This post is so wonderful, thank you for writing it. I’ve gone back to re-read many paragraphs over and over.
A few musings of my own:
“It’s just” … something. Oh? So eager, the urge to deflate. And so eager, too, the assumption that our concepts carve, and encompass, and withstand scrutiny. It’s simple, you see. Some things, like humans, are “sentient.” But Bing Sydney is “just” … you know. Actually, I don’t. What were you going to say? A machine? Software? A simulator? “Statistics?”
This has long driven me crazy. And I think you’re right about the source of the eagerness, although I suspect that mundanity is playing a role here, too. I suspect, in other words, that people often mistake the familiar for the understood—that no matter how strange some piece of reality is, if it happens frequently enough people come to find it normal; and hence, on some basic level, explained.
Like you, I have felt mesmerized by ctenophores at the Monterey Aquarium. I remember sitting there for an hour, staring at these curious creatures, watching their bioluminescent LED strips flicker as they gently floated in the blackness. It was so surreal. And every few minutes, this psychedelic experience would be interrupted by screaming children. Most of them would run up to the exhibit for a second, point, and then run on as their parents snapped a few pictures. Some would say “Mom, I’m bored, can we look at the otters?” And occasionally a couple would murmur to each other “That’s so weird.” But most people seemed unfazed.
I’ve been unfazed at times, too. And when I am, it’s usually because I’m rounding off my experience to known concepts. “Oh, a fish-type thing? I know what that’s like, moving on.” As if “fish-type thing” could encompass the piece of reality behind the glass. Whereas when I have these ethereal moments of wonder—this feeling of brushing up against something that’s too huge to hold—I am dropping all of that. And it floods in, the insanity of it all—that “I” am a thing, watching this strange, flickering creature in front of me, made out of similar substances and yet so wildly different. So gossamer, the jellies are—and containing, presumably, experience. What could that be like?
“Justs” are all too often a tribute to mundanity—the sentiment that the things around us are normal and hence, explained? And it’s so easy for things to seem normal when your experience of the world is smooth. I almost always feel myself mundane, for instance. Like a natural kind. I go to the store, call my friends, make dinner. All of it is so seamless—so regular, so simple—that it’s hard to believe any strangeness could be lurking beneath. But then, sometimes, the wonder catches me, and I remember how glaringly obvious it is that minds are the most fascinating phenomenon in the universe. I remember how insane it is—that some lumps of matter are capable of experience, of thought, of desire, of making reality bend to those desires. Are they? What does that mean? How could I be anything at all?
Minds are so weird. Not weird in the “things don’t add up to normality” way—they do. Just that, being a lump of matter like this is a deeply strange endeavor. And I fear that our familiarity with our selves blinds us to this fact. Just as it blinds us to how strange these new minds—this artificial Other, might be. And how tempting, it is, to take the thing that is too huge to hold and to paper over it with a “just” so that we may feel lighter. To mistake our blindness for understanding. How tragic a thing, to forego the wonder.
This post is so wonderful, thank you for writing it. I’ve gone back to re-read many paragraphs over and over.
A few musings of my own:
This has long driven me crazy. And I think you’re right about the source of the eagerness, although I suspect that mundanity is playing a role here, too. I suspect, in other words, that people often mistake the familiar for the understood—that no matter how strange some piece of reality is, if it happens frequently enough people come to find it normal; and hence, on some basic level, explained.
Like you, I have felt mesmerized by ctenophores at the Monterey Aquarium. I remember sitting there for an hour, staring at these curious creatures, watching their bioluminescent LED strips flicker as they gently floated in the blackness. It was so surreal. And every few minutes, this psychedelic experience would be interrupted by screaming children. Most of them would run up to the exhibit for a second, point, and then run on as their parents snapped a few pictures. Some would say “Mom, I’m bored, can we look at the otters?” And occasionally a couple would murmur to each other “That’s so weird.” But most people seemed unfazed.
I’ve been unfazed at times, too. And when I am, it’s usually because I’m rounding off my experience to known concepts. “Oh, a fish-type thing? I know what that’s like, moving on.” As if “fish-type thing” could encompass the piece of reality behind the glass. Whereas when I have these ethereal moments of wonder—this feeling of brushing up against something that’s too huge to hold—I am dropping all of that. And it floods in, the insanity of it all—that “I” am a thing, watching this strange, flickering creature in front of me, made out of similar substances and yet so wildly different. So gossamer, the jellies are—and containing, presumably, experience. What could that be like?
“Justs” are all too often a tribute to mundanity—the sentiment that the things around us are normal and hence, explained? And it’s so easy for things to seem normal when your experience of the world is smooth. I almost always feel myself mundane, for instance. Like a natural kind. I go to the store, call my friends, make dinner. All of it is so seamless—so regular, so simple—that it’s hard to believe any strangeness could be lurking beneath. But then, sometimes, the wonder catches me, and I remember how glaringly obvious it is that minds are the most fascinating phenomenon in the universe. I remember how insane it is—that some lumps of matter are capable of experience, of thought, of desire, of making reality bend to those desires. Are they? What does that mean? How could I be anything at all?
Minds are so weird. Not weird in the “things don’t add up to normality” way—they do. Just that, being a lump of matter like this is a deeply strange endeavor. And I fear that our familiarity with our selves blinds us to this fact. Just as it blinds us to how strange these new minds—this artificial Other, might be. And how tempting, it is, to take the thing that is too huge to hold and to paper over it with a “just” so that we may feel lighter. To mistake our blindness for understanding. How tragic a thing, to forego the wonder.