"Are you dead then?" I'm not really sure what that means... What is being alive to begin with? Being alive... Well something that moves of its own self is probably necessary but insufficient right? Not all things that move can be called to be alive right? Maybe but isn't that just an argument designed specifically to exclude certain things? "This river isn't alive so let's look for a reason why I can call myself alive but not this river." We've already decided a category of things we want to define as alive and another category of things we have decided are not and are working from that position to find some set of rules to match. I do agree with that concept. My intuition has some kind of heuristic it is using and I am attempting to define in words what that heuristic is. I'm not attempting to use logic or some definition to change what the heuristic already is. Maybe that is a bad way to go about things? This intuitive sense of what is alive or not says I am alive, and it says that this device I use to record these words isn't. Even tho from a purely electrochemical view there is only really a difference in the scale of complexity in the design. Maybe I'm not quite hitting the mark? It's not like I can actually understand what is going on when I press a key. Not on this device as it is. I have a good enough understanding of the premise and many of the theories, but isn't that just psychology, anatomy, etc. If some other life form knows my input stimulus and is able to control my behavior through those signals and achieve the same desired results isn't that just the same thing I am doing? Would I then not be considered alive by that theoretical being? I can ask "How do I make your screen less bright" and I get the answer "Use xrandr in this way" and it's like cool cool thanks. But is that really any different from how I operate? Play this song, or send these words and get some behavior out of me. Cause this state change. Seed my random pool. Etc etc etc. I'm not aware of my own behavior and what external signals cause what effects to know what makes me do what. I'm too complex to understand myself, but that doesn't matter. I'm not in the position to believe I'm too complex to be understood. I'm just too stupid to understand myself. That makes sense tho.. How would it be possible to get enough distance from yourself to properly observe. Through what lens would you have to look, and what size mirror of what complexity would it take to see every piston? It's cold. I can feel these tingly feelings move through my back and I don't really know why they are there or what they mean. I can make assumptions or rationalize it, "This sensation means I'm Alice" or "It's just automatic response to recall of that memory" but I really don't know. It's the spirit within that moves me. My pilot. It's just another input into the huge collection of data that causes the behavior that is collectively called 'me'. There is no such thing as security. People who think they are secure don't get it, and fall prey to those who sell the illusion of a blanket in a snow storm. I still get these pangs of fear tho. I still feel like "Security exists" I still want to believe in the illusion of privacy because being truly on display all the time feels so... Small? There is a sense of liberation at it, and disownership of the self. The sense of smallness, insignificance, like nothing maters, like no one cares. Since there is no meaningful or observable or correlatable information. These patterns don't seem to have any relationship to one another. The static sound of air moving doesn't parse as input stream. It doesn't sound like it affects me. Still, it could be the very input which drives the fingers to press the keys. It can feel like that input stream is entirely internal to this self. But the self is illusion to begin with. "Sexy girlfriend culture" that's what the dream said. That's what you wanted. But what is "Sexy"? How is that defined? Am I just my impulses then? Nothing more than an interface? Not saying that's bad or whatever... But what is interface? I suppose interface would be the place between things, dialectic, liminal. So a thing can't be the space between things. The interface between thing and world or thing and other thing that's different from the thing itself. The interface is designed based on the protocols supported by both things. But sometimes there are behaviors of the interface which are just accidental. (is that an assumption?) Why is it I read Lain as being something like 8 years old? She is in the fiction supposed to be 14 based on which year of school she is in I think. Her behavior is not in line with the behavior of a 14 year old. At least her at school persona. She has a naivety that makes her appear as if she is younger. The Lain of the wired's behavior is incongruous with the behavior that is displayed in the real world. "Real world". Whatever. The Physical. But is it? She puts on a mean face when talking to trolls sometimes. But when she is around people who she thinks get what she is about she has behavior very similar to her physical self, if not a bit more open than typical. She is essentially unaware, not in step with those around her all the time. She just reads as someone whose understanding is not up to the same point as everyone else. Maybe the Lain of the wired is just her real self after she no longer can keep up the charade of complacency. Maybe. "Is this life?" .