MikeSim version 73: A simulated human being

A lot of my recent posts have been about the experience of "waking up." For those of you who are new to this blog or who have bad memories and short attention spans, here's what I mean:I'm going along, living my life and suddenly I realize that I haven't been living my life.I realize that everything I've been doing for I-don't-know-how-long before that moment has been automatic. At the moment of realization everything is still automatic, but I'm now aware that it's automatic. That's waking up. I just woke up. Not doing anything yet. But awake. And watching.I did it just a moment ago. I started writing this post on automatic, and then I woke up and moved from a state in which I was automatically and mindlessly writing to the one I am in now -- in which I am still automatically writing, but no longer mindlessly. I am aware of it. Awake.So: before I woke up who or what was doing the writing?Surely it wasn't me. I just woke up.I have a fuzzy memory of things that happened before I woke up, but that's just a recording that my brain made while I was asleep. Not even a very good recording. It's got huge gaps. The recording includes starting this post, futzing with the title, grabbing links to earlier related posts about waking up (which originally were near the top and now might appear further down). All done without waking up.So who did the writing?Theory 1: a demon did the writing. If so, it's a very nice demon, not like the one in "The Exorcist." It possessed me and wrote all the words that appeared before I woke up. It wrote something like what I might have wanted to have written had I been awake. But then I woke up. And, nice demon it didn't do nasty things with crucifixes to stay in control. It was there just a moment ago, helping me. It seemed friendly, helpful and cooperative. It keeps writing as I watch it.Theory 2: a computer simulation did the writing. My brain is a powerful neural network. It's an organic computer. The neural network has been trained and the computer programmed to simulate the behavior of a human being. The brain is hardware. The programming and training parameters are software. Let's call the simulation MikeSim.Unlike the demon theory, there's science supporting the MikeSim theory.Babies start out with some basic ROMed in behavior, a bootstrap program that lets the environment, especially their parents, install and tune higher level routines. At some point kids develop a primitive sense of self. Kids say "I want" but they have little understanding what what "I" really means. That initial sense of self is just part of the conditioning. Over time it changes, but it's still conditioned.Some people (me, for example, and you, I hope) at some time in their lives experience a different, and more profound sense of self. I don't know what that might be for you. For me it is something that's capable of the "waking up" experience. I experienced something like that many times before I read Harris book. He just gave it a name and led me to realize how much time I spent "asleep."So back to MikeSim.MikeSim is awesome. It can tell jokes and (even harder) make up witty comments on the fly and in context. It shows empathy. It experiences grief and anger -- or what seems a lot like empathy, grief an anger. And it writes blog posts.MikeSim seems a lot like me. And why not. I programmed it that way. Once my parents and teachers had done the initial programming, I started to get involved. Some programming was done by the environment that I found myself in, and some was done by me.At least I hope so.A substantial part of this post was written by MikeSim. Even though I first woke up while writing this post just before I wrote the words "I did it a moment ago," I've had the waking up experience many times while writing the rest of this. So I must have had the going to sleep and letting MikeSim take over experience, too.So who is writing these words -- RIGHT NOW? Honest answer: I don't know for sure. It might be me. It might be MikeSim. Right now I'm sitting here. I'm watching my fingers move over the keyboard and I'm seeing words appear. When I wrote the words RIGHT NOW it was a little different. Those words did not just flow. They got put there.Maybe by me.MikeSim is awesome, but it's been living too much of my life. My goal for the year is to use MikeSim as more of a backup system.Links to other related posts (as promised): this one about the Sam Harris book that started waking me up, or this one about editing what I write; this one about my $100 latte)And then. Holy shit! Did I fall asleep again?