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reductionist, mechanistic views
Sunday, February 13 2000
Despite a light rain falling from the stratus clouds over the mountains of Ojai, Kim and I went on a little walk some distance up the valley surrounding the cabin in which we'd spent the night. The main reason was so that Kim could escape the cats. Her allergies were so bad that she could actually feel herself getting ill. As we walked along the river I looked around at the topography and sensed that the cabin in which we'd slept was asking to be washed away with the next big flood.
Corynna cooked up a breakfast of eggs and sausage which, of course, meant nothing to me. All I wanted to do was drink coffee. While Corynna was bemoaning the state of her head and wondering how she'd managed to get naked and wet the bed last night, I was relishing the fact that I had no hangover.
Back at Corynna and Evan's place in Los Angeles, Kim fussed and picked over the images for her advertisement on the Goddess Temple website. It was much like the experience of seeing Kim reject the seat offered her by the hostess of a restaurant. Even though it's an aggravation to see her being so picky, I've grown accustomed to it and it's no longer a total drag like it used to be.
For most of the ride home to San Diego, Kim and I argued about the nature of life. I said, as I usually say, that I didn't believe in any spiritual forces but that there was no essential difference between human intelligence and robotic intelligence. I said that there were no real mysteries left in the entire science of Biology. "When robots can reproduce themselves and are programmed by survival of the fittest," I assured her, "then no one will see anything remarkable in human intelligence." Kim begged to differ, wondering about such things as art and creativity. It clearly dismayed her that someone endowed with creative gifts would have such reductionist, mechanistic views.
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