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Consciousness Itself: Part Two

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" We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. " Andrew Niccol; The Truman Show " Oh dear. I think you'll find Reality's on the blink again. " Douglas Adams; The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Escaping from Escapism Philip K. Dick (a writer whose relationship with Reality was often, shall we say, pliable ) wrote, among other masterworks,  The Man in the High Castle ; a landmark "alternate history" novel in which Germany and Japan had won World War II. Most of the action of the narrative takes place in the Japanese-controlled Western sector of the former United States, and follows a diverse assortment of characters whose lives and fortunes interconnect in various ways. One of those characters is an older Japanese businessman, Nobusuke Tagomi. After a particularly disturbing and traumatic experience, Tagomi desperately tries to find some inner peace, and is inexplicably transported (for a few enigmatic minutes) to our wor...
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Consciousness Itself: Part One

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" On its journey back, it amassed so much knowledge... it achieved consciousness itself. It became a living thing ." Captain Kirk, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,  Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!  Or that the Everlasting had not fixed  His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! Oh God! God!  How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable  Seem to me all the uses of this world!  Fie on't!  Oh fie fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden  That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature  Possess it merely.  That it should come to this! Hamlet, in the throes of an existential crisis, contemplating the horror of his own existence. Oh, for the love of...  Sit down, Rebekah. Sit the hell down before you collapse on the floor.  My heart is beating like a trapped bird in a cage, Shawm. You really know how to pull the rug out from under someone. You... you are a menace. How can you ask me that so calmly? " Ho...
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Do Androids Worship Electric Gods?

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" ...to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before its data banks had been connected up it had started from first principles with 'I think therefore I am' and had got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off. " Douglas Adams; The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy The times we're living in; they're just gettin' stranger. In 2022, a Google employee claimed that A.I. was "sentient".  Engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines at the time when he announced his belief that Google's then-embryonic A.I. system was developing "feelings" and was showing signs of consciousness. As a potentially sentient being, he said, its needs and wants should be respected. Google issued a statement at the time, strongly denying Lemoine's claims and confirming they had swiftly fired the delusional guy. The very idea that A.I. mi...
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The Awokening

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Part One: Gloria Steinem in Hell Gloria Steinem is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The news of her death at the beginning of this month was not exactly unexpected (she was 92; it was going to happen at some point) but I confess it hit me harder than I had thought it would. To begin with, there were the portents. For decades, Steinem has been the face and the voice of the women's movement in the US and beyond, tirelessly striving to demonstrate that a person's gender does not need to be the be-all and the end-all of their identity. It's thanks to her that we no longer simply assume that marriage, motherhood and domestic subservience must inevitably mean giving up any semblance of a life or a career or a vocation. Remember Mary; Donna Reed's character in It's a Wonderful Life ? When George glimpses the dystopian alternate reality of a world in which he had never existed, Mary is shown to be a miserable "Old Maid" (the exact term t...
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