So Rare and Beautiful

Kirin – a 100 word story

I stretched the line of my bow and shot a straight arrow using magical fire. The Rakuda fell down dead. I looted it. Got some Soft Fur and some coins. I looked for more Rakuda. Only six more to go. I spotted a few more of them, but then I saw it, the majestic Kirin, so rare and beautiful, his long neck towering high above me and his innocent eyes wise, timeless. I fitted my finest arrow and called up all my magic into it, air, water, and fire. It shot straight through, killing him on the spot. Epic drop.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 23, So Rare and Beautiful

There are two kinds of qualities, one that is found in art, music, and literature and another which is found in crafts. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at quality in art, music, and literature. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about quality. Art is first and foremost a form of expression that goes beyond the boundaries of simple words and gestures. For simplicity, I’m going to use the words art and artworks to include painting, music, literature and any other form of expression that can be called art. Quality in art is often reflected in complexity and layering. Quality art can be understood on several layers while holding a strong overall message, or it can hold a paradox, having several conflicting messages on different layers. Quality art can also make us think and feel and we can often be moved by it.

The quality of art can be amorphic since it can’t really be measured. Art is an exchange between the creator of the artwork and the art consumer, thus making the art itself open to different interpretations. As a result, no artwork is the same for two different people. That makes the pursuit of understanding quality in art elusive. An artwork that is of quality to one person might be perceived as utter trash by another. This reminds me I should throw away this art reproduction I got, referred to by bystanders and observers alike as trash, to the trash. I’ll be right back.

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Yogerthy Yogurt – a 100 word story

He follows her around like a dog, and Yogerthy Yogurt loved it until he started chasing cars, barking and digging holes in her backyard, hiding his favorite bones. She tried throwing a stick into a bottomless well but he climbed out and fetched. She tried driving him to remote locations and accidentally forgetting him there, but he kept returning. Even when she refused his marriage proposal, bone ring and all, he kept coming back wagging his tail. She eventually had to call the dog catchers for him. The guys from the asylum just didn’t have dog food on their menu.

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Welcome back. When we pursue quality in art, we use our own perspective as the focal point of our observation. That means we are biased participants as opposed to objective observers since art is an interaction between consumer, artwork, and artist. When you consume art, you interpret it in your own unique way. No two people are alike and any one person would interpret the artwork differently depending on their beliefs and personal biases. In that way, your own interpretation changes the artwork itself. Art, in a way, is what you interpret it to be.

Art is first and foremost a statement by an artist who wants to convey a message to an art consumer. Art happens in the interaction between the two, and one facet of the quality of art can be seen as the amount of influence the artwork has on the consumer. The problem is that while one person might be completely moved by a certain piece of art, another might be completely indifferent to the same piece. In that way, quality in the arts has a quantum quality. It both exists and does not exist in the same artwork. That’s also the reason quality in the arts can’t be measured.

Since quality in art seems to be subjective and can’t really be measured, it begs the question, does quality in the arts really exist? The answer is that some quality exists in any piece of art in existence because any artwork has its own consumers who interpret it in their own unique way. Since art is the interaction between the artwork and the consumer, it’s enough that one consumer finds quality in the art for it to have quality. In that way, the potential for quality exists in the art itself and manifests in the interaction between the artwork and the consumer. It’s the consumer that puts the quality in the art, not the artist. This concludes episode 23 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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The Upper Hand in Debate

The First – a 100 word story

She was the first letter in the alphabet and she knew it. A quick look from her was enough to melt most of the alphabet away. People became muted as she walked by, viciously robbed of their speech. She had the upper hand in debate, leaving every other letter far behind. She was a countenance, a word, and a world on her own. She stood on a strong foundation and no one could collapse her. A coma was just a pause for her and no semicolon could keep her away. It was only at the full stop that she stopped.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 22, The Upper Hand in Debate

We use languages to communicate and words to understand each other. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at language. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about language. Words don’t really have a meaning from the get-go. Meaning is what we pour into words. Words, when spoken, are just sounds, and the written word is just squiggly lines on a blank piece of paper. It’s the meaning we pour into those words that makes them count, and those meanings, in turn, can make those words of ours very powerful. Words create our story, help us communicate with each other, exchange ideas. When we collect all those words together, they make up our language.

You might think your language is the same as the language of that guy living next door. You are not entirely wrong. Some meanings are almost universal and they are almost the same for everyone. The problem is that language has nuances and the meaning often gets lost in translation, even within the same language. Meanings might not be exactly the same for everyone. Part of this is because we sometimes find meaning between the lines, beyond the words. We might say something but the intonation of our voice can tell our listeners that we mean the exact opposite, even if we haven’t meant to. Someone can write a story that is completely clear to him, only to find out other people understood his story in a completely different way. As I understand this story, this is where my break comes in. I’ll be right back.

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The Traffic Witch – a 100 word story

She had her own vehicle, commonly known as “The Broom”, and she enjoyed driving it through traffic tunnels. The rush of cars coming out through the other side, bumping into each other made her giggle. Getting rid of the evidence was a little messy. Usually, it involved accurately targeted lightning bolts, directed at various witnesses, both in the cars and around them. She did enjoy the various commentators, both on television and on YouTube. She liked it when they called her “a force of nature”. It was when they started connecting her to global warming that she gave up though.

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Welcome back. There are many languages in this world. Some have words that other languages don’t have. Some miss words that seem essential in other languages. Not all languages are created equal, and some seem to define the people who speak them. You can learn several languages, then you’ll have an insight into the minds of nations, how they use words, how they connect them into sentences. The order in which words connect in a sentence might give you insight into what is more important to the people who use a certain language. The very sound of a language might suggest that the people using it have a certain temperament that goes well with the general sound of that language.

You think you understand your own language. You might learn another and think you understand that one as well. You would probably come across languages you don’t understand, and for someone who speaks a completely different language then you, your own language might be a mystery, a code to crack, an enigma. The problem is language in itself doesn’t have a meaning. You have to pour your own meaning into it as you grow up and understand more of your own language and any mistaken meaning gets embedded into your very own unique vocabulary. That’s where misunderstandings come from, and those can sometimes change the fate of nations.

Language can be used to change the course of history or just the life of one human being. Language can be used to write a novel, a symphony or just to order a pizza. Language can be mundane, or it can be magnificent, it can be everything or nothing or anything in between. Language can even be used to write a podcast. This concludes episode 22 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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Whispers from Within

The Message – a 100 word story

The bottle washed upon the shore. As I picked it out with trembling hands, I could hear whispers from within. I hesitated for a moment, knowing what was bound to happen, then curiosity got the better of me and I unscrewed the cork. A happy genie burst from within and said: “I have a message for you from the Happy Genie Society. Your HGS membership has expired. Your terms are the regular ones. Once you served your sentence, you would be free again for another term respectively.” As I screamed, my body contracted and I was squeezed into the bottle.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 21, Whispers from Within

Intelligence, there are many ways of achieving one that is greater than human intelligence. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at intelligence and the technological singularity. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about intelligence. When you can recognize patterns in the world around you and have the ability to deduce the missing pieces in those patterns by using logic and the power of deduction, you are said to be intelligent. The more complex the patterns, the more intelligent you are. Most people can deduce that if we have 1 and then 2 followed by a 3, the next number would be 4. That is a very simple pattern and can be recognized by almost anyone. It is much harder to recognize the patterns in the movement of stars or the weather and predict how those would develop over the years.

Intelligence can be measured. There is a range of human intelligence that is measured by intelligence tests and given a range of numbers called the intelligence quantity. Those IQ tests show that human intelligence mostly ranges between 85 and 115, 100 being the average number. A person with an IQ over 130 is considered a genius. The highest measured IQ level is somewhat between 250 and 300. Intellect is what drives human society forward, but it is limited. It can only take us so far. That is why we are creating artificial intelligence that can do things that human intelligence can’t. What happens when artificially created intelligence goes beyond human intelligence though? Let me find an intelligent excuse for taking a break. I’ll be right back.

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Memory – a 100 word story

First, it was the small things, those little details like forgetting what I had for breakfast and if brushed my teeth, forgetting where I put the car keys, then it was the names of people, their faces, then the things I’ve seen on the morning news. I started making notes but I forgot to look at them. I would forget to eat and wonder why my midsection was making those funny noises. Finally, I forgot my name. I honestly can’t tell you who I am, where I came from or what I did. I just exist. No past. Only present.

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Welcome back. One of the biggest problems with current artificial intelligence is pattern recognition, but that is changing really fast. AI can already recognize faces and we are teaching it to recognize traffic patterns so it can drive our cars. It was predicted by very intelligent human beings that AI would exceed human intelligence, probably around the year 2045. Some say that this would be the end of the age of humans as the top of the life chain on earth or even the end of the human race as we know it. The point of time when an intelligence exists on earth that is greater then human intelligence is called the technological singularity.

In astronomy, a singularity is what happens beyond an event horizon where the very rules of physics are not as they are in the world around us. This is seen at the boundary of a black hole where space and time distort completely. The event horizon of the technological singularity is intelligence that is greater than current human intelligence, one that is so great that it changes the world as we know it. This can come about in a few different ways, AI being only one of them. While AI is being worked on, ways of enhancing human intelligence are also being sought after. One way being suggested is the reorganization of the cells of your brain using nanotechnology. Another way is to actually merge our own intelligence with AI using implants, creating a hybrid intelligence. However we go about it, the technological singularity probably cannot be avoided.

The reason we call it a singularity is that presumably, we don’t have the intelligence to perceive what a greater then human intelligence would do and how it would change our world. We have already changed our world considerably using human intelligence in ways that people wouldn’t have been able to imagine a hundred years ago. A superintelligence would be able to do this much faster than anyone realizes. When this happens we could wake up one day and not even recognize the world around us, and no one knows in what ways our world will change. We are heading into the unknown at top speed, and we don’t have our seatbelts on. We can either change ourselves to fit the ride by enhancing our own intelligence, or be left behind. This concludes episode 21 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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