They do not come out of my accord, they do not leave by my choice. Whoever gave these thoughts to me has to complete them for me.
Creator and Creation
It is an engineering masterpiece. No, it is creativity lab of a mad genius scientist. It is a workshop to display engineering marvels. No, it is the Universe. The Universe is a form of mathematical expression only a genius scientist can formulate. But the coronal loops on sun’s surface and vivid colors of crab nebula display abstract art…. how boring!
The Universe is a boring space. It is an empty space. There is nothing out there except lifeless celestial bodies that rotate in boring orbits forever —and do nothing else! The Creator who has intelligence of an insanely gifted scientist and skill of an extraordinary artist, is so bored(I hear you Aristotle!)
So to keep busy, the Creator will create Intelligent Beings (~ Human Being?) An intelligent Creator will create intelligent human; and an intelligent human will make intelligent cars and machines. Because if you are the most intelligent being in the Cosmos, then the most logically coherent decision is to share that level of intelligence. But where to place the intelligent being after creating them? Too close to sun, they will perish. Too far away, they will thaw in cold. So, the Creator has to design a program, a planet designed to sustain life (Earth may be?).
Oh do you realize what the Creator has just done? By making the human beings intelligent, the Creator has eliminated the need for Himself to exist. If I am intelligent, why do I need the Creator to tell me what to do? – I have my own Intelligence. If I am Intelligent, my question is whom I? And who is Creator? Why am I not the Creator?
Likewise, man who is known for making intelligent products believes Artificial Intelligence will crush humanity like an ant hill. But that has not deterred him from making self-driving cars or self-landing rocket. Because it is a promising technology, he wants to believe in it. If there are problems with commercial use of the AI, then those use cases must be regulated; that does not mean technology should not exist. So for AI there is regulation, for humans there is religion. Code of conduct in life, how to behave and how to act.
So do we exist because the Creator believes in us? Well He chose us to be Created! Oh, were we not talking about Creator’s boredom? Nope, now He is playing a video game. He is watching us from distance (watching a video game in augmented reality and in multi-player mode). He sees us playing with each other and then designs the next round for each of us in the game based on how we cleared the previous round. Nope, nonsense! We human beings have free will and do whatever we like. We are not controlled by the Creator. Correct, the player in the video game has all the liberty to move around the set, choose his weapons and choose his strategy to clear the round. He may even team up with other players. But design of the game is set. The gamer plays within the constraints of each set and each round. And every game from The Call of Duty to The Witcher (yo Call of Duty!!) has a story line. An overarching narrative that is fixed, predesigned, predestined and cannot be changed by the player.
The Master Designer, oh that brilliant Engineer in the Universe out there is busy coding the simulation.
(wait…is that question still biting you? Why is He the Creator? Why am I not the Creator? Go and read The First Question)
Soul & Consciousness
“They say intellect is to soul, what desire is to body”
(no they don’t say, only I say that)
But what is soul anyways and what is stream of consciousness? Consciousness or level of information processing in brain is now measured with Perturbation Complex Index that shows brain’s ability to support certain activities. These activities include ability to integrate different brain functions and process information complexity. The technique is called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and it measures (i) engagement of cortical areas (ii)compression of spatiotemporal patterns of the electrocortical signals to measure algorithmic complexity (Yikes! was that English?!? — yes it means assessing electrical responses in brain that process information related to time and space). So these two responses i.e integration of different brain functions and space time determining capability of brain is summed together in an index (what’s up Nasdaq?) and this index is monitored in state of being awake, dreaming, Rapid Eyeball Movement Sleep, different levels of sedation by various anesthetic agents, in patients who are in coma, minimally conscious state and locked in syndrome. Weighted aggregate sum of all these numbers is taken and Viola — consciousness measuring index is ready! (Hello engineers, now you all can say consciousness is just a number. Happy?)
But what is soul…ah my heart knows. My heart. The groundbreaking research published by the neurocardiologist (yeah that’s a thing these days; shut up Auto-Correct, this is the right word!) The groundbreaking research published by University of Montreal’s Neuro-Cardiologist Dr. J Andrew Armour, M.D., Ph.D. shows that heart has 40,000 neurons and little nervous system of its own. Heart is in direct coordination with the brain but can make decision independent of the central nervous system as well. The cardiac nervous system has it own’s independent memory and ..and…and…what is soul again? Dude ask your heart, it knows better!
Alright, alright….. Let’s talk fun. What makes a dragon a Dragon?
By Kevin J. Anderson
What has scales, wings, claws, and (sometimes) breathes fire?
Is it a giant prehistoric monster emerging from the Lost World? Is it an evil beast that lurks in caves and demands maidens as sacrifices? Is it a majestic elemental creature that can protect or save the land? Or is it a giant, scaled flaming metaphor for the terrible darkness that lives inside each person?
A dragon can be all of these things, and more.
In my novel Spine of the Dragon, which comes out in trade paperback from Tor Books this month, the people believe that a great dragon, Ossus, sleeps beneath a jagged volcanic mountain range. Ossus was created by the god Kur who, in order to make himself pure, extracted all of his dark thoughts, his jealousies, his violent urges, his innate evil, and used them to fashion the dragon. He then left the world, vowing not to return until his people figured out how to destroy the dragon, and hence the evil inside themselves. Things don’t go well from that point.
Ossus may seem like a metaphor for the darkest parts of a god, but over the course of the story he does manifest in full, dark reptilian glory, wings and flames and all. A novelist has an unlimited special effects budget.
What constitutes a dragon?
If Sir Lancelot had encountered a T. Rex preying upon helpless villagers, would he think of it as a prehistoric monster that had forgotten to become extinct? Or would he call it a dragon?
When Godzilla awakens from the depths of the ocean and rock-and-rolls through Tokyo, a huge reptilian beast that breathes fire, does that count as a dragon? In the evolution of Godzilla since the first film in 1956, the monster has become more of an elemental force, a benevolent scaly protector of Japan. That fits the mold of another type of dragon.
Frank Herbert said he considered the giant sandworms protecting the spice in Dune to be his version of dragons guarding a hoard of treasure.
As a kid, you must have dreamed of finding a dragon egg, raising and bonding with it to be your pet, your best friend, and your protector, like in Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series, or Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, or even the How to Train Your Dragon films, or (with less warm and fuzzy results) Daenarys and her three dragons in Game of Thrones. “They grow up so fast!”
In movies from the 1960s, a “dragon” or dinosaur was ably portrayed by a hapless stunt alligator or komodo dragon forced to wear makeup accoutrements. Later, in Dragonslayer (1981), which I think was Disney’s very first PG-rated film, moviegoers were promised that we would believe dragons were real—and we did. Now with vastly more sophisticated effects, such as with the Great Leonopteryx in Avatar (which surely also qualifies as a “dragon” both in appearance and story role), who can tell that it’s not reality?
But we all know dragons are real, even if they aren’t swooping over medieval towns and setting fire to thatched roofs, or plucking virgins tied to a stake in front of their bone-strewn lair. Dragons live in our hearts, in our imaginations. And in our stories.
Readers love to devour tales about dragons, just as writers love to create them. Something about dragons strikes to the heart of our psyche, our legendary core, thrums on the strings of our imaginations. I think I hear one coming now…I hope it’s a good kind of dragon.
OK now please buy his book here.
Just Keep Going
But Going Where? If you could take all of your home & habitat with you where would you go?
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Ok then lets Go there?
And stay focused….even when things seems upside down.
Yep you Got this!
And Now You have reached Mars (just kidding – you haven’t gotten all that far)
Maria's world 