The Mind's What??

Since when does My Captain become My Teacher? I guess the day he gave me homework :-P

2.4:6.1061  No Pretensions to Originate Anything

• Machines will only do what they are told to do or programmed to do. 
• They cannot create their own original idea or thought.
• Ask it and it "searches" for something that matches the request.
• Does this basically mean that, answers are already "pre-programmed" and waiting to be searched out?
• So as human beings, are we "pre-programmed" with all the answers based on our genetic make up. 
• Are the answers stored in our "machine" waiting to be searched out?
• Can a computer think for itself?
• I do not know of any examples for this, but it does make me question now Artificial Intelligence. Are they capable of more than just thinking?
• There's a movie out there called "Her".  Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with the Artificial Life form that emerges from his computer. "She" is played by Scarlett Johansson.  Who would not fall in love with her voice or Joaquin and his amazingly stunning eyes?? There's an interesting connection that seems to form between Joaquin's Character and "Her".  It definitely pushes the envelope on this question of whether or not computers can think.  But of course it's all Hollywood, but an interesting twist on the idea none-the-less.

          Movie Trailer #1 - Her

• Teacher! I sense a field trip coming on??? In the name of science! or umm...in the name of curiosity! LOL

2.4:6.1069  Conditioned reflex

• The first thing that popped into my head was Pavlov and his dogs. (Sorry, Psychology was my favorite subject)
• Conditioned Response - Pavlov: voluntary to involuntary reactions/responses/reflexes (automatic after the learned condition).  Learned Habits?\
• A Baby that learn Sign Language
• Perhaps this is more along the lines of Pavlov's Dog Scenario.
• Baby is hungry.  Produce milk, give sign for milk, feed baby.
• At what point does the baby learn that it must sign "milk" when it wants some?  
• Does this Conditioned Response in turn condition your response?
• My truck has bluetooth built in, but I have to give it a stimuli (call Mom) and the "truck" has to recognize the stimulus, pull its matching information for that stimuli and I have to confirm or deny the actions.
• Is it going to eventually learn and think "hmmm...you haven't called your mom in a while...I'm calling her for you so that you may converse." ?? Not likely.
• It is only programmed to give a response once a stimuli is given first.  (it will not do what is not set in it's program.  It will call only when given that command.)
• Is this Conditioned Reflex?
• Will my truck stop calling the people I ask it to, if I only give a Conditioned Stimuli and now follow through Stimuli?
• How does this Conditioned response work with human sexuality?

• In Principle - Giving a stimulus & getting a response 
• Aren't people programmed?  We grow up and are taught (or programmed) right from wrong.  Our bodies are only capable of so much activity.  Do we eventually top out?  Do we re-program ourselves by learning?
• Does our DNA limit us?
• Is there such thing as fate? destiny?  is our life line already laid out for us?  If that's the case, are we limited by our programming?
• Is our destiny pre-planned?  (the 3 Fates)  How long is the thread of my life?  Are the Fates our "Programmers?"
• Computer vs. Human.
• Even if the computer has all the same information as the human, the computer is able to search through all possibilities and come up with an answer/response that might not be what we expected and therefore "surprise" us.
• Does this mean its response is always best?  Not always. Example - brain dead

So the brain has wandered immensely here...and I've come to realize that I've read the wrong section....blah!
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2.6.1658  STANISLAW LEM The Princess Ineffabelle

• Subtillion 
• Robot?  Sent to help King with his dreams or to live out his dreams.  
• Given human like characteristics..."disappointed" when the King returned and was not trapped in this "dream box"
• A dream within a dream.
• Sometimes was hard to tell if the story I was reading was actually the King telling me, or if we were going through his dream with him.
• Is it really so easy to conjure up a "digital" story to live out?  Like the Holodeck from Star Trek, except here you can walk into the "digital" story as yourself.
• It almost makes me wish I could have my dreams "created" so easily, however, at the cost of living a fake life versus true emotions, warmth, and connections?  No thank you.  I think the King decided the same.
• The King was tempted to leave his real life to have this imaginary life.  It ruins things.  On the opposite side of things, its like having this fake relationship digitally and when in real life it cannot be.  It leaves a void.  It hurts, but its not real.  How can something not real provide real hurt? -- Oops too deep!
• Again, this could fall into the same idea behind the movie I mentioned earlier... "Her".
• This ties back to The Imitation Game, "can machines think?" [2.4.863] or feel for that matter.
• Where does technology cross the line?
• On a psychological view point:
• This brings about a more "social" aspect to the psychology behind the story.
• Social Exchange Theory?  the benefits of real human emotions out weighed the "likeness", as the King put it, of his "digital" self. Moral concerns?
• He has fallen in love with an idea that he has read about and created in his mind.  The perfect mate?

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5.18.4857  STANISLAW LEM The Seventh Sally or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good.

I MAY COME BACK TO THIS LATER...MY MINDS SPINNING

• Things may come full circle.

• When I read the paragraph stating how Trurl came upon a chunk of rock that had someone jumping around on it... the first image that really popped into my head was a cartoon that I used to watch when I was younger called "The Little Prince".  The Story book itself was much better than the cartoons, but it brought back memories.  I don't quite remember how he came to be on that little asteroid (or how he was found) but I'm pretty sure he wasn't there to escape assassination. 

I love this quote:  "Our perfection is our curse..."

Sometimes, a good friend is all that is needed to help you see what you don't see.

I'm trying to understand the symbolism of King E becoming the moon...its late..brain is dead..

I will ponder upon this another day...

• Trurl wanted to help King E, but he seems to know the consequences of his returning to rule, so he find another way to help him.  He creates this tiny world full of people that simulate the human condition.  However, when his friend Klapaucius hears what he's done, he 

slight interruption...conversational vodka...

• "Fame, however, has this fault, that it says nothing of one's failures, even when those very failures are the product of a great perfection." [5.18.4857] How is it, if Trurl is this perfect mechanical being, that he doesn't see that the world he created for King E may do more than just "simulate" consciousness? These creations that simulate  "...births, loves, acts of heroism, and denunciations..." merely exist because he programmed them to. 
• It is isn't until Klapaucius starts to question him, and then starts pointing out their "similarities" to these so-called simulated minions that Trurl created.
• "And are we not as well, if you examine us physically, mechanistically, statistically, and meticulously..."  [5.18.4926]
• "Our perfection is our curse, for it draws down upon our every endeavor no end of unforeseeable consequences!" [5.18.4933]
• "Prove that you only imitated suffering, and did not create it!" [5.18.4950]
• From Klapaucius' standpoint, at what point can we determine what is real and what is not? 
• From what I've read, Trurl appears to be a being of good will.  This is evident when it is stated that he had "...no intentions of complying with this request of Excelsius, as doing so would bring about untold evil and suffering, yet at the same time he wished somehow to comfort and console the humiliated king." [5.18.4874]
• Klapaucius even states that Trurls "...intentions were the noblest [...] You always act first, think later." [5.18.4959]
• Trurl created the simulated world to keep the king from creating real havoc and suffering not think about the consequences the would spring forth from those beings.  This world was created to be "...so similar to a real kingdom, that no one, absolutely no one, could ever tell the difference, and is this, I am afraid, you were successful." [5.18.4959] 
• Trurl starts to see Klapaucius' point and rushes back to this asteroid to perhaps "rescue" or "un-create" what he has done.   Except he has found that the minions have freed themselves from the King's Rule and have begun to expand their world.
• Where these minions truly freed? or did they idolize this King?
• Does the King becoming the moon represent that these minions saw him as a God?

OMG!  Everytime I try to re-read this story to regather my thoughts, new thoughts and ideas jump out at me!  How in the world do I organize my thoughts LOL!

• How far do we take this idea?  
• genetically modified food?
• stem cell research?
• dna engineering?
• growing an ear on a rat?
• designer babies?
• nuclear energy?   ---> because of it uses, does this make the creator of this a criminal?  In the eyes of Klapaucius...probably!
• abortion? (a so called "un-creation")
• I guess this list could go on and on... 

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5.19.5024 STANISLAW LEM Non Serviam.

Updated 2-13-2014 - COMPLETED

Non Serviam - being the good Catholic girl that I am... This is usually used (well in the context of where I hear it) to serve God in the highest. So Non Serviam is to serve against God or to not serve in his name. Self-fish? To serve oneself and not God.

So now that I've interpreted the title...let's do some reading and see who my imagination is going to NOT serve :-P

• Is this Lem doing a book review of Dobbs?
• Evil Necessity? 
• Questioning his faith?
• Experimental Theogony - Study of God(s), religion?  Science vs. Religion?
• English school vs. American School?
• "...substance that is "mathematical. This substance...to be 'habitated' by personoids."  
• He is creating a world, programming it via a machine (computer).  Perhaps this mathematical substance he refers to is the binary code?
• They have no territorial limit, although they live confined to a box.
• They are attached to time as we are, with one exception; the experimenter / creator has direct control over.

• The only "limitations" these personoids are given is time.  One limitation which this so called creator has control over.  So these personoids control their own destiny so to speak.  They create their life, the create their beliefs, they create their own meaning to life, they do this themselves, not because of some "God-like" being.  A very existential way of going about things.  At least for these personoids. The "God-Like" being has other views...
• Perhaps my ideas of what existentialism is might be wrong or warped in some way.
• CAPTAIN...a little help here please.
• "...in other words, the world surrounding these beings takes on an unequivocal ness only in accordance with their behavior."  [5.19.5096]  
• In other words these beings are contriving meaning to the world created around them based on their ideas and decisions, not based on what this "creator" says.
• Give a person a passage to read and end up with MANY different interpretations of the same idea.

At this point, Lem begins to lose me a little...

• Coming into this world....born? Each have a "core" or "personal nucleus."
• Could this "core" or "personal nucleus" be a mathematical/mechanical version of a soul?
• No eyes, no limbs, no body - a blob of mathematical ectoplasm.

OMG I lost 2 days of blog here...idk why?? How the HELL does it revert back TWO days?!

•  I think its natural for a "human" to question their existence.  Where they came from, how did they get there, why were they put there, what is their purpose.  So if these personoids are "similar to man" why wouldn't they raise such existential questions as well?
• “...these struggles of a mentality made prey to the torment of such questions...”  [5.19.5159]  -- cruelty and immorality

• Their world is "fully rational" but they, themselves, are not rational.  Have a soul, but no body and no sense of corporeality....no sense of their own existence?  
• "...program a digital machine...to carry on a conversation..." Hello iPhone! Or should I say Siri?  To bad my iPad doesn't have a "Siri"  oooh the things I could talk about   :-P
• "...feeding into it...a personectic program..."  - Hello Hollywood! Who is going to tell poor Joaquin Phoenix that his "Samantha" does not exist?  Actually I think he knows she doesn't but has still fallen in love, or at least created such strong feelings for her, his computer (or whatever it is she might be).  When I first saw the previews for this, I wasn't sure how I felt about the movie. However, now I'm curious to see where this all goes.  I am sure the producer didn't have Lem in mind when he created this movie...or did he?  I guess the same could be said about iRobot and Sonny, or even going back to the 80's to Johnny 5 from short circuit.  Johnny 5 is alive.  Not Human, but a Life-form.  Life not a Malfunction!

• So I've been thinking about this passage I read for a while...What if we are stuck in this "so called" mechanical/mathematical environment and we have become the personoids.  Here's something interesting to think about:
• If this creator doesn't like his programming...does he wipe the "harddrive" and start over again? 
• New Personoids
• New Laws
• New Environment
• Is there any ties to the Bible with Noah and his Ark and the 40 days and nights of floods.
• Cleansing of the Earth
• Wiping of the Earth
• Removing bad "programming"

*** I was born and raised in a Catholic/Buddhist household and this has provided me with two different (yet similar) views of life...so I present another. No challenge to your faith.

• Behaviorists of Personetics - Give them free will to grow and develop as they please. Do not interfere.
• APHRON II and EROT - Allow these personoids to have "erotic contact"
• any correlation to Aphrodite and Eros?  God/Goddess of Love.
• Procreation, sexual endowment...
• What about sex just for pleasure..or is that not in the programming?
• Are these personoids going to procreate??  "...multiply sexually..." No multiplying when the Trojons come into play :-P
• American projects Vs. English projects? "...'progeny' by means of division..." Mathematical programming.
• "...there were periodic eliminations of the 'demographic surplus.'" - Perhaps a crude form of genocide.  I have to many, you must go...was this the American version or the English version?  I assume American.
• I understand when he says if an ungodly dies, all he loses is his life if God does not exist and if he does exist, he gains eternal life.  What happens to the godlies then?  Sure they lose their life if God does not exist, but when they pass on do then then lose their faith because Of what they believed to be really did not exist?  Of course that's assuming there is life after death.  What happens to their "core or personal nucleus" / soul then if God does not exist?  Does it just cease to exist?  Do they get recycled into the "programming language / mathematical substance" and get programmed into another personoid?  Isn't this "recycling" a form of "reincarnation" then?  Or does that not exist because God does not exist?

• The Catholic side of me was taught that there is heaven and hell.  The soul goes to either one.  There is no reincarnation.  When I was younger, I remember questioning about the Resurrection being a form of reincarnation. Reincarnation is being reborn or transmigration of the soul into a different body/form whereas, resurrection is of the soul only. You are the same being, but your body dies and you leave that "vessel" and carry on in another form in heaven or he'll.  if you are Catholic, you don't go straight to heaven fist, but to purgatory to cleanse yourself before passing through heavens gates. Assuming you are not destined for hell. LOL I'm grasping as straws here. This Catholic School girl is not as well versed As she should be.
• I was also taught that the body and soul are one.  This seems to go against what I read in the beginning of The Minds I where it seemed to state that body and the soul were two separate entities.  The soul was just "residing" in the body.  I believe he used the term "ghost in the machine."  Don't quote me on it because I can't seem to locate the specific page/location of this in my copy of the reading.
• The Buddhist side of me has been taught that we are reborn again in different "bodies."  Often times my mother tells me I am being punished for something I did in my past life.  :-P  Thanks mom!  My mother often takes me to temple to say prayers and get blessings.  She states that Buddha can forgive you for past sins, but in this "current life" you have to go to temple to make amends and show you are truly sorry and want to make things right.  My mother's English is not that good, so my translation of her translation isn't all the good.  I have so many amazing stories that I grew up with from my mother.  Doing bad is called bahb and doing good Tom boohn.  (phonetically I don't know if I am saying or spelling this right).  

I may not have the faith that most people would consider "appropriate" for being a "good Catholic" or a "good Buddhist", but its my faith and its good enough for me.  I think I went off track here LOL!

• So now the idea of proving His existence comes up.  This question has been asked since the beginning of time.  Why does God not prove his existence to his followers and put the non-believers (ungodlies) questions to rest?
• So now it comes to a question of faith.  Faith requires you to "believe" or "trust" in something which may not have any evidence to prove its existence.  Grab a firm hold of your convictions and hold them close.
• So then here's a question: what if God does prove his existence?  Will people still question their existence? What their purpose is? What is our meaning or place in this world? Will there be a mass conversion of non-believers to believers?
• From my personal experience, I think people will questioning things no matter what evidence or proof there might be.  If you try hard enough you can talk yourself out of or around anything no matter how much evidence or proof is presented. That is the nature of human beings and free will.

• "...such gratitude assumes the prior determination that God is not able to exist..." I'm not quite sure what they mean here.
• Since this God is a just God, he does not require our devotion and praise because he is not able to prove his existence? 
• When I said earlier that it sounded like Lem was questioning his faith...I take that back...it sounds like he is trying to provide evidence of his non-faith in "God".  If God wants reciprocity on his good-will (creation) he must prove himself to his beings first.  

THE TYPOS IN THIS PUBLICATION ARE HORRIBLE AND MAKE UNDERSTANDING MUCH MORE DIFFICULT WHEN YOU HAVE TO SIT THERE AND DECIPHER WHAT WAS REALLY BEING SAID.   BOOO!

• So I've been thinking about this passage I read for a while...What is we are stuck in this "so called" mechanical/mathematical environment and we have become the personoids.  Here's something interesting to think about:
• If this creator doesn't like his programming...does he wipe the "harddrive" and start over again? 
• New Personoids
• New Laws
• New Environment
• Is there any ties to the Bible with Noah and his Ark and the 40 days and nights of floods.
• Cleansing of the Earth
• Wiping of the Earth
• Removing bad "programming"

Personoids arguing their sides as to how they should "behave" towards this so-called "God" or creator.


I find it odd that he asks us to "take it on faith" when he discusses the activities of the personoids, but questions us taking "faith" in a God who has not proven he exists to us. Perhaps I am looking at this from the wrong point of view.

Seems to be an hidden message in most of his writings (at least the ones I've read)...we have all these great and advancing technology that everyone wants to use to make things better, but we never look far enough ahead to see what underlying ramifications can arise moral or immoral.  Often we do do do, and all of this is done with the best intentions and we possibly end up with ethical or moral dilemmas (again drawing back to the Seventh Sally).

His writing at time is very mechanical but it can be very descriptive and seductive to the senses.  Almost poetic.

I'm still thrown off by why he says..."For the fact that God exists, no gratitude to him is required..."

What happenes when one loses faith or has no faith....do you have "faith" that you will find faith again?

See new post - "Captain! Rudy! Kiss and Tell?! LOL!"