Dearest Rachel –
In light of my current understanding of the process, I’ve resolved (if that’s the right word for it) to try to come up with a new T-shirt design at least once a week – and involve Daniel (and maybe Logan) in the process, in order to determine the ‘right’ image for each witty saying. The trouble is, it’s hard to come up with something worth wearing with that level of regularity. While it might be worth tapping into the rich ore generated by various internet meme-makers, most of what’s coming out that way either involves an image already (which I’m loathe to simply copy wholesale) or refers to something within the immediate cultural zeitgeist which is likely to fade away in short order (consider the election; half of what’s being generated will likely be obsolete by the end of the week – or whenever they determine the winner – and the other half once the next four years are over). I’m looking for something that will last as long as the shirt does, ideally.
One line recently came up that feels appropriate, including for my own situation (which makes it that much easier to work with, when you agree with what’s being said) is that one ought to “live life one day at a time…” which sounds generically inspirational, until you get to the punch line, which I’d seen as “…because that’s how time works.” In order to not steal the line completely, I considered modifications of the punchline before arriving at a somewhat more resigned and cynical “…as if you have a choice.” Same meaning, maybe a little harsher, but no less true.
Because, the more I thought about it (and still do), for all that we sometimes seem to have so many choices in this world to do, in the moment, we don’t have nearly as much as we appear to at first blush. Every decision boils down to a simple binary; are you going to do X or not? Even decisions that look like multiple choice issues – Will you choose X, Y or Z? – are just a series of binaries; X or no? Y or no? Z or no? You could granularize that to where you have an entire compass rose worth of directions to go, and you would still be dealing with a series of simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decisions, whether two, eight, or three hundred and sixty of them. That choosing one automatically means denying the others is irrelevant; by choosing any one of them, while you may not be thinking as hard about the other options, you are delivering a verdict on each of them individually, regardless.
And part of the reason why, in many cases, choosing one option requires rejecting all others is in the fact that, while we can move in any direction in 3-D space, we only travel in one direction in terms of the fourth dimension, that of time. We take life one day at a time because that’s how we experience it; we couldn’t do otherwise even if we wanted to (and given tomorrow’s choice that’s been looming ahead of us for the better part of the last two or four years, depending on one’s perspective, one would be forgiven for wanting to fast-forward to the day when that’s finally resolved and we can move on with a new leader – or at least a new figurehead). Some versions of the meme insist that it feels like several days may gang up on us at once, but we all know better than that; every day, every hour, every minute, every second is just as long as the one before it and the one after, and there are only so many things one can do in any of them. It’s why we have to make certain choices in the first place; we simply can’t do everything we want to in the limited amount of time we’re given, nor can we always backtrack from a poor choice and select a different path. So you see, the vast array of choices we have for ourselves – particularly once we’ve made them – is rather an illusion. X, Y, Z, or however many that appear to be before us are nothing more than a collection of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options; nothing more.
It occurred to me as I pondered all this that this might explain the current drive toward artificial intelligence. After all, if every decision in life is essentially a binary ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ this seems like the ideal thing for a computer to deal with, as the entirety of its processing is based on a similar binary decision tree, with ones and zeros substituted for yeses and noes. It might even be able to accomplish more of the possibilities than we can ourselves, as processing speed has proven to be faster than that of our own ‘wetware’; with fewer limitations in terms of time, AI might be able to explore more of the options available to anyone at any fork in one’s road.
Except… one of the reasons that our wetware lags in comparison to computer hardware is that – whether or not we’re aware of it – we find ourselves considering the ‘why’ of our decisions before we make our choice. Many of the choices we face in life are scaled-down versions of the trolley problem, where you only have the least bad option to decide upon. Again, that may track (if you’ll pardon the pun) with the current political situation); the perfect candidate doesn’t exist (or isn’t running, whether ‘at all’ or ‘still’), so you have to go with the one who will do the least harm – whatever you consider that to be. That’s not a consideration with an artificial intelligence, unless its properly programmed – and even then, different programmers will input different parameters to decide what factors would determine what makes an optimal selection, leading to different outcomes. The computer, in effect, takes on the morality of its programmer, since it has none of its own, and weighs its own choices based on the literal values that have been inputted into it. It makes these choices faster, then, but with a morally bankrupt programmer, this could easily lead to proving another witticism about how “to err is human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer.” It would simply commit the same errors as the human, but faster, and thus, on a grander scale; not so much out of choice, but out of a simple matter of programming.
There are those that claim the world that we inhabit is a mere simulation, and that we are Sims who simply can’t see our plumbob, or know the code that programs us. Even certain schools of theology seem to lean towards this, particularly Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination. While it may not suggest we’re a mere collection of bits and bytes, it does claim that – since our Programmer has seen every decision we have made and will make in our lives – those decisions are written into our code, and we are unable to actually make those choices, as we were always going to make them because of who we’re programmed to be and what we’re programmed to do. I don’t think I buy that – if nothing else, it doesn’t speak well of said Programmer for what He chooses to do with some of us, including our ultimate fate – but I do wonder how much we really have in the way of actual choices at times. How much can a mere ‘yes’ or ‘no’ matter, in the end?
Then again, that’s what these machines run on – mere ones and zeroes – and I find them (and the results they produce) fascinating, so maybe with enough of them, those simple decisions can amount to some amazing things even among us humans. Maybe you know more about how the whole system works at this point; it’s a pity you can’t fill us in on it all. Still, if you could keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck, that would be appreciated. After all, we’re still going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 