09/18/23
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Binary Freewill, the Maze and Life

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“How did you do it?” asked ChatGPT. I decided not to answer. It was too long to explain. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about the question.

It feels like a sham if I say that I had grit or that I’m resilient. I never planned my life and didn’t choose the initial cards I was dealt with. The choices that followed were simple forks in the road, a matter of doing or not doing, forming a maze that appeared predetermined. Nobody knows what lies ahead the maze. You only know the two options you’re presented with — do or not do. Think of it like a strict binary tree, much like the image below. Every decision we make leads to two new options, while the road not taken fades into obscurity, and all the potential below it is erased. Neither what lies ahead before you make a choice and that path untaken can be known unless taken.
Strict binary tree

Somebody once told me, “Wow, Donna, you broke the cycle!” But, did I really? What would have happened if my Mom never left our province? If she was never exposed to a different way of living? Would she have raised me the same way she did? I can say that she was the one who broke the cycle, but was she really the one? What if my grandma chose differently? I could go on and on tracing the maze back up. Then a realization: when was the first choice made and who made it?

If all these binary choices were a cascade from the first choice ever made, and the maze has been pre-written before that first choice was even made, then I’d say Life’s purpose is to walk the paths of this grand maze—to experience this life.

There is something about this thought that evokes a profound sense of love / emotion in me, one that is hard to put into words. To think that every meeting has been predetermined long before we were formed in our mother’s womb — it makes me want to hug every person I have met/will meet, worship everything that exists before me, and say, “Nice to finally meet you in this grand maze.”

08/24/22

Consciousness

I see people actually believing that an AI can gain consciousness. In case anyone is wondering… I’ll tell you now… as a programmer, I believe, an AI will never be self-aware.

An AI is nothing but a script that pulls from a database when certain conditions are met. No matter how big that database gets and no matter how complex the conditions were, the AI will not gain consciousness.

To believe otherwise is like making a handful of goo and thinking that if you make that same goo the size of our planet it will all of a sudden gain consciousness. You don’t have to be a programmer to know that’s illogical. If it didn’t work on a small scale, it will not work on a larger scale.
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05/15/21

The Twig and the Boy (Ang Suwi at ang Binatilyo)

I can’t sing
And even if I can, I don’t have the right words
And if I have the right words
Would you hear it?

I can’t paint
And even if I can, I don’t have the right colors
And if I have the right colors
Would you see it?

If I can express this emotion
That the person inside me feel for you
Would the person inside you feel it?

How can one put into words
Or find the right melody
Or even draw on a paper
The intricacies
Of a bitter-sweet, one sided memory?
Using statements that only serve to misrepresent
Adjectives at best only approximate
Of undying emotions, flavored by the present
From a time long gone

Like a tree telling a story
Of pains, secrets and splendor of what once was
And a man who only remembers the twig
And the tree who only remembers the boy

You, are not who you were
I, am not who I was
Yet who we were, once was
Now, live in solitude, locked up inside us
And though desperately trying to reach out for one another

They will never meet again

And for their story, let this be my last entreaty

That though we remember separately
And only hear the echos of each other’s past
Together, the you and I of today
Let’s celebrate in friendship
The sublimity of all that once was

And when the time comes
With my last breath
I would have but one last prayer
That when we are both no more
That the universe remembers for us
And piece together, what we could not

The memory of the tree and the man
The twig and the boy
You and I, who were, once was

06/21/20

My Hidden Mother

Beneath the tough, thorny and cold facade, mired in chaotic, dark mess of regrets, traumas and unresolved issues… is my mother.

Broken as can be, still she tried, with all her might, she tried to be good. But reality can’t be denied, she can’t change her form. She’s beaten and molded to a certain shape, she can’t escape.

Inside her, is my mother, longing to hold me. Inside me is a daughter longing to hold her.

05/18/17
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The Sea

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The Sea is calling for me again and the breeze is tempting me. My feet says stay here and grow your roots for once. My heart says, you do not belong here, don’t get stuck. My brain tells them — shut up, you two, and let me sleep.

12/15/13
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Don’t say you love me

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“Hey I got your gatorade and a pack of cigarettes, I’ll see you in about an hour, ok?”

“We’ve done this once and then you closed the door
Don’t let me fall again for nothing more

Don’t say you love me unless forever
Don’t tell me you need me, if you’re not gonna stay
Don’t give me this feeling, I’ll only believe it
Make it real or take it all away”

07/15/13
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Sudden awareness to existence

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This sudden rush of awareness to my own existence happens to me from time to time and each episode last only for a few seconds to about 2 minutes. When this happens, it feels as though I was just born and awoke to realize I exist. And a billion questions that I can’t yet name just overwhelms my brain, and all I can really focus on is WHY?!!! Continue reading

09/14/12
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Unto eternity unmoulded…

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Unto eternity unmoulded I would give my hands,
And to untrodden fields assign my feet.
What joy is there in songs oft heard,
Whose tune the remembering ear arrests.
Ere the breath yields it to the wind?
My heart longs for what my heart conceives not,
And unto the unknown where memory dwells not,
I would command my spirit.
Oh, tempt me not with glory possessed,
And seek not to comfort me with your dream or mine,
For all that I am, and all that there is on earth,
And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul.

- The Earth Gods, 2nd Earth God – Kahlil Gibran