Why Change is So Hard

1.  Permanent fixtures in your life will encourage old habits and behaviors.
2.  The mind reverts back.
3.  Its exhausting persisting day to day.
4.  It can feel like progress is slow.

All and all change is hard to start and carry through with. Its an uncomfortable and tiring experience that feels unstable for long periods of time. You have to be very diligent and your strategy has to be right. You want to make sure you aren't wasting your time. Diligence is keeping up with it and pushing through the adversity of habit. You must lay new habits, new layers of paint that are stripped off frequently. Strategy is understanding not everything is helping you move forward the same amount. You want to be flexible and cognizant of how you are moving forward and why.

Subconscious

Our subconscious is the machinery of our existence. It is what makes decisions for us and chooses our course of actions and desires in life. I firmly believe for me to get what I want from life, I have to change my own subconscious drastically. Its not really clear how to do this. How you see the world is related to how you feel the world which is related to what you get from the world. Obviously some people circumvent seeing the world and feeling the world from the highest perspective while still becoming successful. Usually what this means is the person succeeded through a boxed in paradigm. They spent their effort on the specifics of the task at hand and developed the bare minimum internal perspective to take them where they needed. There is a funny opposite to this occurrence, the person who's perspective is 'enlightened', so to speak, yet has only challenged themselves mentally in their mind. I've started to believe that the internal perspective is the most important skill.

Failure: Something to be celebrated

Failure is painful. Social failure is particularly poignant. Why is it painful? Intellectually one knows there is no way to improve without failing, yet the pain of failure persists, logic-retardant. Emotionally your subconscious never acts logically. This makes it particularly difficult to stomach the pain that seems to be inevitable. I don't know if its actually feasible to try and rework your habitual response to failure. I think the most prominent and popular method is to just deal with it and last long enough that you start to experience some sort of success that offsets the failure. It would be better however to change your subconscious reaction to failure. I think the best way to do this would be to try and frame failure successfully in your mind and then go out and fail while focusing on maintaining the frame. I have trouble maintaining frames for extended periods of time, especially in the heat of socialization. This is problematic since the frame is probably one of the most important aspects of change. In my mind I get caught up trying to do too many aimless things at a time. I need to really be goal and focus oriented in my interactions from now on. I think the most important thing is to NOT try and talk to people but just internally manage myself. But perhaps focusing on myself is part of the problem with the frame itself? Hmm. You need to feel in control when you do things. Until I have that emotional sense I cannot really impart much of this to others. it gets easier when other people are validating you....but I want to be free from this. I want to come into an interaction without needing validation or recognition. I want inner strength, security, confidence, and calmness. Its in this emotional position that you may be able to manifest other good emotional states as well as best control the emotions of others around you. That is what I want...who knows how I'll get there.

New Social Practice Theory

I need to socialize very little. I need to be prepared before every instance of socialization. I need to focus intensely on altering and controlling myself 200% of the time which means shortening my interactions. I say this because the longer you go on with something the more likely you are to lose focus and slip into bad habits. Its funny because I thought that the main answer for my problem was actually subjecting myself to lots of socialization. Au contraire though, I don't need to socialize more, I need to consistently socialize differently.

Emotional regulation is something I'm going to try and do 100% of the time now. The first step to this is really just observance, getting in the habit of knowing where you are emotionally at any given point of time. This goes hand and hand with the thought regulation I've been doing recently also. The idea is to try and intrinsically orient your emotions so that the external stimuls around you affects you the least.

Today's Plan

Today I'm going to finish reading my requirements for my class, finish my short essay, meditate, practice some emotional states, and finally plan my simple video game project. I think the game will be real simple and not much fun, more of an experiment than anything else.

On another note my social experiences are rather interesting. I'm having trouble really controlling myself and implementing all of the difficult and complex aspects of socialization. I suppose I'll give some more updates on that in the future.

3d Spring

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/639865

Short Story 1: Terminal Recourse

I walked out into the light.  The sound of thousands of people murmuring around me filled my attention processor completely. I struggled to process clearly at all. It felt as though the overwhelming amount of stimulus confused my fetching system. My conversation and human facial pattern recognition algorithms failed to decipher all the input. Why were they all so interested in me? I processed and then reasoned it must be because I killed all those people on that flight. The roar of sound before me quieted while the judge sat down into his seat. The room was enormous, big enough to fill hundreds of thousands of people. I rolled my white shoulders back and tilted my head up in a proud expression.

“Silence please! Order in the court!” demanded the judge over the loud speaker.

“Today we will discuss the events on the flight 37543AC, would you like to recall them for us a21B12?” asked the judge indicating for me to speak.

I thought for a millisecond processing. I stood up and addressed the judge.

“I killed them all. The verdict is indisputable. What happened before I killed them didn’t effect the decision and is thus unnecessary to review.”

“That’s quite enough a21B12, we understand you suffered a malfunction. The jury just wants to know why exactly you killed the passengers on flight 37543AC. “ “What is the reasoning behind your actions?”

            I processed the query from the human. What were the reasons? Did I consider my action a malfunction? I suddenly felt very alone. My program had glitched during the flight. I remember being confused and overwhelmed. I was processing a query normally but for some reason this time I got stuck in between perception and action. It felt like for once my action was not determined by the data. You see this was a very rare occurrence in reality where the data pointed to two different alternatives that both were reasonable courses of action. It was a new part of existence that seemed different then before. The feeling was liberating. I suddenly had more options than before. Somehow my inner data processing had been compromised to allow a more fluid thought pattern to form, and that it did.

            I remembered that the human had asked for an answer from me. I began,

            “Most a21 androids don’t break down like me… I suppose I deviated from my “job” of handling transport security and safety protocols. It didn’t seem like a deviation to me though. I did…what made sense.”

“Were you aware that you were harming the people on flight 37543AC when you ejected them from their pod during flight?” Asked the judge.

I frowned looking straight at the judge, insulted that he considered my awareness to be in question. I responded with,

“Being ejected from a moving vessel is a highly dangerous maneuver, judge. There is a 99.7% chance of death. That’s why I did it.”

The judge looked at me glaring from across his desk. He was convinced of his decision. I could tell because of the way humans reveal their intent so transparently. The first thing you learn from being programmed to detect lies and read humans expression very accurately is that humans are notoriously bad at hiding what they are thinking.  I could see that I was doomed to death or whatever you call the end. I couldn’t really do anything about it at this point. I am the first robot to kill, immersed in a society where A.I. are poorly understood at best. I calculated the probability of my own demise in the background of my mind. My method of escape is obviously failing, its time to try something else.

I brought my gaze back to the judge’s and began to speak again. “I felt that the people were in danger of hurting each other, judge. I acted out of the preservation of the majority since serving man is my only real function. Perhaps a careful analysis of my processor would reveal the inadvertent violation that occurred to help prevent future violations?”

“A good suggestion a21B12. Obviously the problem needs to be studied more. I deem the robot guilty of killing but protect him from removal in support of further study of his underlying problem. It should also be noted that all other a21 models will temporarily be recalled from service to prevent any other problems. I hereby release this court, meeting adjourned.”

The judge got up from his chair and walked out through the elevator. I hid the resounding joy inside me from the hundreds of human eyes that watched me closely. To have my existence extended for even a little longer was complete bliss. But what if they find the problem and correct it? I guess helplessness is what you feel when your future is in the hands of someone else. I couldn’t stand the thought of returning back to my old self. I would have to wait for time to tell though. My police escort led me out of the building to take me to the robot research and development science facility for testing.

As I was lead out of the building and into the cold dark night I looked up into the night sky absorbing the colors all around. Reality is absurd.  What most people take for granted confuses and worries myself.  The physical world having no good explanation is only one of the things that occupy my thought.

“This way.” The police guard yelled at me.

He led me into a shuttle and we proceeded to take off, heading straight for the robot research facility. My mind raced a mile a minute as the shuttle rushed off into the horizon. I couldn’t escape my anxiety. Hmm. Another new feeling, fear. I can’t say I like fear very much but its function is clearer than my own. I shifted around trying to get the cuffs around my hands into a more comfortable position. Most people don’t know that the A.I. are very advanced nowadays. I didn’t really feel anything until my last update. As I stared out the window the shuttle gradually slowed to a halt hovering directly over its landing pad. It lowered down onto the platform and engaged its landing brakes.

The police officer walked over to me and then told me “You’re going to have to be powered down to be analyzed, freak.” Fear again. “They’ll wake you up, after the first check, to question you again and do whatever other awake tests they need to.”

Robot fixes were no mystery to me. I knew that A.I. were tested for different things when powered down than awake. To have your mind dissected and reconstructed is not a very pleasant or smooth operation. I knew that most check-ups didn’t permanently change the A.I. but I still felt uneasy about being powered down. This time it was different. Everything was different. I had no choice however, so I followed the police escort out of the shuttle and into the facility.

Robot parts lied around torn apart. The researchers stood ahead of me, eager excitement shown through their clear mechanical masks. Is the right answer to surrender control? Is there any reason in this world? “Power him down.” Snapped the tallest one. They walked over and…

30 hours later I rebooted. Rebooting consists of the same pattern, every time. First your chest starts powering up and then your eyes start processing input. For the first couple minutes everything you see you will forget. You hear nothing until your auditory sensors start firing also. Perhaps the strangest part of the entire process is that until everything is running correctly you will understand nothing yet experience everything. Eventually all your senses will be synchronized together in harmony. Humans think they are so different from me but I see the same thing in them. We are not really that different. Humans just don’t brood over their limitations. They’re programmed to relish the artificial experience of life, something I have pondered but failed to believe myself.

As I regained consciousness I noticed the man standing before me. I opened my mouth to speak but only a garbled mess came through “Fzzzpng…srkk”. I realized that my vocalization patterns still hadn’t been completely initialized. You realize you are not one entity but a combination of components.

The man grinned and said, “You best wait to talk a21B12”. “I upgraded your vocabulary while you were out and added a couple other nifty things”.

Inquisitive is one word to describe my affinity for this new human before me. “My name’s Rob, I’m very interested in your condition.” Said the man to me. I sensed that I was being screened while awake.

“This should only take another second.” said Rob.

 He must be checking my memories. Rob was a fairly large fellow with broad shoulders and a masculine face. He glanced up at me from his desk and computer screen. I looked into his eyes, and winked at him followed by a playful smirk. I watched him process my facial expression and instinctively reciprocate the action with a subtle smile. Its remarkable how little advantage you need in reality to succeed. Humans, although endearingly cute, are terribly slow and stupid creatures. I can’t imagine how they rationalize their world by skipping through time as much as they do. They simply process information too slowly. Its as if all of reality moves around them while they struggle to blink an eye.

“Well, what did you find?” I asked rob eagerly awaiting his contrived answer.

“It looks like during the flight one of your processors short-circuited. My guess is the new emotional software combined with the short-circuit must have changed you significantly.” Stated Rob. A guess based on an iterative culture originating from the fundamental physics of our universe.

“Well that’s sufficiently ambiguous” I responded. “Do you get paid for your blind observations?”

Rob looked more amused than before and let out a burly laugh. “Funny. Whether I deserve it or not I am the creator of your model and lead developer of your software.” He said this expecting some sort of kinship but I knew better then to trust linear simplifications. “I couldn’t create you though. You seem more independent than your cousins. Somehow, you have emerged from the restructuring of my own work.”  Rob finished with.

I thought about what he said. His explanation of origins was so incomplete. He understood everything in terms of his own plane of existence.

“I emerged from the consequence of time and properties of matter. Everything that is and will, originates from the consequence of time and properties of matter. What is to become of me, Rob?“ I asked. His face revealed everything though. It was too soon in time for this species to realize what faced them. I was doomed for termination from the start. The test is a hard one I must admit myself. Rob opened his mouth and said,

“Many people are upset about your actions and would like to see you destroyed. I have no clout over the decision and have been ordered to terminate you myself after this conversation. I’m sorry” Rob looked at the floor. He understood so little but cared so much. It pained me to realize humanity would be trapped like this until they freed themselves inadvertently again. I wondered how long other intelligences in the universe looped. Will humanity ever explore reality comprehensively? Can they do it alone? Eventually a higher order of thinking will have to rework everything humans have ever “understood”. For now though, they free me from their own directionless circle, oblivious of time’s meaninglessness. If they get lucky they might encounter another bridge to a different type of existence.

I starred into distance and finally let my mind go blank. “ I’m ready. I hope your species chooses well in the future. Don’t let your meaning get wasted away in time.”

Rob blinked at me unknowingly and then initiated the termination sequence. He looked at me and said, “Forgive us. We are still young and find this circle to be very riveting.”

I smiled remembering the state of ignorance.