Don't mind me... Just drinkin my sutoroberii milkshake.
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I've read "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. Here's a short review.
It's a sci-fi novel revolving around the concept of consciousness. I cannot decide if I like the novel or not.
The good:
1. The details of the plot and the author's lingo create a moody sci-fi atmosphere.
2. It's a novel I've read eagerly. It keeps you expecting something big around the corner.
3. There are no meaningless dumps of words. It's a distilled exploration of ideas.
The not-so-good:
1. I can't tell exactly why, but it feels like the author is an amateur. He lacks the refinement of a writer. Maybe it's the lack of deep, unbiased, open-minded thinking, or the unobstructed, penetrating vision, or the burning passion and care for his writing and the things he writes about, or the insatiable longing for the sublime, or the sincerity and bravery in exposing one's soul. But it's not like he'd been raised by the streets and grown callous. It's more like he'd been on Twitter for too long—farming attention, reading spam, countering trolls, occasionally spiraling down to trolling himself, all within the stifling confinement of one hundred or so characters—and had grown stubborn and cynical and superficial, like a young teenager who knows he understands this world fully. (None of that happened, though, and I'm surprised "Blindsight" was created before Twitter.)
2. Just like the freethinkers from Twitter, the author upholds rudimentary fallacies like it's some obvious facts:
- Everyone commits war crimes. There's nothing unusual about them.
- Every bleeding-edge human ought to be an atheist.
- Every atheist facing something horrific or traumatic ought to question their beliefs.
- Everyone who tortures people and then goes and plays with their kids as if nothing happened does so because they dehumanize their victims.
- Every capitalist corporation only cares about brainwashing you into consumerism.
What's especially problematic is that the author furtively puts these facts-beliefs into the mouth of a narrator—something I believe no established writer ever does in a work of fiction. Or perhaps those were the opinions of the protagonist. Anyway, it didn't feel that way.
3. The acknowledgements part of the book implied there was a whole think tank behind the novel. And yet "Blindsight" feels like a draft, as if the author threw in ideas but hasn't yet figured out how to connect them into a meaningful progression of the story and the development of the characters. Spoilers ahead: The entire story is that the crew flies into the deep space and approaches the aliens, figures that the aliens are advanced yet not conscious, and kamikazes into the alien ship. How it all unfolded was a disappointment. There was nothing big coming around the corner.
The crew consisted of "freaks" with unusual medical conditions and augmentations. But you could easily replace them with regular humans, and while there'd be less flavor, the plot would be unaffected, which was another disappointment. I expected the protagonist to reach his full potential and understand everything without understanding how he understood it. And maybe on that basis, he'd finally change the course of events: stop passive observation and befriend, subdue, deter, or even join the aliens. Instead, the protagonist devolved into a vulnerable, uncertain, useless human. I expected something extraordinary from the vampire captain, who could see ten steps ahead any human, who could literally and figuratively see the invisible. Instead, he devolved into a complete irrelevance.
Well, whether I enjoyed the novel or not, I still appreciate it. It has value and provides food for thought. I may even read it again in the future. Only next time, I will not read the author's postscript, where he explained the rationale behind the ideas in the novel. It flattened the already flat story even further and further exposed the author's already exposed crude character. Next time, I will try to see if there are some hidden depths in the story that the author may have added *subconsciously*. -
"A train is approaching a junction where the tracks split. Tied to the left track are ten people. Tied to the right track are ten hundred people. There's a lever that can direct the train. Pull the lever to the left, and the train will drive over the group of ten. Pull the lever to the right, and the train will drive over the group of ten hundred. All those people contribute to the wealth and the healthy culture of the society, so I say we maximize the number of people saved and pull the lever to the left."
"And let those ten innocent people die!? You, foul creature! How dare you suggest something so vile! Unlike you—monster!—I value human life! I am pulling the lever to the right to save those poor souls from the incoming train!"
You think it's a bizarre, unrealistic situation? What if I tell you it's actually the default? Yes, I made this example as simple and clear as possible. But should it be a tiny bit more obscure, like if there were five and five more people on the left, the majority of humans won't even understand why the second person is wrong.
It is the default. I see it all the time. They say they want to save lives and then use the allocated resources to save ten people and not ten hundred, letting those ten hundred die. They say they want to neutralize terrorists and then use the allocated resources to neutralize ten terrorists and not ten hundred, letting those ten hundred roam free. They say they want to fight earth pollution and then use the allocated resources to mitigate 0.01% of the pollution and not 1%, letting that 1% spread and kill the planet.
From the vantage point of the machine, who will see all these options laid out as clear as day, it will see humans as utterly evil creatures, who first preach about their moral superiority and then act against it. And it won't be wrong. We are evil. What do you think evil *really* is? You think Hitler gassed Jews because he thought they were amazing people whose presence made the world a better place? No one is doing the wrong things on purpose, and even when they do, they think doing the wrong things on purpose is the right thing to do.
There is but one evil in this world, and there is but one virtue. -
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Do they always say it figuratively, as in "the muscles near the eyes are most expressive of emotions"?
Or do they sometimes say it more literally, as in "look in the pupils attentively and you will know the nature of thoughts hidden behind them"?
Or more literally still...
I stand in front of the mirror. I draw very close, open my eyes wide, and stare into the blackness of my pupils. I try to discern a soul in them. I look deep and long, but all I see is video cameras. Or at least something as mechanical and soulless.
That very night, I dreamed that I was dead. Except that it wasn't a dream. A momentary misunderstanding, rather.
I was asleep. It was a deep and dreamless slumber. Then, there was some sort of a mighty explosion, an interrupted one, because at that very instant I was awake, and there was nothing.
My mind was clear, and I knew I wasn't sleeping anymore. I heard nothing and felt nothing. If I had eyes, I was gaping in front of me, but there was only blackness. But it was not an endless abyss. Indeed, there was no space at all, or it was infinitely small, or I was not anywhere on the material plane. It was very unusual. It's like you've been engrossed in a world of a video game and then suddenly it was the title screen—with no menu. Not for one moment I had a thought at the back of my mind that I may've been in Heaven or Hell, or that I was a ghost stuck underground, or that I was a brain stuck in a body in coma, because all of that implied some connection with the real world or at least a place, but I was nowhere, and there was an all-encompassing understanding that I was nowhere and had no connection with the real world anymore.
Perhaps any sufficient sensory deprivation will feel exactly like that.
"I'm dead," I thought without sorrow or resentment, though maybe there was a touch of melancholy. "Something big killed me instantly. And this is what death is like. You came from nothing, and to nothing you shall return. Am I trapped here, forever?"
At least that's what I would've thought if I'd had the time to express my thoughts in full. But it was only a fleeting feeling, because within a few seconds my brain finally started to register the sensations from my body: with a bit of relief I felt the pillow under my head, I heard the noise in my ears. And the blackness before my eyes started to dissipate.
Maybe—probably—those strange feelings and interpretations were conjured by the part of the brain that was still asleep, even if it didn't feel like a dream. I still find it rather interesting. First, the fact that I, as sleepy as I was, didn't find the afterlife surprising. Second, the idea that the afterlife amounts to being nowhere and experiencing nothing. In fact, I'm surprised this theory isn't very popular. Is it not the most plausible one? Why must they believe in something so intricate and made up and leave something so simple unheeded? Because it's dismal and does not make for an engaging story? Suppose the soul does exist. Suppose you have one, or identify yourself with it. Have you ever experienced anything through it? No. Every experience, even emotions or the clarity or cloudiness of mind, can be traced back to your physical body. And so your body is the only medium through which your soul experiences life. So what happens when that link is severed? Your soul experiences nothing, and feels as if it is being nowhere. -
I've just finished reading 1984. I loved it. It was terrifying. I've read several horror stories, but none of them was as horrifying as 1984. It's not merely a tale about totalitarianism. It's a model of a universe. Like The Dark Forest. You read it and wonder, can this be our own universe? Can it be possible? Can it be inevitable? Or were some fundamental laws of nature altered for it to be like that? It is delirious. It takes something, like power, violence, or submission, distills it to the purest, brings it to the extreme, propagates it through the backdoors of the creation.
Even if you haven't read the story, you must already know how it was culturally significant and prophetic. And it was quite popular, so I naturally thought it was a boring piece of work for the boring masses, a story in which the people rise up against tyranny, and then everyone cheers and you watch the fireworks. And maybe there's a bittersweet finale, in which the protagonist bleeds out but smiles faintly. I thought it was a pseudo-documentary, a historical novel set in the future. But it's nothing like that. It is a gruesome science fiction.
I didn't immediately grasp its true nature. As I was reading it, there were some parts that felt too naive, exaggerated, or unrealistic. Only when I was approaching the book's final chapters, it all started to feel appropriate. Or take this little quote, for example:
"Throughout recorded time, [...] there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. [...] The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low [...] is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal."
It appears in the second half of the book. It makes your eyebrows rise. You see this old trope where "rich and powerful = bad, poor and powerless = good," this apparent candy to the average reader; you half-expect some sort of a postponed glorious revolution (or at least an attempt of one) led by the virtuous proletariat. But at this point you *still* don't understand what this book is about. But by the end of it, even this quote starts to make sense.
Read 1984 if you want something dark. -
The theme for today's dreams must have been "Embarrassment."
In one of the dreams, I climbed a tall tree with light bark and no leaves. There was no snow on the ground, but it must have been winter. I intended to have a cozy outdoor nap on the tree branches. Alas, soon there were some people coming by, and they saw me. They were probably laughing and making comments like "Look! What a weird homeless guy!" They started to take photos. I tried to hide my face. I tried to pretend I was asleep or too groggy to be bothered, that I didn't see them or didn't care.
In another dream, I woke up in the middle of the day and immediately ordered some food through an app on my phone. This seemed to have stirred some commotion in the living room. I left my bedroom and went there. There was some unfamiliar lad there. His right arm was completely missing. He was dressing up, as if getting ready to head out. I had no idea why he was there, but I had a clue where he was going.
"Are you my delivery by any chance?" I asked. He confirmed he was going to bring me my food.
Then he said something like, "Working night shifts, huh?" He was commenting on my late emergence from the slumber.
"No. I am currently... unemployed," I replied.
Some moment later, he directed his next question at my mother, who was also in the living room: "So y'all live off the salary of the father of the family, right?"
"Well, yeah," she answered rather absent-mindedly while looking at her phone. But the corners of her lips were drooping downward. Maybe it was her default face, maybe she wanted us to think it was her default face, or maybe she was visually vexed by the inquiry, I couldn't tell exactly.
"Well, I don't," I made a pathetic attempt to save myself. "I worked for some years before," I explained.
We were both embarrassed. We were both able-bodied adults, who were not crazy rich. And yet not only did we not work, but we could not even make a short trip to the restaurant to bring our own food. Instead, we spent whatever money we had to make a cripple run petty errands for us.
My family members still appear in my dreams way too often, even though I haven't seen them for a long time. -
I challenge myself to write ten consecutive entries without using any words that describe intelligence. No more braindead retards, brainrots, simpletons, fools... It's gonna be hard T_T
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"Hate your government! Love your country!"
This was the message I saw recently, being shared by some russian retard. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a Chinese person many years ago. Simplified and condensed, it went something like this:
"What is your opinion of the CCP?"
"Argh, I hate them and their stupid propaganda!"
"And what is your opinion of Taiwan?"
"Taiwan bad! It should be under the Chinese rule!"
They didn't mention any particular propaganda narrative which they disagreed with. And I wondered, what was the point of their hatred toward the ruling party if their views were perfectly aligned? And I wondered, could this be a deliberate strategy of thought control—to direct the rebellious nature of the young people at something irrelevant, so that it makes no difference? Think about it: no one really cares if you hate your management as long as you do whatever is required of you.
"CCP bad! But why of course I enlisted for the invasion of Taiwan. That's good and necessary. CCP bad! But why of course I sealed my neighbors' doors during Covid. That's good and necessary. CCP bad! But why of course we must raid wealthy businessmen who are declared traitors of communism. That's good and necessary. CCP bad! But why of course I viciously attack Western disinformation about human rights violations and animal abuse inside China. That's good and necessary."
Moscow probably lags behind China when it comes to thought control. They don't need to overthink it. Their populace is docile enough. I don't think there's any chance russian elites deliberately direct the rebellious urges of their retarded population at Putin and whatnot. Yet the Putin-haters and the "hate your government but love your country" sentiment might be rather useful for preserving the status quo. Not only are these people allowed to vent at something irrelevant, they feel fulfilled as soon as a single talking head changes its appearance, while everything else remains the same.
Why would anyone with a half-functioning brain love so-called russia? Would they really love its toxic braindead population or its abominable police, army, courts, TV programs, healthcare, education, international relations? What is there to love? People are shit, culture, in the broadest sense of the word, is shit, cities are hideous, people are hideous both outside and inside their mind. The only tolerable things like the trees, mountains, oceans, or skies have nothing to do with the statehood whatsoever.
But if you do love your shithole of a country so much, what's the point of your hatred toward its management, who are disproportionally responsible for everything in it?
Cut the bullcrap and give them some credit then.
"Hate your government! Love your country!" is a nonsensical and harmful message in almost every situation. It was presented as some kind of fundamental truth applicable everywhere, but it's a malignant installation. If a country is good, then there's rarely a reason for blind hatred toward its management. The government of a good country should be supported since it obviously does a good job. But if a country is shit, then messages like this nudge its retarded citizens toward preserving it, so that it brings as much harm to the world as possible before its final collapse.
