Existential
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Fear the machine
Policeman John walks his beat, today accompanied by one of the new law enforcement units, it has no name but it is designated PO7-32-Z$. As they pass each house the unit accesses a report built from various dBs, a report that holds all the info on the assets and occupants. Suddenly in a flurry of… Continue reading
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Off culture
People go hill walking to achieve something very distinctive. The goal is to step out of culture space and discover what defines us in nature, where we are a part of, and in tune with, the earth and the sky, and all the animals. It might sound like I’m about to get spiritual, purge that… Continue reading
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Something else, something bigger
I don’t believe in a man made god, though I’m willing to think there’s something, maybe. It’s the staggering unexplainably of consciousness, a thing that has no necessity to the universe, that drives that doubt. If the universe is 6000 years old according to Bible scholars, then it’s easy to imagine a god creator because… Continue reading
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No bad hugs
I’m not a man given to outward expressions of sentiment toward my fellows normally, though I am someone that recognises how friendships make our lives worthwhile. For me it’s the point of, the meaning in, life itself. Many people draw false meaning, attach themselves to a purpose of their existence whereby they equate the accumulation… Continue reading
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I just don’t get it !
I wanted to look at a modern phenomenon through the eyes of a not so modern person, Luckily I’m fifty now and I qualify as not so modern. For thousands of years people have communicated with each other, and for various reasons. We could speculate that in days past there might have been a good… Continue reading
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Time – clocks that don’t tick
Is a clock a clock if it does not work? A deliberate intervention prevents the mechanism from having the potential energy to move the hands, the batteries are removed, maybe it is just broken. My pal did this with a nice timepiece, a carriage clock his mother owned that she was bequeathed from an ex… Continue reading
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Angry all the time
I am an angry man, in my head I may already have killed you and disposed of your corpse… You only have to say the word yawn and I will yawn. If you yawn, I will yawn. If my cat yawns then guess what… I yawn. Apparently that is a sign that sympathy is indeed… Continue reading
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Revisiting mistruths
Every philosopher is on a quest to write something that changes the way the person who reads it thinks, a search for some compelling argument. Not truth as we might contend, persuasion would be a better term. What is verifiable through testing is scientific fact, those are not arguable in the same way as the… Continue reading
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Constants end
I’m not going to tell you the details, but it’s been a month, and at the point of writing this it’s still that month… There are things in life that seem like they’ve always been there, and then they’re not, and it’s a shock when they go. My neighbour has this year experienced her husband’s… Continue reading
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What would the machine want?
I heard this fantastic story on Radio 4, read by Stephen Fry, written by someone who was speculating on what will happen when AI inevitably finds agency, when it starts to want something. This is a serious consideration, we assume at some point that we will, either accidentally or by our genius, create a machine… Continue reading
