Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

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Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker Snail and dog consciousness Immersion might be thought of as experiencing the world with an empty mind, no model of it needed, no image, no notion of objects, simply the world in and of itself, letting “the world think me” instead of “me thinking the world.” A snail doesn’t even have Boundaries. I’m not sure if a dog has a movie-in-the-brain or not, maybe only fleetingly. Damasio talks about some brain-damaged people who have the movie-in-the-grain but not feelings and core consciousness. Magpie The magpie approach to writing. Stick in any old thing you’ve seen and see what grows out of it. Like seeding a solution for crystals. Fruits of Reason 3D space to fit objects into. Time with before and after. Grammar. Grammar as logic-like tool for producing coherent new utterances. Fun to laugh at how dumb dogs are. But sad, too. Poor Slug squeezed up against the door, listening to our voices. Visual perception important: feedback, robot arm uses to pick things up. Finding a location: precalcuating the route or repeatedly asking directions. Music. Grammar(Many, Objects), Logic(Spacetime, prognostication), 3D Perception (One, World) Class 3 Thoughts? I think it’s very rare we have Class 3 thought patterns. A chaotic storm. Like maybe when I took acid it was like that? Not even. That was more like Class 4 very dense and fast. Though maybe the White Light, or any milder type rush is class 3, with all the neurons firing there’s no real content, simply a sense of stimulation. Any connection here to why stupid people (athletes, businessmen) like coke? Comparing Gibson to a Lifebox Talking to my famous writer friend William Gibson is a little like talking to a lifebox of him. My guess is that Bill’s been interviewed so much that, unless I say something very personal or unusual to him, he tends to respond with a mentally taped answer he’s used before. I could be wrong about this, but his answers are so witty and articulate that I don’t see how he could possibly be making them up on the spot. Wattahertz Evolution Quantity Estimate in words Power of ten p. 78
Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker Population A million individuals to get evolution. This means a million 10 6 at any given time, not a million in all. On the low side, but remember that the population used to be much smaller. Number of years A million. Again, this is somewhat on the low side, but most 10 6 of evolution of the important brain features may have evolved fairly early. Seconds per year Thirty million, approximately. 3 * 10 7 Instructions per Three hundred quadrillion, as calculated in the previous table. 3 * 10 17 brain per second Total number of instructions processed to simulate human evolution Instructions-persecond needed to simulate evolution in a year Target clock rate Population * years of evolution * seconds per year * instructions per brain per second = 3*3*10 (6+6+7+17) = 10 37 updates if again I round 3*3 up to 10. A mathematician would use the name ten duodecillion for 10 37 . Total number of instructions / seconds per year = 10 37 / (3*10 7 ) = 3 * 10^29 . Here I’m rounding 10/3 down to 3. If there’s three clock ticks per machine instruction, we get 3 * 3 * 10 29 , which we round up to 10 30 , a tidy million yottahertz, which could also be called a wattahertz. 10 37 3 * 10 29 10 30 Table: A One-Year Simulation of Human Evolution on a Wattahertz Machine Why I Quit Teaching I was tired of preparing new lectures and demos on difficult material, tired of wrestling with the ever changing hardware and software, and eager to devote my few remaining non-senile years to writing. Freewill Once the dust settles, what you did is what you wanted to do. This truism lies at the core of the philosophy called existentialism: you are what you do. Recovery-Group-Tinged Rap About God and Free Will Once or twice a week I participate in a meeting of a support group devoted to helping people change their destructive behaviors. One of the pleasant side-effects of this kind of informal group therapy is that I get flashes of insight into the minds of people whom I might otherwise never meet. Over and over I discover unexpected intricacies of emotion and humor within strangers. Nobody is simple on the inside. It’s an impossibility. Every brain is carrying out a class four computation. And this is no surprise, really. For look inward at your flow of thought. It’s like that cellular automaton rule depicted above. One thing leads to another. The glider-like thought p. 79
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Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

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