I think, therefore i am; but it’s not important..

I’m encountering some kind of a paradigm shift. And being unable to let go of my old beliefs, it’s kind of an icky state i’m in. Or rather, i’m having trouble accepting the new belief. The gist of it is this:

Let’s say there was a robot. This robot is programmed with my memories, personality, and looks, acts and thinks exactly like me. The likeness goes right down to dna and the petty faults. And no one is able to tell the difference.

Since i’ve always asserted that my existence is pretty much summed up by my memories and personality encoded in my brain. Incidentally, that would also mean that if a robot possess the same memories and personality, that robot would, in essence, also be me.

But yet, i could hardly say that the robot is me. Coz if i were to stand in proximity to the robot, i would be able to see that we’re two separate persons, even if we’re identical.

But then i got round to thinking about teleportation pads. Where the mass of a person is disassembled in one location, and the information is transmitted to another location.

The teleportation device over the other side would then use the information received to reconstruct the person using atoms and molecules from the surrounding area.

Is such a person still the same person before teleportation? If something went wrong with the teleportation pads, and information was transmitted to the destination, but the system failed to disassemble the person at the source, then we would have the same problem, two separate but identical persons.

So far so good. But then i got round to thinking, about our biological bodies. We lose and gain cells everyday. Over the course of our lives, we probably lose and gain enough cells to replace our entire brain several times.

The dissonance here is what bugs me. If i’m losing and gaining brain cells everyday, and i still call me as me while this is happening, then why should i treat the person in the teleportation scenario any different. He’s getting his brain cells replaced with new cells that’s all, albeit in a more arbitrary manner.

I’m beginning to think that the only way to reconnect the disconnected is to not treat the separate bodies with identical mind as separate persons. It’s a little hard to conceive, a person with two bodies and two brains, which is why i find this paradigm shift particularly icky.

The sad conclusion is that both individuality and the biologicality (no such word) of an individual is of relatively little importance.

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The one where i dreamed i was in Prison Break

Had a pretty weird dream last night. I dreamed that i was in prison and was parting with my brother, Lincoln Burrows. That makes me, by inference, Michael Scofield. Woohoo. I’m going to whisper alot and pretty junkie doctors are going to fall in love with my witty charm.

We had our cells at the end of the corridor, side by side. He went into his cell and i was left in the corridor with Fernando Sucre, lying on some hospital trolley bed. Yep, the hospital trolley bed was inexplicably in the prison corridor. The cell doors were opaque wooden doors, btw.

I asked him if there was any way to get T-Bag transferred from the dark room back into gen pop or ‘here’. ‘Here’ was understood to be psych ward. He said something about “we don’t need T-Bag.” and i walked up to him, place my hand over his neck and whispered, “T-Bag is more useful than you.”.

Anyway, we both walked back into our cell; apparently, Fernando seemed pretty cool with the exchange earlier. Then a girl appeared at the doorway. She had her eyes wide open, so wide that it looked like they were going to pop out, like how people having psychotic episodes look like on Tv.

She looked in the direction of me and Sucre, and i recall that i was wishing very hard that the girl was looking at Sucre instead of me. Then she screamed something repititively. I don’t remember what she screamed. It could’ve been “You, you, you, you, you.”.

Screaming, she charged at me and i tried to fend her off by kicking her away. After awhile, she went over to bang on my brother’s door screaming the same thing. When my brother didn’t respond, she came at me again, fingers and nails clawing at me with some fiery hatred. And i fended her off again, with legs kicking, fear of this scary woman gnawing at my heart.

And i called out, “Help, security, help!” Which was rather awkward because i realized in the dream itself that i was in a prison rather than a hotel. I should’ve been calling for “officers” rather than “security”.

The officers came and grabbed the girl from behind and dragged her out. Officers filled into the room, ready to subdue us, coz despite us being the aggrieved, coz the girl charging at us was somehow seen as our fault.

One of the officers gave Fernando an injection to make him fall asleep. Then the advance on me, cautiously. They were cautious coz they perceived me to be dangerous or something.

And i raised my hands to stay them, telling them that it wasn’t us causing trouble. Then the rushed me and started injecting me with stuff. Two on the crook of the elbow, one on the arm, and one more in the neck.

Which is a really crazy amount of needles to use.

In any case, i woke up and the dream ended. The dream did not have an OOB perspective.

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The one with durian seeds

I read somewhere that durians seeds are poisonous when raw and edible when cooked. And when mum bought some durians today, i kept five seeds for cooking.

The thing about cooked durian seeds is that they are kind of awful smelling. And the skin covering the cooked seed is kind of slimy to peel off. The taste is an ugly bland. Jackfruit seeds are alot tastier than durian seeds.

After eating one seed, i decided to google a little more to see how edible durian seeds really are. Then i came upon one webbie that said “Due to the toxic and perhaps carcinogenic nature of these substances, it would be unwise to ingest uncooked durian seeds.”

Wth.. perhaps carcinogenic..

I threw away the other four seeds. Now i feel queasy. I think i’m going to die from throat, stomach and intestinal cancer.

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The one with my relationship in facebook

Yep, i’ve got nothing better to do..

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The one with ‘last monday’

Just bumped into something. If today was Wednesday, June 16, and someone said ‘last Monday’, does he mean June 14 or June 7?

Coz i came across an explanation online that said, “Suppose we are in the autumn of the year 2010, Last spring would be spring 2010. The spring of last year would be spring 2009.”

So.. is there a difference between ‘last monday’ and ‘the monday of last week’?

And if someone said “next weekend”, does he mean the coming weekend or the weekend of next week?

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The one with Prison Break

I’ve just finished Prison Break. At 80 eppys and 45+mins per eppy, back to back eppy watching meant that i’ve been doing nothing much for the past days but sit in front of the picture box.

My mind is totally filled with Prison Break. So much that i kind of want to tattoo a map onto my body. I can’t decide on what map to tattoo onto my body though.

The thought of tattooing the mrt lines onto my body seemed kind of useful. But it also seemed pretty amateur and mundane. Not to mention, nerdy too.

Maybe i should get my hands on the local prison blueprints, tattoo it onto my body, along with a cute poison tattoo, and then get myself imprisoned, and then do a prison break. I’ll go down in history as legendary if i did that, i think.

Hey.. did anyone steal my toothpaste?

Anyway.. guess which one is my favourite character in Prison Break. People would think that my favourite character would be one of the female characters like Sara Tencredi or Sofia or Morgan Gretchen.

How can anyone not love Morgan Gretchen. She’s kick ass like Lara Croft and has a tendency to offer sexual favours for no apparent reason at the worst possible timings. She’s the kind of girl that every guy (or girl if one so prefers) wants to get locked up with.

I’ll pull her pocket with a kind of religious zeal, ya know.

But nope, my favourite characters are not any of the sizzling hot female characters. Throughout the seasons, i was always rooting for Theodore Bagwell. Yep, T-Bag, that villainous murderer.

I was hoping that when the seasons ended, Theodore Bagwell would be free (though not exonerated, just free), walking into the desert sunset with a bag of cash slung over his shoulder.

Oh well.. so much for now. Ta.

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The one with 20102010

This is an announcement. Cousin icegalaxia is getting married (ROM) on 20102010.

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No free delivery

Argh… i mailed a letter without a stamp today.. The thing is, when i looked at the return envelope provided earlier, i had whined to my brother that the envelope provided wasn’t a prepaid envelope and needed stamps.

I hope the letter gets returned to me. I had the sender’s address on it.

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Induced insomnia

Oh gods.. now i’m awake and blogging.

The baby nephew tends to toss and flip and crawl in his sleep. So much that he can flip himself off the breadth of his mattress and onto the floor. Mum’s mattress and mine line both the length of his mattress. So he doesn’t fall off the length of mattress unless he manages to flip over our sleeping bodies.

But that doesn’t stop him from coming over to our mattress. And that’s what he did. So i shifted a little to give him more space, less i roll onto him in my sleep. I give space, he takes it and in no time, through attrition, the baby nephew had conquered my mattress and i had retreated to the floor.

Which is mighty fine. Except that as i was trying to fall back into sleep, i felt the hairs on my thigh tingling. The tingling sensation didn’t stay in one spot, which meant something was crawling on my leg. Wth.

I gave it a quick brush to flick the legged thing off my legs and was on my way to sleep when the LB with horns woke me up filling my head with murderous intentions. If it was a roach, then i definitely wanted it dead.

So i sat up, put my glasses on, which is really made of plastic, so maybe i should say i put my plastics on. Anyway, i snooped around and found the legged thing. In the dim night light, i couldn’t really identify what the legged thing was.

I grabbed a tissue, and grabbed the legged thing off the floor. Coz i’m still very afraid of legged things and i need an insulation between the legged thing and my fingers. I can never pick up legged things with my bare hands. I’ll freak out.

Flushed it into the toilet bowl. RAmen.

When i returned from the toilet, the baby nephew had eased his attack a little, and there was just enough space to put my body on the mattress, to position myself between the floor and him (as to his position when i’m blogging; he sat up and cry later, and mum transposed him back to his mattress in the middle).

But the damage was done. Though i lay there perfectly still, eyes closed, my mind was vividly blogging about what happened. And then the worst happened; i bumped into words which i felt that i needed to check the dictionary.

The last straw was when some idiot started revving his motorcycle many many times before speeding away with his pillion. I had gotten up to look at them, but that’s way too much physical and mental activity and i couldn’t go back to sleep anymore.

So i blogged and am now hungry.

Hmm.. don’t i long for a girlfriend to crawl into my bed? Instead, i get a baby nephew doing it -_-

Oh well, time to raid the refrigerator. Ta.

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