Infinite Quack

 This is a conversation I had with ChatGPT at 5 AM. I'm posting it here without further comment.

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." In the Apple+ series Foundation , inspired by the Isaac Asimov series I enjoyed reading as a kid (but that I remember as being quite different), the Galactic Empire is run for centuries by a single ambitious man, Cleon. His name is an anagram of "clone", and that's his gimmick: as a dying old man, he decided to clone himself repeatedly to extend his reign beyond a human lifetime. There are always three copies of himself alive at any given time: Dawn, who is young and being trained by the elder two; Day, a middle-aged man who has the final say on all decisions in the Empire; and Dusk, the elder statesman who divides his time between imparting wisdom to the younger two, and expanding the palace mural celebrating all of Cleon's accomplishments. When Dusk succumbs to time, they decant another infant clone to be the new Dawn. They're all identical genetically, and behaviorally. This allows them to work in ...

Have you had that feeling before, that your brain's on fire? I hope so. Everyone should, from time to time. The first time I can remember feeling it was when I was six, and discovered computers. I've written about this before , briefly: My grandparents left a TRS-80 at our house while going off to travel, and they also left the manual. As a kid I was a precocious little snot, already able to do some reading by the time I was in kindergarten. The computer's manual explained how to program it in BASIC. I picked up the book and started reading it, trying out the examples. Then I started improvising, mixing and matching the pieces, writing entirely new programs. I don't think my grandparents had any idea what they'd set in motion, quite by accident. I was obsessed . I was enamored of this mysterious machine, that could be given instructions in a language vaguely like English but with much stricter rules, and would dutifully execute with absolute faithfulness. When I tr...

Karl Popper made a big stink about falsifiability . If you’re making a statement about the real world, there had better be some way to disprove (falsify) your statement. Let’s say your statement is “It’s raining”. I should be able to open my window and stick my arm outside and see if it gets wet. Writing as a software developer, I might use the shorter word “testable”. If your assertion is testable, it may be right or it may be wrong. I and others are empowered to figure that out. If the assertion is that life continues after death, how does one render that assertion testable? We must say more. “Ghosts exist”, for example, is testable, as long as your definition of “ghost” includes that they have some observable impacts on the living world. It should be possible to take a picture of a ghost, record a ghost saying something or moving an object. People make ghost hunter TV shows, of course, but the wider scientific community remains unconvinced because this “evidence” doesn’t meet the hi...

Here’s the problem with Superman as a character: He’s boring. Sure, all the Superman movies are packed with exciting drama. He’s facing off against world-ending threats, the odds always seem stacked against him, and though he ultimately triumphs, it always seems to have been a close call. Dramatic plots, no question. Superman movies are exciting, but Superman himself, as a character, generally isn’t. The trouble is that Superman is, traditionally, perfect: a demi-god, who always turns out to have whatever power he needs to defeat whatever enemy he faces. He can fly, he brushes off bullets and explosions, he can survive in the vacuum of space, and he’s always optimistic and kind. The trouble with a perfect character is that it leaves no room for character growth. We may admire people who seem to have it all, but (as Superman literally is) they also strike us as rather alien. They aren’t relatable. We look up to people who can face any challenge. We love people who have flaws. Making us ...