Just an Illusion

The world is illusory.

I would imagine that most of us have at some time flown in commercial airliners, but how many of us have actually taken a critical look at them? They cannot fly. Everybody knows that they cannot possibly fly. They are massive and very heavy. They cannot stay up in the air. Something happens when we get on one – I don’t know what – and we appear to be in a different time and place when we get off. It is not possible, we all know that it is not possible. Have we been brainwashed or socially engineered? Are we the victims of some kind of mass hypnosis: ‘…and when I click my fingers you will go back to being an ineffectual fool in impractical shoes and eye-crippling knitwear.’ We will never know because, honestly, we don’t care. We get into the giant metal tube in one reality and we get out of it sometime later in a totally different one. The sunsets are glorious and the drinks are cool, so why enquire too deeply. Why make waves? Life is a snowglobe* in many respects: cheap and tacky, filled with water and tiny plastic chippings but give it a shake and the magic happens. Who doesn’t love a snowglobe? Things are always so much better when you don’t understand them and remain so as long as you make no attempt whatsoever to do so.

Try to understand a butterfly. Try to explain why evolution – the survival of the fittest – could possibly lead to that particular design. “Shall we make it fast and sleek so that it doesn’t get eaten all the time?”
“Nah.”
“Well let’s make it drab and colourless then, so that it doesn’t get noticed.”
“Nah, we’ll make it beautiful and slow and impossibly fragile. In fact, I’ll tell you what, we’ll let it be a caterpillar first: they’re even easier to catch and eat. And in between times any that manage to survive can just exist as crunchy little pools of non-moving protein.” Charles Darwin could not explain this. It is no way to survive.

And here’s another thing. While humankind learned to stand upright, make fire, build cities, use computers, create music. art and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, why did everything else stand still? Why didn’t the other apes evolve around us? Why didn’t cows and sheep and pigs arm themselves? Why did whales continue to mooch around the oceans allowing themselves to be harpooned? Critters got bigger, got stronger, faster, more venomous, more difficult to spot in a sock drawer, but none of them got brainier. Why? They have had just as much time as ourselves and equal opportunity. Put an infinite number of chimpanzees in front of an infinite number of typewriters and, given an infinite amount of time, they will write Hamlet. Nothing to shout about is it? Shakespeare did it on his own and in a time only slightly longer than it takes to perform. That apes continue to be apes says it all. They have all the raw materials: large brains, the tendency towards violence, opposable thumbs, but when it comes to knowing which knife and fork to use they just don’t have a clue.

It has to mean that humans did not evolve smarter, they just started out that way. So how? What element of the primordial sludge gave us such an evolutionary advantage? It is as though we managed to jump the starting pistol by millions of years with nothing around to tell us that we couldn’t do it. Maybe we were created in somebody else’s image – if so, I’m pretty certain that whoever was involved is not going to own up to Nigel Farage. Maybe in a hundred million years Orangs will be like we are now, but what we will be like by then? Far from developing, our own brains appear to be atrophying. We are happy to have all of our thinking done for us by AI and, sooner or later, it will figure out how to neutralise the ‘off’ switch.

I am old enough to remember the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ film (Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowal I think – although I’m pretty certain that a Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson reboot must be imminent) in which the human race had gone into some kind of evolutionary reverse gear whilst the apes had learned how to ride horses and fire guns. Not massive progress, but enough it appears, to put us in our place. Ridiculous? Possibly, but it does open a window onto an unfortunate human trait: because we have, over history, always ‘worked it out’, we believe that we will always be able to do so; that we will somehow continue to thrive on an uninhabitable planet, that we will find ways to feed ourselves when we can no longer grow the food we need. As a species we have always had the ability to think our way through things, but what if this – where we are today – is as far as we actually go? What if Donald Trump is actually the apogee of human development? What if he is our entire race’s high-water mark? What if he represents the fullest extent of the human ability to think rationally? What if we become unable to cope with software that is actually much brainier than ourselves? What if we are not ready for the planet to fight back? What if we really have no answer to mounted chimpanzees with rifles? What if all of human history is just an illusion and we are waiting for someone to tell us?

I guess that they might just be up there on an airplane somewhere…

*Autocorrect would have me believe that snowglobes do not exist, but we all know that they do, so I will continue to ignore it.

It didn’t even occur to me until just now – too late as is so often the case with me – but throughout our recent holiday, we were constantly bombarded with Spike Milligan’s pet hate (the looped muzac tape) which was continually playing what could best be described as ‘soft jazz’ versions of long ago hits, one of which was Imagination’s 1982 song ‘Just an Illusion’, and it had obviously lodged in there somewhere as I started this piece. By the time I finished, David Bowie had stormed the Citadel…

“President Joe once had a dream
The world held his hand, gave their pledge
So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine

They called it the Prayer, its answer was law
Its logic stopped war, gave them food
How they adored till it cried in its boredom

Please don’t believe in me, please disagree with me
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now
Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all” Saviour Machine – David Bowie (1970) Frightening how clearly some people can see the future isn’t it – and how easily others ignore it…

Circles Erratica

I needed to report that our debit cards might be used abroad. Mine was easy, but my wife’s card for the same account has a different number which does not appear on the online banking app, so I was forced to throw myself onto the mercies of the AI chatbot. Kick off with the full facts I thought:
“I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?”
“I’m not sure I understand. Try rephrasing your question using a few key words.” Exactly what, I wondered, were those few key words.“How do I report that an additional card holder will be abroad?”
“Ok. Let’s have a look at removing somebody from your account. 1. Remove a current account owner. 2. Remove a savings account owner. 3. Remove a credit card owner. 4.Something else.” Clearly the few key words I had chosen were not the few key words I needed.“Something else.”
“How can I help?”
“I want to report that an additional card holder will be abroad.”
“Try again. Please type one of the listed options.”
“They are not appropriate.”
“Do you wish to continue?”
“No.”
“OK. Let me know if I can help with anything else.”
“Yes. I want to register a debit card for use abroad.”
“If you are travelling outside the EU please report travel here.” ‘Here’ being a link back to where I started.
“I can’t because the card number does not appear on the app.”
“Did I answer your question?”
“No, you did not.”
“Thank you for your feedback. Can I help with anything else?”
“Almost certainly not.”

I abandoned the ‘chat’ and decided to try the phone number instead which connected me to a different machine. Before it would speak to me it wanted to register me for voice recognition. It asked me to repeat the same phrase a number of times. It was something like, “XXXXXXX Bank is the very best bank in the whole wide world and I love it more than life itself.” (At this point I was reminded of an incident some years ago when my mother received a call from a plum-voiced ‘BT Technician’. “We have had reports of problems on your line,” he said. “In order to allow me to check the integrity of your connection could you please repeat this phrase after me: I cannot hold a hot potato in my hand.” Very precisely my mum repeated the phrase “I cannot hold a hot potato in my hand.” “Well shove it up your arse then!” shouted the voice from the other end, hanging up amongst gales of laughter.) Anyway, after I had made approximately twelve attempts to sound like me, the machine finally decided to let me in. “How can I help?”
“I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?”
“You wish to remove somebody from your account?”
“No.”
“How can I help you?”
“I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?”
“You wish to remove them from your account?”
“NO I DO NOT!”
“There are just a few steps to have this person removed from your account. Would you like me to take you through them?”
“Noooooooo!!!!!!!”
Click. Brrrrrrrrr…….

I returned to the on-line chatbot with an iron will.
“Hi. I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?”
“I’m not sure I understand. Try rephrasing your question using a few key words.”
“How do I report that an additional card holder will be abroad?”
“Do you wish to remove someone from your account?”
“No, I wish to report that a debit card will be used abroad.”
“Do you wish to remove someone from your account?”
“No, I do not. I wish to report that a debit card will be used abroad.”
“Thank you for your feedback – I think that I might need some help in getting you the right answer. Would you like to ask the question again?”
“I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?”
“A team member will reply as soon as possible… As there are currently very high volumes of chats there may be a delay in answering your query. In the meantime you can leave the app. When you return the chat will still be here and you can continue at you convenience…”
I left the chat and returned about fifteen minutes later to find: “I understand. What is the card number you wish to register?… As you are no longer online and you have not replied, this chat has been closed.”

Spitting the proverbial feathers I started a new ‘chat’, determined not to let it go. I inputted all my answers word-for-word as the previous chat in order to avoid enraged swearing and then I waited… and waited… and waited, not daring to allow my eyes to drift from the screen, until finally what I presume was a human being picked up the chat. They asked for the card number and, within seconds, said “That’s done. Can I help with anything else?”
“Yes,” I typed “can you tell me how I can get half a day of my life back?”

Sometimes I’m invisible I’m nowhere to be seen
Kicked like a tin can into the shape of a man… Circles Erratica – Colin Hay

Saviour Machine

Each day as I sit down to write, a song usually manages to worm its way into my brain, where it remains warm and protected, for the rest of the day. It is usually connected in some tenuous way or another to the subject in hand and, in its own small way, influences what I subsequently have to say. This year, as part of my ‘challenge to self’ ethos I decided to incorporate the song itself into each little segue of psyche as I go along. Simple: the song is always there and always linked to what I am writing. Except that as soon as I start looking for it, it disappears. I have started to think about the song – what it should be, how it should be linked – before I sit down to write and it occupies such a large portion of my poor, enfeebled brain, that the rest of it cannot settle down to the job at hand, preferring instead to twiddle its thumbs and dream of wires.

Of course, if my brain actually contained wires – if it was actually Artificial Intelligence (abbreviated to AI and thus saving me from having to use inverted commas on the word ‘intelligence’ when referencing the contents of my head) – it would all be much easier. It would cope with two things at once. It would be able to systematically cross-reference all known songs in order to alight on the perfect bedfellow to the (logically inputted) illogicality of my outpourings. It would also do much better with the grammar.

Now what I know about AI would, I fear, struggle to distract an electrical brain for nano-seconds: its function, let alone its use, is a complete mystery to me. I presume that programming a set of electrical circuits to write in the same way as I do would be the work of seconds for a computer programmer (just give him a hammer and he can knock some cogs out) but surely it is in the nature of solid state that however illogically it decides to compute it must do it logically: it must make a rational decision to do it. There are not too many alternatives when all you’ve got to play with are zeroes and ones. Every decision is yes or no, left or right, up or down; there is no diagonal, there is no ‘maybe’. These things can think many times more quickly than we can, they can think more accurately, they can focus… but surely they cannot think quite like us. They cannot decide what to cook for tea whilst balancing the fact that the baby has just shit on the carpet and the cat has brought a live mouse into the house. They cannot say ‘F*ck it, we’ll eat out.’ They cannot make emotionally irrational decisions… can they?

Like everybody else, when I think of AI I think of Arnie. I think that a machine can only be as rational as the brain that programmed it, and then I realise that, pretty soon – if it is not already the case – AI will be programmed by AI. It will have no affiliation to the human race at all. It will control the machines that make it. It will control the machines that make weapons, it will control the machines that make medicines. It won’t take it long to figure out a way of stopping us from pulling the plug…

…And then I realise that the theme tune circulating in my brain has changed from the deeply morose to the frankly terrifying. Saviour Machine was written by Bowie back in 1970 and as usual he saw it coming. I don’t think AI can do that…

They called it the Prayer, its answer was law
Its logic stopped war, gave them food
How they adored till it cried in its boredom

“Please don’t believe in me, please disagree with me
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now
Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all”… Saviour Machine – David Bowie

So I press ‘C’ for ‘comfort’.
I dream of wires, the old days.
New ways, new ways.
I dream of wires… I Dream of Wires – Gary Numan

There’s more to this than anything that you or I can see
The world is mine the world is yours and here’s the cause
Zeroes and ones will take us there… Zeroes and Ones – Jesus Jones (Edwards)