Regarding Artificial Intelligence... And Religion

About a year ago, I wrote the following but never published it. Since I don't have anything new to write about tonight, I'm posting this instead. It breaks one of the NaBloPoMo rules - no pre-written content - but och well. I'm practicing being unperfectionistic.


Last night, my hubby and I went out for a much needed date, just the two of us, no kids. Gotta thank the parents for babysitting! We went on a 'high school' date, aka, cheap and cheerful, Taco Bell for dinner and a dollar movie [dollar cinema now closed!]. We saw Johnny Depp's new(ish) movie, Transcendence.

I'm one of those people who after watching a sci-fi movie, especially on the big screen, comes out of the theater feeling all, well, sci-fi-y. I'm the same with horror; first time I saw Final Destination, I drove home certain that street lights were flickering ominously and death was prowling around me to get its due. So after leaving a film about artificial intelligence, I began imagining my brain was a computer, with an uploadable consciousness.

We put on one of our current favorite albums for the drive home, Quiet Company's We Are All Where We Belong, a brilliant 'coming-out atheist' album. My mind started to wander...

"I know this is going to sound so cheesy, but in a way, it's like our brains really are computers, and all it takes is a little virus to deprogram the whole thing."

My husband, not finding this as cheesy as I feared, agreed. (Which is good, considering my programming knowledge is very old and probably obsolete, not having worked with data and coding in ten years.  In other words, please excuse any errors that may now follow.)  I started talking about the moment I specifically got 'infected' with the virus; the moment it dawned on me that Jesus Christ might not actually ever be coming back. I remember that exact moment so distinctly. And seeing it from a computing point of view, I started to imagine the so-called virus corrupting my original programming, slowly at first but eventually wiping out the system completely.

The moment I first considered that Jesus was not coming back was like opening a corrupted file. Over the following weeks and months, the belief system I'd held my whole life began to fall apart. It all started to unravel, like a computer virus scanning all my files and wiping them out. After three years, the system was completely wiped, gone, deleted. The faith that had been my operating system had been destroyed.

But a virus isn't right. A virus corrupts. I don't feel like what happened to me corrupted me. "What else could it be then," I asked my techie husband. "A factory reset?"

"More like an upgrade," he responded. Our default setting, he argued, IS religion. We from infancy anthropomorphize everything; it's the only way we understand the world. We tend to think that the world thinks like us, that everything has meaning or reason. Our ancient ancestors saw the sun and believed it had a spirit and a will. We believe bad things happen for a reason. We imagine that the universe works in a humanly rational way. We want to make sense of why we are here, so we create divine beings to explain our existence, and we rely on this deity for order. Our factory settings kind of are religious.

It takes an upgrade, or perhaps a patch, to rise above that.

This, of course, is highly debatable, depending on what side of the 'program' you fall on. For religious people of all kinds, saying that religion is a factory setting is right! Of course, because God made us that way. God made us to need him. And as we go through life and discover this need for religion, we are pointed to God (or Ra or Allah or Brahma or whomever). To the religious, atheism (or agnosticism) is definitely a virus in the worst sense. A corruption to the system. Something in an email we don't want to open (so we don't open). We stay far away from viruses of doubt to ensure we keep the programs operating as they should, keep the system clean.

But to a non-believer, it's as I said earlier. It's an upgrade. It's taking a system that had faults to begin with and improving upon it. The original OS had some bugs, but there has been new software released that can improve the system's performance. However, you've got to open up that email with the instructions on how to compile the new or changed files to get the patch.

For me, maybe that moment I first realized Jesus may not be coming back like the Bible said he would, wasn't so much a virus that corrupted my system, but a source code modification. How it got there, I'm not sure (was it an executable file, begging the question, IS there a manufacturer someone releasing patches? Are we all actually existing in a virtual reality like The Matrix?), but however it was executed, I'm glad it was. It has definitely improved my system's performance.

Roundabout Rules for the Uninitiated American

Our town just got its first roundabout. There is a second one opening within the next two weeks (supposedly). I have heard countless people stress out, complain, predict doom and disaster, and criticize the city over this.

It's only a roundabout, folks. It's just an intersection with a circle in the middle.  They exist in every country, and so far, have not brought down the apocalypse. They are in fact safer and better at regulating traffic.  Easier on your gas too, cutting down on all that stop-and-starting stop signs make you do (which in essence is better for the environment, pollution-wise).

But I understand that for those who have never used a roundabout (sometimes called a traffic circle or rotary), it can be a little intimidating.  And if you are unsure of the rules of a roundabout, I can see how you might approach one with a little confusion and trepidation.

So I'm giving you five little roundabout rules and tips that will hopefully make you feel a little more confident next time you approach one.

1. Fifirst thing to realize is that roundabouts are basically the same thing as a four-way stop, only with a yield (and an island in the middle).  Imagine that island as a large piece of roadkill you don't want to run over.  You'd bend around it right?  And that's what you do at a roundabout.

The rules of a four-way stop apply.  The person who approaches from the right of you has right of way.  You don't - I repeat DON'T - have to come to a full stop each time you approach.  But you do have to yield if anyone else besides you is approaching or already on the roundabout.

2.  Saying that, unlike a four-way stop where everyone proceeds one at a time, you can actually enter the roundabout simultaneously with someone else if they are coming the opposite direction or are far enough around the roundabout for you to SAFELY enter it too.  This is why it's so effective for traffic control. If you can safely slide in without slowing anyone on the roundabout down, you may proceed.

3.  This is why SIGNALLING is so important on a roundabout.  Here's a breakdown of when and where to signal.

Upon approaching roundabout,
If you are going to take the first exit (on the right), signal RIGHT.
If you are going straight through the roundabout, do NOT signal at all UNTIL you have passed all the exits on the right, then signal right to indicate you are now taking the straight across exit.
If you are taking any exits in between the first right and straight on, don't signal until you have passed the last exit before your exit, then signal right to take your exit.

If you are going left (any exit past straight on), signal LEFT upon approaching the roundabout. This allows everyone else approaching from other exits to know that you are going to be passing by all of them. Keep signalling left until you approach your exit, then signal right to take your exit.

4.  Roundabouts let you legally do U-turns.  You can just approach the roundabout, signal left and keep signalling left until you've made your full U (then signal right to exit). You can even do a full circle if you want, but this is rarely necessary unless you missed your exit, are completely lost or have trouble making decisions and can't cope with too many choices.

5. Go slowly. Always be aware of who is entering, exiting, approaching, and already on the roundabout. Slot in where safe to do so. Stop only when you have to, otherwise, yielding is fine.  Always be aware when you are approaching that someone may be about to cross in front of you, even if they are not signalling.  Not everyone knows to signal and not everyone bothers to signal.  Don't blindly trust other people's signalling either. Just like you wouldn't pull out in front of a car onto a street simply because they are signalling to turn (because you never know if they are actually turning until they start to), do the same with roundabouts.  Roundabouts have rules, but not everyone follows them.

Hopefully, however, this little set of rules will help YOU follow and understand the rules, and maybe teach someone behind you a little about signalling, and hopefully your new roundabout will be a safe and effective traffic installment, not a disaster waiting to happen.

For more information, click on this helpful little graphic of a simple four-way roundabout from Wikipedia.

I am resisting the urge to mark this with the label 'death'.

Change Your Bookmarks!

Change your bookmarks - We're a .com now!

scottandlori.com

Hoping to get both the blog.scottandlori.co.uk and the scottandlori.co.uk to redirect to this blog, too, but I'm not very clever with these things. If you're DNS smart, um, I'd accept your help?!

Anyway - yay!  Been trying to get the .com domain for YEARS!

[ETA:  It all works now!]

May Experience Tek-nik-el Difficulties

Don't be surprised if you see some funny stuff on here today. I'm changing the website for two reasons: 1) Frames are soooo last century and get on people's nerves and 2) Because I blindly paid for another year with our current webspace provider who doesn't support... uh, something that apparently we need for using better blogging services... so we are stuck with Blogger for the time being, and Blogger has moved to a 'new! advanced! wicked cool!' version which freaking sucks if you try to mess with their prescribed skins WHATSOEVER YOU HORRIBLE PERSON.

So, I've been messing with their prescribed skins for a few days on a 'tester' site, and it all worked out great... until I tried to copy the same code into the real site and found for some reason, Blogger wasn't down wi'dat. So... like I said, funny things may happen here today (or for a few days, who knows!). I apologise.

For the record, Scott told me to leave the blog alone until he was around to help if something goes haywire. I'm kinda... uh... not submitting to my husband. But I mean, really! If I wait til he's around, I'll never get a shot at the computer! He's trying to level up to 70 with his druid!

Ciao for now.