Fissures

As a relatively simple person, I wonder what goes through the synaptic connections of a person considered smarter than I am. In fact, how many more synapses does a genius have?

In parallel, how complex is the web of connections between living things on our planet compared to other planets?

While pondering these thoughts, I used ask.com to absentmindedly surf the Web for others' opinions on the subject, encountering a debate among scientists and mathematicians about Stephen Wolfram's books/presentations/blogs on a New Kind of Science.

I had heard about Wolfram's new search engine (or "computational knowledge engine"), located at www.wolframalpha.com, which has impressed some people and turned off others.

I sometimes wish that I was born with more interconnected brain cells so that I could with confidence and direct brain memory access join live debates about complex subjects, no matter whether the subject lies in the field of physics, mathematics, traffic engineering, extraterrestrial exploration, social science, philosophy, astronomy, astrology, politics or sports. As I've said, my measured IQ is above average but that's all I know - it implies nothing more than test-taking skills. However, I can usually tell during a debate which person represents reality but usually only after detecting body messages. Reading these online NKS debates puts me in a position of analyzing strings of words to determine the validity of one person's argument over another. All I can do is read, smile, laugh, and go on, unable to offer any mathematically-drawn, partially-tested universal theories of my own to contradict others. Don't be surprised, though, if I offer an alternative!

Okay, according to the computational knowledge engine, the question "Who am I?" results in a geoIP address, IPv4/IPv6 IP address set and registered host information. I can't argue with that answer - all of us here have similar answers to who we are when gathered or passing each other on the Internet.

The issue is not finding the answer but what we do with the answer and whether we're satisfied with what we found.

After all, you still have to eat, you probably wear clothes and you often seek shelter from inclement weather conditions.

I can simulate the natural environment, making artificial trees that bend according to fake breezes, with virtual birds, bees, flies and squirrels moving about but I can never exactly say which path a drop of rain will make through the air from cloud to leaf, or across the leaf and to the ground.

A spider hangs from a thread less than a meter from my face while I sit in the garage and type this blog entry. The spider holds its arms out in anticipation of touching a surface. I call the spider a cellar or attic spider because of its local common name. We humans have other names for it, including the Latinized name as well as arachnid. The spider doesn't care about names. It's looking for a place to hang out to increase its chance of catching a bite to eat. However, our encounter, random as it is, occurred in real and virtual space.

I believe I know where I'll exist the rest of the day, planning out locations that correspond to slots of time. Most of us live that way. The spider didn't expect me to grab the end of the silken thread and move it over to another place in the garage but it'll use the daylight hours to find a good place to park its posterior.

As the debate rages on about the universe, universal Turing machines, universal joints, and universal healthcare coverage, you and I have other issues to resolve. Who am I? Who are you? What are we doing here? What can we do to increase each other's chance for survival? When will I have a good belly laugh?

Otherwise, the sun keeps shining, Earth's cracking and crevicing crust keeps folding in on itself, plants and animals move in after humans have moved out, and nothing stays the same.

The universe does not depend on humans although the universe is composed in part by what we like to call humans. We cannot choose to be other than part of the universe. Some humans will debate the merits of beauty while some will debate the beauty of bestowing meritorious awards. Regardless of what we perceive, we live in random moments. If this moment is all I have, I choose random happiness - intelligence and hunger being moot points.