Category — Uncategorized

The most interesting post I’ve read in a long time was on Quartz, and it was about the app Replika.  Replika is an app — you can download it right now in the app store — and you chat with it.  And as you chat with it, it is building an AI version of yourself, one that speaks like you and answers like you and remembers what you like and don’t like.

The idea both thrills and frightens me at the same time.

I haven’t downloaded the app because I don’t have a good sense of how the information I provide will be used in the future.  The author of the article writes that the creators don’t even know where this is headed:

But its creator, a San Francisco-based startup called Luka, sees a whole bunch of possible uses for it: a digital twin to serve as a companion for the lonely, a living memorial of the dead, created for those left behind, or even, one day, a version of ourselves that can carry out all the mundane tasks that we humans have to do, but never want to.

A digital twin.  A me who is not me.

I wrote about this bot exactly one year ago, and it was strange to encounter another article about it as I was debating whether or not to download the app.  I still stand by my feelings last year: I would want everyone I know and love to build a bot version of themselves.  What I struggle with is giving the same gift back: a bot me.  Because it’s not as simple as just answering questions.

The author writes,

A question to contend with as I was building my bot: In your everyday life, how open are you with your friends, family and coworkers about your inner thoughts, fears, and motivations? How aware are you yourself of these things? In other words, if you build a bot by explaining to it your history, your greatest fears, your deepest regrets, and it turns around and parrots these very real facts about you in interactions with others, is that an accurate representation of you? Is that how you talk to people in real life? Can a bot capture the version of you you show at work, versus the you you show to friends or family? If you’re not open in your day-to-day interactions, a bot that was wouldn’t really represent the real you, would it?

Maybe that is it: a bot is flat, unable to pivot and speak to each person the way you speak to each individual person.  So the author finds a completely different use for the bot, one that gives him deep insight into his own brain and way of processing the world.  Think of it like having a therapist who is always with you because it IS you…

Really, read the whole post and let me know if you’re going to start to use Replika.  I am so curious to hear about another experience.

I recently read a quote that gave me pause.  It came from the stoic text The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. One translation of the 167 AD text went:

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now.

The more common way this quote is written — on inspirational posters and coffee mugs:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it, and this you have the power to remove at any moment.

In other words, if you’re upset, it’s not the event or situation or person causing you to be upset but the power you’re giving that event or situation or person.  You can just snap your fingers and say, “you know what?  I’m not going to be upset anymore.”

I call bullshit.

I always call bullshit when I encounter this attitude.  Does it work on small things: absolutely.  If I’m frustrated because the house is a mess or someone cut me off on the road or someone isn’t returning an email, it is in my power to decide not to let these things bother me.  I know this is true because sometimes they bother me and sometimes they don’t, depending upon my current mood.  If I just received great news, I’ll laugh at the fact that the house is mess and turn it into a funny Facebook status update.  If I’m in a terrible mood and everyone leaves their shoes by the front door… watch out.

The word that makes me call bullshit is “any”: “any external thing” or “anything external.”  Once we lump all pain together and say all emotional pain should be treated equally by our hearts and minds, I’m going to call bullshit.  To paraphrase John Green, some infinites are larger than others.  And in that vein, some pains cannot be contained or changed; they can only be endured.

This community knows you can’t just decide to feel otherwise; at least not on your own timetable.  Feelings change over time, but that is just it: it’s time that wears the rough edges smooth.  There are things that you can do to speed up the process, but you feel things when you’re ready to feel things, and those feelings may not come when you force them but mosey into your heart like a cowboy entering a saloon, casually eyeing the room for danger before deciding to sit down at the counter.

I guess I just showed my hand in how I feel about stoicism in general.

What do you think of the quote?

The Guardian recently had an article about the Scottish island of Eigg.  I am a sucker for all things island-related; the more remote and bleaker, the better.  I’m not against Bora Bora, but my heart starts pulsing like a homing beacon when I see pictures of underpopulated, craggy settings.  I love grey rocks and I cannot lie.

The article opens:

Small islands are like celebrities: they loom far larger than their actual size, they are pored over by visitor-fans and they become public possessions, laden with reputations and attributes they may or may not embody.

Yesssssssssss.

(And it feels pretty damn accurate when I think about my favourite celebrities.  They’re less of the Bora Bora variety; a little more off-the-beaten path and therefore remote, with dark, bleak hearts.)

But there is more:

Fredrik Sjöberg, an author I visited on the tiny Swedish island of Runmarö, believes small islands possess “a peculiar attraction for men with a need for control and security” because “nothing is so enclosed and concrete as an island”.

Ooooh, you had me at control. I loooooooooove being in control.

And:

The literary academic Peter Conrad offers a more Freudian interpretation, suggesting that an island is a “uterine shelter” surrounded, like the foetus, by fluid, and attracting men in search of a mother or a primal source of safety.

Oh. Yuck. You totally had me celebrity swooning and control and then lost me the second you brought fictive pregnancy into it.

Let’s brush that last one under the rug, shall we?

It’s actually a fantastic article about an island community that bought itself, about ownership and freedom.  Our fears about islands and the reality of those spaces.

I think there really are two kinds of people in this world: those drawn to small islands and those who prefer mainland.  In my heart, I’m an islander living on mainland.  What are you?

I was trying to fill out a form in Hebrew recently, and it asked me for a bunch of names.  While you use a normal last name configuration for secular things like banking or mail, you use a lineage configuration in religious situations.  The formula: Name, daughter/son of Name and Name.  That name never changes, even if you change your last name with marriage.

While I clearly know all of my siblings’ names and a few other people’s names off the top of my head, I have to look up everyone else or ask them.  No problem: I had a ton of names written down in our wedding program.

Let’s start by saying that while I remember that the program was a little on the long side, I hadn’t seen it in 16 years.  Josh and I both fell over laughing when we pulled it out of the storage file.  First of all, it was BOUND.  It had so many pages — 22 in total — that our wedding program needed to be bound.  Next, it went into ridiculously minute detail on not only every aspect of the ceremony as well as our feelings and thoughts on every aspect of the ceremony BUT it also included ridiculously minute details about everything that happened OUTSIDE of the ceremony.  Like stuff we did the week before.

But the worst… the absolute worst… it was written so earnestly, so passionately, that we barely stopped short of rubbing each other verbally with goose fat.

Who were these assholes who used to inhabit our body? What made them think printing a 22-page program would be a good idea?

So we want to apologize to everyone who attended our wedding. And we promise: our next life-cycle event program will be brief. Definitely under 16 pages. We clearly learned our lesson.

I started re-reading the Magicians trilogy as a mind cleanser while I plow through a family-building-themed book (that, yes, I will need to discuss afterward because I have big feelings from it).  I keep thinking about a moment that occurs towards the end of the third book.  This is NOT a spoiler.

In The Magician’s Land, Quentin enters a library that contains a strange collection of books.  Each person has a book about their life.  On page 360  – 361, he learns:

These are the books of our lives.  Everyone has one.  See, here we are.  All together, as it happens, one book for each of us … Only people who are alive have them.  They come and go as people are born and die; this shelf goes on for miles in all directions.

They can take them down from the shelves, open them, read about the events of their lives.  If they want.

When Quentin hesitates, the librarian says to him,

Not as tempting as you’d think, is it?  I never opened mine.  There are those in the order who have looked, and I’ve seen their faces … You spend your whole life trying to understand yourself, what your story is about.  And then suddenly it’s all there.  All the answers, spelled out in black and white.

It’s a small moment of understanding, where Quentin responds that he is supposed to be writing his story, not reading it.  And then the scene is over; a choice made.

I’ve thought about this a lot; if I would read my book if I entered that library.  It’s different from a journal because it’s an objective, unemotional retelling of every moment from your life.  You can hover above the words, hover above your own existence, and see all the decisions you made, even the ones you no longer remember.  How strange would it be to read about events that have been erased from your own mind?  You’d have to believe it because it’s in the book, but it would feel like you were reading about a stranger during your early years.

Sometimes I think that I would re-shelve the book and let it go, and other times I think about how unlikely it would be to get the opportunity to read it twice, and the novelty of the experience would draw me to open the cover.  Would I have regrets?  Maybe.  But I think I’d still read the story of my life.

Would you?