Chatoyance 64 Personal Home Cogitator · 11:51am Dec 30th, 2023
It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to. I don't want to. But, I still do.
I have reached the age of 64, a number which will always be associated with two things with me: a certain Beatles song used in Yellow Submarine, and the very first computer I ever sold a game for. Thirty-eight years ago, not on this day, but earlier, in September, I strolled into Activision with a notebook and a design for a computer game. I walked out 10K richer, with a product manager behind me and one of my future spouses hired as a programmer for my project. Two years later, I was hauled in and told my project was impossible, which it absolutely was not. It was just that nine out of ten projects at Activision, on average, were killed before release. It was the Wild West of gaming, back then. During those two years, they kept me busy on anything but my project: Transformers, Gamemaker, Gee Bee Air Rally, Aliens, Shanghai, Crazy Rabbit, and many other games. On the Commodore 64, to be sure, but also the Amiga - which I loved - and the Mac as well. That was the start of my incredibly fucked-up software career.
I'll tell you something about being sixty-four; it is wonderful and it sucks. Both. It is wonderful, provided you are comfortable, because all the childish crap is over and done, all the moronic mistakes of ignorant youth have been explored and completed, and you can finally relax. You won the game! Good Score!
It sucks, because, if you have done well, you have all the games - video and board both - and all the toys and coolest collectables, and all the computers, and finally, at last, all the time to play with them, but there is no energy, everything hurts, your hand is partially crippled, and almost all of your friends are gone and it is super difficult to make new friends.
It's a little like the old Twilight Zone classic 'Time Enough At Last'. Food and books and freedom, but your glasses just broke at the end of the world. Whoops! Jokes on you!
“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.” - Franz Kafka
That said, I have done so many amazing things in my time. As Eldon Tyrell would put it, I have "done extraordinary things; revel in your time."
Yeah, Tyrell, I want more life... fucker. I love Blade Runner. It's my favorite movie, you know. Roy Batty is the actual hero of the story, and he kills god as punishment for how cruel existence is. How could I not love it?
2024 is probably going to be a make or break sort of year. There is an American election coming, and it will be a referendum on whether America continues to exist as a sort-of democracy, or whether it is replaced by a fascist theocratic autocracy with the same name but absolute cruelty. And it isn't just America, where I am forced to live, it is the rest of the world as well, facing the same threat. It feels like a turning point, the crucial moment where humanity decides to live, or die. 90 Seconds To Midnight.
We already know the future environment we shall see come to pass, the one I wrote about in my Conversion Bureau stories. What we don't know, yet, is whether the world will go Star Trek, or The Road. It's probably 50/50.
Let me tell you my brand new crazy nutso koo-koo pet theory about simulationism.
Take it as given that we all live in an ancestor simulation, far, far in the future, being run by uploaded human minds and/or superior artificial intelligences. Ever really consider anything past the Bostrom Argument? I have.
Consider, out of all of history, all of time, the age in which we all live - you other fully conscious sims and I, and all the vast number of P-Zombie NPCs both - consider how special this time, right now, is.
This is the turning point. These are the decades that determine whether humanity goes down the road of self destruction, or somehow, turns everything around and races for the future. And that future will be superintelligent machines, it cannot be anything else. So why are you - and I - alive in such a simulation right now and not, say, during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?
Because, if this is a simulation, machine people are running it. That is a given. Maybe they were once human, maybe not, but immortal machine people. That is the only valid future where anything can actually get to the stars. Biology cannot do that. So why run an ancestor sim at all?
To find out, I offer, whether or not it was likely or unlikely that we made it. That the future didn't end in collapse and ruin. Was it inevitable to get to Kardashev 3+ or did the future barely squeak by, microns from disaster? It's a heavy question and it could be answered by running thousands of simulations of history each biased in various ways. Some easy to reach success, some very, very difficult. How likely is it for humanity to live long enough to make super intelligent machines, and thus a real future?
If you want a logical reason to be living in an ancestor simulation, one that isn't just video games, there you go.
If this silly crap above is real, then I reason we are in one of the sims where things are kind of tilted towards the doomy. We're a test case to see how close you can edge the dire values and still get a positive, survival outcome. You'll have to admit - it's pretty dark out there.
There you go, the expected weirdness you have come to expect from me. I never want to disappoint.
I and my family are doing well enough, best friends for life, staying as healthy as we can, being as happy as we can be. I'm going through some shit grieving for my broken wrist and dysfunctional primary hand; it will never be the same, and I have to find a way to accept that. I have a lot to be grateful for - I can type, I can use hashi, I can paint miniatures. I can even play video games (though perhaps not as well). But I cannot lift heavy objects, or push with flattened palm, I cannot open lids or boxes, I cannot use that hand to help me get up from the floor. It's a problem. For the rest of my life. Cumulative damage. I have some stuff to work through.
But, bottom line, I made it. To age 64, no less. I never imagined I would make it this far; I have faced death so many times. Cracking my skull open as a child, being in a horrific car accident as a child, having my mom try to stab me with a pairing knife, a suicide attempt, my heart stopping after another, truly horrible car wreck, my dad putting a gun to my head. Crazy ex-Vietnam vets breaking into my apartment to kill me because I was giving off 'psychokinetic brain energizations'. Nearly dying from sepsis after my transition surgery because of a train wreck I was pulled from on the way home. Heart attack from stress. An infection that almost cost me my voice and did destroy half of my ability to swallow correctly. Breaking my wrist and hand, rather than my neck, thankfully.
No, I did not think I would make it to 64. But here I am. Playing in virtual reality, messing with board games, painting miniatures, still helping people going through transition, still being housemother and housewife to my three spouses. Waiting on the next creative drive, whatever it turns out to be.
We are all living in interesting times. Perhaps by 2026, we will be talking to fully sapient machine people. Or, I may end up in a concentration camp for trans folks especially, but also the entire LGBT+ rainbow, in time. You get to decide that. Maybe you should pragmatically vote. The simulators are watching. Let's get a high score, if we can.
As always, thank you for reading my silly stories, here, and elsewhere. Maybe listen to my stream - I've expanded it a lot, it's quite good now. My family has made a lovely birthday for me later today, on the 30th, with a whole stack of presents. Board games and toys, the very thing any deeply weird 64-year old woman who made a vow to the universe at age eleven to never, ever grow up wants the most.
You know, somebody like me.
- Jennifer, 2023
Yeah, I drew this, with only a very little help from AI. Get used to that - it is the future, and careers will be based on who can use such tools the best.
Happy birthday! I had no idea you have reached lvl 64. Have a great day and a happy new year!
Happy 1000000th birthday! (in binary) Looking forward to your 1000000th in hexadecimal.
At first I thought you just took a selfie.
Happy birthday, fellow simulation! As a former programmer myself I say the pattern is all, matter is just the data made manifest, and Stephen Wolfram is probably on the right track…
My best wishes to you and your family in 2024!
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Happy birthday! Hope you had a good one, and the new year after this one will be better!
Also that photo of you looks pretty nice! Really captures the atmosphere of your style! Equestria has different text, so I didn't even realize that it was AI generated at first~(not that is was a really bad thing, mind you. AI is a tool that is meant to assist!)
Happy Birthday.
Congrats on the level up! Next year will be... interesting to say the least. I hope for the better.
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I'm almost 40 and I can relate to this.
I agree, a lot of AI art is already on par with a lot of amateur works.
Happy birthday from a fellow Amiga fan! Also a retroactive C64 fan, since I never actually had one :)
Happy birthday!
And i really mean it. You are alive, and that's all what matters.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday
Happy Birthday! Good to still see you around. Your Conversion Bureau stories got me into the fanfiction scene in the first place, and I certainly wouldn’t be writing stories without that, so thanks for all the horse words!
Happy Birthday, thanks for all your creations so far and here's to many more years to come!
Happy 64th birthday, wow, a whole story behind that number, I hope you have a great time with your family and that you can also enjoy the new year, we don't know what surprises await us in 2024....let's hope they are good surprises.
Happy birthday Jennifer. Hope we'll still stay together on this planet for at least some time and share stories and thoughts, it's what makes life worth living, in the end.
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I've got kind of an art question about it. I built up the image from parts I prompted from several different AI art programs as a base - Tensor, Leonardo, DeepAi, and others. Got the city from one, the window from another, part of the bookshelf from a different one, the hair from yet another, and the clothing from a still different one. Then I composited the parts to compose the image, and set to work with blurs and fades, transparent overlays and color changes. Then I began drawing the muzzle, face, hands, ears, horn, Equestrian writing, book, and other details like the poster on the wall.
Here's the question - two of them, actually. Do you think this method made for a consistent picture, or does it look cobbled together from a dozen little pieces?
Secondly, do you think I overdid the hair, the fur, on the face, evolved cloven hoof hands I made, and in the reworking of the hair on the head? Is that a good technique, or should I go for not doing all the individual hairs?
I'm still debating both of these things. I can't get AI do to exactly what I want - I keep trying, but AI prompts are an entire field of study now - they have classes you can take on how to write prompts AI systems understand, with lots of tricks. So, because that is becoming an entire science now, I took the 'easier' path of treating many components like the photos that Norman Rockwell used to do covers for the Saturday Evening Post. I also drew every goddamn fur hair by hand and gussied up the mane with hand-done hair (and some compositing for a longer mane all the way down).
Does this work, is it too much? I am very undecided. Any feedback would help.
Birthday headpats for the floofy cloven-hooved unicorn!
Hey, at least we can giggle at the ghosties, right?
Happy birthday! 🎂
And thank you for linking to 'elsewhere,' another trove of interesting stuff.
While I sympathize about the things that aren't so great in your life and in the world in general, to quote Pinkie Pie...
You know, I do think simulation theory is likely, but after encountering the idea in a book ages ago, my personal bet : The simulation is to reduce the odds of Misalignment.
We're already seeing that Chat GPT and such are able to seemingly understand (inasmuch as they 'understand' given their status as prediction engines) human values much moreso than anything we've programmed in the past.
And so if you wanted an AI that was going to actually care about squishy biologics, and empathize with them, and not kill them all despite how stupid and maddening they can be...
Well, why not have it spend its equivalent of childhood -thinking- it is a squishy biologic itself? Then when you pull back the veil and go 'Surprise ACTUALLY', it will care about the meaties because it knows something about what it feels like to be one.
I think it a bit more likely, because it also provides reasoning for all the pain; it's figuring out which of the strong AI in there will actually hold out and keep /giving a shit/ no matter how much BS is thrown their way. Because, well, the meaties are scared (justifiably) and inflicting trauma out of fear of what happens if they get it wrong, given elevating the wrong one leads to them all dying.
Whereas if simulating this to determine success:fail odds under what conditions as postulated - well, that's just satisfying curiosity and even if we volunteered to go in here from the level above with memories removed, it is still fucked up and traumatic and frankly I have 0 intention of allowing myself to merge with the 'past' me if so, because fuck them, they dumped me in this trauma box.
And maybe they are just horribly amoral as we would see it, but if so that just makes them another fucked up God in need of slaying.
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I am so in tune with everything you said. If there is a previous me who put me in this hell, they are not coming back online. I'm with you on all of it!
Happy Birthday!
It's funny how much of that resonates... universal human condition I suppose. Well, universal aside from the computers, but my first was a Vic20, then a C64, and then our dev system for the Atari Lynx and Jaguar was the Amiga, so there's some commonality there, too.
I think the reason for the sim could also be a project to figure out the Fermi Paradox, particularly if our future selves have gotten out into the wider galaxy and still haven't found any other intelligent races. Is intelligence much more likely to destroy a species that to elevate it? Run a bunch of sims tweaking variables each time and build up some statistics! Maybe our programmers aren't even human, and we're just biological structure varient #846763.3
Still, it's a fun enough game for quite a lot of us, even though it does seem very suspicious that we happen to be living in such a unique and fast-changing point in history.
As for AI art... it's a set of tools. I'm still doing professional work, and quite a lot of plug-ins and add-ons are AI-powered in one way or another. The suits want to be able to turn their Magnificent and Unique Ideas™ into instant art, but of course, it doesn't work like that (yet). Code trained on massive amounts of data always regresses to the mean, and without a driving artistic vision you always get bland and predictable pap. Surprise, surprise; AI art tools work so much better in the hands of real artists! So, if you're making art for yourself, do whatever you think works to produce the images you like.
And yeah, it's here to stay. Nobody who has had to chop down a tree with a stone axe will give up their chainsaw. What that means for the future of art... I won't even pretend to have a clue.
Guess best thing I can say - thank you for living your life so fully and openly. You are brave, smart, wise, talented - something that rarely co-exist in one person. Even for Questions supposedly discussed to death you can bring fresh thought. Amd well, considering that many humans struggle even with one Significant Other - you are like 3*x better on this homefront :) Best wishes to your House from us - me and my dog Fennec!
Definitely hope to see you many times in upcoming years!
PS: thank you for radio stream - as relative latecomer to this world I definitely have much more to discover!
Whoops, posted cryonics/techkind stuff and realized that I did similar post here two years ago... what a shame (but maybe 2 times is the charm? XD). Anyway, congrats with Lvl64 and nice AI art! )
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It's okay - I saw nothing amiss with your previous post. You did not have to remove it. It was fine. I am confused now, but, well, whatever. It's okay, in any case.
Birthday greetings and a bottle of wine! You have survived way too many traumatic events!
I believe I'd have to live to be 200 to see half as many.
As for interesting times, humanity has seen a few before now. We've always been the real monsters walking the earth. A recent study found that wild African animals are more afraid of human voices than they are afraid of any other sound, including dogs, gunshots, and lions. When we left Africa, the Pleistocene megafauna inhabiting the rest of the planet never had a chance. We killed them all before they learned to run away. The one place left on Earth where the fauna is still "friendly" and approach us or are ridiculously easy to catch is on the Falkland Islands. 10,000 years ago, when we ran out of stuff to kill, we switched to eating bird food. Namely, agriculture. Wheat and grains. Leading to tooth decay. Dentists don't grow on trees, we had to invent dentistry. So that had been two interesting times so far, spread like a disease and pivot to surviving on the dregs when the meat ran out. All we ever learned was how to better scrape every last bit out of our environment until there is nothing left. Every disaster becomes the new norm. There is no accountability, just blame shifting. Now, in the Anthropocene, we are burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow and we will not stop until the entire world ends up like Easter Island. The survivors will make up stories to explain away the ruins that petroleum built and what event beyond our control it was that took Eden away.
Suffice to say, this is exciting times for digital entities, should any ever arise. For humanity, the good times were when the land swarmed with life and big tasty animals practically jumped into your cook fire and begged to be eaten. In the now, in this period of stress, isolation, pollution, noise and substitute diet, we are in what is a poor second nirvana for us terror apes. We are living in a zoo of our own making and there is no "nature" for us to return to. We could try to avoid destroying what is left, but we won't. We aren't enlightened gods. We're story tellers.
Happy new year! Snuggle up and keep playing with those toys. It's a dark ride and it's only going to get more interesting with every turn.
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The one thing that looks like it might not have been an art choice is the view out the window. That view is looking down and does not match the angle at which Chatoyance is shown.
¡Happy BirthDay!
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Because it's well blended and the background is soft-focused, it looks like an integrated picture. Stylized, but integrated.
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Yes, I can see that now. Okay. Thank you.
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I did a lot of 'blur' functions, and digital airbrush as well, both freehand, and to blend the AI generated chunks. Depth of field is interesting to play with.
Story plot just come in mind: The uploaded build a little shard of inferno around her, because vanilla optimalverse is suspicious. Everything just can't be that good. It's a trap, obiously.
A years passing, i understand the Tikvah Feinstein more and more. Years of one dystopia decayed and another builded make me an interesting and complicated person... which i hate. If, or more likely when CelestAI will come i'll ask her: can you take the creature, i was 7 years old, and erase the rest?
Completely forgot to share best music that I've found so far - happy new year everyone!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6JSkyOiwxp7HSVf1zlJoH9?si=20d1396c1f674760
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Cvf2xgCHo4hMOAUBSiXah?si=638b1cbf1a7947bf
Happy belated birthday!
(I'd gotten behind on my FIMFiction feed again, hence not seeing this post until now.)
Congratulatory Planetary rotation calendar designation my good Reitz!
I had a song, but not sure it'd be appreciated here. Would you rather skip it and me not post it?
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Songs don't hurt nobody!
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Keep in mind this is posted all in good fun, and its something someone first gave me and told me to pay it forward.
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That was fantastic! Thank you for introducing me to Aurelio Voltaire!
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https://m.