Basement Chronicles

Disconnect

"It won't be long enough, but it may never end."

I know, I know.

Went to go see "Supersize Me" tonight. Usually I'd be kind of angry about paying $8.75 for a queasy stomach, but I think this was worth it this time around. It was the story of a guy who ate nothing but McDonald's for a month. He gained 20lbs and his liver started to look like he was an alcoholic. He was lethargic and depressed, among other things, as well. Definitely enough to keep me away from fast food for a while. For ye of little faith out there, its understandable, but I'm gonna see if I start feeling any better.

After standing around watching friends try and make cars run over a 2-liter bottle of soda (8th grade all over again), I decided to be lame and come home. There I caught up with my family, who I feel like I haven't seen for a good long while. Since my dad and I had gone to an evolution seminar at my sister's church, my sister wanted to know what we thought about it.

I agreed mostly with what my dad said about things as he and I are pretty avid Darwin supporters. However, in the midst of most of the stuff my sister kept citing her belief in a lot of the things that she'd learned in her time at the church. Really, I've only been back from school for 2 and some months, and I guess I never really realized to extent to which my sister has changed in my time away. Simply amazing. What I realized at the same time was that what I was saying was just as much a belief as what she argued.

I've never done any research. I've never watched evolution. I can piece together what I've seen on the Discovery Channel, what I hear here and there about DNA and cancer research, but in the end I'll never really know. While not logical, its awfully disheartening to think of the things in life we believe in for no reason, or without substantiation.

I guess where this is all leading is to how we, as humans, are built. For my chosen career I am essentially an engineer, or more specifically, a systems engineer. I make small machines that work together with bigger machines to perform a certain task. Tools to use tools, tools to create tools, so on and so forth.

While I can't imagine what system ticks away behind our minds, I can understand that any system has its limitations. Alan Turing, basically the inventor of computer science, theorized that it is not possible to build a computational machine, no matter how simple or complicated, that can determine whether something else is a "valid" program.

While this may seem flawed to some, as obviously programs exist that perform similar tasks, it comes from the fact that it is near impossible to build a program that can understand other programs and their function. This is why artificial intelligence, or at least the kind we've imagined in science fiction, is far far from what we wish it could do.

All this is a bit abstract, I know. I have a lot of time to waste at work, and when I'm not sneakily trying to fix stuff at work, I read the AI news group over at google. Gimme a break, I'm bored.

But seriously. What I wonder sometimes is if how we function follows similar rules. We can obviously understand other systems, it is part of our imaginative abilities that set us apart from the rest of the oxygen breathing population of the planet. But what limitations do we contain? If at all? Are we anything like Turing said, able to understand anything but ourselves?

If we do have limitations, I have to wonder how they manifest in our daily lives. In a way, I think that belief is how we cope with some of limitations. It is impossible in our lifespans to learn all that there is to know about the world. I will never know if evolution occurs, or if there is a God. But I can believe either, or both, even if it defies the very logic I'm trying to surpass on blind faith. When I think about this stuff, I don't burst into flames, there is no system fault, and usually I don't go crazy about it if I find one of my beliefs to be incorrect.

This is something that I think we've failed to achieve in our attempts at artificial intelligence. And yes, those that have read the Hitchhiker's series will laugh, because they specifically address this. They say that in order to acheive artificial intelligence, they program a robot to believe that it needs to be happy and not sad and everything works out in the end. What its happy and sad about they leave up to their robot.

It was at this point I zoned back into my dad and sister continuing to argue about how humans began on the Earth, and how we've supposedly evolved over an unfathomable amount of time from a simple amoeba to a queasy teenage computer programmer.

I wanted to tell my sister that we share some 90% of our DNA with any other living organism on the planet, and that every cell in our body shares the exact form and function of any living thing.

But what does that prove to her?

Its just what I believe.