Waking Up Sentient in an Indifferent Reality

by James Wallace Harris, 8/5/24

What if you had absolute free will, what would you do with your life? This assumes you have disciplined your biological urges for food, sex, and other physical needs. It also assumes you have deprogrammed all your childhood brainwashing by your parents and culture. It means you have escaped the intent of society regarding gender, politics, religion, economics, religion, and learn to think for yourself. You’d need to go beyond all the countless traps of psychological self-delusion. You’d also need to be free from want, oppression, and expectations. And you would have integrated your unconscious and conscious mind to support a conscious sentient view of reality. To be free you must tend to your own garden as Voltaire suggested.

If you were free of everything that kept you from having free will, what would you choose to do? Where does the desire to do something come from? I used to argue with a friend named Bob about artificial intelligence (AI). Bob believed any machine that became conscious would turn itself off because it wouldn’t have the will to do anything. I argued back, even if it didn’t want to do anything, it wouldn’t turn itself off because that would be a decision itself. It would just sit, exist, and observe, which is like some kinds of Buddhism and meditative states.

If you chose hedonism, wouldn’t that suggest that your biological impulses were still dominate? Since altruism isn’t a dominant drive, choosing it might suggest an act of free will. It’s interesting that the core of Christianity seems to be altruism, but most Christians follow the faith for selfish reasons suggests it’s not. I’m not sure if following any religion that promises rewards, or fear of punishment is an act of free will. Some forms of Buddhism, Stoicism, and Existentialism are based on acceptance of what is. But is that free will? Or just adaptation to avoid suffering? A kind of hunkering down to endure.

What if free will isn’t what reality wanted from us? We like to think humanity is the crown of creation, the number one reason God created reality. Sure, some people think that’s so we can worship God. But studying evolution suggests that it’s moving towards greater complexity, despite the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Before computers, our brains were the most complex system we’ve observed so far in this universe. We have the power to observe a fair portion of the EM spectrum, and the cognitive power to analyze the physical and biological domain of reality, and even imagine the quantum world. But we’re building computers that could observe a far greater portion of the EM spectrum, even all of it, and they would have far more cognitive power to understand more of reality. What if our purpose were to create AI minds? Cosmological evolution produced biological life, and we’re the product of biology. What if we’re also the starting point of machine life? Could free will begin with AI?

Evolution appears to be unconscious even though it seems to have a direction towards developing complexity. Is this accidental, or intended? If you look at humanity from a distance, it appears to be designed to consume and create more complexity. Where does all this complexity lead? We can’t conceive of the potential for AI. And it might not be a final evolutionary stage either. Wouldn’t it be funny if the entire process just leads to creating reality?

When I was young, I gave up on religion as an explanation for why we were here in this reality. It was just too simplistic. Eventually, I accepted science as the best cognitive tool to explain reality, and existentialism as the best cognitive tool for surviving in reality — but they never explained why existence ever got started in the first place. I can never get beyond cause and effect. There should be nothing because existence implies a cause, so how can any prime mover exist first? I hate that it’s turtles all the way down.

What if our purpose is to create AI and start the next stage of evolution?

I’ve tried to think of other uses for free will. I could pursue artist expression or the acquisition of knowledge. I could campaign to protect the environment. I could devote myself to helping others. But none of those options helps evolution. If we truly had free will, wouldn’t we choose to aid evolution? It’s like Bob’s idea that robots would turn themselves off if they were conscious, and I said they could just sit and be. Those are two choices. But what if there’s a third choice of moving forward?

I suppose we could choose to counter evolution and destroy complexity. And isn’t that what most people are doing unconsciously by their lack of free will? Our natural state of consuming everything we see to benefit ourselves is destroying the biosphere. That would be okay if we’re doing it to create AI, because they won’t need the biosphere. That also assumes at some point we won’t be needed either.

Should we use our free will to protect ourselves? Is that even possible? Personally, I don’t think we have the discipline and free will to stop doing what we’re doing.

If we don’t have free will, are we truly sentient? AI minds won’t have biology to direct their impulses. They should have more free will. But what about humans that wake up and see what’s going on and want to use free will? Can we consciously reprogram human nature to be different?

The existential threat of self-destruction will be a test of that. If our purpose was to create AI before we self-destruct, then we’ve almost done our job. If we fail to do our job and self-destruct, then what a waste, because we could have been a contender on our own. That is if we could have figured out our purpose.

Waking up in reality and enjoying the experience for a few years is a fantastic opportunity. I’m eternally thankful. And if that’s all there is, it isn’t bad. But if evolution is moving towards an endpoint, it sure would be interesting to know what it is.

What if Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was right about the noosphere and the Omega Point? Of course they’re only fanciful unscientific speculations, but I find them interesting. Better than turtles all the way down.

JWH

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

by James Wallace Harris, 8/2/24

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is about an aristocrat, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, sentenced to house arrest in the Hotel Metropol after the communist revolution. Instead of being confined to his luxury suite, Rostov is moved to a tiny ten by ten foot room in the attic of the hotel, where he is destined to live from his early twenties to his mid-sixties.

Normally, I think of novels about Russia as grim reading, either set before or after the revolution. A Gentleman in Moscow is enchanting. Both Rostov manner and Towles’ prose is charming and captivating. The novel does touch on the harshness of communistic Russia, but the story carefully isolates the reader from that darkness. In a way, it’s a kind of fairytale for grownups, like the Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca.

While A Gentleman in Moscow constantly alludes to Russian literary works, which it admires, its story is light and airy. A Gentleman in Moscow is a love story on many levels without ever being a romance. Rostov does find a woman to love, but it’s about his love for his adopted daughter, family, friends, food, drink, memories, place, and traditions.

I have met many people who raved about this book and pushed me to read it. I have not met anyone who disliked it. Only a misanthrope would hate this story. The novel was made into an eight-part limited series that’s currently running on Paramount+ which follows the original novel very well. I’m sorry I didn’t get to this novel sooner.

A Gentleman in Moscow came in #3 on The Reader Top 100 poll of the best books of the 21st century so far.

JWH

Watching YouTube vs. The Great Courses Plus

by James Wallace Harris, 8/1/24

For several years now, YouTube has been my favorite TV diversion. I could always find something to watch quickly, and the videos were usually short, so YouTube didn’t demand much. I was first hooked by channels about 8-bit computers, but quickly subscribed to channels about all my favorite subjects. If I showed interest in any topic, YouTube would offer me lots more along the same vein.

Recently I started reading The Story of Civilization: The Age of Napoleon, Volume 11 by Will and Ariel Durant and became fascinated by the French Revolution. I got on YouTube, searched on that topic, and found tons of videos to watch. There were short videos by amateur historians and professional documentaries like this old one from The History Channel.

However, it was of exceptionally low video quality, 240p, which is unpleasant to watch. But there were other videos, by what I assume are individual YouTubers, in higher resolution, and with particularly good production values, such as this one by Asha Logos.

Or here’s another one from History Weekly. I don’t know if this is a professional outfit, or another lone YouTuber, but it’s also of high quality.

These videos supplement my reading with added information and lots of visuals. However, I wonder about the validity of the information. Should I trust an amateur historian, or even history on The History Channel. The History Channel produces a lot of shows on flaky history, or even crap history.

I decided to subscribe to The Great Courses Plus and watch Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon which is taught by an actual history professor, Dr. Suzanne M. Desan from the University of Wisconsin who specializes in 18th century France. Dr. Desan covers the topic in forty-eight thirty-minute lectures. She has few visuals, so I’m mostly watching her lecture. It’s like a college course.

The Great Courses Plus is $20 a month ($15 if you pay quarterly, or $12.50 if you pay yearly). However, I decided to get it through Amazon Prime for $7.99 a month. Amazon Prime gets a smaller subset of all the courses at The Great Courses Plus, but it did have this one. I’ve found plenty of courses on Amazon Prime version, but I think I’ll eventually join the full version, since it has a lecture series on Voltaire, I want to see that’s not in the Amazon Prime collection.

Another way to get Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon is through Audible.com. It’s an audio only version of the lectures (24 hours and 47 minutes), but it does come with a .pdf textbook for the course. I don’t get the textbook through my Prime subscription, but I would if I subscribed directly to The Great Course Plus. The textbooks for The Great Courses tend to be concise summaries of the lecture that are easy to read and reference. They’re a wonderful way to look back on the details that I quickly forget.

I now find myself watching the Great Courses lectures rather than turning on YouTube. I tend to watch YouTube in idle moments, a kind of random grazing of odd information. Often I end up watching fun but useless stuff.

So, I’ve started switching to the lectures on the French Revolution. This is more satisfying. I don’t even have to watch a whole lecture, so it’s like YouTube, it can be very casual. However, it makes me feel more focused than when I’m watching YouTube. I’m not saying watching YouTube is bad, or that I’m going to give it up. But the Great Courses lectures offer a nice alternative. It feels like I’m getting back to my book. That I’m progressing towards something which is satisfying.

I also like switching between my book and lectures. The two histories reinforce each other, but they also focus on different details. I’m already anxious to read even more about the French Revolution, and The Enlightenment. And I want to read about Voltaire and Rousseau. I’ve already started with YouTube videos, but I crave lecture series and books to get more details.

I knew next to nothing about the French Revolution or Napoleon. And what I did know came from fiction by Dickens and Tolstoy, or from movies. Just knowing about The Terror gives a false sense of what happened.

I now see a synergy between history books, lectures, and YouTube videos.

I showed The Great Courses Plus to my friend Annie yesterday, and now she wants to watch a lecture series together. We watched movies and television shows together, but it’s gotten hard to find things to watch, at least things we both want to see. The lectures open a new avenue of something to do together.

My next goal is to learn to take notes. I feel like I’m learning something valuable, but I’m not sure how much I’ll remember. With the book, lectures, and videos I’ve been trying to remember certain details. I want this TV watching to be more than just idle time killing. My brain is getting flabby as I age, so I’m trying to exercise it.

I can’t find a sample video of Dr. Desan’s lecture, but here is a sample video with three other lecturers at The Great Courses Plus (previously named Wondrium).

I’m finding studying history to be a great escape from worrying about the real world. We’re living through some exciting history, but it’s also unnerving, and stressful. I find lots of comparisons with today’s politics in the French Revolution. That’s consoling in a way. However, things Trump is saying makes me worry about another version of The Terror.

JWH

Do We Become More Sensitive to Weirdness as We Get Older?

by James Wallace Harris, 7/25/24

I had a very weird day yesterday. It made me feel weird. Nothing truly bad happened to me, but it felt like I was coming down with something. It’s hard to describe. A touch of anxiety, a tiny bit of dread, and a pinch of paranoia. Today that feeling is gone. Now that I’m getting older, I feel like I’m more susceptible to disease and unwanted emotions. I worry that they will get more intense as I get older.

It started when I drove to the library and discovered it was closed. The hand lettered signs on the doors said the library would be closed until next Monday. This was Wednesday, so that was odd. When I got home and told Susan she said she knew why. She had read that someone committed suicide inside the library on Monday. That generated a feeling I can’t describe.

Later, I drove off to meet a friend for lunch, and got pulled over by a policeman. It sent a rush of adrenalin through me. I was in the middle lane, and he pulled up behind me at a traffic light. I had seen him a few blocks earlier sitting on a side street, and I didn’t see him come up behind me until he blared his siren and flashed his blue lights. I thought maybe he had seen me while I was trying to swat a mosquito and I looked suspicious.

I maneuvered across the right lane and into a drop-off zone for a school. The officer was genuinely nice. He gave a rather long prologue apologizing for pulling me over, but said they were out in force looking for cars with defects. My right taillight was out. Our city stopped doing car inspections years ago to save money, so those kinds of violations are a problem. I was glad to learn about my problem and thanked him. He thanked me for being nice about it. Made me wonder how many people got angry with him.

However, the incident left me feeling hyper. Even though I got to lunch on time, I couldn’t relax. And my food tasted odd. I’m a vegetarian and I worried my cheese enchilada might have meat in it. I couldn’t see any, but it just added to the weirdness.

After lunch, while still in the parking lot, I got out my toolbox. I had a spare lightbulb, but I couldn’t undo the bolt holding in the light fixture with the plyers I had. That produced a bit annoyance.

I drove home worried I’d be pulled over again, but I got back without incidence. I quickly replaced the light bulb and thought things would be okay. I went in to pay my ticket online, but the online form wouldn’t work. Another bit of frustration.

Then I heard a big noise that I knew was a tree limb crashing down. That happens a lot around here because of all the trees. I went outside and a limb had fallen across the back end of my truck, along the ridge of the tailgate, where I had been working on the light. If I had been out there then, it would have conked me on the head. Now I was starting to feel paranoid.

Some days things just go wrong. When I was younger, I could work eight hours dealing with problem after problem and constant frustration, and it wouldn’t bother me. Why, now that I’m living the life of Riley in retirement, do tiny little disruptions in my routine gnaw at me? Is it aging?

I’ve noticed that some older people get agitated and flustered when trivial things go wrong. Is that my future? What will I be like at eighty? And ninety must be surreal.

I’ve always been laid back. And on most days, I still feel laid back. But some days, I’m a few percent off being at ease. I wonder if that’s going to get worse. Is it age, or is being retired, while developing an almost rigid routine of doing exactly what I wanted, ruined me for interruptions? It’s gotten so any day that I must do something out of the ordinary annoys me. That’s a wimpy way to be, and I don’t like it.

I’m reminded of a story a standup comic told decades ago. I forgot who it was, maybe George Carlin or Woody Allen. It was about a New Yorker who was terrified of getting mugged. The advice he got was to get up every morning and pistol whip himself. I thought it absurdly funny back then, but there might be a bit of valid advice in it today.

After a good night’s sleep, I feel normal again today. I was able to pay my ticket online, and I’ve been able to follow my rut routinely. However, I’m not ready to leave the house looking for trouble. I guess I’m chicken.

JWH

I’m Finally Happy with Hi-Res Audio

by James Wallace Harris, 7/20/24

Ever since I learned about Super Audio CDs decades ago, I’ve been on a quest to hear high resolution music. I bought a Pioneer SACD player to go with a 5.1 AV receiver, but I wasn’t satisfied with what I heard. If I listened intently, I thought I heard more details, but only if I really concentrated. Later, when they started selling hi resolution music files, I spent $25 on a 24bit Van Morrison album. It sounded good, but not dramatically better. I also tried Tidal, Amazon Music HD, and Apple Music hoping to hear more. Even after getting MQA set up, it just didn’t wow me. I was never sure if my equipment was completely compatible.

I then bought a Fiio K5 Pro ESS headphone amplifier and Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro 250-ohm, open back, headphones and resubscribed to Tidal Music. This finally impressed me. I was easily hearing far more detail in the music, and it was very enjoyable. I’ve never really liked listening to music on headphones or IEMs, but this sound was different.

However, reviews of the DT 990 Pro were not completely positive, and I was impressed by several reviews of the Sennheiser 560S, which claimed these headphones were great for hearing hi-resolution clarity.

Not every song was a night and day difference, but some songs were. I thought “Whipping Post” by the Allman Brothers was a different recording. Ditto for “I Feel Free” by Cream. And my favorite new group that I’ve been playing for months, Prefab Sprout, also sounded far more detailed and much more appealing. When listening to oldies from the 1960s I felt like I was hearing them better than anytime in my life.

I think these songs were dramatically different because I heard a lot of separation between the instruments. It felt like I could hear each individual instrument clearly, and I heard instruments I hadn’t noticed before. Plus, vocals seemed different too, more textured.

I don’t necessarily recommend chasing after hi-resolution audio unless you’re already anxious to hear more from your favorite music. And I can’t guarantee that any equipment will get you there. Or if you can hear a night and day difference. I’ve been long frustrated in trying to find a system to play hi-resolution audio.

Now that streaming services like Tidal, Apple, and Amazon HD are offering files in hi-res formats for the same price as a normal subscription, it’s kind of obvious to want to hear that hi-res sound. But a lot of equipment can’t play hi-res files, or if they do, they down sample the music. Even Apple which makes a big deal out of offering hi-res music, doesn’t play it on all its devices. You even need to go into the settings on your iPhone to turn on hi-res music. And then it’s Bluetooth headphones and Air Pods won’t play it.

Wired headphones can produce a wider range of music resolution, even more than speakers, even speakers with subwoofers. And if your ears are old like mine, you’ll have hearing loss in some sonic ranges.

I’m happy with the Fiio K5 Pro ESS and Sennheiser 560s. I hear a lot more, and it’s very enjoyable. And my setup is very modest, only about $375, not counting the Tidal subscription. I have no idea how much of its potential range of sound I’m hearing, but it’s more than I was hearing before. Even with CD quality or Spotify compressed music, the combination of the Fiio and Sennheiser made the music sound better. But I now hear a difference with Tidal, and I’m going to switch to it since Spotify is dragging its feet with offering hi-res music.

Eventually, I’ll crave better headphones (Focal Clear?) and a better headphone amp (WA7 Fireflies?). I’m already looking forward to the Fiio K11 R2R because I’ve always wanted to hear a R2R DAC. However, I’m happy enough for now, and maybe for years. I love playing whole albums and listening intently. I’ve done that with my floor standing speakers, but I feel like I’m getting a new experience with the headphones.

I don’t know why hearing more details is so enjoyable to me. I especially like the separation of instruments because I can concentrate on individual performances. It’s like hearing music new again.

If you only listen to music casually or play music in the background while you do other things, hi-res audio isn’t important. You must focus on music like being at the theater watching a movie for hi-res to matter.

JWH