Dearest Rachel –
It’s been a very long time since I’ve had a dream about being unprepared for school; in fact, I can’t remember the last time that’s happened. Of course, that may just be due to the fact that I rarely ever felt that I was during my educational career. Which rather begs the question as to why I might find myself experiencing one at this point in time.
Although, in the strictest sense, I wasn’t so much unprepared as I was fearful that I might be accused of cheating – or at least plagiarizing. You see, the class – and I don’t recall whether this was in high school or college, but it was at least in secondary school – was assigned to give oral presentations on the history of various numbers, and I had assembled mine (on the subject of the number eight) with the assistance of ChatGPT. I think that, even as I waited my turn to speak, I was worried that I would be found out. This despite having already turned in the essay in written form in to my professor without receiving any comment from him about it.
And it’s not as if I should have been so worried; in the short amount of time I’ve dealt with the program and its various open-source peers (and I should mention, the latter are often preferable, as they don’t have the biases that the original displays, plus, they show more willingness to discuss subjects that it seems to find ‘triggering.’ If it weren’t so annoying, it would be funny, but those flaws just make it decidedly less useful, apart from the fact that, by being the first to market, ChatGPT is the format people will be used to using, leaving those bothered by its quirks having to acclimatize themselves to a different interface to interact with a different program), I’ve noticed that they tend to write in a much more sparse manner than I do, and rarely manage to generate more than a few hundred words in answering a question. If you want a thousand words or so, you’re going to have to assemble the results from multiple inquiries. Fortunately, any given answer generally manages to prompt additional questions in a reader’s mind, so this isn’t a particularly tedious process (at least, in comparison to writing an essay on one’s own), and the stitched-together result is therefore (thus far) virtually impossible to identify as artificially generated – because, to that small degree, it isn’t, at least, not completely.
But you know how it is; it still feels like cheating to you and me. So yeah, I was still bothered by it as I was waiting my turn to deliver my speech to the class. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I realized I hadn’t touched on the significance of the connection between the number eight and the infinity sign (∞) in my paper. Granted, since the sign itself was developed independently from the rest of what we refer to as the ‘Arabic’ numerals that we use, there was no connection (at least at first), but I knew I ought to address that fact regardless. So as to make sure that my professors knew I would be including this information in my presentation, I got their attention and announced this additional data, which was dismissed with a sort of “thank you for mentioning that, but so-and-so is presenting right now; please wait your turn” sort of response. Not particularly auspicious, but I probably had that coming, given the timing of my interjection.
And with that particular word in mind, that is the basic gist of where this lecture of mine was supposed to go. While there are no numbers that are universally considered lucky or unlucky (we in the West tend to favor the numbers three and seven, for various reasons), it so happens that in China, the number eight – “bā” (八) – is considered to be quite auspicious, as it sounds very much like their word for ‘prosperity’ – “fā” (发 or 發). As a result, it’s sought after to have oneself or one’s business associated with the number. Fortunes have been spent to acquire auto license plates and telephone numbers with successive eights in them, to give the impression that one is successful and prosperous. And I suppose that if one is able to shell out such money for what might otherwise be considered a fairly trivial thing, that certainly could be evidence of one’s level of success – that, or much the opposite, in that you’re an easy mark that can be duped into spending ridiculous amounts on something that is ultimately meaningless (although perhaps from your perspective, that pretty much is the sum total of human existence and expenditures, no?).
Along those lines, it’s also considered particularly auspicious to attain the age of eighty-eight, which makes a fair amount of sense. Not only does it include this supposedly lucky number twice, but it is a particularly advanced age to reach, by just about any metric. The fact that both your parents made it to that age should have boded well for you, and I suppose that genetically speaking, you could have been expected to do likewise (and hopefully, those genes will serve Daniel well in the relatively distant future). But of course, luck cuts both ways, and one’s DNA cannot shield you from things like freak accidents.
As for myself, I woke up with this thought in my head, and cannot for the life of me imagine what would convince me to strive toward achieving that age. It would be one thing if you and I were walking together into the next thirty-three years of my hypothetical future, but doing so on my own feels like more struggle than it’s worth. It hasn’t been a tenth of that yet, and I find myself hard-pressed to imagine ten times as many days like these yet to come sometimes. Not that I seek any end to my existence, mind you, but I understand why in Greek tragedies, it wasn’t that the main character died as much as he was left standing in the ruins of his life with everyone around him dead, and having to carry on by himself.
Of course, comparing Chinese ideas of good fortune and Greek interpretations of what constitutes tragedy is a case of apples and oranges (or lychees and olives?). As ChatGPT points out, “It’s important to remember that cultural beliefs and superstitions can differ, and what may be considered lucky or auspicious in one culture may not hold the same meaning in another culture,” which is sound advice the first time it’s said, but snivelingly didactic after the third repetition after four lines of inquiry. And now you know why I will switch back and forth between chat programs (which has the virtue of making it that much harder to identify whether I’m cheating or not, not that it matters in a dream).
Anyway, that’s what’s going on this morning. Keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, honey. I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 