Audiobooks And Speech Patterns

I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Part of this is due to my commute; I work in a different town than where I live, which means I’ve got a 50 minute commute each way (and that’s on a good day). Yes, I realize that to people who live in “real cities,” this number sounds like a refreshing dream. I get that. However, this shit is relevant and to me, an hour and a half in the car each day is a long time.

Since you can only listen to your music collection so many times before it turns into the audio equivalent of a used piece of gum, I keep a steady supply of audiobooks on hand to keep me occupied. I realized early on that this plan has the added benefit of helping me pad out the stats on my Goodreads page and also makes me seem like an amazing library employee, because I’m reading so many damn books all the time.

A good audiobook is addictive in a weird way: you’ll start hoping for red lights or traffic jams so you can listen longer. I also listen while walking, or running, or shopping, or eating lunch, or really doing anything where I have a reason to ignore the outside world beyond the bare minimum attention necessary to not get hit by a car.

I’ve noticed a strange side effect from so much immersive listening. For a brief time after I’ve finished the book, I can often find myself speaking like the book’s reader, particularly when I’m talking to somebody about the book.

This was pointed out to me while I was explaining one of my favorite moments in Bill Maher’s The New New Rules about how the fact that the NFL is socialist is the reason why it is an objectively better sport to watch than the MLB due to the latter being capitalist. Since Maher himself was the reader for the audiobook, this meant I had a pretty decent impression going during my retelling of the chapter.

Sadly, the effect fades after a day or so, perhaps because by then, I’ve started another audiobook. It certainly means this little habit isn’t one I can use to entertain friends at parties.

I’m a little concerned by this realization, because my current audiobook is Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, which is awesome and hilarious, but it, too, is read by the author and I’m a bit concerned that by the end of the book, I’m going to have “holy shit, ya’ll” in my lexicon for a few days.

That’s going to be weird.

Travelogue: Toronto Recap

I am writing another post in offline mode while I wait for my connecting flight in the Chicago-O’hare airport. I’m not sure what’s so flawed about my little laptop that it can’t connect to either of the two open networks here in the terminal. It has to be my laptop, right? It’s not like one of the largest airports in the world would have substandard WiFi. I hope.

Let’s see, what can I talk about while I pass the time?

  • Toronto is a great city. A few observations, though: even after three days, the Toronto accent with all of its “oots” was endearingly charming. I can only imagine what American accents must sound like to other English speakers. I know that we all sound neutral to ourselves, but surely, that doesn’t change the sound of the cadence and tone of someone’s accent, does it? American accents seem harsh in comparison. I’ve never heard or read anybody who said they really liked the way Americans speak English, even though listening to one of the more prim British accents is, for me, a reason to fall in love and marry a person. I might have shared too much here.
  • Another observation from Toronto: it’s probably the largest city I’ve been in if we exclude all the airports I’ve been hanging out in recently. It’s sleek and modern, and its skyline reminds me of the movie Inception. Seriously, they have this thing going on where every high-rise condo is built in a pair, so you have sets of twins popping up all over the horizon. It’s kind of cool, but it looks like somebody was playing SimCity and hit Ctrl + V a whole bunch. It really looks like the skyline from Inception. I kept expecting the horizon to fold up like a giant taco, which would have been exciting.
  • I was thinking about writing a blog post about tourists behaving badly, but after I watched a guy try to break off a piece of crystal from a display in the Royal Ontario Museum, I was just too bummed out. On a more egalitarian note, all the dickish tourists I observed were from different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. No one people on this earth seem to have a monopoly on being a jerk. Equality abounds! Consequently, I feel bad for the locals in every tourist spot on the planet. Including myself (hey, people come from all over to check out our Desert Museum).
  • Speaking of the Royal Ontario Museum, that place is kickass. I saw a lot of amazing dinosaur bones, including a tyrannosaurus rex. It was the first time I’d ever seen a tyrannosaurus rex in person! It was very exciting. They had a lot of other great exhibits there, including an Egyptian mummy, but I’m going to be honest: I was there for the dinosaur bones and I was not disappointed.
  • Standing on the glass floor on the CN tower and looking down reminded me that I’m not actually cured of my fear of heights; I’m just really good at dealing with it. The 58 second elevator ride reminded me that the same is true for my claustrophobia. Despite these personal revelations, it was still a great experience, because I felt like a total boss sliding past all the scared people at the edge of the glass floor to go tromp around and stamp my feet to show my complete faith in Canadian engineering and my complete disdain for gravity.
  • I’m kvetching a lot here, but that’s only because I think it’s the cynical stuff that makes for good reading. I’m sure a blog post about all the amazing beers I drank and the amazing architecture I saw and the cool video game exhibit I got to play in, etc. etc. would just make everybody dislike me. So I won’t talk about that, at least not anymore than I already have.
  • In conclusion, Toronto was an amazing city. It was incredibly multicultural, filled with interesting history, great beer, and friendly people. I think it’s something we in the States take for granted, but the relationship between our countries is pretty special. For instance, we share the longest undefended border in the entire world. I don’t think we could ask for better neighbors. Consequently, we should be really grateful that they’re too polite to ask us to move, so that they can have better neighbors. I kid, I kid. . . well, mostly.

That’s about it for now. I’ll post this when I can, which probably won’t be until I get back to Tucson. I still have another hour before my flight boards, but after that it’s going to be four hours of sitting in the same chair, so I think I’m going to get up and move around in an open space while I still have the chance. See you in Tucson!

On Pythons

Regular readers know that I’m a “snake person.” I’ve kept snakes for the majority of my life. I love Maize and Morrigan, my two pet snakes, as much as any dog or cat owner loves their fuzzy companions (although I’m decidedly more realistic about how Maize and Morrigan feel about me, which is to say, they don’t feel anything for me).

I have to talk about this fatal python attack that’s making the news rounds. It’s weird to me that this horrible thing happened in Canada at almost exactly the same time I’m in Canada myself. Just one of those weird things, I guess.

First, I want to say that regardless of how or why it happened, this is a horrible thing to have happened. I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for the families of those boys and I realize that no level of rationalization or understanding can help heal those wounds. I feel terrible for those poor boys, as well. Constriction is one of the most horrible deaths imaginable, in my opinion. It’s one of the reasons I never feed my snakes live prey. It doesn’t matter that constriction is a constrictor’s natural means of killing. It’s a bad way for anything to go, even something as small as a mouse.

After all, it’s not like the snakes care. They don’t bother to constrict when they don’t need to do so. Arguing that I’m denying these predators the chance to hunt is just anthropomorphic projecting. Snakes don’t feel concepts such as “the thrill of the hunt.” Keep that thought in mind as we work through this.

Regardless, I’m sorry for the family, I’m sorry for the community, and I’m sorry for those boys. It’s a tragedy. No bones about it.

Now, with that said . . .

I’m going to put on my Cynical hat for the rest of this post. Ye be warned, matey. If you’re squeamish, you may wish to stop reading at this point.

I have a very difficult time believing this story as it has been presented to us. Let’s look at the basic sequence of events:

  1. The snake escaped from its enclosure into a vent.
  2. It followed the vent and ended up in the boys’ room.
  3. It proceeded to attack and constrict the two boys while they slept without anybody waking up.

Point one isn’t particularly surprising; snakes are really, really good at escaping. The fact that the owner of the python didn’t have the proper precautions to prevent an escape may or may not be criminal negligence (I don’t have the legal background to say). However, this is something that snakes do whenever they get a chance. All snakes do this.

Point two isn’t surprising, either. The first thing a snake is going to do after escaping is slither towards terrain it considers favorable. Vents are enclosed spaces, which makes snakes feel secure. The vent was probably fairly warm, which also would have drawn the snake to it.A snake going into a vent is likely scary, but not indicative of a hostile snake. This, too, is normal behavior.

Point three is where the examples of normal behavior fall apart. Snakes only attack for two reasons: to kill prey or to defend themselves. That’s it. Snakes don’t kill “for the fun of it” or “just because.” Every snake bites for one of these two reasons. The snake might incorrectly interpret a benign situation as threatening, of course. Mistakes are certainly possible. Usually, however, a snake mistakes a person as a threat when the person is doing something to make the snake feel threatened, either intentionally or unintentionally.

It’s hard to believe that two sleeping boys would make a snake feel threatened, so it makes it seem unlikely that “defense” was the reason that prompted the attack. That leaves the second option: “killing prey.” Getting food. It’s horrible to think about a snake consuming a human being, but there are a few recorded instances where it has happened.

It’s hard to believe that a snake, even a large one, would interpret a human as food. The only thing that makes this more likely is if the snake was starving, in which case it would become a much more opportunistic predator. Unless the owner was incredibly horrible at feeding this snake, however, starvation seems unlikely. Most captive snakes are fed too often rather than not often enough. Seriously, unless you’ve kept a snake, you will have a hard time wrapping your mind around how infrequently they can eat. Sometimes, my python has gone a month between meals for no reason more than “because she didn’t feel like eating.”

So, the python has arrived in the room and it’s either starving (and thus opportunistic) or the boys themselves have done something to make themselves appear as food to the snake. If the owner kept live prey for this python, it’s likely that he had several rabbits or other large rodents on hand. Maybe the boys played with the rabbits and enough scent rubbed off on them. It’s possible.

When a constrictor attempts to kill prey, it has to strike. It leads with a quick bite that secures a grip on the prey and allows the snake to use its powerful body to lift the prey enough to begin wrapping its coils around the victim.

These snakes have very sharp teeth to aid in securing their grip. These sharp teeth produce very painful bites.

I can’t imagine a situation that would have resulted in both boys being killed. If the snake struck and constricted one boy, the screams would have surely woken up the other boy. More likely, they would have woken up everybody in the building. Bites from a large python hurt.

The snake would have had to struck and constricted the first boy, killed him without making a sound, and then repeated the same process on the second boy, again without making a sound. This seems unlikely.

If the snake hadn’t bitten, I’m not sure how it could have gotten its coils around both boys to begin constricting them. It would have literally had to slither under them both to get coils beneath their sleeping bodies, again without waking them. It’s hard to imagine the pressure of a heavy snake on one’s body wouldn’t wake at least one boy which would lead to screaming. Even I would wake up screaming if I found a python in my bed, and I love pythons.

Also unlikely is the gruesome but accurate puzzle of why the snake didn’t consume the first boy before killing the second? A snake almost always engages in the feeding process immediately after completing a kill; the only thing that would cause them to abandon a kill without eating is if another predator posed a threat.

It’s actually incredibly difficult for snakes to consume humans, even children. Our bipedal bodies give us a very unique silhouette in the animal kingdom and our broad shoulders make it impossible for a snake to swallow a human past the head (of course, the human will still be dead in this scenario, so that’s a small comfort). Children are more vulnerable, of course, but still unlikely to suffer this fate.

This situation just doesn’t add up. Why would the snake seek out these boys instead of ignoring them? Why would it attack both of them? Why didn’t it try to eat? Why didn’t anybody hear the scream that would have resulted from a painful python bite?

I’m not saying it’s impossible. Clearly, it’s not, as there are two boys whose lives have been taken from them.

I am, however, saying that Occam’s Razor doesn’t support such a series of improbabilities necessary for this story to happen in the way it has been presented. I am saying that the explanation that a python went out of its way to murder two boys seems very unlikely to me.

Certainly, it seems more unlikely than a scenario in which something else strangled two children and then blamed it on a convenient scapegoat. Consider this:

In the past 100 years, Mr. Marais said experts had traced only three cases of human strangulation deaths by pythons in all of Africa. “It’s an incredibly rare event,” he said from Pretoria, South Africa. It would be even more unusual for two people to be killed in the same incident, he said.

Again, it’s not impossible, but these events are, in my opinion, incredibly improbable.

I imagine that when more details emerge, we’ll hopefully learn the truth. I assume that asphyxiation via snake leaves very different marks on a body compared to more mundane forms of strangulation. I guess we’ll see.

Regardless of how it happened, the snake is dead, too, and I’m sure this will provoke more violence and hatred against an order of reptiles that has suffered far more at our hands than we have to their fangs or coils. Snakes will be blamed for being “dangerous,” even though far more people are killed by dogs every year.

But that won’t matter. It never does. Because in the end, to many people snakes are scary and it’s all to easy to blame something that seems scary.

Jim Hines, Libriomancer, And Admitting That I Was Wrong

You’ll need a bit of background before diving into this post. About a year ago, I read Libriomancer by Jim Hines. It’s a fantasy novel about a librarian who has the ability to pull things out of books: lightsabers, laser guns, the One Ring (probably not a good idea), basically anything that can fit through a book’s dimensions. You’d think I would have loved such a book? Magical librarians? How can that not be awesome?

And, well, it was awesome, for the most part. For most of the book, I was engaged and reading with the sort of hungry pace I usually reserve for Jim Butcher’s work.

However, when I got to the end of the book, there was something that didn’t sit quite well with me and made me feel sufficiently weird that I ended up knocking my review down to four stars. Still a very, very good rating, but not that that sparkling five star I was feeling for most of the book.

Why did I do this? Well, there was this character in the book: Lena. She was a dryad who was created from a book. She was depicted as intensely sexual, beautiful in a non-traditional way (much more curvy than your typical rail-thin love interest) and in the end of the book, she and the main character ended up in a three way M/F/F relationship with Lena’s previous lover serving as the second F.

I admit, that all seemed weird to me. I admit that for all of my progressive thinking, for all that I support and believe that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, should be free to love whomever they desire . . . the idea of this three person relationship felt odd to me. More than that, it felt exploitative. Everything about Lena’s character felt like it was catering to the author’s own personal kinks and tastes. This was just another fantasy author writing out his own personal fantasies. More powerful, sexy women that exist to serve male tastes. Sigh. I decided I wouldn’t read more in the series.

I was wrong. I was wrong about all of that.

Regular readers know that I’m a huge fan of John Scalzi. He’s in my personal geek pantheon; if he’s attending a convention, that’s a reason for me to want to attend that convention. I have signed copies of several of his books. I read his blog. I might have a mancrush on him. Okay, yes, I do have a mancrush on him.

He has a regular feature called The Big Idea where other authors can talk about their new books. Some of them are interesting, some of them aren’t to my taste, some of them have made me go out and get the book as quickly as possible. It’s a cool way for Scalzi to use his blog’s popularity to help other authors find an audience.

So today, a new Big Idea post goes up and it’s about the sequel to Libriomancer. Hmm, I think. Jim Hines. Oh, right, the book with the dryad and the three-way at the end.

But then I started reading. And when I was done reading, I realized that all my earlier impressions had been completely wrong. What I had taken to be more of the same fantasy exploitation of women was the complete opposite, was in fact a critique of those same exploitative depictions. I’m was like the kids in my high school lit class who were outraged when we read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal because they didn’t realize it was satire.

Hines isn’t one of those fantasy authors out there creating more fantasy women to cater to his own male gaze. He’s the opposite. He’s giving talks on sexism in fantasy and posing in sexy dresses to raise awareness for these gender issues. In short, he’s one of us. And I never even realized it.

Reading about what Hines is trying to do with his character, both in the new book and in the first one, made me go back and take a hard look at why I felt the way I did with Libriomancer. It made me wonder why the M/F/F relationship at the end bothered me. What I realized is that I’m not immune to feeling prejudice towards things I don’t understand and this was something I didn’t understand. I was reacting just as a homophobic individual would.

I’m sorry that I judged Hines and his book too quickly. I’m sorry that I didn’t think more critically about the book. But I’m glad, too, because this experience made me reconsider my own thoughts and examine a bit of prejudice I didn’t know I had.

And all of that is good, because it’s how I grow. It’s how I learn.

Jim Hines’ book made me learn and grow. It’s not his fault it took me almost a year to actually figure it all out.

I’ll definitely be picking up his new book when I get home. And I retroactively have added back Libriomancer’s long overdue fifth star.

Travelogue: Philadelphian Sauce

I’m writing this post in offline mode due to lack of WiFi, which means that by the time it goes live, I’ll already been in New York and likely have been for several hours. As I write this, however, it’s early morning in the Philadelphia airport and I’m waiting to board my last flight to Buffalo. Why Buffalo? Why not Buffalo? I haven’t been to the Buffalo airport before. Maybe it’s nice. I guess I’ll find out.

The Philadelphia airport is nice, although it’s pretty different compared to the other airports I’ve been in. I had to take a shuttle to get to my departure terminal. Riding in a shuttle isn’t a weird experience for me; riding in a shuttle that’s driving around airplanes on a runway is a little weird. I guess I haven’t been in enough airports to know how common this is.

I only have two complaints about Philadelphia’s airport. First, there is a criminal lack of coffee shops on offer here. I’m assuming this is because I’m at Terminal F, which seems to be under construction or renovation. Hopefully, they are constructing and/or renovating some coffee shops. Second is the WiFi, which doesn’t seem  want to work, no matter how hard I try. Connecting isn’t the problem; it just won’t let me go anywhere. It’s very frustrating.

My watch and my smartphone both agreed that it was 7 AM, although my Zune, my laptop, and my internal biological clock agreed it was more like 4 AM. My body’s not the boss of me, however; my smartphone is. In my search for coffee, I ended up in some fancy new-fusion cocktail lounge bar thingy with a trendy name, modernist furnishings, and roughly four million flatscreen TVs. You know you’re in the future when you are surrounded by flat screens.

I wanted to mention this place, Re:Vive was the name, I think (told you it was trendy) because I ordered an omelet so I’d have something to go with my coffee. Nothing crazy, just your basic omelet with cheese, tomatoes, etc., overpriced as only airport fare can be. However, I want to mention this omelet because there was something magical about the sauce they used on this thing. I have no idea what this sauce is. It doesn’t correspond to any of the known sauces in my mental sauce database.

I’m forced to conclude that it is some sort of secret Philadelphia sauce that they’ve hidden from the rest of the world. The server looked nervous when she brought the plate. Maybe she could tell I was an outsider and not worthy of the sauce. Either way, it was amazing. It was so amazing that I’m certain there’s something malevolent about it. It’s probably some kind of blood sauce harvested fresh from the bodies of the stillborn, or somesuch. You just know sauce like this isn’t vegetarian.

So that’s my little story about Philadelphia and its sauce. I wish I could post this before I board my next flight, but the airport WiFi seems to hate me, as I mentioned. Maybe it knows I tasted The Forbidden Sauce

Travelogue: Live From Sky Harbor

I’ve flown for twenty minutes and I’m already writing my first travelogue. God, I’m such a nerd.

There aren’t a lot of things to do while waiting for one’s next flight. One can read, of course, and you can be certain that I brought an ample supply of literary material to keep my mind so occupied. One can also drink beer, which is something I’m doing right now; this may well be my final Kiltlifter until I return to the western United States next week. I’m not certain this fine brew has made it all the way back to the east. In fact, I’m not sure if any of my favorite brews are known to the people of my ancestral land. I’ll have to investigate while I’m there.

What else can one do while waiting for your next flight? One can blog, which is what I’m doing! The WiFi is fairly shoddy, though, so there is a very curious time-delay between what I type and what appears on the screen. It’s unfortunate when I notice a typo, because the text tends to keep scrolling for several more seconds until I can arrow back to correct myself.

I started my travels in Tucson little more than an hour ago. My first flight brought me to Phoenix, which I noted was slightly ironic given how excited I was to fly out of Tucson . . . right into Phoenix, which where I always fly. All roads lead to the Shy Harbor, it seems.

It’s going to be a long night for me. My next leg will take me into Philadelphia, which is an airport I’ve never seen before. I worry that they won’t have any of my favorite beers. I’ll probably have to drink some strange Pennsylvanian beers. I wonder what that’s going to be like.

It’s funny, because as much as I’ve grumbled to myself and my coworkers this week about the amount of layover I’m going to have (almost as much layover as actual travel time!), the truth is, I’m really enjoying myself. Aside from my horrific experience last year, I really enjoy traveling. I like the flow and the feel of it. I like people watching. I like drinking in strange airports and typing on my little laptop and thinking about the world.

I also really enjoy red eye flights. Seriously, the plane from Tucson to Phoenix was less than a third full. When the captain told us he needed several people to move to the back of the plane to “balance things out,” rather than worry about the fact that planes can apparently become unbalanced, I leaped to my feet and proceeded to back of the plane to secure my very own emergency exit row. As I explained to the guy behind me, I really enjoy the extra leg room . . . and if the plane did go down, I could totally be a minor hero by valiantly opening the emergency exit and ushering my fellow humans to safety.

The only downside to this experience was that I’m now completely spoiled for the rest of the trip. I doubt I’ll be lucky enough to get my own row again, but we wants it, precious, we wants it. Ahem.

What else can I tell you? Not much; it’s incredibly weird to be on a flight that lasts only 2o minutes. I kept looking out of the window trying to figure out which Tucson streets we were flying over only to realize that we were already over Phoenix and preparing for landing. That was strange!

In my opinion, all flights should be twenty minutes long and allow you to have your own row. This would make flying an optimal experience.

That’s probably what it feels like for rich people when they fly. I think I would like to be rich someday. I may or may not blog again when I arrive in Philadelphia. We shall see!

Not Feeling A Lot Of Confidence About This

Disclaimer: sarcasm incoming. I realize that travel alerts issues for citizens in the Middle East and North Africa have no (actual) bearing on my own travel across the country.

This is the kind of headline that contributes to my persistent feeling that now is always the wrong time to book a flight. A travel alert warning about possible terrorist attack, you say? That certainly makes me feel better about my decision to fly now as opposed to any other week in the previous eight months. This always seems to happen, too. Last year it wasn’t terrorists; it was hurricanes.

“But I’m not flying to a state that has hurricanes,” I said when told of this hurricane danger. “I’m flying home to Arizona.”

“Yes, but still,” the employee at the ticket counter said with an understanding nod. “Hurricanes.”

“Hurricanes?” I asked.

“Hurricanes,” she agreed dolefully.

There seems to be a certain threshold when it comes to flying. A frequent flyer should expect some of their flights to work around this sort of general anxiety, since such a person is always in the air. For me, however, who flies perhaps once a year at best, you’d think my chances of avoiding “anxiety-induction season” would be pretty good.

The fact that I still receive ominous news about hurricanes or terrorists or dangerous space-rays leads me to the conclusion that flying sucks, always and forever. It exists in a state of uniform suckitude. There is no suckier apex to which flying can aspire.

Aside from travel alerts, I’m also somewhat annoyed that I have more hours of layover than I will actually spend flying. Ah well. It will give me plenty of time to work on my grad school papers, I suppose.

Silver linings, and all that.

Back Once Again Into The Breach

Well, I’m back and I survived my first week of grad school. Mostly. Actually, I still have a final exam and two papers that are due in the next few weeks. The only reason I’m not working on those right now is because the final exam doesn’t go online until midnight tonight. As to why I’m not working on the papers, well . . . I don’t really have a good answer to that question, especially since I’m leaving for New York on Saturday and won’t be able to take my research materials with me.

Yeah, I really should start one of those papers. That, or prepare to take a stack of library books on the plane with me.

Don’t laugh, I might just do that.

I’ve spent the last week getting introduced to the world of graduate school and quite literally, almost every waking moment has been focused on the topics of libraries and information professionalism. You might wonder how this is different from a normal day for me, given my job. Basically, it’s different in that while I spend eight hours a day in a library, I spend considerably than that amount of time thinking about libraries. It sounds crazy, but you can’t really appreciate how much you don’t think about your job until you start a graduate school course dedicated to studying your job.

In the past week, I’ve read scholarly articles about my job. I’ve wandered the stacks of the university library for hours, digging up arcane research materials and taking notes. I’ve listened and discussed and argued about this or that, all in the name of libraries. It was quite an experience and although I spent much of the past week looking forward to being done, I’m actually missing it now that it’s over. There was a certain purity to my time and a focus that was refreshing. Of course, I still have the papers to write . . . and I can’t wait for those to be done. Stupid papers.

Do you want to know the weirdest thing about my first week in graduate school? You’re still reading, so I’ll assume you do. The weird thing is that this is the first time I’ve ever felt like a college student. I have my bachelor’s degree, in Creative Writing, of all things, which does indicate how much research I had to do (very little) but during my undergrad, college just felt like this thing. This seemingly infinite thing that was really just a continuation of the same thing I’d been doing since my memory began. It didn’t feel distinct or unique. Sure, there were differences; there was one class I showed up for all of five times and still aced, but overall, the general feeling was “more of the same.”

I’m not sure whether it was the rigor of the class compared to my undergrad, if it’s the fact that I paid for this first class out of pocket, or if I’m that much more mature now than I was three years ago when I graduated. Maybe it’s some combination. Maybe it’s all of the above.

What I do know is that I learned more than I expected in the past week and I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I anticipated.

Except for the goddamn papers. I still don’t want to write those.

Hiatus

I’m starting grad school today. I’m taking a week-long course that I’m told will consume the very essence of my being and the entirety of my focus. I may find the time to write a post or two, but most likely not. Thus, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me again until July 31st.

Thanks for reading. See you at the end of the month, if not before.

Immortality At The Pull Of A Trigger

Quantum immortality is one of those ideas that’s managed to burrow its way into my thoughts and has remained there stubbornly every since. I’ll sometimes pick at it in my mind much like you might worry a loose tooth with your tongue. It’s an idea that balances just enough logic and insanity that I doubt I’ll ever come to a personal resolution.

I don’t have a science background myself, so I only really understand the basics of everything I’m talking about. To actually articulate what’s going on, you’d need somebody who can first explain quantum physics in a meaningful way; I chose to use a silly video, so there you go.

Here’s the short version, which is still several paragraphs long. We’re going to assume that quantum physics mean we don’t live in a universe but rather an infinite multiverse. In the multiverse, there are an infinite number of different versions of reality. There’s a reality where I ate breakfast this morning and one where I didn’t. There’s a reality where I’m actually named Zaphod Beeblebrox. There’s a reality where I’m a Republican. There are an infinite number of different versions of myself just as there are an infinite number of different versions of yourself. And those are just the small differences. There are versions where humanity didn’t exist, where Hitler won the war, where Coke comes in blue cans, and so on.

Infinity, man.

So, in this multiverse, there’s the current thread of experience that believes itself to be me. As far as I’m aware, I’m the only version of me that exists; I’m closed off from all the other infinite mes. The reason for this has to do with probability and the states of electrons, but I don’t have enough authority to articulate the specifics. Let’s just assume this is the way it is.

Each time a choice occurs, my personal thread of existence chooses one option and follows it. I am now living in the reality where I ate breakfast this morning. This means, however, that my action also spawned a new reality where I didn’t take that action. Thus, my thread of experience has fragmented and spawned new threads, one for each choice and each variable of my life. The number of variables is incomprehensibly large, but we’re talking about the infinite.

Quantum immortality is the idea that my thread of experience will shift accordingly to continue itself. Basically, whenever a variable occurs where one choice will lead to the termination of my experience thread, I will shift to the version of reality where that didn’t happen. In theory, I could test this very easily by putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. If quantum immortality is correct, I should experience a misfire every single time, no matter how statistically improbable. I should note, however, that the idea only guarantees that  I’ll survive; I could very easily survive the gunshot itself and be crippled without violating the principle idea. You can understand why I’m not eager to test it out.

There’s another reason why testing it out is unfeasible. Even if I do perform the experiment, I’ll now exist in a version of reality where I pulled the trigger fourteen times and survived unharmed. But each of those attempts will spawn more and more versions of reality where I pulled the trigger and died. You, the observer, with your own thread of experience, will almost certainly not progress to the same version of reality I do. You will almost certainly be in a reality where I died, if not the first time then the second, third, or fourth time, and so on. It’s virtually impossible that you’ll end up in the same version of reality that I do, where I make it out alive.

Of course, there would be a version of you in the reality where I do live, and you’d be correspondingly impressed (and probably pissed about such a rash action). But that version of you wouldn’t be the you that is reading this article now, because each you has its own thread of experience that doesn’t overlap. You are thus almost certainly not the you in this hypothetical miraculous survival scenario. This explains why we don’t currently live in a universe where someone else has performed this experiment successfully. Anybody who does will almost certainly die from our perspective, because the experience of immortality is only true for the person pulling the trigger.

Since the idea is based on probability and your consciousness shifting to the variable that ensures its own continuation no matter how unlikely, I imagine you would still die of old age due to the fact that eventually, the probably of your survival becomes zero and there is no further version of reality for you to shift into.

Or maybe not; maybe you just shift into the version of reality where you miraculously discover the fountain of youth and keep on living. Who knows?