Why we do things

[flamingsword]

Some days I feel so tired that I don't think about having a purpose in life. And I do have one, though putting it into words is kinda awkward. I want to make the world weirder. To do that you have to make safe spaces for people to experiment and really get their weird on and not get slapped down for it.

But under that, I think I have the same basic motivation, though expressed differently, as every individual does. We're all shouting into the void:

"I EXIST! I AM WORTH KEEPING AROUND!!"

And hoping that the universe listens, and we do not cease to exist. Some hope that people will connect to us the way we need them to and don't know how to express or ask for. We want to be kept, most of us. There are schools of thought that say that self-hate twists this message into the negation of self instead, and we broadcast our self destruction. Or choose to broadcast nothing, as though we are already dead, do not deserve our own existence. Human nature being as wide-ranging as it is, that is very probably true. But I think that the point of origin for these behaviors is the insistence on our own existence.

We are coming upon an age where self-consciousness can happen in nonorganic beings and it behooves us to think about what exactly we are letting them in for. What is this state of being that we seek to share? Why are we so desperate to replicate it in beings we cannot hope to understand, knowing already the problems we have understanding each other? What are our responsibilities towards this new consciousness we are creating?

We are Uplifting the race of computers, and that makes us parents, of a sort. Happy Birthday NAO Bots! I hope we teach you to be better people than we have been capable of, and that your experience of the world is satisfactory to what as-yet-unknown nature you may have.

Comments

two comments in one >.>

[ot_atma]

I haven't decided yet whether I want that article to be clickbait or not. It seems like it would be easy to make a robot that can do that one thing; I want to hold out for more general intelligences. More context information is desperately needed.

--I want to make the world weirder.
Do you have any working definition for 'weird'? Is it strictly a felt sense, or is there some constellation of words that evokes it without also maiming it too badly?

Re: two comments in one >.>

[flamingsword]

Weird is the making of complexity. It is the emergent property of complexity to give rise to singularities beyond which previous function is suddenly unforeseeably different, like swapping out the copper at the heart of chlorophyll for iron and getting hemoglobin, a sudden reversal of function that lead to the ability to breathe, a cycle of gasses which reshaped our world.

I have a felt sense of the destiny of humans to become or to create an overarching superconsciousness. How this will be accomplished I don't know. It's beyond the singularity I can't see past, and I'm not the quisatz haderach. But my part of helping the world along toward that destiny is to make it safer for people to feel comfortable being weird and let their ideas take root. There are two types of creativity in humans, and one requires desperation and the other nurturance. I think we've got enough desperation to be getting on with, maybe?

So here around me, let's try nurturance.

[we_are_spc]

And may it not end in an "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" senario. >.<


I ndee to be less Jaded, I know this. I'm working on it. I'm also a bit more traumatized by events in my past than I first thought, and dealing with the complexities of that is... not fun. I'll put it that way since I have no English equivalent for the complexities of that emotion here.

-T~

[flamingsword]

Yeah, humans could make hell on earth for AI without even meaning to. It is a risk. Then again, sometimes we do that to other humans, so ...

Is English not your first language, or do you just have aphasia-type issues like I get sometimes?

[we_are_spc]

The typing issues...we'll sort of go with that. Otherkin is also an issue, so while English is my first language in here, it isn't on another level, and so it gets crossed sometimnes. My Elven dialect is much more complex than this English one, and I sometimes don't have the appropriate complex words for emotions here like I would 'out there'.

-Trausio~

[flamingsword]

I have heard of Otherkin before, through my friend numb3r_5ev3n. I have never met anybody who is even more of an alien here than my friends and our autistic/neurodivergent selves.

Greetings! Welcome to Earth! We're sorry for the perpetual irritation that is living here! Feel free to start introducing techniques and behaviours from your other world that undermine the dominant paradigm, it severely needs changing!

[we_are_spc]

Some, maybe. But my world was run by an empire that was going from wortime to peacetime, and was an alligarchy pposing as a double matriarrchy. ... Mor like a diarchy, if you want to be technical. It was insane. The politics even more so.

My clan and family were merchants and traders. You wouldn't want the politics, trust me.

I miss some of it though, if nothing else, I'll try to replicate the tracts and tracts of green space and wide open indoor terrariums. Fuckgod I miss that shit.

-Trausio~

[flamingsword]

I bet there are at least a few behaviours from a bicameral matriarchy that would be healthy challenges to fascist authoritarian patriarchy. I don't want to replace one bad with a different bad, I want two bads to duke it out and come to a better conclusion.

[we_are_spc]

Hah, yeah. It's a multiplanetary empire-the thrownworld was where I grew up. I'm ... or was... technically a noblewoman, albiet a lower ranked one...until I became friends with the diarches. Then that changed.

So figure how to run that scale with something bhetter, go for it. I'd love to see it work out, especially since the current system is bound to end in a very near disastrous outcome as it is. *sighs*

I love my homeworld, but I don't miss the doublestanderds and everything that went with it.

-T~