Submitted by Hannah Mueller on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 11:09am.
I hadn't thought about that--that the brain is another "machine" that we (necessarily) use to mediate between ourselves and the environment. Of course, that is another assumption, that "I" am separate from my brain. But it's interesting to think about how we are affected/limited by the architecture of the brain.
When I wrote this, I had only been thinking about one kind of repetition, described by a saying I heard somewhere (?) that went something like, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result." For me, that makes sense with the descriptions of insane Ahab in the book, and with the endless repetitions of a machine. Computers (ones today without I,Robot-like artificial intelligence, at least) don't come up with their own ideas, because they follow--over and over again--the patterns set for them. That doesn't make them insane, but it does demonstrate how they have no "sanity", no sentience.
But not being able to stop thinking is another kind of repetition that we don't have much control over, as you say. In a way, I agree that we're most human when we let out brains "run wild" because it's then that we're most creative. But another way our imaginations run away from us is in dreams, where brains repeat events/thoughts from the day uncontrollably. And animals have those, too. So I don't know--I think there definitely is a "messy/inaccurate opposition" or border between a brain and a machine. There are some ways that the analogy just doesn't work.
As for blog conversations being productive instead of destructive, I was thinking about it in terms of emergence; so, as "productive" or "good" as anything is, in terms of it being useful. Because a blog conversation is "organic," it is looking to get it less wrong in the same way that biological evolution does; not the way a pre-programmed machine does, or a conversation where people already think they know the answer. Maybe "useless" would be a better word that "destructive." I was thinking of Serendip when I was thinking of an "organic," "productive" blog.
»
Reply
Search Serendip
Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate
but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)
brains etc.
I hadn't thought about that--that the brain is another "machine" that we (necessarily) use to mediate between ourselves and the environment. Of course, that is another assumption, that "I" am separate from my brain. But it's interesting to think about how we are affected/limited by the architecture of the brain.
When I wrote this, I had only been thinking about one kind of repetition, described by a saying I heard somewhere (?) that went something like, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result." For me, that makes sense with the descriptions of insane Ahab in the book, and with the endless repetitions of a machine. Computers (ones today without I,Robot-like artificial intelligence, at least) don't come up with their own ideas, because they follow--over and over again--the patterns set for them. That doesn't make them insane, but it does demonstrate how they have no "sanity", no sentience.
But not being able to stop thinking is another kind of repetition that we don't have much control over, as you say. In a way, I agree that we're most human when we let out brains "run wild" because it's then that we're most creative. But another way our imaginations run away from us is in dreams, where brains repeat events/thoughts from the day uncontrollably. And animals have those, too. So I don't know--I think there definitely is a "messy/inaccurate opposition" or border between a brain and a machine. There are some ways that the analogy just doesn't work.
As for blog conversations being productive instead of destructive, I was thinking about it in terms of emergence; so, as "productive" or "good" as anything is, in terms of it being useful. Because a blog conversation is "organic," it is looking to get it less wrong in the same way that biological evolution does; not the way a pre-programmed machine does, or a conversation where people already think they know the answer. Maybe "useless" would be a better word that "destructive." I was thinking of Serendip when I was thinking of an "organic," "productive" blog.