An anecdote

I would like to share today a memory from a few years ago which I like to think is quite relevant to the state of today's society.

In middle school, we had recess on a big turf soccer field surrounded by a track. The track was enclosed by a ring of real, not entirely tamed grass. On the left, in front of the school, was a strip of pavement of the sort people play wallball on. On the right was a second soccer field, which we were forbidden to enter because the high schoolers sometimes had gym there, and between the big soccer field and the school was a small playground (the kind that doesn't even have a swing set) which only a small minority of the student population used regularly. Directly in front of all this was the soccer field, and the track, and the ring of quaintly wild grass, and beyond that, on the far side of the track and the field, the real grass sloped up towards a tall chain link fence, which protected the children from the quiet row of residential houses which lay behind it (or vice versa).

It was in that direction I was generally looking--as it makes sense to do, when one is walking out the door having just finished their lunch--when I saw something. It was barely a flicker, and it would have seemed unlikely to me that it was anything substantial--yet I knew I had seen some sort of movement. I immediately took off running, feet pounding against the pavement, then grass, then rubber track and turf and rubber track and grass again, uphill this time, until I reached the fence, panting, and I saw that I was right in hurrying over.

Now, it's entirely possible that I had simply seen the leaves rustling in the wind, which had alerted me coincidentally to the thing which I gawked at presently, but I was and am very proud of my good eyesight, and I like to think I saw from almost 80 yards what I saw from just several feet: a falcon, peregrine, as I'm fond of remembering it (though I have never known the slightest thing about the identification of birds of prey), pulling the entrails free from a small, grey rodent with its small yellow beak. I was excited, and I watched the falcon, or hawk, or whatever it was (though it did not look pompous enough to be an eagle, I'm certain) eat its just-caught lunch, right in a woodpile in some unaware persons backyard. I stood very still, as not to scare it away, for several minutes. Periodically I looked behind me, to see if anyone else noticed what I was doing. Sometimes I would see a friend or acquaintance, someone I was comfortable talking to, making their way past ten feet below. Each time I would motion frantically with my hands, press my finger to my lips, try to get them to come over quietly. But they didn't get it, or more likely, they didn't see me, and they just walked on past.

Eventually, I got frustrated, and the excitement was boiling over--so I began whispering, very quietly. "Hey guys, psst, look at this!" They didn't hear me. So I resorted to a quiet shout: "HEY GUYS C'MERE! LOOK WHAT I FOUND!"

I ran halfway down the hill to meet my friends and shepherd them to my wonderful secret.

But when I came to the fence again, the hawk was gone.

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett, Part 1

Every few months or so, my local library will have a used book sale. I usually get a pretty good haul, and the books are so cheap I grab anything that looks even vaguely interesting. For this reason, most of the books soon find themselves sitting on my shelves, unread, until they catch my eye and I pick them up again.

Yesterday, I stayed up very late, and when I finally stumbled into bed I couldn't get to sleep, despite being exhausted. So I looked to the bookshelf on my right and there was a big, heavy, boring-looking book--Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett. I am reasonably sure I picked it up only to have it sit impressively on my bookshelf, perhaps half-convincing myself I would read it someday--after which I could, of course, correctly claim that I had in fact read that book, and talk about it with whatever level of pretension I chose.

Speaking of pretension, what a title. Right off that bat, I'm thinking, 'well here's someone with an ego'. Look, I can explain consciousness! No matter that nobody else can! The supposedly legitimizing testimony from The New York Times, quietly set across the top of the front cover--"One of the Ten Best Books of the Year"--did very little to assuage my doubts. However, I was and am confident that this book will be very interesting, if boldly erroneous. Daniel C. Dennett also coauthored The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter, author of my favorite non-fiction book of all time, Godel, Escher, Bach (which, come to think of it, also believes it understands consciousness and can correctly explain it to the unprepared layman). 

The first chapter, "Prelude: How are hallucinations possible?" seems to confirm all these suspicions. Dennett begins harmlessly enough with the famous "brain in a vat" thought experiment. Just a few pages later, he has convinced himself that the scenario is technically impossible, that the world we see must exist on some level, because no computer is powerful enough to fabricate it.

Now, I'm certainly no expert in philosophy, but I know a bit about it, and it seems to me that declaring the scenario "beyond human technology" is a huge cop-out. The problem with Dennett's argument is that all of his evidence relies on science--data humans have obtained from the physical world around us, over generations. Even something as simple as the tactile sensation of your index finger running through sand is "computationally intractable on even the fastest computer". That statement relies on what we know about energy, matter, and logic in our universe. What if a different kind of computer exists in the "outer universe" of which you are not aware, the one in which you are hallucinating your own existence? What if nothing physically exists at all, and you are simply a magical free consciousness, creating a world for itself to live in? Why would a brain in a vat be the only mode of not-existing (in the "real" sense), if there is no guarantee that we even have brains, or anything similar? Furthermore, Dennett argues that a simulation would never be realistic enough to fool us--but how can you know, if you have never experienced the "real" reality?

There is one point I will agree on, however, and that's Descartes' famous declaration: "I think, therefore I am". Clearly something exists with which to do the thinking, doubting and hallucinating--though it might not exist "physically", in our sense of the word; it might not exist on our level of reality. Who says our reality is the "real" one, anyway?

Like I said, I'm no philosopher, so feel free to discuss or correct me in the comments--if you know this stuff, I really appreciate it, and if you don't, well then you have no reason to be intimidated.

Stay tuned for discussion of the following chapters!

Greetings from Northeastern suburbia!

Hello all. This is the first post, so I suppose I will tell you some things about me.

I'm currently 15 years old. I'm a freshman at a private school (which I can only afford because my mom works there) somewhere in the Northeastern United States. I have a lot of interests--music, science, reading, art, math. And I love to write. Which you probably guessed already, because I'm writing right now, of my own volition. School just let out, so I won't have to write anything against my will until September! 

So, for the next few months, I will try to document the things I do with my ample free time. I am going off to camp at some point, but that's not for a while.

Since I don't have much else to say at the moment, here's a low-quality (cell phone) video I shot a few weeks ago.  No, I did not alter or add any sounds to the video. I barely edited it at all. The only things making noise are a bass bow, a ride cymbal, and an amplifier. (No, you don't have to listen to the whole thing. I understand. You have things to do. There are some cool things in the middle and towards the end, but you can get the gist of it after about five seconds).