Sunday, July 19, 2009
The Simulacram that is Human!!!
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true. - Ecclesiastes
Part I
I am not AI software. I am human. I am not a simulacrum. I am real.
There is a Borgesian fable that is closely associated with the philosophy emphasized in a book called simulacra and simulation by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard . Let me present a slightly abridged (read short) version of it:
There exists a kingdom that is as vast as an ocean. The king, ordered to create a Map of his territory, and he wants’ that to be as detailed as the kingdom itself. The cartographers started to undertake this herculean task and created the said Map. The Map is so dense with information about the territory that it ended up filling the same space as that of the territory. Whenever the kingdom conquered its neighboring kingdoms the Map grew along with the kingdom...
The above tale is an example of a second-order simulacrum where
the distinction b/w image and real starts to break down, and the Map's ability to simulate the kingdom threatens to replace the real kingdom...
But, We (living in the post-modern era), are in the midst of Third order simulacrum (according to the above said book), where the Map precedes and determines the real kingdom and therefore it is no longer possible to strip away the Map to arrive at the kingdom because there is no kingdom in the first place...
The author of this post is not AI software. The author of this post is human. The author of this post is not a simulacrum. The author of this post is real.
Part II
From the Author of this Post:
For people who consider any inquiry into "what is real?" is hogwash, this blog post would be just that - hogwash.
But the real reason for me to choose this arcane topic as my first blog post is to experiment this 3rd order simulacra myself. In philosophy asking the right question is more important than the answer. So my question (which I don't chase further to answer, partly for the sake of keeping my own sanity and partly because the answer is not anyway near the horizon of my mind) is this:
Are we Real? or Are we the necessity created by the precession of the simulacra (image of the Real)?
In this blog I have sporadically mentioned that "I am not AI but Human; I am not Simulacrum but Real". These sentences occur in such unexpected places in this blog, that a reader with keen eyes - one who might think that there is meaning to everything and try to read b/w the lines - might think that the author is trying to be too pretentious to make him believe that what if this post is written by AI software. He would reason that, by asking himself the question "What would be the first thing that comes to my mind if I tell myself to stop thinking about white crows"? But the actual reason of mine is to try to make myself- the author - (and not the reader of this blog) doubt for a few second that what if this blog is really written by AI software. I had in the course of writing this blog, immersed so much in thinking that this blog post is written by AI, that I forgot for a split second (believe me!) that this blog post is written by human. There was no way that I could separate my Real from my Imaginary.
The Image preceded the Real and mixed with the Real from which there is no reverse process to separate the Real from the Image.
PS: How do you even know if this Part II is not written by an AI software???
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. . because it makes sense, and sounds intelligent! (The last rant on my blog is about A.I.)
ReplyDeleteBest wishes