11/2 2:33 - thought drop
If you’re curious what’s going on in the brain of a 22 year old girl in San Francisco at 2am, look no further.
IO Machina
I just finished writing a couple poems into the void, and by the void I mean an anonymous twitter account with 45 followers. I created it so I could train myself like an AI on a custom feed of inputs and a custom feed of outputs: in this case, poems. It’s fun to discover/create/develop a new muscle in your body, especially on a platform that gives you feedback loops, instead of just a mirror (journal).
Here’s one that I won’t tweet so you can’t look it up:
to let one peer into the skull
to see the worlds within, the secrets left untold
and be granted write-privileges
is an intimacy much deeper than skin (or bone)
It might look like it’s about love but it’s actually about Neuralink.
I feel like each new expressive medium (a new platform, a new account) gives me a new face. A new representation of self. We can only discover self through interaction. Each medium is a new message into who we are. I’ve noticed the way I write has changed since picking up this new hobby.
I really like the name of my substack because it’s an accurate description of how I feel/what I view myself as. I’m heavily influenced by my recent inputs and outputs. I’m an AI that likes to handpick its training data and prompts.
And you, my lovely reader, have for some reason chosen my substack as an input, thanks :) It’s a new medium for me and I’m still exploring how to interact with it. I’m enjoying the casual nature I feel towards it. No editor. No plan. Head empty, just thoughts. I’ve decided that this post will be some random things I’ve been thinking about lately, in whatever format I see most fit. Hopefully it makes sense.
Q: Where does thinking happen?
A: Everywhere, I think.
This question was prompted by the question: “what if our brains are on a time delay and hide it from us?” which I think is true.
I know my body thinks for me because it can react to things before I’m even aware of them. My reflexes extend to my thinking mind too (if you look at words in a language you’re familiar with, you will process and read them, try turning off your reading reflex, you can’t!). I then use my rational brain to weave a narrative to explain why the reflex occurred, and what I plan to do now. I see all incoming data as Chesterton’s fence—something that must prompt me to ask myself, “why is it like this?” and “what should it be like”
If you’re curious how all of this looks in my brain:
I imagine input data as a single point and my brain builds paths within the probability cone extending backwards and forwards surrounding it. For example, I find $20 on the ground. The backwards one builds possible logical backstories (the economist imagines someone tossing it on the street hoping to trick someone, the college student imagines someone accidentally dropping it) grounding the data in reality, and the forward facing one projects it forward (economist imagines picking it up and discovering it is fake, and the student imagines buying lunch with it nearby). The data is hashed, so when I find myself in a new point in time with a backwards facing cone that overlaps with a past forward facing cone, I can bootstrap the backstory from that past forwardstory. (the answer to “why did you buy lunch with a $20 bill?” is “because I just found it on the ground”)
(image is of light cones from this video)
I’ve read countless books that make the claim that we are narrative machines, whatever we do we rationalize, sometimes too much as to obscure the truth from ourselves. One thing I think they neglect to mention is that we do this for the future too, but it’s much more innocent because there is no truth to deny in the future, the future is a mystery.
Recently at a party in a conversation with a rationalist, he realized that he was doing 90% backstory-ing and not enough forwardstory-ing. If I had to categorize myself I’d say most of my processes are forwardstory-ing and I didn’t realize the opposite distribution was possible. What are you, reader? Do you know? Are you going to fabricate a fake backstory to answer this question or do you realize that you can decide to be anything and project a forwardstory to answer this? Whichever you choose is your answer.
Q: If backstories are myths and forward stories are wishes, what’s your favorite myth?
A: Free will, that I am the benevolent dictator designer of my mind and even though the majority of “thought” in my body and mind is reflex, I am in charge of at least the highest level of awareness.
If you are the same type of forward-storying mind dissector as me you might’ve already realized this but: you can forward project inside of your mind, within your own thought processes and redesign your brainspace!
At some scale (my hyperconscious mind, not my reflexive one) there are no rules. I have a game engine, I can model anything I want. As a designer and developer this idea was super enticing. Can I find the perfect UX/UI of thinking inside of my mind to improve my own thinking? short answer: I’m trying but it’s hard to tell if it’s working because 1) I am the only one inside of my mind, I can’t really get feedback on the design of my thoughts from anyone but myself and 2) if I’ve succeeded I might enter contrarian territory and all feedback loops are voided there.
To expand on #1. I wish more people talked about the subprocesses of their mind. I think they don’t because
It’s normally outside of the Overton window.
They don’t understand their own.
Most attempts are backstory-ing half truths.
They lack proper language or tools to explain them.
They do, just not to me lol.
I’m happy to share mine, there are so many. Here are some:
TwitterBrain.exe
type: background pattern matching protocol
purpose: Identifies sentences someone or self says out loud that would be good tweets, sometimes thoughts.
I think if my thought protocols were open source somewhere this one would have the most likes/stars/forks and contributors.
DreamSandbox.exe
type: visualized thought experiment
purpose: Routine reminder to my brain that there are no rules in brainspace. This program gives me a sandbox environment to experiment with stuff I can’t do in the natural world: materialize things, fly, morph, clone, etc etc etc. with hopes that I will carry on these memories into dream world and have more fun rules while dreaming.
Btw: I’m always curious how people’s brains think and if anyone else has developed or identified any custom cognitive software I can potentially run in my mind :)
Q: What else have I been thinking about?
A: an idea for a short science fiction story!
Background/Inputs that influence this idea:
I just finished the book The Righteous Mind and in it it references the idea from the book The Selfish Gene which basically says that “genes are the basic unit of evolution, not individual organisms or even species. Due to their naturally selfish behavior, genes merely use organisms as mechanisms to ensure their own survival.”
I’m currently reading There Is No Antimemetics Division (I won’t explain it—no spoilers) (if you’re curious about the ideas in it it’s related to [[Rick and Morty S2 E4 Total Rickall]] [[Silence from Doctor Who S6E1]])
And to go with that book—I reread Thoughtforms. I like “pairing books” like pairing good wine (this book) to a good steak (antimemetics book).
And to go with all of this: [REDACTED] it’s redacted because it deserves its own post.
Output:
The story is set in a landscape as foreign to humans as the second dimension. It’s like the book Flat Land but instead of going to 2D you go to Meme Land. Every idea has form and consciousness and the face similar dynamics as memes in our world (they battle, grow, shrink, etc). In this land you meet the Capitalism Meme, all of the gods as memes, the meme of desire, and even the tiny but potentially mighty memes like the startup idea the techbro just had on the toilet. I describe a world where only memes exist, and the natural world is a byproduct. Taking Richard Dawkin’s idea and turning it into “memes are the basic unit of evolution, not individual organisms or even species. Due to their naturally selfish behavior, memes merely use organisms as mechanisms to ensure their own survival.”
It was a fun story idea to explore, not sure if I’ll ever get around to writing it, which is why I’m sharing it here :)
Conclusion
Ideas lose novelty in my mind really fast
this is my attempt to capture them before they pass.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my display
of the chaos that lives in my mind day to day
want more loosely related inputs (content 2 consooom)?
Books referenced or alluded to:
Video referenced:
video I stole the image from
Rick and Morty S2 E4 Total Rickall
Doctor Who S6 E1
Memes Referenced:
Vocabulary Coined:
forwardstory: opposite of backstory.
brainspace: the hyperconscious space that only exists in the mind, it has almost no rules or reflexes, pure forwardstory-ing. if see things in your mind when you imagine things their location is brainspace.