Steve - Is Getting Withdrawal

Can't help feeling this is leading up to something?

I've been writing so, damn, much, lately. I worked out yesterday that I'd sent burns 10,000 words worth of email in the past 7 days. Excuse my Anglo-Saxon, but... fucking hell. That's on top of writing lots of schoolwork, an email to Kathy, a fair chunk of IM, more blog posts than usual, and a fair amount of creative work too. It's really really insane, I'm not sure I've ever written so much in such a short time. And I've gone through some pretty writingmanic periods.

I'm really into At War With Walls and Mazes by Son Lux lately. It's quite different to most anticon records sounds, but it's really damned good. If you're not against beats and chirps and other artifacts of electronic music, take a listen, srsly.

I said I'd write less today. This blog entry will probably be stupidly long because of that. Perhaps I'll send burns a link to it in the (her) morning, 'cause I don't want to disappoint her! Hey burns, I hope you're enjoying this.

I've been thinking a lot before I sleep as well. The other day I worked out how many days there were until March 23rd (you know), then how many hours, then how many minutes. All in my head. I figured seconds was a bit much, but you know.

Another day I consider dimensionality. How that if you have a pipe with a bend in it so it takes up three dimensions, you can rotate it so that it fits in two dimensions, but you can't if there are two different bends in it. I wanted to know why this was. I got a vague idea by using sine and cosine in my head, but I wasn't amazingly satisfied. What I really needed was to be able to visualise four dimensions in my head so I could work out if the two-bend pipe that pointed through time could be rotated to fit in three dimensions. I think it probably could be.

After that I thought about objects that rotate in time. I came up with an interesting theory for light that it's just matter that's spinning in time while also moving in our three dimensions. It would explain how it acts as a wave (only one bit of it is in 'our' frame of time at any point, and that bit would move in a rough sine-wave (remember the circle plot from maths class?)), and also as a particle ('cause it is). It'd also explain the relationship between wave speed and wave length, and then to wave energy (bigger particles have a wider wavelength annndd more inertia when they hit another particle, but speed can compensate for that and also change wavelength as it's just a plot). Converting matter to energy is as simple (hah) as giving something a spin in timel. That would require something hitting the particle a glancing blow from either the future travelling back or the past travelling forwards (and of course electro-magnetic radiation can do this, as it's spinning anyway). There are other things it doesn't explain, but it's a pretty good elementary theory as things-thought-up-in-your-head-while-sleepy go.

Last night, and this is where the story really starts, I thought about what I am. It's the classic clone/teleportation. If I /am/ just a pattern in my brain, what happens to my consciousness when I am duplicated? Because, given certain assumptions, I have existed for a while and /I/ am... I dunno, existant, in my brain. The only thing separating my consciousness from the rest of reality and other people's consciousnesses is the insulating material of my body (designed to preserve my soul, basically, which is what my consciousness will be called from now on). It's pretty mind-boggling, to use an overused phrase.

But, if I am just a pattern, then my consciousness can be reduced to information. And information, as you well know, can be transported. I do it a lot, I'm doing it now. I'm putting information into your head, reader. So, and you'd better sit down for this, am I transferring my consciousness into your brain? Is my soul now active in your neuron-mesh?

I mean, by rights, you wouldn't know, because our consciousnesses wouldn't have to infringe on eachother. We could just exist separately. And, you can get an idea of where I'm headed can't you? In fact, you don't even need to. You're emulating right now what's going through my head, in yours. The more information you have about me, the more you're able to predict and be unsurprised by me, figure me out. Are you not just reconstructing consciousness in your brain? Of course, maybe, you're the dominant consciousness, but perhaps I'm there too, or an approximation or variation of me, and maybe only when you want to think about me and find out what me-in-you is thinking, but I am there nonetheless.

Perhaps, when they say that you live on in your loved ones after you die, they're being more literal than you think.

Anyway, just a thought I rather like. Information theory and materiality opens up some fascinating possibilities. Enjoy your day.