Cogito Ergo Sum

From the R.M. Dolin novel, AN UNSUSTAINABLE LIFE – The Book of Darwin

Chapter 23: I Think Therefore I Am

Darwin surveys the command center conference area as everyone settles in, reflecting on how good it is having the team back together. It’s only been a day since their rendezvous started but already it seems like old times; familiar mini clicks have reformed, backstage dramas that don’t amount to much after years of separate journeys seem to percolate just below the surface, it’s as if thing’s are where they’re supposed to be, everything that is except for Nash and Noah. Nash they might still convince to throw in with them but not Noah. Nobody’s certain what happened and while everyone has their own conspiracy theory, the one thing they agree on is that official explanations seem more like diversion than evidence.

One minute Noah’s at a Bay Area startup leading a government project and the next he’s dead. The police say it was self-inflicted but for anyone who knew him, it simply isn’t possible. According to Miyako who briefly worked with Noah at the startup, things were not as they appeared. At Noah’s insistence, she hastily left to take a job at a Tokyo startup where Noah promised to soon follow but never did. Finding out what happened has become Miyako’s life mission but so far access to information is tightly controlled, so much so that even for someone as talented as her at breaking through firewalls, it’s one big nada.

Nash is a lost cause, he’s the only one unaffected by Berkeley, he said it was good their technology wound up in the hands of the Chinese military because it served as a wakeup call for American military planners that modern battlefield tactics are rapidly evolving and the consequences of falling behind existential. Where the others are collectively plagued by moral interpretudes, Nash seizes the opportunity Berkeley creates to worm his way into a large and lucrative gig with a major defense contractor by convincing them he has the keys to the Chinese autonomous solider and can exploit flaws in their software architecture. What Nash does now is anyone’s guess, but it must be crucial for military success because he holds an important executive position at a government run research laboratory and repeatedly reaches out to Tien for help with a math problem he can’t tell her about unless she agrees to get a security clearance. Given the history of her grandparents and what went down at Berkeley, that’s just not gonna happen.

Last night was planned as a casual evening featuring cocktails, guacamole, and barbecued elk. Alfonso was the last to arrive because he got lost in Four Corners and instead of heading east along the Colorado/New Mexico border he drove south into Navajo Nation and by the time he realizes his mistake he’s hours behind schedule. He was pouting a bit about all the food being gone until Darwin produces a thick elk steak he’d put aside special because he knows how much Alfonso likes a freshly grilled steak. That was the only real hiccup in an otherwise pleasant evening, except for the off-colored joke Gabe told after he’d had a few too many. They spent some time memorializing Noah while vilifying Nash even though no one really condemns him for his choices because they each, to varying degrees, envy his ability to move past what happened.

The deal with Noah is far more convoluted and much harder to work through, while most focus only on the tragedy of what happened, Miyako can’t get past the unknown factors causing it. The consensus sediment is no one believes Noah would take his life but they accept he likely was dealing with demons that conquered his soul, everyone that is but Miyako, who not only was in close contact with Noah right up to the end, but also knew the shit he was dealing with seemed more like paranoia than demons. For her, the paranoia’s real, based on two attachés from the US embassy in Tokyo questioning her about her relationship with Noah and what they may have discussed. Nobody goes to that extent for an accidental death, so according to Miyako, Noah was either taken out by American agents because he stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have or was killed by agents from another country for information they thought he had. Either way, his death was certainty not self-induced.

While nothing gets resolved at their workshop mixer, the collective sediment is that Noah will be missed; and Nash too for that matter, they were both key contributors to past success, and their absence creates holes in the team’s cohesiveness that must be filled. Darwin can step up to fill Noah’s project management role since he no longer needs to delegate technical oversight to focus on the business aspects of running a startup. Filling Nash’s vacancy is a much harder challenge; his academic training was in software engineering and as such was Basi’s backup, but his real value to the team was as a software system integrator who understood on profoundly deep levels how software needs to mesh with hardware to create optimal system effectiveness. While no formal decision emerged from the mixer, a quiet consensus taking hold is that Camille can fill Nash’s role, the lingering worry, however, is that she lacks practical experience and necessary wisdom but there’s little doubt after everyone reviews her Master’s Thesis, that she has the raw talent.

Darwin takes all of that, along with years of leading this talent team, into consideration as he kicks off their first formal session. “Okay guys, let’s get started.” He announces. He takes a moment to allow stragglers to make their way from the coffee pot to the conference table and can’t help but laugh once everyone’s seated. “Take a moment guys and look around, anything familiar?” They all look around but no one offers a response. “I wish I’d brought a picture from back in the day because after twenty-some-odd years, you guys are sitting in the exact same order you did back then. It’s like nothing’s changed.”

“Except for getting older,” Alfonso offers

“And more portly,” Gabe adds while rubbing his beer belly.

“Speak for yourself,” Basia counters.

“Yeah,” Tien adds. “Some of us actually care about being healthy.”

“And some of us would rather enjoy life,” Gabe fires back unashamed of his weight gain.

Darwin steps in to refocus his team. “It appears the level of banter is something else time hasn’t changed, but before we dig into things, we have some necessary house cleaning. I know I’ve said this to each of you separately, but we haven’t all been together like this since before Berkeley and I think it’s important we start by dealing with the elephant in the room.” Darwin makes eye contact with each team member, he knows they know what he needs to say but he needs to say it anyway. “From the deepest depths of my soul, mea culpa. I was your leader, the person you dedicated years of hard work to, the person you trusted to fulfill our mission, to make something benefiting humanity. We were all so committed to that lofty ideal and I am so sorry I let you down.

“While what happened at Berkeley was a lifetime ago and we’ve each traveled personal journeys since, there’s no denying each of our lives is different today than it would have been otherwise, perhaps more for some than others but each of us has struggled with the aftermath and in one way or another, our individual journeys toward redemption have now brought us back together. Maybe it was always fate that we would eventually reunite when the moment most needed it, maybe whatever brought us together in the first place never let go, maybe even more, we have collectively always had a shared purpose that’s laid dormant until now. What started as philosophical discussions about the future of technology and our responsibilities to society have now cast us as outliers. I think it’s fair to say we always knew the task before us is an inevitability we can’t outrun.

“I know this sounds cliché, but to move forward we must let go of what happened, something I’ve wrestled with since Tien first came to New Mexico to see me. I can only speak for myself but before Tien’s visit I was content to live out my days in this off-grid wilderness world isolated from technology’s temptation. I truly believed the world was free to create whatever hell it wanted so long as I wasn’t part of it. Once Tien left me with no options, I struggled with the realities of what I was giving up and what I was walking back into. For years I tried reconciling things but just couldn’t, then yesterday, I’m talking with Camille, who’s an credibility talented woman with amazing insight into our challenges, and we’ll get to her in a moment, but I’m visiting with Camille and she starts talking about her Society for the Preservation of Humanity and the irony of how they have to use technology to promote their concerns about the dangers of technology and it hits me, that’s the core of my angst; we’re going to have to not only use technology to counter the evils of technology, we must advance it to new and dangerous levels.

“I remember how when we first got started, we talked with profound pride about how we were advancing technology for the betterment of humanity, and I know each and every one of you believed it down to your core. None of us set out to have what happened at Berkeley happen, but it did, and now, here we are in this bizarre ‘deja vu, Twilight Zone’ moment where each and every one of us believes what we’re here to consider is for the betterment of humanity and with the lessons of Berkeley behind us, we must acknowledge that the consequences of what we do, could very well be Berkeley 2.0.”

Satisfied he’s said his peace, Darwin knows he primed the pump for the hours long discussion and debate certain to follow. He looks around the table to see who’s going to start things off and isn’t surprised.

“First,” Tien begins. “Thank you for stating in your usual eloquent way all those things that needed to be said. But before we get into details, I, or should I say, we, want to tell you that, we know the years since Berkeley have been hard and we all wonder what you would have accomplished had you not withdrawn from the technology world; if your road to redemption would not have been better utilized staying engaged. More important, even though you took what happened to heart far more profoundly than the rest of us, none of us blames you for what happened. You have always been a good man, a great leader, and what we accomplished under your stewardship is something none of us have come close to since. So thank you, and again, collectively, we implore you to stop living in the past, this moment requires you to be all in, present, and fully committed; we’re counting on you and if you can commit to that, we are ready to join you for every opportunity, advancement, challenge and yes, consequence that may come.”

Before Darwin can respond, Basia weighs in. “While you banished yourself to the wilderness, the rest of us had to find other ways to get on with our lives. We talk trash about Nash, but we don’t really mean it, he’s no different than us, he just chose a different path. We have all had to reconcile what happened and like you, I never thought I’d write code again, but here I am because here is where fate was always leading me, like it has for each of us. So yes, we are committed to seeing this through, we know it won’t be easy and there will be risk, but if my daughter has taught me anything it’s that we need to be guided by our beliefs and my belief is that what we are proposing needs to be done even if the outcome could possibly be another Berkeley.”

Gabe goes next. “We Irish like to say that you need an old dog for a hard road, and the years have hardened you plenty. We also have a toast I think captures our collective sediment, ‘May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.’ We’ll be trusting to you, Dr. Darwin, to manage our foresight and insight, replete of course with unsolicited critics, you know, for your own continuous process improvement.”

Darwin smiles warmly at his team, not just for their affirmation but for their spirit of comradery that has not diminished. He accepts that’s a sign their journey is what fate’s been holding for them all these years. “Well,” he adds with a laugh, “I’m glad we had our little chat. It’s good to start an undertaking such as this with clarity and now, we can talk turkey.

He shifts gears with the smoothness of a Harley on a glide, “as we stare into the technology abyss and consider the work that must be done, the thing we should acknowledge is that there’s no such thing as dishonorable work, as least not when the goal is honorable. I believe the reason we’re here is because each of us knows it’s necessary, not only for fixing what we, me, broke, but for moving forward. I’m not gonna lie, there are huge dragons out there that must be slain, the two most directly in our path are the Information Oligarchs and the far more obtuse dragon representing humanities innate willingness to sacrifice itself for convenience and continual stimulation. This is our quest, our holy grail if you will, finding a way to awaken humanity to the devil’s subtle seduction; this is our truth, the reason fate brought us together.

The French philosopher, René Descartes, famously posed the following paradox, “Suppose you know something to be true, but someone challenges your belief by asking, how you know it’s true? You offer evidence in support of your assertion, but then someone asks, how do you know your evidence is true? So, you provide evidence validating your previous evidence but again someone asks, how do you know that you know that you know the evidence is true?

Descartes’ paradox is a recognition that this process of validating what you know only to have your validating evidence challenged never ends. His solution to this recursive riddle was to assert that as a rational thinking human he has the ability discern what he knows, which famously over time has been translated into the expression ‘Cogito Ergo Sum, I think, therefore I Am.’

“Setting aside the science of the soul, if AI obtains the ability to think for itself, it would, based on Descartes’ paradox, become a sentient human possessing foundational consciousness? But AI can’t think for itself, it can only spew data and process information in the narrow way it was programmed. That doesn’t mean AI can’t possess human-like attributes and even pass itself off as human in certain circumstances. It can be smarter than humans at logical challenges, like chess or operating a nuclear power plant, but it can’t think; it will never achieve that level of consciousness, at least not if we have anything to do with it.

The challenge before us is how to prevent AI from becoming a weapon against humans when humanity is so willing to be subjugated? Philosophers have been wrestling with this for millennium; think about how easy it has always been to control those willing to be controlled, from monarchs to dictators the masses follow like lambs. Mao murders millions and the Chinese willingly comply. Stalin slaughters millions and the Russians pretend they’re both strong and proud. The British intentionally introduce smallpox to American Indians killing millions and history never holds them up as genocidal murders. The history of humanity is very dark and very ugly when the masses are compliantly led by the self-aggrandizing acts of a few and those few today willfully leading the masses toward their own extinction are the Information Oligarchs.”

#

It’s been a week since the rendezvous ended and the one thing continuing to haunt Darwin like a lost soul at an empty cemetery is the chanting echo of Camille’s prophetic warning from that afternoon they first met, ‘if all we do is sit around proselytizing about what should be done, then nothing ever gets done, so nothing ever changes and humanity continues its slow descent into the ever increasing darkness of the abyss of its own creation.’

The overwhelming issue looming like a lion before his pride, is once you strip away frivolous tapestries, there’s a sea change of difference between knowing something must be done and knowing what that something must be, which is why, even though the meeting went well critics need to be carefully caveated within the context of how Camille says her society meetings usually go; full of puff and pop with nothing getting done. That’s the problem with intellectuals; they overthink things to the point of becoming frozen in self-replicating stases. As soon as one course of action is decided, a thousand possible scenarios arise, each having to be summarily assessed and dismissed. Once that’s done, a new course of action arises, having another thousand outcomes that must be navigated through like a poorly armored jeep in a minefield. And so it goes, the very essence of Descartes’ recursion; nothing ever being decided because there’s never a way to illicit an escape from the recursion. It would be like trying to defy gravity or alter the outcome of manifest destiny.

That’s the issue plaguing Darwin as he hurries up to his high mountain meadow attempting to make base camp in time to catch the first pitch in the pivotal third game of a potential Cubs homestand sweep against the rival Saint Louis Cardinals. With a cold lake breeze blowing toward home plate at Wriggly, the match has all the markings of a pitcher’s duel and today, the Cubs have their ace on the mound with all starters playing together for the first time since the all-star break. This game has all the markings of an epic late season showdown having serious playoff consequences, which is why Darwin’s packed extra beer and snacks.

Murphy senses the urgency, so he calmly sits on the passenger side of Darwin’s rust riddled pickup, which is hard for Murphy’s to do while watching out the rolled down window as the pickup plows past embedded boulders that drift like treacherous midsummer snow and around busted up deadfall that clutters the road like discarded trash. Murphy hesitates to bark as the pickup splashes through the elk bog before begrudgingly grinding up the last steep incline. Every bolt, every gear, every turn of the smoothly worn cam relentlessly lumbering over jagged cutouts and super tight switchbacks first carved into the mountain by Spanish settlers four centuries ago, men who understood we’re all ethereally tied to a land that grants and takes life with callous causation. Men who appreciated the way each deeply worn rut and syncopated washboard provides poignant proof that in the struggle between man and nature, man seldom prevails.

The pickup forcefully ushers itself from the primordial forest onto the isolated high mountain meadow that even after years escaping calendar counting, Darwin doesn’t feel he’s earned the right to call home. It’s hard for Murphy to wait for Darwin to walk around the pickup, open the passenger door, and help him down. He’s eager to be outside chasing whatever needs chasing but at this stage of his life, a leap from the passenger side seat to the tall meadow grass is painfully hard on his aging joints. His heart still beats to the rhythm of a puppy, but the rest of his body slips every day past deeper increments of betrayal. The colt who used to let Murphy chew on his ears has grown into a regal roan stallion who relieved the proud Appaloosa of herd command this spring, so it’s now on him to fret over the comings and goings of each interloper to his mountain meadow domain.

The proud Appaloosa who’s allowed Darwin access to his meadow for the last twenty some years, feels the increasing cold air of early fall, knowing this will be his last winter. While he might make it down the mountain to winter pastures, there’s no appeal in making the journey back up come spring. He knows in ways that can never be put into thoughts or words that this is where he wants to die, his high mountain meadow is as close to heaven as any place on earth and better to rest in paradise than to survive one more harsh winter in hell.

The regal roan waits for Murphy to be helped out of the pickup, watching a safe distance away. The Appaloosa’s too old to hesitate, there’s an aura about the meadow today that tells him his time with his lifelong compadre is no longer measured in seasons. With the final thousand feet of snow crusted bare rock rising up Marquez Mountain in ever increasing complexity, Darwin’s so busy hurrying down the lush green-grass meadow to the base of the aspen grove where legend maintains Calvin Kismet Kincaid is buried, he doesn’t appreciate the warning signs of an early fall storm forming behind the peak.

Darwin sets his cooler and snacks on the heavy pine table first carved by Spanish Conquistadors several hundred years ago. He fires up his solar-powered satellite radio just as the Cubs take the field for the opening pitch and before the lead-off batter has a chance to look at strike three, Darwin’s settled into his blue-veined Adirondack chair and cracked open an Old Milwaukee. He couldn’t ask for a better day to catch the final game in the Cub’s final homestand with the pennant on the line. Two weeks ago, the Cubs where four-and-a-half games up on the Cards and now, down a half a game, it all comes down to today. With so much on the line, it’s not until after the third batter goes down swinging that Darwin notices his old friend standing at the edge of the aspen.

“How ya doing old friend,” Darwin says to the Appaloosa, “you here for another installment of exciting Chicago Cubs baseball?” Darwin reaches into his snack bag and pulls out a green apple that he tosses to his friend. “I’d offer you a beer, but you never ever said who you root for and I can’t be wasting beer on a Cardinals fan.” As Chicago’s lead-off batter gets a sharp drive into the gap between second and short, Darwin’s mind drifts over to matters even more important than the game’s outcome. He walks to the edge of his pine floor platform on the open side of his three-wall tent, “Let me ask you something,” he says to the Appaloosa, “Are you at all concerned, the world’s going to hell? I mean you know from all your winters that down below humanity’s rushing toward its existential cliff, but up here, life’s pretty dang darn good. So, my question is, why the hell should either of us ever leave? Calvin certainty never left but I doubt we can say that was his intent.”

Darwin stands there talking to his friend until his beer’s nearly gone, so lost in thought he’s not paying attention to the lead-off batter stealing second, the next two batters striking out, and fourth batter belting a two-run homer over the left field ivy. He’s equally oblivious to the sudden storm rolling over Marquez Mountain turning his sunny afternoon into daytime darkness. The storm moves in with tremendous temerity, then out in tacit turmoil, moving so fast the sun never has a fighting chance. Rain rages down with the sullen suddenness of a bitterly betrayed woman releasing the passion of her anger, leaving behind a wake of devastation that was, for those paying attention, foretold in the earlier legend of Marquez Mountain.

That Darwin dies in the afternoon was never in dispute any more than his final fade would be along the south slope of Marquez Mountain embraced by del Sol’s last lingering kiss. That ancient aspen defiantly daring to dangle on the edge of Tender Top Mesa like a seductive dancer concealing charms in darting dashes that amplify life to the level of lore is no more, killed by a brazen bolt of lightning. The appaloosa tries to warn Darwin but in the micro moment before the strike, he recognizes the futility of his endeavor and bolts up the meadow staying within the protective shield of the aspen grove. The lightening hits with such intensity the aspen is split in two. The heavy branch hanging over base camp that Darwin’s been meaning to prune for years, crashes onto the pine-floor platform with so much energy it catapults Darwin headfirst in the heavy wood table first built by Spanish Conquistadors. The impact of Darwin’s soft head colliding with the hard table is a consequence containing no time for lingering thoughts or the realities of regret. That Darwin dies alone was never in question any more than any of this is being dramatic; just the consequential way accounts get settled between man and nature on Marquez Mountain in the still untamed Northern New Mexico wilderness.

Note: While you might be thinking the story ends here it doesn’t, it continues in “An Unsustainable Life – The Book of Issac.”