hi readers. yesterday i made a blog post but my computer froze near the end of it which made me lose my progress. the blog post was originally just me spiraling about how much humanity sucks and how the human experience sucks and how much stuff i needed to do but was still behind on doing. it was kind of emotional and made me feel bad but i've been thinking more about it and have a different perspective on it now.
this started because i read "my lesbian experience with loneliness". it was a super good manga and i really enjoyed reading it. but i read it at kind of a weird time. that day (two days ago), i had this schedule: woke up at 8am, looked at phone for 30 minutes (i was reluctant to start working and wanted to delay it), ate breakfast while watching one episode of dragon ball, arrived at work at about 10:30am, worked on grading an assignment, left work at around 7:30pm, watched one episode of dragon ball with dinner, and then sat at my desk. the issue is what came afterwards: i was supposed to do more with my day besides just grading, so i told myself to read one research paper before sleeping. this would have taken about two hours to do if i focused, so i would have had enough time to read it and go to sleep on time.
but as you can guess, i read "my lesbian experience with loneliness" instead of the paper like i was supposed to. this means i was one more day behind on reading my papers, which means i would need to compensate on it the next day, which means i would need to spend 6 hours reading instead of the regular 4 hours, which is already hard enough as it is but combined with all the other deadlines im missing just seems a bit impossible.
the manga itself also made me feel several different emotions. the author writes about a lot of different problems they were having including convincing themselves to take better care of their body, to get themselves to go to work and sleep and eat at regular times, and more things along those lines. the way they write of their problems makes it feel like they had no control over them; their eating disorder was something they tried very hard to stop but just couldn't. this is very scary!
subconsciously, whenever i heard of people like this, i would always (subconsciously at least) think "if you put a little more effort in, you'd avoid this issue and everything would be perfect and the world is a place of sunshine and beauty but only to people who really try and perceive it that way." that and "everybody can attain the same exact level of success if they just tried super hard." of course, we should all know that this idea is completely untrue. there are many different instances of people being needlessly punished completely outside of their control causing them to suffer with ailments like physical disabilities, eating disorders, poverty, etc. i know the first idea that "your issues are your own fault" are convenient and prevalent in my own brain but jeez, none of it works that way in the real world.
you can do a very simple thought experiment to prove that, actually. "does evil exist in the world" is one of the biggest philosophical questions humans have been asking since humans gained the mental capacity to ask questions. let's assume that human perception is completely determined in its entirety by the positions and momentums of atoms; our senses of perception generate electrical signals in our nervous systems, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth that are fed into the neural network inside of our brain to lead to movement, thoughts, and memories. if this is true, then humans can be considered a state (e.g., a "tensor" of "parameters", if we're following an analogy of neural networks in deep learning). perception is considered a similar tensor of values, and the brain is a function that both (1) takes this inputted tensor and feeds them through the brain function to yield a list of signals to be sent to the body to do movement and such, and (2) adjusts the brain's existing state by using reinforcement learning to cause future decisions to be made in a more intelligent way.
if all of this sounds reasonable, then lets go a little further. if we interpreted the brain as a state of variables, then imagine a fancy machine that could read the positions and momentum of every particle inside of the brain and feed them into a physics simulator. this would constitute our deep-learning parameter tensor. then, we could directly input values into the simulation-human's perception: if smell is a list of electrical values (either the neurons are "activated" or "deactivated" to keep things simple, or we can reduce it further to the realm of positions and momentums of electrons or whatever else), then we should be able to input a new list of values into the "smell" input (e.g., where "the smell of fish" is a list like [on, off, off, off, on, on, off, ...]). then, we could see what happens to the simulation-human after giving them the values and waiting a few seconds.
we're getting somewhere with this. since a human (in our example, at least) is simply a conglomerate of parameters and a transition function that modifies the parameters, it should respond exactly the same regardless of whether or not its within a simulation space. if we perfectly simulated physics, and if we perfectly gave the human the correct perception inputs into their brain, then they should respond exactly the same way in the simulation versus in the real world. whether or not such a "particle-scanner" exists in the real world is debateable, but if we assumed that wasn't a limitation, then this experiment shows that humans are just physical responses to our environments.
what does that mean? it means "free will isn't real." what you think is free-will is just your involuntary response to electrical signals generated by your current and past environments. obviously, you can think to yourself "it is my decision to raise my hand right now," but if the former paragraphs are true, then your brain simply generated that thought as a result of your upbringing and current environmental state. it seems like "you" thought of that idea only because you exist in the environment. "you" are not a separate state from the environment, despite it seeming like you are.
if "free will" is not a real concept, then nobody can be "blamed" per-se for what happens to them. if "decisions" are not real, then there is no concept of "deciding" to be a better person, or deciding not to eat too much food, or deciding to go to work on time. a person that appears to be very motivated to work is actually just a conglomerate of extremely favorable coincidences that aligned their genetics with an environment that encouraged their growth (and this can go both ways; "environment that encouraged their growth" can mean "grew up in a stable household with lots of money" or "grew up in an abusive environment that lit the fire under them to escape that world and make it big somewhere else"). if this is true, then you cannot blame anybody for any of their successes or failures. their inclination to use drugs or sleep all day can be interpreted as "pure laziness" or "an inevitable consequence of their environment", but in both cases the onus is on consequences outside of their control.
of course this does not justify you for refusing to get better or become more successful, this just means not to put too much stock into something that seems very very hard for you to do. note that if you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, that emotion is caused by forces ultimately outside of your control, but maybe the inevitability of physics will cause you to put in the work to get out of bed. this is a weird concept and i dont know if i can explain it good enough but bear with me: imagine a ball on the top of a hill. the ball is given the gift/misfortune of consciousness (but note, this does not mean it can actually influence its environment, it simply means the ball thinks it can influence its environment). the outcome of "the ball does/does not roll down the hill" is completely determined by some other deterministic factor (e.g., "if there is an invisible particle named "Pariclons" near the hill then the ball will roll, otherwise the ball will stay"). this ball is at the very top of the hill, and it realizes it wants to roll down, and the ball (inevitably, outside of its own control) thinks to itself "i can roll down the hill if i exert all of my energy to do it". so it does, it puts in lots and lots and lots of energy, and then it rolls down the hill. it does not realize that there is a fertile vein of Particlon's right underneath the surface of the hill, which are the real ultimate explanation if its successful roll down the hill. you and i, as "balls that live on hills", see this analogy and think "if rolling down the hill is considered as a success, then the ball shouldn't even try since it will always roll down the hill," but this idea misinterprets my argument i'm making. i'm saying that the ball will always, no matter what, exert lots and lots and lots of effort in order to roll down the hill. the "thought process" is a complete physical process that truly does not have any "free will" aspect of it. we can adjust this scenario very slightly and still come to the same results: imagine if effort does influence the flight of the ball, but the desire to exert effort is determined by the presence of Particlons in the area. this does not change anything: the ball will put in lots and lots and lots of effort into rolling down the hill, and it will come to be very successful in its goal, but it does not have the capacity to realize their success was due to Particlons.
i think i'm losing the plot a bit so here's my thesis: we are a part of that second scenario. effort does determine success, but it only goes so far. there are veins of Particlons scattered throughout the world but only in very specific places (perhaps you have a stache of Particlons in your pocket right now!). effort will influence your ability to succeed, but your ability to even exert effort in the first place is completely outside of your control because it is entirely determined by Particlons. so yes: you need to put in lots and lots and lots of effort in order to succeed. you need to try and take a shower every day and eat three meals and go to work and talk to people and brush your hair and teeth. but your mental capacity for completing these actions is determined not by yourself, your "free will", or your level of motivation or energy, but rather by physics and "Particlons".
this sucks for several reasons. if life is deterministic, then i may not be able to obtain the level of success i want to obtain. maybe the organization of particles in the world are just not in the correct arrangement. but it doesn't mean i should just give up and let the world do its thing because effort does affect my environment and i want my future to be good. even though "destiny" is real in this situation (the same future/outcomes will occur no matter what because everything in the world is determined by physics alone), effort is a part of my reality, so i must put in effort regardless even though effort is determined by forces outside of my control.
generative AI is a big thing right now and its gotten me thinking about how much life generally sucks for most people. most people's lives are bad and unenjoyable, its just those brief short-lived moments that make it worthwhile. there are people who live in trash houses with roaches and rats as roommates and the only reason they don't kill themselves is because their brains are wired to perceive that as acceptable, as something they can work with. generative AI is getting so good at looking realistic that its hard to imagine how much it will change our lives even a decade into the future. this has given me lots of anxiety, but the thing i keep telling myself is "stop worrying about global issues because you are a local phenominon." the world is gonna do its thing, but i can affect my own success right now by doing the things that i need to do.
maybe researchers won't be needed in the future because AI will get so good at proposing experiments and making connections in research topics that humans won't be able to compare. regardless, that is completely outside of my control. the only thing i can do is things that affect me, so im going to put my effort into completing my work right now. the world will turn and everybody else will move without my intervention because it has continued to do that throughout all of history so worring about the fate of humanity will not matter in the slightest. i am just a passenger along for the ride. i think i can attain success by devoting effort to it, even though ultimately everything is beyond even my own control.
i have more to say about this topic but i am tired of writing. i need to work but i am tired of that too. i am tired of lots of things, really. so i dont really know what to do. i have my to-do list and i can just complete the items on there in order to stay on task but, man, that sucks. im exhausted, and its not like anything ultimately matters. but thats a pessimistic idea. i need to get a girlfriend this is the big thing thats keeping me going. i should not have read "my lesbian experience with loneliness" because it has amplified my desire for physical contact with another living creature by 1,000,000x. aarrgghh..! i dont want to write any more so thank you for reading. i'll have another blog post soon.
- Sophie