Humans – Harmonia Philosophica

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…

Faster than light… So?

Photo by **Spiros Kakos** from **Pexels**

Faster-than-light speeds could be why gamma-ray bursts seem to go backwards in time. (1)

Amazing. Isn’t it?

But wait a minute.

If gamma rays can do that, then why are we so keen on doing the same?

And what is more…

Why are we so keen on doing something that common matter can do?

Do we consider our self as something common?

Why are we so desperate to act like matter when we are nothing but?

Why are we so desperate to do things which are so mundane in the cosmos?

Perhaps the cosmos itself is mundane. Perhaps the universe itself is boring.

No, we cannot do these things.

And this only means one thing…

(We are NOT mundane!)

Chairs into tables…

Turning a chair into a table, or vice versa, might sound like somewhat of a magic trick. In this case, zero magic is involved, just plenty of complex geometry and machine learning.

Called LOGAN, the deep neural network, i.e., a machine of sorts, can learn to transform the shapes of two different objects, for example, a chair and a table, in a natural way, without seeing any paired transforms between the shapes. All the machine had seen was a bunch of tables and a bunch of chairs, and it could automatically translate shapes between the two unpaired domains. LOGAN can also automatically perform both content and style transfers between two different types of shapes without any changes to its network architecture. (1)

Chair… Table… Human… Cosmos…

Look at any shape.

Imagine any shape.

There are ways to go from one to the other. But there is nothing natural about it. All changes are abrupt. Raw. Untamed. Whenever something becomes something else, the first one dies. Completely and utterly. There is no gradual change. No “natural” way of dying. No “natural” way of changing. This is the secret we have chosen to ignore. And we keep on believing in the ability to change. This is the essence of our civilization. The cornerstone of our existence. That we can “change”. That things “change”.

Imagine a cosmos where everything is stable.

A perfect cosmos.

We hate this cosmos. For it nullifies existence.

Free beings we are.

And if we choose, we can choose to be!

And die…

So have we done.

So shall it be…

Massive filaments fuel the growth of galaxies and supermassive black holes

Based on direct observations researchers have discovered massive filaments between galaxies in a proto-cluster, extending over more than 1 million parsecs and providing the fuel for intense formation of stars and the growth of super massive black holes within the proto-cluster. (1)

A filament fit for space: Silk is proven to thrive in outer space temperatures

The scientists who discovered that natural silks get stronger the colder they get, have finally solved the puzzle of why. (2)

Delicate structures in space.

Delicate creatures on Earth.

Holding together.

Patiently watching.

Afraid to break.

But it is not the unbreakable that God dreams of.

One day you will break.

And realize that that was what the cosmos was afraid all that time…

Delicate silk. Delicate humans.

Breaking apart.

And within their weakness.

With their cries and despair.

Rising together.

To hold the cosmos in their fragile arms…