red give knowledge hitherto hidden to RoboMary?

2. Imagine Mary whose brain is implanted with RoboMary. Without ever encountering red, if she somehow can imagine red, she will then have the emotions of experiencing red. The crucial question is how will she imagine red? RoboMary will simply process the wavelength info of red color and thus without even knowing what red looks like, Mary may have a gamut of emotions that she would have experienced on actually seeing red with Mary's brain.

Right? Or, is there a catch? RoboMary does run simulations based on Mary's brain but the other input is all the reactions of all other people/robots. Is the output actually reflectant of Mary's brain? If 100 people did this and that with such and such elements in their brains with the red color, Mary with her particular brain should experience all this. The question is: how many people will be the deciding factor? 1000? One crore? One billion?

What Dennett does is to discount the possibility of a wider template than whatever is the number of robots RoboMary is feeding upon: or can humans with new combinations of chemicals and post-modifications of those chemicals given conditions, surroundings, etc., be not born? A billion human beings may be recorded, but who is to say that the billion-and-oneth will not have any element new (and then who is to determine if that information might not have been crucial to determining Mary's state on seeing red?); in a blind race to objectify experience, and human experience, why are we forgetting that we never created the world (even if a Creator didn't) and that we do not know what life is, what thirst is? The billion-and-oneth might yet be different: but, ah, yes, given the growing controls on me, it will be much more difficult to produce anything but my clone or my neighbour's clone.

Move on, Berni!

days of colds

Today was slow. Sometimes I become slow. Everything gets blocked with mucus and the air beats me as it does every other object. Amidst the discussions, the laughter, the zeal to do something, amidst it all there are moments when I feel the earth has become a map. I wonder if I were to say this to anyone, would I be looked at as if I'm crazy? But it does feel so. The finger moves to trace the Arctic Circumpolar and in a moment all the people struggling with identities, love, recognition, the meaning of life, a great sorrow, a sharp event, a prolonged circumstance, the people elated after winning applause, having scored well, something to look forward to, the people busy in spinning stories, teaching new mysteries, researching new methods of saving lives, trying to solve an obscure village's very real problems, and those people who roam about in guises but do nothing, who want to do so much but cannot be true, who will even destroy life rather than create even a mere clay statue: in prairies and meadows, in mountains where snow falls for the whole winter, sitting and watching from windows of havelis where the road marches by every day but their lives don't move on, in aeroplanes where live moves on so fast that it has become again stationary, and in thoughts that fly faster, that connect and spring from books and music, that immortalise because they cross the time. But then this is the world that my heart beats for, the world of good and bad, true and false, of reason and unreason, of rationality and irrationality, of kiss and slap, of procreation and murder. And the world becomes a map, a sheet of paper on which I dream, my elbows dream.

What's tangible? Whom to believe? Where to rest? What to achieve? Then I remember the hound that roamed the moors. Then I recall how sharply etched in my mind are the silent smoke curls going up in the air of the unseen silhouette of the thief prowling on the roof. I remember how people not just fight for honour and ethics, but rather there is more to life: I remember there is love. I remember there is the instinct of love and goodness, like when the man tries to save a little dog just when the firing practice is to take place and he loses his sight as a result. He does save the dog. I also remember that modern science will try to explain away his action as if it's something not otherwise acceptable at all; I of course know humanity doesn't save dogs and lose eye sights and hence it's a thing worth investigation. I remember the lakes that shimmer in glinting winter sunlight and give joy to a child's heart. I remember belief and the childlike joy in it and how the grasshopper sits on blank white walls every night and the child looks on with wonder and fear and fascination, as if the grasshopper is the god. He's still to learn the god by name, because that is the role of the world to teach him that and to then make him obey a thousand things (or to disobey); but he's already known God for once, the green lanky insect with an antenna like a fisherman's rod to someone who has not seen fishing.

I am slow today. I can't even remember what's spit in French. Outside there is a world that is debating vehemently about unemployment figures and for hours they are debating and for hours they are. They look at me; either they want another wise opinion or they want me to make myself scarce. I want neither; I don't want them. But, there is my map spread out on the table, and there are these people also in it. Some make music, draw paintings, write books, and play a new part; but mostly all they do is just make noises, noises. Noises tire me; I love silences. Or dialogues. Sometimes when I fold the paper, it crackles: everyone has a world, so rich a world. Why do they have to make noises, I realise? I don't know, probably will never. It doesn't always matter, not when I am not slow. I have loved, and I may live. Sometimes remembering the shiver that that hound sent down my spine; isn't that the thrill of life and the love I have loved with?

untitled

What was it
you remembered, today?
The wisp of moon, the feather of my soul
or the red, shiny tomatoes that reflect my joy?

Let them make merry

I went through gnarled walnut trees
eaten by care and worry, with useless fight
to survive; when I sang to them, they wept.