Yo Sense of Yoself

 

As yo sense of yoself revolves around our sense of Self, this article may prove interesting.

Some core concepts from the article:

-The idea that certain behaviors/processes can be "reduced" to specific areas in the brain (vmPFC).

-Mental time travel

-Self-reference effect

-Confabulations

-The self as not static or unchanging, but fluid.

-Memory as a form of imagination!

-Most importantly for social psychology, "future thought has played a significant role in human evolution. This ability may have contributed to the development of language, and it has a key role in human interactions, where the vmPFC is central to evaluating and taking advantage of social context."

What are your thoughts after reading this article?

For me, thinking that, if we follow (loosely) the logic of the article, society is tied to interactions, which are tied to language, which is tied to future thought, which is tied to the vmPFC...renders our human situation as tenuous, almost held hostage to the development of a distinct brain area. If our human history had been just every so slightly altered, our vmPFC could have developed differently and "we" (all humans) would be very different.

I am interested to hear your thoughts.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-our-brain-preserves-our-sense-of-self/

Bittersweet

 Two feelings at once.

Is this possible? Or is it a myth, like multitasking?

I'll leave the answering to the folks that study feelings.

But I can tell you this, assisting your youngest (and last) with potty training and experiencing the joy and pride that comes along with this, WHILE ALSO realizing you won't have these real-time moments again is as bittersweet as it gets.

And since we're rolling with this "at the same time" vibe, I'll remind you that drummers have four limbs doing different things at the same time (while keeping the time). On top of this, you have wunderkids like Don Henley singing while these four limbs do their thang. 

Does Don Henley have four brains? Is he some sort of octopus on lead vox for The Eagles? 

I'll leave the answering to the folks who study brains, octopuses, voxes, and eagles.

But I can tell you this, this is bad ass:

Nothing Compares To You

 I don't know if you've heard the Chris Cornel cover of Nothing Compares To You.

But you should.

During my half-hour drive to take my eldest (now 10) son to swim, the song came on.

Tis a powerful rendition laddy. 

And me being the emotional sensitive guy I am, well you know, I had them feels.

The lyrics and the rendition brought back some pretty powerful memories of a break-up in my oh so sensitive twenties. One hard part was the realization of being rejected.

Now here's the thing, this ten year-old reading in the back is oh so sensitive, like his old man. And my job is to help him along in this world.

How does one teach about rejection? Minimize it by giving it context?: everyone will experience it; take the long view. Explain it away? Rationalize it? Embrace it some sort of Leibnizian best of all possible worlds/what doesn't kill us makes us stronger sort of way?

I cannot save him from rejection, even though I know his sensitivity will make it so damn powerful. I know he will look inside and...take it to heart.

I know this.
I feel this.

But dem feels, so powerful; so alive; so sensitive to the rejection but also the love.

Sensitive through and through.

"I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant..."

David Lee Roth - Breaking Down Walls, 4th Walls

 All three, count 'em three, kiddos in the car. Mass hysteria, as usual. I forget where we were going, because, it's mass hysteria with three kids in the car.

Anyhoo, Van Halen's Unchained comes on the Sirius XM Radio and because it's Van Halen, I dig it.

Now I've written about Eddy on this hear blogarooski, but I can't remember if I've written about Diamond Dave.

Till now.

If you don't know Unchained, give it a listen:

Just killer isn't it. 1981 Killer stuff.

Three kids in the car but fourth walls being broken down.

What is the fourth wall?

Per your pals at wiki, it's: 

a performance convention in which an invisible, imagined wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot.

My first experience with this was, of course, one of my favorite movies: Airplane.

Ted Striker breaks down that fourth wall, looks at me, yeah me, and says, "What a pisser."

God I love Airplane. Airplane II too. 22.

What's all this got to do with Diamond Dave?

Well, Dave loved his little talky talk during Van Halen tunes: "What the fuck, I'll pay you for it; What do you think the teacher's gonna look like this year; Reach down between my legs and ease the seat back."

You remember.

But on Unchained, Dave ropes in Producer Ted Templeman. 

That's Ted, top left.

"C'mon Dave...gimme a break."

It comes into the music from the outside. From outside the studio, into the mix. 

Ted told me, "What a pisser," and broke down a wall, and per Dave, Ted Templeman told me, after a wall came down, that he wanted Dave to give him a break.

By instinct or creative genius (or a mix), Dave broke down a wall.

You may not think, behind all that flash and 80's schtick and the teased hair and groupies that Dave is an artist, but you'd be wrong.

He is...an artist. The myth is that one can't fun and be an artist. An artist is serious and concentrated and thoughtful and committed.

Maybe, definitely, behind the hair and the "outfits", Dave is all those things...and fun.

It's a forced dichotomy you doofus. I know it's hard to believe. 

But the record(s) speaks for its self. 

Truman Capote, AI, and Comedy

I recently reread Truman Capote's La Côte Basque from my Great Esquire Fiction book and it prompted my research into this story, which prompted this post on Artificial Intelligence and Comedy.

In researching this story and Capote, google kept popping up things about Capote's IQ. After I finished my research of this story (and how it basically ruined Capote's life and resulted in his slow suicide via drugs and alcohol) I went back to the Capote IQ.

Now the internet isn't exactly the place for unequivocal truth, but let's say that Capote's "internet" IQ of 215 is close to the truth. 

Now we know that AI can now write novels and poetry and there is cause to believe it can be "good" or "decent" writing. 

Because AI is a matter of pattern recognition. Recognize enough patterns and you can create, be it skyscrapers or stories. 

This is a crucial point. 

So I thought of comedy. If AI can recognize the parts/patterns of a joke, (set-up, punch line, etc.), it can in theory, create comedy.

So in time we can expect computers to be comedians?

Naw.

Part of what computers and AI can't access or pattern recognize, is feelings. Humans have feelings. And pain. Certainly what drove part of Richard Pryor's comedy was pain. Part of what drove George Carlin's comedy was anger.

Can computers pattern recognize their way to pain or anger?

In my estimation, no.

Pain and anger, (and I say this in my 51st year on the planet, and in therapy), require a biography, a full narrative to draw from.

Computers and AI don't have a past, replete with feelings and memories.

Can computers and AI pattern recognize their way to feelings and memories?

You can see where this is going. An infinite regress, a homonculus with a homonculus with a...

Kurzweil is probably correct about the future and the singularity may be near. And he's probably correct that we shouldn't fear it or the algorithms.

Probably.

I have always been more afraid of humans than anything else, being a student of history.

I certainly do not fear robots and AI creating anything artistic that will rival what humans can do. 

Capote, IQ of 215 and all, was, per Nietzsche, human, all too human, and imperfect and flawed and capable of sadness and regret and shame, in incredible proportions.

Ah feelings, nothing more than feelings.
Trying to forget my feelings...

AI can't feel or forget.

Our (human) art is safe.

Just not from humans.

Get it?

Stupid copywriting, I didn't want to do it anyway

I recently finished Behave: The Biology of Humans At Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky and was taken aback at how he points out what socioeconomic status and early trauma can do to a person. 

Namely, me.

And here I sit, in a nice house, reading a book for a copywriting class I get to take...for free when a certain passage hits me and I realize just how correct Sapolsky is.

The book for the copywriting class is The Well Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Commercial Freelancer in Six Months or Less, by Peter Bowerman.

The chapter is Nuts and Bolts and the Passage is The Ebb and Flow of Work, where he writes:

"...in most cases, human nature usually prevails: we market a bunch, get work, stop marketing, only to resume after the job's done. The result? Alternating periods of being swamped and dead in the water. C'est la vie..."

And in 4 sentences I know I can't be a freelance copywriter.

(Disclosure: I was not planning on being a freelance copywriter or a non-freelance copywriter. I'm taking a class to learn some stuff.)

But the thought of not having a job and not having an income, meager it may be, is too anxiety provoking to give this career a second thought. 

Growing up with 8 people in a 2 bedroom home that could have six inches of water in the basement means I have to keep my world small and routine and perhaps the most important part of that routine is money (again meager) coming in.

I can't ebb and flow with money, I can't C'est la vie. I won't make it.

Why?

Socioeconomic status and trauma.

We are thrown into the world, with no choice of where we land or into which hands and homes. 

I have a choice now but it is limited. Free will is limited at best, an illusion at worst. 

Stupid copywriting, I didn't want to do it anyway.

Luv you dad.

Well here we are faithful Heavy Levity blog follower, September 21, 2021 and yours truly is now fifty and one years of age. As the religious say in america, holy shit. 

First the facts: I'm a mess mentally...and have been for a long time. Angry, bitter, incompetent, lazy, not too bright, unintelligent, redundant, with a touch of pedant at best and a slap across the face at worst. But on the bright side, I completed a half-marathon on Saturday morning with a time of 1:46:53. (My last half was in 2017 and I finished in 1:51:17.)

Tis funny because I think platonic dualism is the cause of much suffering but in a Leibnizian fashion, my mental suffering helps my almost best of all possible worlds running.

I kid.

Second the fun: my coworkers presented me with a card and sang a lively happy birthday. When I told them it was reminiscent of how they used to sing it at Chi Chi's...NONE of them even knew of Chi Chi's.

Funny haha and funny old-as-hell. I didn't think it was like I was talking about a printing press or a phonograph machine but I guess I went and dated myself.

Third the love: The fam didn't have time to celebrate over the weekend with all the activities and I was happy my wife gave me the four plus hours to get out in the morning, run, and not get back until around 10 or so, while she took all the tots to gymnastics and baseball. And today doesn't bode well because I am gone from about 8 to 8 and the mornings being absolute chaos trying to get everything and everyone together and out the door on time.

But get this: I'm walking my daughter from the car to the check-in table at daycare and I ask her, "You gonna do a good job today?" And in just the cutest fashion in the world, as only she can say it she says, "Yes." But she hangs on that s for just a little bit and it comes out with an unmistakable yesss. So cute and endearing. But it gets better.

Then, she says, "Luv you Dad." Oh man, I lit up like an xmas tree. Totally unprompted but totally accepted and completely needed. 

And with four words, I tell you, one of the best birthdays ever.