If At All It Matters

ANUSHREE RAI
5 min readMay 1, 2021
Welcome to the Roulette

What’s more of ‘make-believe’- The superior controller of this universe or the randomness of our very existence? You might not have pondered over the same, but here’s the thing- this is how it was supposed to be until now (or not, you’ll find out).

Premise

Humans have loved the delusional myth of being in the driver's seat, continuously making attempts to make sense out of the most minuscule incidents. As if there’s a pre-written sketch and our characters ought to align with that of the given storyline. But I am glad that the Stephen Hawkings-Eientein duo showed us the quantum probabilities from the astrophysics aspect, depicting that we were just spectators to an ever-increasing entropy. And that everything is utter random, even you reading this write-up at this very moment.
Nevertheless, the ‘go with the flow’ approach towards life does indicate that maybe ignorance IS bliss, but dear, we love the good poison over plain life, don’t we! (*inserts wine emoji*)

Thanks for dropping by. Let me tell you, this is what happens when we either have much time at our hands or the conditions around us are gloomy and we’re clinging on to our inner compass, or neither. I hadn’t actually planned a structure around this one, and I’ll leave you to the mess hereby. Feel free to pause and look over the terms I might not have abstracted enough.

In the latest episode of SimpleKen, Kanan Gill says that in your head, if there’s a voice other than your own vocal cords talking, you’ll eventually dive into this ocean of rhetoric writing one day. But if that voice performs in your head as well, you’ll become a comedian.

The Inevitable

The puppets to our own interpretations, I wonder if the simulator ever sees this (accidental?) feature as a bug. Either way, for this iteration (the Big Bang to the Big Crunch is a Dr. Strange loop), it’s a beautiful prison with the exception of the prisoner and the jailor both being you. Plato and Rousseau could have taken all the philosophy to the graves. But then, the high of mixing this with the so-called tech would intoxicate whom?

Let’s taste the cocktail.

At Your Own Risk

Here are some (of the many) questions I’ve had some sleepless Eurekas over (You know who you all are). I will keep the order bottom-up, from specific to an umbrella. Again, leaving some food for thought here instead of the answers:

Is a world-class guitarist (read John Mayer) as ‘intelligent’ as a chess grandmaster? (Leaving Alpha zero out of the choices here).
* Subjectively, intelligence, for example, is not quantifiable but a malleable physical state of the brain, which ‘seems’ like a ‘virtue’.
* The professional chaos out of comparisons based on an ‘absolute intellect ’ seems absurd then isn’t it?
* If ‘skill’ could be represented as a graph, whose root node is our childhood capacity and the possible paths one can take are the branches of that tree, it’s just that we are far along in a branch at a certain point, oblivious of the depth and complexities of the other branch. Now the capacity to mere ‘touch’ multiple branches in a single life span is commendable.

Will we ever have a strong AI?
* When we don’t have enough data to train the models, we tune into the butterfly effect, accounting for the slightest of the things which could alter the target variable.
* Even when fractals validate this, one might attune this as a situational (and helpless) defense against the ‘mighty’ way the world operates. (Carefully tiptoeing around your boundary on the God vs No God xD)
(If you haven’t read on fractals yet, it will amaze you!)

The Butterfly Effect

Is Ignorance really a bliss?
Think of this as a thought experiment. What’s comfier- no struggles, or familiar but tamed struggles.

* Okay hold on. If you’re curious about this, I have some bad news- it’s not in your hands anymore. Here’s how:
* Imagine 2 groups of people- A (The blissfully unaware of this very question/fact), B (The cursed crackheads trying to think of every angle possible).
* The paradox is: once you are B (you’ll know, dear philosopher), you can never be A. Curiosity floats your boat, period.
* In other words, stop making set A smaller by propagating the statement: ‘ignorance is bliss’. Because once they know it’s a bliss, it’s not ignorance (of the ignorance) anymore xD.

Is finding the purpose of life really essential?
* We’ve all had this crisis one time or the other if we believe that yes, there’s supposed to be a purpose. Quoting the absurdity again, is it really so?
* Nihilism sets in here and so does this ramble.

Trying not to sound like a feel-good Guru here, but this too shall pass (if at all you want it to) :)

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