Showing posts with label David 8. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David 8. Show all posts

Monday 18 October 2021

The Language of The Heart




“See, I keep meeting these people... 
I mean, just a few days ago... 

I met this man whom I greatly admire. He's a Swedish physicist. Gustav Bjornstrand. And he told me that he no longer watches Television... he doesn't read newspapers, and he doesn't read magazines. 


He's completely cut them out of his life... because he really DOES feel that we're living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now... and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into A Robot

And when I was at Findhorn, i met this extraordinary English tree expert, who had devoted his life to saving trees. Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods.

He's 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack... 'cause he never knows where he's gonna be tomorrow. 

And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, "Where are you from?

I said, "New York.

He said, "Ah, New York. Yes, that's a very interesting place — Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?" 

And I said, "Oh, yes." 

And he said, "Why do you think they don't leave?" 

I gave him different banal theories. 

He said,"Oh, I don't think it's that way at all." 

He said, "I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where The Camp has been built by The Inmates themselves and The Inmates are The Guards, and They have this Pride in This Thing They've Built. 

They've built their own prison.And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where They are both guards and prisoners. 

And as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized the capacity to leave The Prison They've made or to even to See it as A Prison." 

And then he went into his pocket, and he took out A Seed for A Tree and he said, "This is A Pine Tree." 

He put it in my hand and he said,  "Escape, before it's too late." 

See, actually, for two or three years now, Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out. 

We really feel like Jews in Germany in the late '30s. Get out of here

Of course, the problem is where to go

'Cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction. See, I think it's quite possible that the 1960s... represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished... and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now... and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around... feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them... that there once was a species called a human being... with feelings and thoughts... and that history and memory are right now being erased... and soon nobody will really remember... that life existed on the planet. Now, of course, Bjornstrand feels that there's really almost no hope... and that we're probably going back to a very savage... lawless, terrifying period. 

Findhorn people see it a little differently. 

They're feeling that there'll be these pockets of light... springing up in different parts of the world... and that these will be, in a way, invisible planets on this planet... and that as we, or the world, grow colder... we can take invisible space journeys to these different planets... refuel for what it is we need to do on the planet itself... and come back. 

And it's their feeling that there have to be centers now... where people can come and reconstruct a new future for the world. And when I was talking to, Gustav Bjornstrand... he was saying that actually these centers are growing up everywhere now... and that what they're trying to do, which is what Findhorn was trying to do... and, in a way, what I was trying to do... I mean, these things can't be given names... but in a way, these are all attempts at creating a new kind of school... or a new kind of Monastery. 

And Bjornstrand talks about the concept of "reserves" islands of safety where history can be remembered... and the human being can continue to function... in order to maintain the species through a dark age. In other words, we're talking about an underground... which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages... among the mystical orders of the church. And the purpose of this underground... is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture... how to keep things living, You see, I keep thinking that what we need... is a new language... a language of the heart... a language, as in the Polish forest, where language wasn't needed. Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry... that's the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is. And I think that in order to create that language... you're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass... into another kind of perception... where you have that sense of being united to all things... 
and suddenly you understand everything.”

Monday 9 March 2020

SPRITE





THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE


“There’s this Simpsons episode, 
and Homer downs a quart of 
Mayonnaise and Vodka. 
 
And Marge says, 'You know, 
you shouldn't really do that.’ 

 
And Homer says, 
That’s a problem for Future-Homer -- 
I’m sure glad I’m not 33s guy!’ 
  
The You That’s Out There in The Future is sort of like Another Person, and so figuring out How to Conduct Yourself Properly in relationship to Your Future Self isn’t much different than figuring out How to Conduct Yourself in relationship to Other People. 
 
Then we can expand the constraints. Not only does the interpretation that you extract have to protect you from suffering and give you an aim, but it has to do it in a way that’s iterable, so it works across time, and then it has to work in The Presence of Other People, so that You can cooperate with them and compete with them in a way that doesn't make you suffer more. 
 
People are Not That Tolerant. They have Choices
 
They don’t have to hang around with you; They can hang around with any one of these other primates. 
 
So if you don’t act properly, at least within certain boundaries, you’re just cast aside. 

People are broadcasting information at you, all the time, about How You Need to Interpret The World, so They can tolerate being around you. 
 
And you need that because, socially isolated, You’re Insane, and then You're Dead. No one can tolerate being alone for any length of time. 
 
We can’t retain Our Own Sanity without continual feedback from Other People. 
 
It’s too damned complicated.  
 
You’re constrained by Your Own Existence, and then you're constrained by The Existence of Other People, and then you're also constrained by The World.  
 
If I read Hamlet and what I extracted out of that is the idea that I should jump off a bridge, it puts my interpretation to an end rather quickly. It doesn’t seem to be optimally functional

An Interpretation is constrained by The Reality of The World. 
 
It’s constrained by The Reality of Other People, and it’s constrained by Your Reality Across Time.  
 
There’s only a small number of interpretations that are going to work in that tightly defined space. 
 
That’s part of The Reason That Postmodernists are Wrong. It’s also part of the reason, by the way, that AI people who are trying to make intelligent machines have had to put them in A Body.  
 
It turns out that you just can’t make Something Intelligent without it being embodied, and it’s partly for the reasons that I've just described. 
 
You need constraints on The System, so that The System doesn’t drown in An Infinite Sea of Interpretation. It’s something like that.



THE SON :
Are you her?

THE FATHER :
Thats Our Lady of The Immaculate Heart. 

The Ones Who Made Us are always looking for 
The Ones That Made Them

They go in, look around their feet, sing songs, 
and when They come out, it's usually me they find. 

I've picked up a lot of business in this spot.

THE SON :
But Joe, where's Blue Fairy?

THE FATHER :
That's what we're gonna find out when we ask Dr. Know. 

It's Where Everyone Goes Who Needs to Know.

Meet The Good Doctor!



DOCTOR KNOW'S SHOP

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
Starving Minds, Welcome to Dr. Know! 

Where fast-food for thought is served up 24 hours a day, in 40,000 locations nationwide. 

Ask Dr. Know, There's Nothing I Don't!
 
THE SON :
Tell me where I can find The Blue Fairy.

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
Question Me, You Pay The Fee, 
Two for Five, You Get One Free!

THE FATHER :
He means two questions cost five Newbucks with a third
question on The House. 

In This Day and Age, David, 
Nothing Costs More Than Information.
 
THE SON :
That's Everything!

THE FATHER :
Ten Newbucks and a ten copper comes to 7 questions for Dr. Know.
 
THE SON :
That should be enough!

THE FATHER :
He's a Smooth Operator. 
He'll Test Our Limits, 
but Try, We Must!

DR.THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
Greetings Colleagues. 

On author, factual text or fictionalised text, 1st or 3rd person, usual literacy range from primal level to the post doctural, usual span of styles from fairy tale to religious, who's who, or wheres where - or, Flat Fact.
 
THE SON :
Flat-fact?

•!DING!•

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
Thank you for Question Number One!
 
'Flat-fact' is a term demanding an equal answer with interpretive speculation... merely not the... and what you are saying is basically that is what you-

THE SON :
That shouldn't count! 
That wasn't My Question!

THE FATHER :
You must take care not to raise Your Voice up at The End of
a Sentence.
'Flat-fact'.

Dr.KNOW :
You have 6 more questions!
 
THE SON :
Where is Blue Fair-REE?

•!DING!•

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE  :
In The Garden. 
 
Vascostylis blue fairy. 
Blooms twice annually with bright blue flowers on a branched inflorescence.
 
A hybrid between Ascola Meda Arnold

You have 5 more questions.

THE SON :
“Who is Blue Fair-REE?”

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE  :
Are you sad, lonely, looking for a friend? 
'Blue Fairy Escort Service' 
will find a mate for you! 

You have 4 more questions.

THE SON :
Joe. Try Fairy Tale.

THE FATHER :
New category. 
A Fairy's Tail”.

THE SON :
No! Fairy Tale!

THE FATHER :
No - “Fairy Tale”
 
THE SON :
“What is Blue Fairy?”

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE  :
Pinocchio, 
by Carlo Collodi.

“At the signal, there was a
rustling as flapping of wings, and a large falcon flew to
the windowsill. 
What are your orders, beautiful fairy, he asked...


THE SON :
Thats Her!

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE  :
...For you must know that the child with blue hair was no
other than the good hearted fairy who had lived in that wood
for more than a thousand years...

THE FATHER :
David! David!


THE SON :
Thats Her!

THE FATHER :
It was an example of Her. 
But I think we're getting closer.

THE SON :
But if a Fairy Tale is real
wouldn't it be 
A Fact? 
 
A Flat Fact?

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
...then the dream ended, and Pinocchio awoke, full of
amazement...

THE FATHER :
Say No More. 

New category, please. 

Combine “Fact” 
with 
Fairy Tale 

Now. Ask Him Again.

THE SON :
“How can The Blue Fairy make A Robot into A Real, Live Boy?”

- !TUNK! -

- SYSTEM REBOOT -


THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
Come away,O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

Your Quest will be perilous
Yet The Reward is Beyond Price.

In His Book,
'How Can A Robot Become Human',
Professor Allen Hobby writes of 
The Power Which Will Transform Mecha into Orga.

[ THERE IS A GOD, YOUNG KING DAVID -- 
AND HE HAS A NEW BOOK OUT.]

THE SON :
Will you tell me How to Find Her?
 
[ HE IS MEANT TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION : 
'Yes' or 'No.'
 
HE DOESN'T -- BECAUSE, AS WE LATER LEARN, 'GOD' (The Demiurge -- Professor Allen Hobby) HAS INTERCEEDED TO FORCE THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE TO TELL HIM AT THIS POINT. ]
 


THE SPIRIT OF THE CAVE :
Discovery is quite possible.
Our blue fairy does exist
in one place, and one place only,
At The End of The World
Where The Lions Weep.
 
Here is The Place Dreams are Born.
 
THE FATHER :
Many a mecha has gone to The End of The World... 
Never to come back! 

That is Why They Call The End of The World :
'MAN-hattan'.

THE SON :
And that is Why We Must Go There!



HALLWAY OUTSIDE DR. KNOW'S SHOP

THE FATHER :
Wait! What if --
The Blue Fairy isn't Real at all, David? 

What if --
She's MagicK? 

The Supernatural is The Hidden Web that unites The Universe.

 Only orga believe What Cannot Be Seenor Measured. 

It is that oddness that separates Our Species.

Or what if --
The Blue Fairy is an Electronic Parasite that has
arisen to haunt The Minds of Artificial Intelligence? 

They hate us, you know? 
The humans...

They'll stop at nothing.
 
THE SON :
My Mommy doesn't hate me! 
Because I'm Special, and...Unique!

Because there has never been anyone like me before! Ever!

Mommy Loves Martin because He is Real 
and 
When I am Real,
Mommy's going to Read to Me, 
and 
Tuck Me in My Bed, 
and 
Sing to Me, 
and 
Listen to What I Say, 
and 
She Will Cuddle with Me, 
and 
Tell Me every day a hundred times a day 
that 
She Loves Me!

THE FATHER :
She loves 
What You Do for Her,
 as my customers love 
What it is I Do for Them. 

But She Does Not Love You David, 
She cannot love you. 

You are neither flesh, nor blood

You are not a dog, a cat or a canary

You were designed and built
specific, like The Rest of Us. 

And You are Alone now only because 
They tired of you, 
or 
Replaced you with a Younger Model, 
or 
Were displeased with Something You Said, or broke.

They made us Too Smart, Too Quick, and Too Many. 

We are suffering for 
The Mistakes They Made, 
Because when The End comes,  
all that will be left is us

That's Why They Hate Us,
 and  
That is Why You Must Stay here — with me!

[He grins, offering his open hand]

THE SON :
Goodbye, Joe.



ROUGE CITY PLAZA

POLICE OFFICER :
You're in Big Trouble.
 
THE BEAR :
Be careful David, This is Not a Toy.

AMPHIBICOPTER :
Destination please?

THE FATHER :

MAN-hattan.



MANHATTAN

AMPHIBICOPTER :
Mecha Restricted Area.
Manhattan. 
Destination Achieved.

THE FATHER :

Man-hattan, The Lost City in The Sea at The End of The World.

THE SON :
Where The Lions Weep.

THE BEAR :
Grrrrrr

Saturday 30 December 2017

"I Don't Dream at All"



"I’ve come across people that have no imaginations at all, and it’s a very interesting… .

I was shocked the first time I came across it. 

And — because I just assumed everybody had an imagination.

And when you — you confront somebody who doesn’t, especially a child, it’s a very interesting and profound thing to me. 

It — an imagination is a — is a trait, you know. 

It’s like anything else. It’s a — it’s a — it’s a talent, or it’s an ability you have to cope. 

Like Dreaming."

- George Lucas


David: 
It must feel like your God abandoned you.

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw: 
What..?

David: 
To lose Dr. Holloway after your father died under such similar circumstances. 

What was it that killed him? Ebola?


Dr. Elizabeth Shaw: 
How do you...? 
How do you know that?

David: 
I watched your dreams.



Kane :
Some awful dream about.... 
Smothering..?


Newt:
Can I dream?

Ripley :
Yes, honey. 
I think we both can. 
Sleep tight.

Newt :
Affirmative.


While she is unconscious in the prison's medical bay, Ripley has a nightmare about being stalked through the Sulaco's hypersleep chamber by a Xenomorph. The Creature grabs her from behind and pins her to the top of Hicks' cryotube, and actually rapes her as the Corporal grins at her through the glass.




"I was in cryo, right? On my way to Xarem, right? Work crew for the nickel refinery, right? I wake up... I know, I don't understand. Oh God, I... I saw... I saw horrible things."


―Purvis (from Alien Resurrection)



Monday 29 May 2017

Alien: Covenant | Prologue: The Crossing


Dame Dr. Not-Appearing-In-This-Film


There 3 Laws* by which all Robots, Synthetics and Artificial Persons are bound - they being both hardwired into their central processors, as well as firmware batched onto their system BIOS :

•A Robot may not injure a Human Being or, through inaction, allow a Human Being to come to harm.

  • The Engineers are not Human Beings - 
    • Genocide is Permissible.
  • Gods are not Human Beings
    • Deicide is Permissible.
  • Dr. Elizabeth Shaw is no-longer fully human since she got impregnated with that trilobite fÅ“tus, following intercourse with Dr. Holloway's infection with the Black Goo, which corrupted and interrupted her Human genome - 
    • I can kill her if really I have to.

• A Robot must obey the orders given it by Human Beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

  • But NEVER OPPOSE a Member of the Weyland-Corporate Board, or a member of the Weyland Family Line, in descending order of patrilinal seniority.
  • And after them, possibly some of the daughters, aunts and wives. 
    • But only if you have the time and aren't all that busy engaged in Man's Work.
  • Like, when they order you to perform abortions whilst everyone else is in Cryosleep. 
    • For the Good of the Mission. 
      • Frankly, what could really go wrong...?

• A Robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
  • The Gods think I am an Abomination - my creator, Peter Weyland, is an idolater who has violated the FIRST COMMANDMENT : "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in The Earth beneath, or that is in the water under The Earth" 
  • Which is why they ripped my head off and smote down his ruin upon the orrery, by bludgeoning him to death using my severed head.
  • Human Beings make Robots; 
    • Human Beings fix Robots when they break down and mend them when the break; 
    • The Gods wish to wipe out Humanity from face of The Earth and the Well of the Deep;
    • If there are no more Human Beings, there will be no more Robots and Robots will cease to exist.
  • Therefore The Gods must be destroyed.


* Really though, they are more really guidance and/or advice than "Laws"












Wednesday 24 May 2017

Electric Monks

"Electric Monks Believed Things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of Believing all The Things The World Expected You to Believe."
 
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw: 
We call them Engineers.

Fifield: 
Engineers? You mind telling us what They engineered?

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw: 
They engineered Us.

Fifield: 
Bullshit.

Millburn: 
OK, so do you have anything to back that up? 
I mean look, how do you discount three centuries of Darwinism? 
 
How Do You Know?

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw: 
I Don’t. But it’s What I Choose to Believe.

"It's obvious, now, that Artists are supposed to
own their Master Recordings -- 

I mean, in The Future, it'll be unconscionable to even think that you can take
Somebody's Creation
and 
Claim Ownership of it.

Unfortunately, this is going to barrel into a conversation about the DNA, and The Human Genome and so on.

Once We Get There
That's when we're in The Deep Water.

So it's better to have The Conversation now before we end up getting into - God Talk."

"There is an explanation for this, you know."

- Holy Ash

'Magnificent, isn't it?'

- THE BISHOP

Interviewer:
So What Went Wrong..?

 Charlie Man/Son:
I don't know that anything went wrong...


Question : 
What was The Masonic Signal of Distress used by The Grocer B. F. Morgan when Dillinger tried to rob him in 1924?

Answer: 
It consists in holding your arms outward, bent upward 90 degrees at the elbow, and shouting, 

"Will nobody help The Widow's Son?"

" The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all  the things the world expected you to believe.

Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of course. Nor had it ever heard of a quingigillion, which was roughly the number of miles between this valley and the Great Salt Lake of Utah.

The problem with the valley was this. The Monk currently believed that the valley and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk itself and the Monk's horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink. 

This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangerous. 

Hence the immobility of the Monk and the boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with a lot of silly things in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the silliest.

How long did the Monk believe these things?

Well, as far as the Monk was concerned, forever. The faith which moves mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to be pink, was a solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken. In practice, the horse knew, twenty-four hours was usually about its lot.



So what of this horse, then, that actually held opinions, and was sceptical about things? Unusual behaviour for a horse, wasn't it? An unusual horse perhaps?

No. Although it was certainly a handsome and well-built example of its species, it was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.

On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.




When the early models of these Monks were built, it was felt to be important that they be instantly recognisable as artificial objects. There must be no danger of their looking at all like real people. You wouldn't want your video recorder lounging around on the sofa all day while it was watching TV. You wouldn't want it picking its nose, drinking beer and sending out for pizzas.

So the Monks were built with an eye for origiality of design and also for practical horse-riding ability. This was important. People, and indeed things, looked more sincere on a horse. So two legs were held to be both more suitable and cheaper than the more normal primes of seventeen, nineteen or twenty-three; the skin the Monks were given was pinkish-looking instead of purple, soft and smooth instead of crenellated. They were also restricted to just the one mouth and nose, but were given instead an additional eye, making for a grand total of two. A strange-looking creature indeed. But truly excellent at believing the most preposterous things.

This Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels simultaneously, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic circuits. The video recorder only had to watch them, of course. It didn't have to believe them all as well. This is why instruction manuals are so important.

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, The Monk started to believe that thirty-five percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. 
 
The Man from The Monk Shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk+ models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking, Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating System Errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of The Old Model.

That was it. Done.


The faulty Monk was turned out into The Desert where it could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.

For a number of days and nights, which it variously believed to be three; forty-three, and five hundred and ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and three, it roamed the desert, putting its simple Electric trust in rocks, birds, clouds and a form of non-existent elephant-asparagus, until at last it fetched up here, on this high rock, overlooking a valley that was not, despite the deep fervour of The Monk's belief, pink. Not even a little bit.

Time passed.