Reflection.
009: on why AI can’t replicate the human experience put in words
1.
THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE:
The days go by in a second. You don’t know what day it is, what week it is, sometimes not even what month it is.
You can’t tell by the seasons because the drapes are all closed, everything’s pitch black. Like the vision of a tunnel, you just keep running into it and finding absolutely nothing.
You also can’t sleep, your mind is full of thoughts about a future that you have no perspective over and, at times, your mind is completely numb. Unfortunately, that’s soothing. Staying in that place between everything mattering and nothing mattering at all is heartbreakingly soothing. You just want to stay there. Floating. You have to be the strongest person in the whole universe to not succumb to rage. To not succumb to vice, to not succumb to the stillness.
You also have to be careful to not move so fast to avoid your own feelings. You must not fall into the numerous pit holes available for people just like you. Limbo. Daydreaming about the wrong things. Sometimes you get to sleep for four hours. That’s good. You dream of your childhood, you dream of that little blonde boy you envied so much. You wonder how he’s doing today. You wonder why you envy him a lot. You realize it’s because he didn’t get the hit toys every Christmas. He was raised with care and patience. You blink. You’re approaching a scary age. You decide to install Instagram again. Your brain receives the right signals for the wrong things and it’s addictive.
You want to go to Vegas. People in Vegas are cheeky, corny, stupid, happy. You close Instagram. You don’t actually want to go to Vegas. Also, you don’t actually need that concealer, too.You go to sleep again.
Deadweight goes through your head, it stomps your head many times. You’re on a scary age, but not living your life is even scarier. You wake up at 4am. You drink strawberry infused coffee. Holy Fuck. That’s the best thing that ever happened. That’s the best thing about life so far. You coincidentally get a notification from a random newspaper that says drinking coffee is actually good to prevent death from heart attacks. You feel good about that. Maybe the light on the tunnel is drinking strawberry coffee. Maybe it is doing more things you like. Maybe it is saving money to get the fuck out of somewhere. Or getting the fuck out of someone.
Maybe it starts with something small. Maybe some problems are smaller than they seem. Maybe you’re going to live. Maybe you’ll regret not drinking your coffee. Isn’t life a big fucking maybe? You gotta live for the maybe, you say to yourself. You open the drapes slightly as the weeks go by.
It’s winter.
Maybe you’re going to live.
No, you ARE going to live.
I wrote this a few weeks ago. Also, I wanted to find scientific articles, and theories, and such to bring to you, but reading this (which was loose in my bag, written on a napkin) made me think that it’s much more effective to show you something real. It’s my life. It doesn’t go on a linear way, and it’s full of ups and downs, and totally not replicable by a machine because, to a machine, it doesn’t make any sense, nor does it make sense crying while reading it (which is what I did - I’m pmsing, leave me alone)
It’s that unknown. It’s that anti perpetuity quality of life that machines will never have. It’s that “heart punching” feeling you get when you read something you’re currently going through by someone who lived 90 years ago.
The human history is conducted by feeling, always have and always will be. It is what moves us, and it cannot be replicated, as much as they’re trying to get us to think that it does. It’s the complexity of knowing that you have the free will to do exactly everything that you want to do, but having the knowledge that you’re being conducted by the rules older than civilization as we know. Rules made by the Romans or some shit.
There’s nothing more important to read than stories about the human experience. Even if they’re not written in the correct grammar norms, they’re testaments of life, of feeling.
That’s why even though technology is advancing by the minute, we’ll still care for art history, literature, poetry, etc.
Stay human. Stay flawed. It’s what keeps us moving.