Humans – Harmonia Philosophica

What is an individual?

It’s almost impossible to imagine biology without individuals — individual organisms, individual cells, and individual genes, for example. But what about a worker ant that never reproduces, and could never survive apart from the colony? Are the trillions of microorganisms in our microbiomes, which vastly outnumber our human cells, part of our individuality?

The authors of a work published in the journal Theory in Biosciences suggest that one way to solve the puzzle comes from information theory. Instead of focusing on anatomical traits, David Krakauer, Nils Bertschinger, Eckehard Olbrich, Jessica Flack, and Nihat Ay suggest that the individual must be seen as a verb: what processes produce distinct identity? The authors’ information theory of individuality (or ITI) indicate that individuality relates to a blend of self-regulation and environmental influence. (1)

Processing information.

Processing food.

Processing data.

Processing others.

We are all about processing.

And yet at the end, we end up being processed.

And this is what defines us.

That we are part of everything.

And we know it.

And we accept it.

And even though we may process information.

We choose not to.

And even though we could be apart from God.

We chose to return to Him…

And be able to process everything.

To know it all.

To control our self.

To live. To die.

To be human once more…

Fairy tales…

But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
~ C.S. Lewis

When we are kids we love fairy tales.

But now we have grown up.

And we consider fairy tales… fairy tales.

Now we believe in science. Now we believe in what we can see. Now we believe in us and in what we can measure and analyze. Now only things that can be proved matter.

And yet, the world we live in is not so void of miracles as we might think.

A cosmos where everything is without us knowing why. A world where you change every minute and yet you are still you. A universe where particles can be in two places at once, where cause might come after the effect. A cosmos where time does not exist even though we believe it does.

A cosmos full of life without any reason. A cosmos where we seek knowledge without knowing why. A world where we believe we can understand why without even knowing why we are alive.

We tend to ignore miracles.

Only because we believe we will one day explain them.

But what if we never will? What if the explanation of these miracles is me? You? Everyone who make this world be? What if we are the ones who keep this world alive? What if miracles are more common than you think?

We used to read fairy tales as kids.

And guess what.

These fairy tales are the things we keep on seeking still. Dragons, mermaids, the tooth fairy. We used to live in a world of magic. And this magic is the only thing that keeps us alive.

Beyond the Excel spreadsheets, the meetings, the customers and the things we believe make up our life, dragons, mermaids and fairies keep whispering to us. The one secret we choose to ignore. Because it is terrifying.

You once were a kid…

But you were too afraid.

And you believed the worst fairy tale of them all.

That you grew up.

(That the child has died…)

But worry not.

One day you will cry.

And it will be right then,

that the child will come back.

(And smile…)

Whispering a terrible thing you knew.

Listen dad.

Since I was born.

Within thing void world.

I always smiled.

But…

I was never a child!

A story told…

Meteorites tell story of Mars’ water history. (1)

But who else can tell your story? But someone else?

You cannot ever know thyself.

Except those who see you.

And when they do, they will tell it to someone else. And you will be liberated. From the burden of Being. And you will be liberated. From the prison of Existence.

And in the songs sang to blissful young lads, you will live for ever.

As only men who never did can…

AI not explaining it self… Scary AI… Scary humans…

Upol Ehsan once took a test ride in an Uber self-driving car. Instead of fretting about the empty driver’s seat, anxious passengers were encouraged to watch a “pacifier” screen that showed a car’s-eye view of the road: hazards picked out in orange and red, safe zones in cool blue.

For Ehsan, who studies the way humans interact with AI at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, the intended message was clear: To explain what the AI was doing. But something about these whole scene highlighted the strangeness of the experience rather than reassured. It got Ehsan thinking: what if the self-driving car could really explain itself? (1)

Scary AI…

Not being able to explain itself.

Scary humans.

Not being able to explain themselves.

Scary life.

(Are you afraid of me?)

Finding your way…

A team at Facebook AI has created a reinforcement learning algorithm that lets a robot find its way in an unfamiliar environment without using a map. (1)

Finding your way without a map.

Is there any other way?

With a map, you will always return at home.

But what is home?

Were you not born inside chaos?

Were you not bred by lightning?

Did you not ride the rough waves?

There is no destination.

For there was never a home in the first place.

Look at you.

Did you not bring fire into the cosmos?

There is only one reason to return home.

And that is to burn it down to ashes…