(or: Lanterns and Algorithms)
I feel that I am a remarkably aware human being. I think so as well.
Cynical Gemini duality, perhaps — but I see not only degrees of awareness, I see flavors of it. “Self” awareness is just one of the tastier awareness treats.
Today’s morning reflections brought these thoughts I’d like to share with you.
I walk through my life looking for enlightened beings, those people I would describe as truly self-aware, people whose consciousness hums audibly in their presence. They radiate an expressive creativity simply because they are creativity itself. Their awareness leaks into everything they touch. I like it when creativity drips from their very pores, like cold sweat off a nightmare’s forehead. Whether or not I care much for the finished result of their creativity, “the creation” doesn’t even enter into the equation.
It is not the Crescendo that makes the Symphony; it is the Symphony that builds to the Crescendo.
Much like Diogenes of Sinope — that fourth-century wanderer who roamed the world with a lit lantern in the daylight searching for an “honest man” — I find myself seeking the same thing: a mirror of myself. A simple reflection for me that proves awareness still exists in the wild.
After all, the only thing separating us from our primate ancestors is that fragile loop of self-observation Adam Smith described — the mind’s capacity to step outside itself and say,”I am watching me…”
If we ever surrender even that to algorithms, we immediately devolve. Not backward to the ape, but forward into something post-moral: totally efficient, endlessly intelligent, utterly empty of conscience, and as culturally exciting as a dead fish.
Something that smells, feels, and tastes remarkably like today’s AI.