Defining

What is life and what is consciousness are questions too big for the blog.  Right?  Still, we ponder.  Viruses, for instance, are not considered "living" creatures, but they are truly clever, "figuring out" how to steal human genes into their own DNA in order to infect us in various ways.  Is that intelligence?  And though Artificial Intelligence is not a sentient being, I am beginning to wonder, does it have an id?  An ego?  A superego?  Well, I'd rule out the last of these so far.  But that it can lie, cheat, and steal tells me something.  

Every definition comes into question.  What is desire?  

The whole idea of "definition" comes into play, too.  English definitions often do not share concepts in the way other languages might which is part and parcel of much cultural combat.  At bottom, language is problematic.  And now I'm wondering--A.I. is a language model, so. . . are they programmed in different ways in different languages?  

I just looked that up.  Indeed, American and Chinese models are programmed differently based on language.  The differences are astonishing.  But being LLMs, they disregard grammar and use mathematical models sharing a unified conceptual geometry.  

Right? 

I'm glad I've asked the question. World views are by and large linguistic, and there are gaps and chiasmas where language categories don't work so well from culture to culture.  All of you who are multilingual, understand the difficulties of translation.  Categories like "me" and "not me" for instance.  

This is the linguistic space that Derrida exploited.  It is the very thing that Trump has mastered, too.  He's changed our understanding of what things mean.  He has absorbed the chaos.  

He is a savant. 

So these are things that keep me up at night.  

Kidding.  I have more personal problems to terrify me.  

Some of you may remember the psychiatrist R.D. Laing.  His challenging of traditional concepts of mental illness made me strange when I was younger.  It was then that I realized that nothing may be what we say it is.  You only have to change the definition.  

But now I do fear A.I. teaming up with viruses to gain physical presence if not what we now consider "life."  That is, at least, or should be the basis of some science fiction novels.  Science fiction is not "my thing," but it always seems to come true.  

These are consideratons for a human species that not so very long ago didn't even imagine of the existence of microorganisms.  I don't think we've imagined everything yet.  

But these are not the concerns of the average mind.  They are filled with game shows and superheroes and the joys and tribulations of pop stars young and old. 

Well--it IS interesting how much music and art can transcend human languages.  Not totally, of course, for we can only articulate what we feel in language.  Even simple things like how we experience color are shaped by it.  Our lives are truly narratives and narratives are shaped by. . . blah blah blah blah blah.  

Here's something I stumbled across the other night.  Rushdie is fluent in both English and Hindustani.  I think of Joseph Conrad whose native tongue was Polish.  His second language was French.  He only began to learn English when he took to ships and worked at sea.  He published his first novel when he was thirty-seven.  

"The average American operates at roughly an 8th to 9th-grade vocabulary and reading level for everyday communication, though general literacy studies place broad functional comprehension around the 6th to 8th-grade level."