IF YOU SEE A ROBOT ON THE ROAD–

KILL IT! (Heading taken from Sheldon Kopp’s If You See Buddha on the Road, Kill Him,)

I went to bed last night slightly depressed after reading much in Daniel Dennett’s book From Bacteria to Bach and Back–The Evolution of Minds.

Last night I dreamed I had gotten a ride with two other women, and we spent the night in a hotel. I was in a room by myself and they shared a room down the hall. The next day I had a lot of stuff to repack and fit into their vehicle. The owner of the vehicle was driving and I feared she was going the wrong way. The landscape was unfamiliar and I learned she had not been following a map. I wasn’t sure even what state we were in. I looked at the sun which was several degrees to the right overhead, and was unsure myself if we were going in the right direction. There was a tie-in toward the end of the dream with a regular meeting at my house every Wednesday. I didn’t send out a notice about it, but motivated people showed up. I am unsure of the status of that arrangement at the end. School was out and people were leaving for home. I didn’t know if anyone would come at all. Perhaps a few came before I got home and settled themselves in. I had not prepared wine or food for them, however.

Themes: Group communication (recuring)

Lacking vittels (little to offer others) (recuring)

Not in control of my destination.

Lost.

Before retiring last night I had been bothered by Dennett quoting

“Comprehension is so passe, so vieux jeux, so old-fashioned! Who needs understanding when we can all be the beneficiaries of artifacts that save us the ardurous effort?” (Feynman ?) …Dennett observes, however, that the supply of high tech repair persons is dwindling or non-existent (p 407)

Dennett quotes Chomsky, “we accept the best explanation science can give us…It doesn’t matter what we can conceive any more. We’ve given up on that.” (Dennett, 374).

How can we willingly turn over our reason to robots? Perhaps emergence has led us so, but as E.O. Wilson and even Dennett has observed, current humans are becoming more capable of impacting our evolution. It could be in a benevolent way, but is surrendering our comprehension benevolent? Perhaps only if one wants to change the meaning of human.

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I’ve recently realized how much of a 2-way street the connection between the Conscious and Unconscious is. I was about to write a treatise on how to connect with the Unconscious, when I realized the many ways the Unconscious tries to get in touch with us. Is that anthropormophizing? They’re both human, not animals. If not human, then what?

Freud spoke of dreams as the royal road to the unconscious. Is it perhaps the other way round?