An Ode To Reality As We Thought We Knew It

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is

southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.” – Hamlet

Translation: a) I’m conveniently mad when I need an excuse for acting like a jerk.

b) Madness is a form of genius. Y’know, in case excuse (a) needs a little beefing up. (But really, blame the Cliff Notes.)

In the 1970s and 80s, a small US Army unit was mandated to develop soldiers’ telepathic abilities in order to carry out psychic warfare. Besides working out how to walk through walls, they trained in staring at goats to stop their hearts.

They’re he-eere… 

But they’re not the ghosts who live in tvs… (New word to scold my kids with: POL-ter-geist.) They’re evil robots humans built… Y’know, I always think an indication of how we feel about ourselves as a people is tellingly in how we quickly assume that any other evolved consciousness (like AI) is also going to turn evil, but anyways..

In 1965, British Mathematician Irving Good defined an “ultra-intelligent” machine, arguably what we might today call an AI (artificial intelligence), as “a machine that…. can design even better machines..” Make copies of itself that are evolved.

The Omega Team named their first AI Prometheus... Prometheus’ chosen first task and test was to build….. computer games. Like what you need to be Jimmy Fallon or Leno or Wayne Brady or some other super funny-on-the-fly guy, to design the next cult game requires an understanding of the human gamer’s nature – to hit that sweet spot between Challenging Enough and This Stupid Thing Is Too Hard <givesup>. A good computer game gets you hooked. Makes you spend money. Gets all your friends hooked so you can’t leave without “losing your friends”.

Max Tegmark of Life 3.0 writes – “The real threat is not malevolence, but competence.” When algorithms know ourselves better than we do, they can mine and crunch data to make all kinds of decisions – including creative ones. I don’t think tha-at, but what I do think is Those Are Some Awesome Tools To Have.

And my personal take on AI replacing Human? Never Fear. The most wonderful-terrible thing about being human is being crazy-passionate enough to….. a) cut off your ear during an argument.

…then sparking countless theories and debates about why the “creative genius” would cut his own ear off during a fight with a friend. Why he then sent the wrapped-up severed ear to an unknown woman, and who she might be. (I remember one of my old mum friends (Mum of Cherub, former budding English Prof from Yale who now lives half a world away) eyeing the Starry Night sticker on my then-laptop and saying something along the lines of Van Gogh Was Such A Troubled Man, Yet… His Art. And What Everyone Else Derives From It… Again – a completely unpredictable, often illogical trajectory by other human minds…

b) absorb energy from people around you, then paint feverishly all through the night (don’t even get me started on all the other inventions in various other fields he is known for)

Can you possibly ever build all this in an AI? Is “creative genius” truly possible without certain human flaws, or quirks? And whether “quirks” can exist in the perfectly “normal” (what’s “normal” anyway? What everyone else who is not Hamlet sees? So if you had enough Hamlets to change that, the “normal” people would then be the mad ones?)

 

Popularity, normalcy, madness…. are all labels created by other humans. They require a human opinion (or well, an algorithm that takes these things into account – Monte Carlo Simulation, anyone?) The Monte Carlo is what they use to run “infinite” possibilities in an investment portfolio. That’s pretty cool, right? Now do that again. But on the Kardashians. 😀

One of my all-time favourite stories to tell the kids is of the Golden Apple of Discord (or Contention) – because one of the first ever great storytellers – Homer (NOT the yellow cartoon character but hey, now we know where Papa` Simpson got the name) – painted a picture of Greek gods…with very human failings. (Shakespeare is another master of the terrible-wonderful bitter-sweet all-too-often-all-bitter characteristics of human nature)…

Eris, Greek Goddess of Discord, is offended at not being invited to the wedding of Sea Nymph-Goddess Thetis and King Peleus. And so she throws the Apple of Discord in the midst of the three greatest goddesses – Hera wife of Zeus, Athena Goddess of Wisdom, and Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. These three great goddesses – far greater than Eris herself – allow themselves to be pitted against each other for the Apple, on which is written To The Fairest. In some incredible irony these 3 great goddesses depend on the opinion of Paris, at the time a lowly human shepherd, to break the 3-way tie. (Some versions have Zeus, King of gods, in an all-too-typical human male self-preservation response, wimping out on annoying two out of three very powerful females – he passes the buck to a hapless mortal haha)

On a parenting aside I’ve also narrated to the kids, Paris is born prince of Troy. Because it is prophesied that he will cause Troy to burn, his parents abandon him on a hill somewhere and he is eventually adopted by a shepherd (where he then ends up awarding the Golden Apple to Aphrodite, and she, having obtained his vote by promising him the fairest woman in all the land, now needs to deliver. Fairest mortal woman turns out to be Queen Helen who is already married to King Menelaus.

This the thing – practically all the other mortal kings in that particular region wanted beautiful Helen for themselves, but in a huge feat of cooperation, had decided that the most beneficial union of lands would be that of Menelaus’ and Helen’s. So when Paris steals her with Aphrodite’s help, everyone gets super-pissed at Troy and so they go to war. In other words – wait for it – had Paris’ parents King Priam and Queen Hecuba been of stronger character – either making the decision (IF they really believed the prophecy that their son would cause the deaths of thousands of Trojan subjects) to a) euthanise baby Paris quickly and painlessly instead of leaving him to a much slower more painful end of starvation, exposure or being eaten by a bear or b) raising Paris right – to understand the need for cooperation to mutual benefit so he doesn’t selfishly steal Helen the Trojan War would be prevented. Maybe there was a reason those various were mortal kings – leaders – and not plebeians. Perhaps also why Dante reserves a special place in hell for the Indecisive, in his Divine Comedy. Because Indecision is also a choice.

(Hamlet, did you hear that?) Because, very obviously, you lose time by indecision. That is the cost that also needs to be factored in… (What do I want with the time saved? Simply to have it. Because if Newton weren’t vegging out under that tree he wouldn’t have seen the apple drop. 🙂

Lemme just throw one more thing in about the Trojan War – it’s where the Trojan Horse type of computer virus gets its name – the Greeks leave this giant wooden horse on the beach saying it’s a gift of surrender. The Trojans pull the thing willingly through their own city gates, have a big party, and then in the night the Greek soldiers hidden inside the horse come out and slaughter all the drunk-on-partying Trojans. And so they named the computer program that pretends to be something it’s not, right until you click it and it sends porn to all your friends and bosses from your email account or some other idiot thing you would never have allowed it to do… (You… didn’t send porn to your boss’ account and pretend your home PC was mad, did you?)

A-nyway, Don’t Download Senselessly Off The Internet, Kids. Your Life Or At Least Your Laptop (Fine, Same Difference) Could End. This actually happened to my grandma back when I was crashing at her/my uncle’s place in Bishan, Singapore, around Uni Finals. First time she gets her Yahoo email over 2 decades ago (as in, they surely have better child-safeties nowadays!) she’s clicking excitedly on all the erm, pop-up ads and gets seriously spammed XXX Lesbian Porn and then I have the most awkward time imaginable coming up with an appropriate response to “Aileen, what is this?”

 

S-O Tangent went on a tangent and when everyone got back we decided to have a debate on reality. No actually, I meant reality TV.

 

Back To the Original Question: Without Googling, which d’you think is real, The Men Who Stare At Goats or the AI named Prometheus?  

Yeah yeah that’s not a goat, I believe Bored Panda says it’s a “rare white baby reindeer”. (Yay Christmas season!) Not-a-goat was so cute! And I figured well, Close Enough.

<pause> I’m just going to get hate email from the Goat People and Reindeer People now, aren’t I. Y’know, I once flippantly said cats and Poms have “awful personalities” and several weeks later….. no, I didn’t get hate messages, I got…… a casual invitation to an informal Pomeranian Lunch Club. Every month, some 15 – 20 Poms have lunch in someone’s apartment. HN, who was there when we got invited, really, really, really wanted to go. But it’s possible after that we will end up getting a Pom. Or three. W-aaait. That was the plan all along wasn’t it. Revenge of the Pom People. There be method to the madness, you’re one of us now!

And the correct term is protective. Pomeranians don’t have awful personalities, they are VERY PROTECTIVE OF THEIR OWNERS. There, now. Please don’t make us get three of these things? <pause> Pom Christmas Party just flashed through my mind.

(You guys know Boo rose to fame off his Facebook page created by owner Irene Ahn… who works at Facebook, right?)

Cat people appear to be notably silent. And permanently disapproving. A thing about people and their pets comes to mind 🙂

<end of very long tangent on tangent>

Reality TV or really fake reality tv (think: Kardashians) is a real story. Just watch it not for the fake marriages, fake weddings, fake fights, fake eyelashes – watch it for why the creators and characters think that’s what viewers want. <boom!> Watch Disney Princesses for what they thought little girls and their parents used to like and relate to. (And then go watch what the latest Ralph Breaks The Internet tells you about what’s fashionable today. Disney’s making amends for the whole helpless-Princess-saved-by-strong-man-era)

Epiphany: There is no fake reality tv and everything is reality tv. 

Now back to goats: Who signed off on tax payers’ money to finance that small real US Army Unit decades ago? There were actually enough people who believe, misguidedly or not, in the paranormal and tried to weaponise it. (Wasn’t this roughly during the Mulder-and-Scully X-Files Era?)

Note also there were people erm, brave enough to dare stand before politicians, law makers and army generals with a proposal along the lines of “I Want Funding To Explore Developing Soldiers’ Psychic Abilities”:

Hypothetical 3 Star General: We will need to take that out of the Defense Budget for new Stealth Craft Detection Software. How will you be spending those tax payers’ dollars on this?

Brave Person: We will be buying some goats. And then our carefully vetted, hand-picked soldiers will be staring at them.

Oh, so you thought your presentation assignment sucked? (Fine, some of you want the Mad Genius assignment). Oh, and these guys actually succeeded in getting that funding!! What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall during that particular preso…

Epilogue: There’s a part 2 someday… Here’s a teaser:

(Leo diCaprio, Margot Robbie, Miranda Kerr etc etc etc were all cleared of wrong doing, but the USD 3.5bio from the former Malaysian State-Owned Funds is going to be One Serious Rabbithole.)

Let’s take a trip to Wonderland dears, hopefully soon 😉