#And illness is again metaphorical and often illness within fiction has nothing to do with illness as a real event that occurs

[panvani]

I think this is a very silly way to talk about fiction

[strangertheory]

How do you think people in Stranger Things would react to Will being THAT powerful??? His allies (friends, family), his enemies (Lonnie, Dr. Brenner...), other psychics (would they be jealous?) MIKE??? Would he still want to be with him? (I know he's been with Ell, but wouldn't he be too scared to be with someone THAT powerful?) And finally WILL HIMSELF?

Hello there! Thanks for Asking! ^_^

So - I believe that the context of your question is that you are assuming that my understanding of the Stranger Things universe is that Will Byers’s mind created the Upside Down and the monsters and the “Russians” and that in this sense he has “god-like” psychic powers just like @kaypeace21 explains in many of her blogposts. Correct?

Yes. I believe that Mike and Joyce and Jonathan would still want to stay with Will. I believe that his friends will ultimately choose to stay with him, too. I personally believe that El will also ultimately be an ally to him just as she always has been since season 1.

Jealousy, in my opinion, would be inappropriate and ignorant. Will’s powers are nothing to be jealous of since they stem directly from the abuse and trauma that he has been through and they are fantastical manifestations of his mind attempting to do everything it can to protect itself. But I suppose it's always possible someone would be jealous and ignorant about his powers nonetheless.

Currently Will does not have conscious control over these events. Not that we know of yet, at least. They also appear to be tied to his anxiety, his emotions, and his trauma that is buried in his mind. Of course people in Hawkins would be intimidated and afraid of Will if and when they figure out that his feelings and traumas are manifesting themselves in their world and are creating dangerous circumstances for everyone in Hawkins and the world-at-large. Of course. But it’s important to remember that he is not choosing to cause any of it, and it is not his actions but the actions of those who hurt him that are reaching out and spreading and incidentally harming the town as his mind tries to process what has happened and deal with everything and, ultimately, protect him.

However. I want to also add a tiny bit of my own speculation regarding what these supernatural and fantastical occurrences could represent within the theory that Will has dissociative identity disorder:

As you have probably noticed - I am a huge fan of @kaypeace21‘s theories and I agree with her on many, many observations and ideas about what is going on in the Stranger Things universe. But sometimes I might have slightly different ideas of my own here and there. I go back-and-forth on many of them. They tend to not be as well-organized or cohesive as @kaypeace21 ‘s interpretations, but I do have a collection of “maybes” floating around my mind most days.  I’m not committed to any of these rogue thoughts, and I change how I feel about them every single day and so I haven’t wanted to share them. But I will mention one of those thoughts in this answer to your Ask:

I continue to go back-and-forth between whether or not I see this story as one about literal monsters attacking a very real town and creatures that have emerged from Will’s mind in the flesh, or whether this entire story could be a story-within-a-story. Might there be a real-world, realistic-fiction version of everything happening that is hidden behind this curtain of fantasy? Could there be a version of Hawkins itself that is an internal world with alters and introjects and NPCs living in it? Was Will “going missing” really El fronting in a DID System for a few weeks because Will was afraid and “hiding”? Did Mike yell at Max for allowing El to show up at the Mall and say “You know she’s not allowed to be here!” because he’s worried it’s not safe for her at the mall for reasons that don’t involve the Lab or Evil Russians? Were we supposed to pick up on Will tapping out Morse Code to Hopper and saying “Close the Gate” in season 2 as being a method of communication that Hopper had taught to El for when she needed to reach him? I don’t know. I do think about these details and these possible hidden layers sometimes, though. These are just some thoughts that nag at the corners of my thoughts some days.

But whether Stranger Things is a fantastical retelling of “What Happened to Will Byers and How His Friends Helped Him Defeat the Monsters” written by author Michael Wheeler or not, I think that much of the conflict with supernatural elements in Stranger Things is still functioning on a very metaphorical level and will be resolved within the emotional and psychological aspects of the story getting resolved.

To return to the heart of your question and how his friends and family might feel about him being “so powerful” :

Yes. Will’s friends and family and all of Hawkins will probably be afraid of him at first just like (sadly) people in the real world are often afraid of those that are dealing with trauma and mental illness and those that behave “strangely” and are different compared to others that they are used to understanding. I think that their reactions will probably be analogous. We have already seen how Will (and El!) is treated as different and ostracized socially in many ways, both intentional and unintentional. Will is known to be not like other kids. (”He’s not like you, Hopper! He’s not like... most.”) Will is anxious about being treated like a baby and like he can’t handle things on his own by even his friends. Will is bullied. Everyone at school, even high schoolers that aren’t Will’s classmates, refer to him as a “freak.” Jonathan was referred to as “the freak’s brother” at one point. Can you imagine? Will is mocked so widely by the town that even high school bullies take jabs at him in casual conversation when insulting someone else: his older brother. He’s mocked. He’s bullied. He’s ignored. Will is already treated as someone different that the town is uncomfortable with and doesn’t respect. His “powers” growing or Will suddenly becoming more aware of his situation as someone that is different and called a “freak” will surely be a very hard thing for him to deal with while he is also met with increased ostracization by the people he knows and loves.

Hopefully those that love Will are going to ultimately realize that his “powers” and his condition are not a threat to their safety, and that the true danger and evil stems from the person (or people) who have hurt Will and who need to be brought to justice. Helping Will heal from everything that he has been through will surely be the key to banishing the monsters from Hawkins and allowing Will himself to realize that he doesn’t have to see his life as ruined by his condition or his “powers” and that he can truly have a happy, fulfilling life with those he loves. On that note: I highly recommend @kaypeace21‘s response to this blogpost (click here to read the thread) in which she discusses how important it is that storytellers create narratives in which survivors find happiness and love in spite of everything that they have been through because too often the lie and the damaging trope that mental illness inevitably condemns people to misery and death shows up again and again in pop culture. It’s important that we reject the lie told to us by society that the mentally ill are incapable of having happy lives.

(Thank you for Asking!)

[becomewings]

Shadows of My Childhood

Analysis: ON Children + Shadows of the Past (BU/HYYH)

Note: All names herein refer to fictional characters in BU (BTS Universe/HYYH/The Notes). The events described are entirely fictional and not representative of the members' real lives.

Content warning: contains mentions of abuse, abandonment, trauma, and suicide; images of blood 

Some of the most compelling aspects of the ON official MV, and indeed most of BTS’s cinematic repertoire, are the multiple layers of meaning and opportunity for interpretation woven throughout the video. While this version of ON has not been confirmed as part of BU canon, it contains enough explicit references to visual material in other BU videos to merit analysis of the deeper thematic connections between the two.

In this post, I will specifically look through the lens of the pairing of child figures with BTS members in ON to address possible implications within the context of their corresponding BU characters. If the children of ON represent the shadows of the characters’ pasts that continue to haunt and shape them, then the relationships and interactions of the video pairings map to each character’s coping mechanism for handling these ghosts: JiMin’s denial of trauma; YoonGi’s self-inflicted destruction; and TaeHyung’s spiral of violence that starts within him yet increasingly splinters outward. But they also shed light on the future’s hope for moving forward and healing.

The blindfolded girl + TaeHyung

The child with the most screen time and arguably the most significance in the unfolding of ON’s cinematic narrative is paired with TaeHyung. But taken in the context of BU, why is the child a girl and why does she wear a blindfold? Blood ties and violence are the roots of TaeHyung’s shadows. Yet it is impossible to address the years of his suffering without acknowledging the individual who bore it alongside him, the person one may interpret as represented by the blindfolded girl: his sister.

This portrayal does not reflect their true age difference. She is depicted as a child because, as a protective brother, he views it as his duty to safeguard her innocence. The blindfold reinforces the symbolism that he is trying to protect her from the atrocities and darkness of the world. In ON, it is the aftermath of a bloody war (a battlefield upon which he possibly fell and was reborn, given the grave marker of gathered objects and the cross-like pose of his awakening). In the BU narrative, the darkness is domestic violence and their father.

As young children, TaeHyung and his sister were abandoned by their mother,  who was pushed to terrible extremes by her husband's treatment, and left to fend for themselves in the home of an abusive alcoholic. Violence is perpetuated throughout their childhood and into adulthood. Every time she suffers, he suffers too, whether by his father's hand or the guilt that he is powerless to stop him.

“Then. That night. That night ten years ago when Mom left home. That night when Mom, my sister, and I were beaten to a pulp by Dad and we cried ourselves to sleep. … My sister is weeping quietly. It was even more distressing to hear it today.” — TaeHyung, 24 July Year 22. The Notes 1.

This cycle of violence traps TaeHyung in a private nightmare, making him afraid of his own nature's potential: vengeful fantasies (and half-remembered events from parallel timelines) of killing his father; lashing out physically at his friends in moments of conflict. Perhaps more than anything, he fears turning into his father (20 May Year 22, The Notes: Her). Denial is a disease. The more he withholds the truth of his pain and fear, the deeper the darkness takes root in his heart. The pressure threatens to break outward, consuming the people closest to him, or shatter him from within. At his most desperate, TaeHyung views suicide, an act of violence against oneself, as the only way to break free of this cycle.

“I almost killed Dad who brought me into this world and who beat me every day. I almost killed him. No, I actually killed him. Countless times. I killed him countless times in my head. I want to kill him. I want to die. I don’t know what to do. I’m lost.” — TaeHyung, 20 May Year 22. The Notes 1.

Outside, TaeHyung dons a mask to conceal the circumstances of his home life, even around his closest friends. Despite his grinning and loud-mouthed persona, this mask is cracked. His friends see the signs: bruises on his face and back, the emotional marks that run deeper than skin. They follow his lead and do not speak openly of the abuse. TaeHyung refuses to acknowledge that they can see through his mask. They all skirt the uncomfortable truth:

“TaeHyung laughed sheepishly, taking off his torn shirt. Under the dim light hanging on the trailer box, for a second, I saw his bruised back. HoSeok looked at me in shock. TaeHyung looked at himself in the mirror wearing my T-shirt. And he laughed.” — NamJoon, 11 April Year 22. The Notes: Her (translation credit: KRN - ENG © ktaebwi).

“I couldn’t imagine how he must be feeling when I felt this chilly inside. His heart must’ve felt ripped and torn. Or, does he have a heart left at all? How much anguish has he endured? … I first saw the scar on TaeHyung’s back in NamJoon’s container. I couldn’t bring myself to ask about it when he was smiling so broadly with his new T-shirt present.” — HoSeok, 20 May Year 22. The Notes 1.

He cannot seek help from his friends, because that would admit his powerlessness and give voice to the truth of his suffering. And if his pain is real, then so is his sister's.

TaeHyung cannot protect her from the brutality of their father's abuse. He cannot shield her from the cruel reality of their world. The gateway to healing will never open while he turns a blind eye to the ramifications of the violence committed within his family. In ON, acceptance of these truths is embodied in his removal of the girl's blindfold. She gazes forward, unafraid, at the wall toward which she has been looking the whole time. Standing, he takes her hand and discovers that the once-impenetrable wall is in fact a gate. With open eyes, he can see the blossoming land beyond. The future has hope, if only he can face the reality of his family’s violent history.

The drummer boy + JiMin

This is not the first time a blindfold has been employed as a significant visual symbol in BTS’s MVs. Blindfolds, in the form of silk or other members’ hands, figured prominently in Wings-era BU content, particularly in association with JiMin. Therefore, it is all the more noteworthy that in ON, he is not the one paired with the blindfolded child. However, there are several cuts from TaeHyung and his blindfolded partner to JiMin and the drummer boy, or vice versa, that feel like a deliberate choice to draw attention to this absence and the contrast against previous representations. 

In the BU narrative, JiMin suffers from seizures likely caused by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as the result of an as-yet-unspecified traumatic childhood event that he has tried, and often failed, to repress. He is forced into extended hospitalizations by his parents, who seem unwilling to face the reality that something happened to their child and seek to bury his “abnormal behavior” behind doctors and drugs to preserve the family’s appearance of normalcy.

“When I was taken to the hospital after they found me unconscious at the Grass Flower Arboretum, my parents didn’t ask any questions. They ignored the fact that I had blacked out there. It was the same when I developed seizures. They hospitalized me, discharged me after some time, and transferred me to another school. Family reputation was important to them. A son with mental illness was unacceptable.” — JiMin, 11 May Year 22. The Notes 1.

JiMin, for his part, wants to live a normal life by attending school and cultivating friendships. Maintaining both presents challenges that he struggles to overcome, doubting his own fortitude and questioning the lie that he perpetuates to save himself: nothing ever happened to him. When his seizures are triggered by stimuli that resurface memories of the past, he winds up in the hospital again and again. Donning a metaphorical blindfold to deny the truth of his trauma, he attempts to convince the medical staff of the same lie.

“When the doctor asked me about it in a concerned tone, I trembled and apologized at first. I repeatedly said that I was sorry. It was all my fault. Please let me forget all about it. Then, I tried to pretend nothing had happened. I didn’t remember anything.” — JiMin, 11 May Year 22. The Notes 1.

After HoSeok and his friends help break him out of the hospital (15 May Year 22, The Notes 1), JiMin recognizes that in order to keep his freedom, he must prove both to his family and to himself that he is “okay” and will not relapse. 

“I had to return to the Grass Flower Arboretum. I had to stop lying about not remembering what I’d seen there. It was time to stop hiding in the hospital and put an end to my seizures. To do that, I had to go back there. But, for days, I went to the shuttle bus stop and failed to get on the bus.

After I watched the third bus of the day pull away, YoonGi suddenly appeared and plunked down next to me. … Then he asked what I was doing here. I kept my head bent low and kicked the ground with the toe of my sneaker. I was sitting there because I didn’t have courage. I wanted to pretend that I was OK now, that I knew enough, and that I could easily overcome this. But I was afraid. I was afraid of not knowing what I was about to face, whether I would be able to endure it, and whether I would have a seizure again.

… The bus stopped and the door opened. The driver stared at me. I asked YoonGi. ‘Will you go with me?’” — JiMin, 19 May Year 22. The Notes 1.

The drummer boy in ON may represent, in part, JiMin’s childhood: his real younger self, the one who experienced an event with long-reaching, traumatic consequences, just as the drummer boy marched into the horrors of war. User @cinnaminsvga​ points out that the boy’s striped pants (and I will add, shaved head) may refer to the common style of uniform assigned in Holocaust concentration camps, drawing in additional themes of imprisonment and persecution. In JiMin’s case, the violence against his true identity is committed by himself, in the attempted act of self-preservation, and his family, in turning a blind eye and forcing his hospitalization.

JiMin has spent years of his life denying the truth of what happened in the arboretum, hiding behind a blindfold of denial and lies. Embarking on the arboretum shuttle with YoonGi marks his first conscious effort to remove that blindfold. This is paralleled by his interaction with ON’s drummer boy. For the first time, he reaches out to that boy of his past, in a striking visual homage to Blood, Sweat, & Tears. Instead of running away, he chooses to face the reality of his trauma, in the hope of walking a new path toward acceptance and healing. 

Later events in the Notes and BU films remind us that the path to recovery is not easy or straightforward. It is riddled with pitfalls and switchbacks, challenges and missteps that threaten to drag oneself into relapse. When JiMin accidentally stumbles into his dance studio partner and they fall, the sight of his own blood once again triggers him.

“The blood reminded me of the Grass Flower Arboretum. I felt suffocated. I couldn’t remember how I got up, ran out of the practice room, and made it to the restroom. I scrubbed and washed the scrape like crazy, becoming more and more frightened at seeing the blood sucked down the drain. I thought I’d overcome this. I thought I was OK. But I wasn’t. I had to flee. I had to wash it off. I had to look the other way. 

… On that day, I’d run away from the Grass Flower Arboretum. My body was covered with mud that looked like blood. I hadn’t grown up one bit from that little eight-year-old kid.” — JiMin, 4 July Year 22. The Notes 1.

The road to the future will be paved with hardship and setbacks for JiMin. However, the act of reaching toward the drummer boy in ON may further represent the acceptance that he has more challenges to overcome. Although the young age of military drummers has been exaggerated and romanticized over the years, their role is uncontested: drums helped the formations march in step, and a language of rudiments (basic rhythmic patterns) relayed commands from officers to soldiers. Despite the danger to their lives, they accompanied the troops to war and played on the battlefield. JiMin’s partnership with the drummer boy in ON signifies his willingness to brave the conflicts, personal and external, ahead. Though his private battles to survive his trauma are far from over, if he does not surrender again to denial, he will one day see light breaking through the storm.

The candle girls + YoonGi

In ON, YoonGi is connected with not just one child, but an entire congregation. The scene appears as a kind of candlelight vigil or memorial service, likely composed of girls because all the men and boys have been summoned to the war. Fire has been one of the most significant, recurring elements since the very beginning of BU content, especially in association with YoonGi, so the choice of imagery is impossible to miss. Fire is the root of his obsessions, the heart of his torment, the means to his self-destruction.

YoonGi has never truly come to terms with his mother's death, locking away the suspicion that she was responsible for setting the fire that took her life. His love for music is bound by the painful memories of his mother and the piano. Love and pain are inextricable. His mother's love for him and for music were not enough to save her life. Again and again, in countless timelines, he plays out that same act of self-violence, throwing himself into the flames.

“I tried to imagine what was going on in YoonGi’s head. Once, I followed him secretly for hours. His footsteps were insecure and unpredictable. He staggered through the night streets and tried to fling himself into the fire. He sometimes squatted on the ground and listened to music that flowed out of somewhere inside an underground shopping arcade. … The suffering he must have endured, going from one extreme to the other, were beyond my imagination. All I could do was watch him stagger on.” — SeokJin, 2 May Year 22. The Notes 1.

Like TaeHyung, YoonGi attempts to hide the true depths of his despair from his group of friends: the wildly uncontrolled mood swings from fits of creative passion to destructive tendencies of alcoholism and self-harm. Though he finds a kindred spirit in JungKook, his own internal conflicts and fears repeatedly force him away when they get too close. When they are reunited physically at key moments throughout the BU narrative, he cannot bridge the emotional gap. YoonGi’s mother abandoned him to an inheritance of grief and mental health struggles, neither of which he is capable of working through alone. But he recognizes that his self-destructive habits spin out of control, and he does not want to inflict that pain upon others through their closeness.

“I turned my eyes away. I didn’t want to get involved in someone else’s life. I didn’t want to try to console someone who was lonely. I didn’t want to be important for someone. I wasn’t sure I could protect that someone till the end. I wasn’t confident I could stand by that someone till the end. I didn’t want to hurt that someone. I didn’t want to get hurt. It’s hard enough for us to try to save ourselves when the last moment comes, let alone someone else.” — YoonGi, 7 April Year 22. The Notes 1.

“‘Why didn’t you go see JungKook? Don’t you know what you mean to him?’ Of course I knew. Maybe that was why I couldn’t go into his room. I was distorted and thorny. Anyone who tried to come near me was bound to get hurt.

… I’d inflicted pain on others as I suffered greater pain. I looked away from their wounds. I didn’t want to take any responsibility. I didn’t want to get involved. That was who I was.” — YoonGi, 25 July Year 22. The Notes 1.

YoonGi is eventually driven to understand that he cannot survive alone. When he fears that he pushes away HoSeok, the “one who always pave[s] the way for [him] to come back no matter how far astray” he has gone (28 July Year 22, The Notes 1), for good this time, HoSeok later texts him privately to ask if he is okay. In between those two points of contact, YoonGi discovers a new purpose for living: completing the melody that has nearly driven him to madness, as it haunts him across many parallel timelines in tantalizing and ungraspable fragments. 

“I completed the piece several days ago. I changed the version I sent to HoSeok a few more times. I gave it the title ‘Hope.’ To be honest, the title didn’t actually match the piece. It contained my fear, cowardice, and inferiority. It contained all the moments I tried to avoid, get away from, and reprimanded myself for. But I couldn’t think of any other word that could encompass it all.” — YoonGi, 30 August Year 22. The Notes 1.

In sharing this musical representation of his innermost self, YoonGi opens himself to vulnerability. This is a step forward in accepting the turmoil of his heart and allowing others inside to see his true self, too. It is particularly striking to see YoonGi, who has forbidden himself emotional proximity to others for so long, emerging from isolation to participate in ON’s candlelight service. Linking him to a community of children, rather than the solo partners of TaeHyung and JiMin, signifies his progress in growing beyond the shadows of his past and exploring new ways to manage his grief. Even the cuts to him alone in this sacred, ceremonial space reflect his development. He is not torn by anger or despair, but given to reflection. He does not stare obsessively into the flames, but instead gazes outward at a beam of sunlight. Despite the somber undertones, this scene in ON is one of the rare instances of YoonGi associated with fire in a positive light: not one of violence and self-destruction, but reflection and healing through the allowance of both private and shared grief. 

Bonus: HoSeok + the bag girl

While all seven characters of the BU narrative are influenced by their pasts, the ones whose lives are most acutely shaped by the ongoing traumas and conflicts that are rooted in their youths are the characters reflected here: TaeHyung, JiMin, YoonGi. And, I am inclined to say at first pass, HoSeok. Like TaeHyung, he was abandoned by his mother, but this left him without any family and he was consigned to an orphanage. He carries the weight of his abandonment with him into adulthood, influencing multiple aspects of his health and manifesting an unconscious obsession with seeing his mother in other women.

So where is his child representation in the ON video? It is entirely plausible that another pairing included was not included for timing reasons. Another possible reason is that he has made considerable progress in his personal growth by the end of the Notes 1, and therefore the shackles of his past have loosened: he confesses to JiMin that his narcolepsy is fake (16 May Year 22, The Notes 1) and in later months recognizes the problematic nature of seeing his mother, whose face he can no longer remember, in other women in his life, strangers and friends alike. 

That being said, the presence of the girl with the bright yellow bag in the shot of everyone looking beyond the wall (included in the first photoset) might be a coincidence… or it might be a small nod to the shoulder bag carried on tour by the real-life HoSeok and gifted to a fan during the New York Citi Field performance in October 2018. The one in ON is not red (although the girl standing next to her has one with red embellishments), but the yellow is a surprising pop of color amid the subdued color palette in the rest of the shot. She does not stand near HoSeok (although neither does the drummer boy near JiMin)... But perhaps, if we are inclined to read into it, we may find a dash of hope in the separation of this mother/child reference, as HoSeok gazes forward with the others at the opportunities and dreams promised by the future.

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If you made it this far, I sincerely thank you for coming on this little journey with me. Please do not repost this analysis on other platforms. If you have any questions, comments, or wild theories of your own… send them my way! I would love to hear from you. -- wings

Added Note: This was written before I read actress Rina Johnson’s statement about playing the role of Taehyung’s sister and prior to the release of the ON behind-the-scenes video.

[agonizingjest]

The Tellstales Heart - E.A. Poe Parody

Yes, I’m annoyed. Ridiculously annoyed I had been, and still am; but mad, you say? You’d think putting up with those terrible stories would dull my senses to reality, but no -- rather, it has destroyed my imagination. Above all, it destroyed my ability to think about anything decent. As a philosophy major, I have considered heaven and earth. I have thought of hell, but those tales put me through it. Listen! I’m going to tell you what happened, and it’s going to have an actual damn POINT to it.

It’s not easy to put into words how the idea first entered my mind; but once I thought it, I could think of nothing else. There was nothing I wanted, I couldn’t feel anymore. Sure, I loved the old geezer. He had been a nice enough fellow. He’d always been supportive. He didn’t have money, and if he had, I wouldn’t have wanted it. It was his storytelling! Yup, definitely that. He had the wit of a goat -- his stories were drawn out, his characters were flat, his grammar was atrocious, and his plots, oh don’t even get me started on his ambiguous, dry, tangled, boring plots! Whenever he would start telling me a tale, I would have to zone out for hours; and then -- over time -- I decided that I had to kill him, to put an end to his rancid taste in words.

So here’s what I’m getting at. You think I’m crazy. Insane, out of my mind. But you should have heard what I had to put up with. You should have witnessed how well I tuned out that blathering idiot -- how hard I worked to stay awake through his -- how tough--how immensely difficult it was to pull this off. I was so patient with the old fart and his awful stories for the whole week before I finally shut him up. Every night, from around eight until midnight, I’d sit next to his bed and let him disappoint me with his flat works of fiction. Then, after he’d finished his tale of an orphaned boy who lost his parents to a murderous pyromaniac and went on to become the world’s fastest swimmer after having given up at becoming a figure skater, or the tale of a mouse who befriended a cat and travelled across the Great Wall of China in a post-apocalyptic world in search of the last samurai in order to -- well, you get the point. I let him tell me these tales and I pretended, with oh such difficulty, to enjoy them, and over time, I even started to act them out as he told them. Oh, you would have laughed to see how I acted out a little girl who found a lost, rusty bicycle and rode it every day until she was an old, decrepit woman, and was seen by a handsome young prince who claimed it was his when he was a child (which, yes, I already know doesn’t make sense in terms of how time works) and who married her for finding his lost childhood bike and his magic kiss turned her young again. It was awful. Yet, I acted every step out, fooling the old man into thinking I was just so caught up in his tales that I couldn’t help but to react in such a jolly way. It took hours of sweat and misplaced modifiers and lack of originality and gaping plot holes to convince the guy I was actually enjoying it. Ha! Anybody with a mind less keen than my own would have cracked under the pressure, if not the appalling prose. And every night, every night after being afflicted with awful anecdotes, after the old fart talked himself tired, he would take his book (self printed, of course, since not the most desperate of publishers would dare touch his work), tuck it under his pillow, and snore, unaware of his disgrace, his lack of attention to detail or originality, his non sequiturs and nasty narratives. For seven long nights I listened to his crap, and it was impossible to do the work; see, it wasn't the old man himself that vexed me, but his stories, his words, his evil writings.

And so, after every night of this nonsense, as he slept, I crept back into his room and slithered toward his bed. I slid his book out from under the pillow and cautiously, oh so cautiously (for the book sleeve crumpled) -- scribbled out the pages with a marker, one by one, ever so slowly, to seal those lousy words from innocent eyes. I did this for seven long nights -- there were a lot of pages, you see. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into his room, spoke to him in a courageous manner, calling him by name in a tone so hearty, and inquiring as to whether he dreamt any dreams -- boorish cliches of dreams, no doubt, if a mind so simple as his could dream even any dreams. So you see he would have been a very profound old coot, indeed, to suspect that every night, at the witching hour, I looked upon him with hatred while I destroyed his work. But he had committed them all to memory, his horrible stories, and never did see the inside of that hardcover monstrosity.

On the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than mine did. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers -- of my keen mental judgement. I could hardly contain my feelings of triumph. I had rid the world of his book. But in that triumph, I knew, with his book no longer readable, the tales he told existed in but one place, still looming over me. His mind. His dull, dreary mind. To think that there I was, opening his door, bit by bit, and he couldn’t even dream of my secret deeds or thoughts -- no, he definitely wasn’t creative enough for that. Which is why I had to snuff out that mundane mind. I chuckled lightly at the idea; and maybe he heard me, because he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back -- but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (you see, he had blackout curtains, to block out the bright city lights), and so I knew that he couldn’t see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it, steadily, steadily. I had my head in, and was about to do the deed, when my thumb slipped from the handle and the doorknob clicked and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out -- “whoozit eh what?” I kept quite still, obviously, and said nothing. For a whole hour I didn’t move a muscle, but in the meantime I didn’t hear him lie back down. No, no, he was still sitting up in his bed, listening; just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to his damn crappy stories.

Suddenly I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror, not of pain or of grief. It was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. The groan of a total wuss! I knew the sound well. Far too often, just after sunset, when all the world readied for sleep, it has swelled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terror of seeing that old codger walk toward me, book in hand, ready to lay upon he is ill-written words wrecked terror upon my mind. Oh yes, I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him -- although not really. Sorry not sorry and all that. Yes, I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. I knew his fears had been growing and growing ever since then. He’d been trying to imagine them as no cause for concern, but his imagination, weak as it was, could not do so. He was probably trying to say to himself -- “It’s nothing but the wind in the chimney, maybe a mouse on the floor. Or heck, maybe it was just a cricket that chirped, like, one time and one time only, right?” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these thoughts; but he had found them all in vain. All in vain, because Death, in approaching him, had stalked his black shadow before him; death had enveloped him, the victim. And it was the mournful influence of that unperceived shadow of Death that caused the uncreative old man to feel -- though he had neither seen nor heard -- to feel the presence of my head within his room.

(Typical. Absolutely no skill when it comes to writing, but an acute spatial awareness of his surroundings. Gosh, this man choked me -- not, obviously, literally in the way I planned to choke him, but... well, you get the picture.)

Anyway, after I’d waited a long while, very patiently I might add, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to push open only slightly -- very, very slightly the corner of the curtain next to the door. So I pushed it aside -- you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily -- until, at length a tiny ray of nighttime light pollution, like the thread of a… I don’t know, neon spider? (Ugh, his inability to create basic similes or metaphors is rubbing off on me.) Anyway, a tiny thread of light, just enough for my eyes to adjust and see his silhouette, fell upon him as he was -- I just cannot believe this -- writing. Yes, apparently I had been waiting there for hours, unmoving, barely breathing, thinking he was all paranoid and attentive, when really he was just night-writing. IN THE DARK! Who even does that? Jotting down ideas for his next incohesive instalment of story-time drudgery -- and I grew furious as I gazed upon the sight. I knew without a doubt he was coming up with a bunch of ridiculous ideas that have nothing to do with each other, his pen scribbling out more and more nonsense onto the page, a dull, blue-ink stream of terrible writing, the idea of which chilled the very marrow in my bones; it was all I could focus on, that damned pen in his damned hand, writing in that damned notebook, his damned awful ideas! And didn’t I mention to you that what you mistake for madness is merely over-awareness of this godawful writing? Yes, I majored in philosophy, but I also minored in creative writing, so it’s not just that I personally didn’t like his writing, but I knew, from a technical standpoint, that it wasn’t merely unenjoyable, but also just… just really, really bad! Now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull sound. Despite its softness, it was not unlike the deafening chirp of spring cicadas, enveloping the entire atmosphere for hours upon hours, in just a few moments of his mumblings. It was the old man muttering his ideas out loud as he wrote them, just as horrid in their first draft dribble dripping monotonously from his mouth as they become in their final draft. This heightened my rage as the dripping of a leaky faucet in an otherwise silent room drives a man’s mind to unrest.

But like, seriously, this guy’s prattling is way worse, because on top of his voice just sounding outright awful, there are the words -- which, by this point, I don’t have to tell you again are just -- oh but I will -- they’re the worst! The absolute worst!

But despite my inner turmoil, I refrained and kept still. I barely breathed. I stood motionless, steadily holding the curtain so as not to draw attention to myself, to burn into memory exactly where his pen was, how it slid on the paper, writing that filth, that garbage, as the hellish hand moved quicker and quicker, and his mumbling grew louder, yet more incomprehensible.

I continued to stay still, though. I didn’t move a muscle. I barely even breathed. Completely motionless. I was completely still. Through all that, the old man kept mumbling. In fact, he started mumbling faster. Like he was hoping writing some crap down on paper would calm him down or something, I guess; and apparently he can’t write without murmuring out loud to himself. His creative muscle, had he even one in his entire body, must have been straining. The scribbling of his pen grew faster. At such a pace, the flow and syntax of his words must have been extremely messy. And yet the ferocity of his writing grew harsher, I say, harsher every moment! -- I told you I was nervous, right? Well, I was. Still am. But seriously, at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of this old house, so annoying the noise that was his scribbling and mumbling excited me to uncontrollable irritation. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the mumbling and scribbling grew louder, louder! I thought he’d rip through the paper with how aggressively he was writing. And suddenly a new fear came up -- the fear of what another of those rancid stories being finished, being fully brought to reality, what it would do to my very soul. I was very much personally offended by how bad these were. Seriously. If you read one, you’d understand. But don’t. No, really, don’t read one. Don’t subject yourself to that type of torture. Trust me.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, the story. I couldn’t have him finish it. So then, I decided, the old man’s hour had come. With a loud yell, I threw open the door and leapt into the room. He shrieked once -- just once. In an instant, I ripped the writing utensils from his hand and dragged him to the floor, then suffocated him with his own pillow, keeping from him the air like he, with his horrid stories, had snuffed the light from my very soul. I smiled, knowing the mumbles I heard through the pillow must not have been the tellings of terrible tales, but the sounds of muffled terror. This didn’t vex me, because I couldn’t make out any poorly-chosen words; and, of course, because that’s totally what he gets for instilling within me the terror of both poetry and prose. For turning fiction into some sort of severe psychological torture. Seriously. Like bad-writing ptsd or something. I just can’t even. But, like all things, it eventually came to an end. The old fart was dead. I removed the pillow and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon his heart and held it there for a while. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His stories would bother me no more.

Look, if you still think I’m mad, you won’t think so after I tell you about all the wise precautions I took in concealing the body. The night went on, and I worked quickly, but silently. First things first, I dismembered the corpse. I removed the head and arms and legs. And to top it all off, I cut out his heart and stuffed it into his blabbering mouth. Eat your heart old, oh man. Hah! Then I took the book, that bloody awful book, and stuffed it into a bag with the head. Even with its pages unreadable, I wanted the damn thing out of my sight. Anyway, then I took up a few floorboards -- they’re mahogany, you know -- and stuff his, uh, parts, right under there. Then I replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out -- no stain of any kind -- no blood-spot whatsoever. What, you think I don’t know how to lay out a tarp? Not to mention I used the tub. Anyway, when I was done all that, it was about four o’clock. Still dark. But then, right on the dot, just as the old grandfather clock chimed, there was a knocking at the door. Pretty coincidental timing, eh? I knew I was in the clear, so I went down and opened it with a light heart. Three cops. Apparently someone heard the old bugger’s shriek and called it in. Annoying. But hey, I had nothing to fear; like I said before, they couldn’t have found anything. I let them in, even though they didn’t have a warrant. No need to raise suspicion. I smiled and told them the shriek was mine -- night terrors. The old man, I said, was out of town. I gave them a once-over of the whole apartment, told them to check out whatever they wanted. Eventually, we got to the old man’s room. I showed them that all his stuff was undisturbed. Being a little overly enthusiastic, I must admit, in my confidence, I dragged in some chairs and told them to take a load off. I had the audacity of my perfect triumph to actually sit right on top of where I hid the old victim’s corpse. Yup, right there.

The cops were satisfied. I’d convinced them with my manners. I was completely at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted openly. But before long, I felt myself getting pale, and wanted them gone (ACAB, after all). I had a headache, and there was a ringing in my ears. Yet, still they sat and chatted away. The ringing got worse. It went on and one, louder and more distinct. I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling, but it continued and gained definiteness -- until, at length, I realized that the noise wasn’t in my ears. Now I was getting really pale -- I talked more fluently, and slightly louder. But the sound increased -- and what could I do? It was a low, dull, aggravating sound -- like the sound of neighbours chatting through poorly insulated walls. No, no, not neighbours chatting. That old man, telling his stories, reading them out from beyond the grave, through the floor. I gasped, but the officers didn’t hear it. I spoke more quickly -- more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I got up and started ranting about trifling things, high pitched and with passionate gestures; but the noise kept increasing. Why the heck wouldn’t it stop? I walked back and forth quickly, almost as if I was getting frustrated by the cops’ observations -- and that noise still kept getting louder. Oh gods! I could almost make out the words. I could almost visualize him writing out poorly planned passages right there in the space under us. What could I do? I ranted, raved, swore! I flipped over the damn chair I’d been sitting on, and grated it along the floor, but the noise was everywhere, continually getting louder and faster. Louder and louder and louder! And still, the cops chatted pleasantly, and smiled. How the heck couldn’t they hear it? No, wait. Yeah, of course they heard it! --They suspected! --They knew! --They were mocking me, making fun of my horror. I thought so and I still think so. But honestly, anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this mockery! I couldn’t take it anymore, those hypocritical smiles! I knew I had to say something or die! And now -- again! --listen! Louder! Louder! Louder!

“Villains!”I I shrieked, “enough of this sham! I admit it! --Tear up the planks! Here, here! --It is the bothersome blabbering of his hideous head!”

[transhumanitynet]

Obstacles to Mind Uploading

Sing The Body Electric

“Mind Uploading” is the idea that the pattern of information which constitutes your perceptual awareness, memories, personality, and all other cognitive functions can be abstracted from the brain it developed in, and “run” on a different computational substrate. In other words; that the stuff which makes you, you could in principle escape the inherent limitations of human biology… such as inevitable short-term mortality. If it is plausible, that is a profoundly powerful and transformative idea.

Of course, the uploading idea has a myriad of opponents. The vast majority are ill-informed people whose opposition relies more on instinct and straw-clutching than good arguments well supported by evidence. To be fair, the same could be said of the uploading idea’s many dilettante fans who simply like the notion without having seriously researched its plausibility. The paragraphs below offer a whirlwind tour of objections to uploading, and the degree to which they should be taken seriously.

Where to Begin? You Are Already A Machine

Human argumentation is rarely half as rational as we like to imagine it is. For a start, our estimates and judgments of whether an argument is correct are heavily dependent on context. More specifically, we are overly influenced by what are known as “frames” or “anchors”; i.e. by the initial point of reference we use to start thinking about… anything. For example, a million dollars sounds like a lot to a homeless person, and like considerably less to Bill Gates.

This is highly relevant to arguments about uploading, because people tend to begin those arguments from different starting points, depending on whether they like the idea or not. Opponents of uploading tend to start out with an implicit assumption that humans and machines are very different things, and never the twain shall meet (for one reason or another). Uploading advocates, however, will frequently argue that the human organism is already a machine of sorts, thus acting as a kind of living testimony to the possibility of intelligent, conscious machines.

The core issue tends to be a fundamental misunderstanding (albeit one that is often deliberate) over the question of what it is to be a machine. Opponents invariably define machines in terms of those artificial devices which already exist or have existed, whereas advocates focus on the underlying principles of known organisms and artifacts. In case you hadn’t guessed; I am an uploading advocate, and I believe that we are – in the deepest sense – already machines, and always have been.

Computational Power, S-Curves, & Technological Singularities

Of course, that still leaves a considerable (some would say intractable, even impossible) gulf between our current technical ability on the one hand, and the ability to intelligently alter, replicate, and improve upon our own biological machinery on the other. For a cogent, exhaustive argument for the ability of accelerating technological development to deliver on these promises, I would suggest reading “The Singularity Is Near” by Ray Kurzweil.

The basic premise of that book is that technological innovations make more innovation easier to produce, which in turns leads to the (already well observed) acceleration of change. Accelerating change leads to an exponential (rather than linear) pattern, by which we might reasonably expect to see twenty thousand years of technological innovation at the c.2000 CE rate by the end of the 21st Century. That is definitely enough innovation to bridge the kind of technical gap we’re talking about. Of course, opponents like to deny that accelerating change even exists, but their claims are increasingly hard to take seriously if you pay attention to the latest developments coming out of cutting-edge labs.

Minds, Bodies, and… Intestines?

Broadly speaking, on the technical level (i.e. leaving aside arguments that we can upload minds, but shouldn’t), there are two types of opponent argument. One is that the mind cannot be reduced to information and thus modelled. The most common version of that argument comes from religion, involves “souls” (whatever they are), and is addressed further below. The second is that the mind can be modelled in terms of information, but we are modelling the wrong information.

I would not want to dismiss that second argument too quickly. To be frank, more often than not it is perfectly on the money. It’s just that I believe we are moving closer and closer to modelling (and understanding) the right information all the time. Let’s be clear, here: The oft-heard refrain that “the mind and consciousness are complete mysteries, we have no idea how they work” are ridiculous, infantile catchphrases used only by people who are wilfully ignorant of the last twenty years of developments in cognitive neuroscience and related scientific disciplines.

AI research is littered with ridiculously simplistic assumptions from people who’ve had little or nothing to do with cognitive science or any related discipline, working on their own narrow-domain problems and then somehow assuming that their models capture the intricacies of, well… everything. The first “AI Winter” and the challenge of developing competent AI chess players was perhaps the most notable early wake-up call in that department. To cut a long story short, the moral of that story is that AI researchers have a habit of making lots of huge, terrible assumptions.

These days, it’s much harder to find a serious researcher who thinks you can abstract away most neurological processing without “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. These days, complexity is increasingly respected and explored, which means not only not dismissing it, but also not holding it up as some magical ‘deus ex machina’ from which consciousness will emerge if we can only hook enough artificial neurons up to each other…

Anyway, such issues lead to some interesting grey areas, which are often (in my opinion) misused for the purposes of argument. For example, certain biologists have made a lot out of observed connections between the human gut microbiome and “enteric nervous system” on the one hand and cognition as a whole on the other. The research literature essentially says that human intestinal health affects our mood and other personality aspects. On the one hand, that is an entirely reasonable observation, of course. It is hardly surprising that our moods and cognitive abilities are highly sensitive to the state of the body they are instantiated in!

It is quite another thing, however, to suggest (as opponents sometimes do) that this intestinal “second brain” (so-called by popular science writers) is intrinsic to intelligence or conscious awareness, or any harder to model than any other part of the extended nervous system. You could argue up this garden path for a long time, but the basic reality can be illuminated with a simple Reductio Ad Absurdum: Do you really believe that if you could fully capture everything happening in a person’s brain but not their (personal, specific) intestines, then something fundamentally definitive about that person would be missing? If you do, then I would hazard that you have some rather, ahem, fringe notions about what information is actually processed by the enteric nervous system.

Leaping the Gap from Data to Software

Another intriguing, and yet ultimately spurious objection to uploading is to say that you can collect all the neurological data you want, but without some kind of “animating force” in the form of properly configured software then it would be for nothing. On a certain level this argument can carry some weight, but again it’s easy to take that too far.

The value of this opposition argument is inevitably correlated with the degree to which uploaders are committed to a degree of abstraction of human neural activity. Basically, we know that humans are intelligent and consciously aware. With a technology that modelled the human nervous system down to each individual atom, there is no need for software that has any “magic sauce” beyond faithfully replicating the physics of atomic interaction. Of course that would require a staggering amount of computational power to achieve if it is even possible (the jury seems to be out on that, depending upon the computational assumptions you make), so the natural temptation is to take shortcut. Just model entire molecules, neurons, neuron-clusters, brain regions… and so on. The more abstraction you rely upon, the more you have to rely upon software to bridge the gap.

That is an entirely fair point. It is not, however, any kind of argument that uploading is impossible. To the contrary, it is an argument for the establishment of the circumstantial boundaries within which uploading is possible, given sufficient available computational power.

A Final Note on Souls and Other Fictions

If you believe that you could perfectly capture every conceivable physical aspect of a person down to the atomic level, putting aside all of the technological achievement required to do such an incredible thing, and still believe that something important is being missed out, then it seems fairly safe to say that you believe in souls.

Not in some metaphorical, poetic sense, but in proper old-fashioned, literal “soul stuff” which somehow acts like a physical substance but obeys none of the laws of physics, and which people only imagine exists because they read about it in a work of fiction (and/or refuse to believe that they could be made of the same stuff as literally everything else in the observable universe).

If that is your position, then I’m afraid I only have two words for you: Grow Up.

Further Reading

AI Transcends Human Cognitive Bias http://transhumanity.net/ai-transcends-human-cognitive-bias/

Obstacles to Mind Uploading was originally published on transhumanity.net