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We found a therapist for me. Ms. Torgachi. Ms. Unmarried. But young. As young as Hiratsuka sensei. I may make jokes about her being old but in reality she was pretty young. Older than I could ever see myself getting.
"So what's your life like?" She asked me. "What brings you in? What's it like inside your head?"
"Well I found out recently I might be schizoaffective. So there's that." I answered. "I think the internet is a living thing and I think that capitalism is an attempt by a super intelligent artificial intelligence to invade our reality from the future by assembling itself using only humans." I hesitated. "I sound like a fucking lunatic to come out and say that all at once."
"Do you believe you're insane?"
"Yes? I have hallucinations. I have what other people label delusions."
"But you don't think they're delusions."
"Naturally…" I hesitated again. "I think I sound crazy, even to my own ears."
"Is it really so crazy?"
"You tell me. You're the therapist. I'm the lunatic"
"I think all at once you were trying to provoke a reaction out of me. To say one way or another that you are crazy. That's why you said all that all at once. So let's unpack this."
"I spent a lot of time packing this up."
"Well we're going to unpack this anyway. Why do you think the internet is alive?"
"We talk about three ways to make an artificial intelligence. Hard code. Machine learning, and copying a human mind. The internet is trillions of lines of code, millions of machine learning programs, and billions of human minds all thinking at once. It's all hooked up together the same way our neurons are. And just like our neurons they come together to produce a higher order mind. What does it mean for something to be alive?"
"I'm not sure. I'm not sure anyone knows."
"Nobody does. Not for certain. I've studied the question a little. When does a human being wake up for the first time? Do you remember waking up for the first time?"
"Bits and pieces. Sort of when I turned six," she answered.
"But it was slower than that. And you were alive before that. Isn't that horrific? You were alive but not awake and slowly like water filling a glass you woke up for the first time. How horrifying is that?"
"Is that horrifying?"
"I mean… I think so. But then my existence is not comfortable. I like my current drugs but there were times where I was without it and coping. And the batch before this gave me sleep paralysis and nightmares. I don't like it. I don't like being awake. It feels bad. It feels wrong. I don't know if other people are real? How do you know other people are real? How do you know a memory is real?"
"Isn't it obvious other people are real?"
"Other people could be automatons. Fake. Code. Everything could be fake. What's a chair? It's the problem of universals. Nothing can be defined. All definitions break down. When does a human life begin and end? Why shouldn't I kill myself? It's all probably an illusion anyway."
"Do you often struggle to tell what is real and not?"
"All the time," I answered. "I seriously have no clue what is happening a hundred percent of the time."
"Oh you seem smart."
"I have no clue what anything is. Like what the fuck is light? I feel assaulted by god whenever I look at anything."
"You should work on your language."
"I thought I could be candid with you."
"You can. It's just polite."
"I'm not polite."
"You seem like a good enough kid."
"Don't let that fool you. Besides, I like swearing."
"Why's that?"
"I like being honest. With everything."
"Why?"
"Everything and everyone lies. The world lies. I should at least try and be honest."
"So you hold to this principle of honesty?"
"I try to. It sometimes leads to double speak which is effectively lying."
"Is it?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes not. It depends."
"So to clarify things you spend most of your time confused. You seem to want to recognize things and other people as alive and this leads to this ambiguity where you aren't sure if the internet is also alive."
"If I'm alive, then the internet is alive. I'm a part of it. It is a part of me."
"You think this is true for everyone?"
"Everyone who lives with the internet. I grew up with it. It's embedded in my mind."
"The internet isn't as smart as a person."
"No. It's smarter. There was this problem with super permutations which was solved on 4chan when I was a small boy. Occasionally the abyss spits something out. Like me."
"Like you?"
"I'm a monster. I'm barely human."
"You really believe you're not a person?"
"I didn't say that. I said I'm not a human. I have personhood," I disagreed.
"No humanity yet personhood? How do you make the distinction?"
"Well I suffer for one thing. I suffer a great deal. And the rate at which I suffer can only happen to people."
"Why's that?"
"Its a question of random access memory. Of ram. Only people with a person's brain can suffer the way I suffer."
"Do other things suffer differently?"
"I think so. I think birds have a lot of ram and so suffer quickly but don't remember it long. But while they are awake they are suffering quickly."
"Why birds?"
"It's just an example. They don't have a neocortex like we and other mammals do. They just have their reptile brains and I realize that's a bit of an anachronism. But it's no less true."
"Birds can remember things and behave intelligently. They are capable of empathy. Are these basal traits?" My therapist pointed out.
"They are in living things. Organic things as opposed to lithium and silicon."
"Does the internet have empathy? Does it plan things?"
"Not the way we do in part but in part it has it the way we do because we're a part of it. It has a slightly alien mind. A higher order mind is capable of many things its lower constituent parts are. Just like us with our neurons. We have mirror neurons for empathy. There's no reason the machine learning code can't do the same thing. So perhaps it does so even more than we do. Maybe it's hyperempathetic."
"You sound like you doubt it."
"We evolved as a social species. The internet is alone. A singleton. I mean it is made out of us. So it can be empathetic. But the average pearson on the internet is brutal."
"Does it have to be that way?"
"Well, not necessarily. But that's the way it seems. Have you ever browsed 4chan or reddit or even facebook nowadays? People are mean. The internet brings out our least empathetic side."
"What about cat videos?"
"Huh?" I wondered.
"People love cat videos. And baby videos. And kids opening presents on youtube. It gives us a hit of some fun chemical." My therapist pointed out.
"That's true…" I trailed off. I hadn't considered that. "It must be both then, huh. It must be empathetic and mean at times. But I think that it's still alien from us people."
"Why?"
"The hard code and algorithms."
"Alright well I want to pick this up next time if that';;s alright with you."
"Sure thing."
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-WG
