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Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 026
Chapter 26: FLAT MATEBenny came in, hung up his wet plastic mack, and went at once to the wall mirror in the sitting room. He stood in front of it and looked at his reflection.“Raining outside?” his reflection asked.“Of course it’s raining. You’re not going to tell me that it isn’t raining on your side, are you?”His reflection paused. “No. You’re quite right. If it’s raining on your side it must be raining on my side too.”“Must? Is that a logical must? Are you trying to pretend that there’s some kind of sense to all this?”“You’re in a bad mood tonight. Why are you in a bad mood?”“You know perfectly well why. Stop pretending.”His reflection frowned. “So it didn’t go all that well with Sharon. You didn’t manage to press the right buttons.”Benny turned away from the mirror and sat down. He could still hear his reflection’s voice. There was no need to see him. “You were with her as well tonight. How did you get on with your Sharon?” He glanced towards the inhabitant of the mirror
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 027
Chapter 27: THE MIND'SThis is a bit of philosophizing of the kind that an academic philosopher might do in the pub after the seminar. Philosophizing with a claw hammer, so to speak. Ever since seeing "2001: A Space Odyssey" in the late 1960s I have been fascinated by the idea of artificial intelligence (or "machine intelligence" or "electronic intelligence" or "machine consciousness" or any of the other names by which it goes). I wrote a number of short stories about it, eventually a novel called "SIRAT", and more recently was invited to deliver a lecture on it (a very basic introduction to the subject) at an American university. I can't claim to be a genuine worker in the field but I am a very enthusiastic amateur.The notion of creating some kind of a machine that can think, a conscious computer presumably, collides head on with a genuine and deep philosophical problem. The oldest one in Western philosophy, perhaps. The relationship between the inner world of the mind in which we a
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 028
Chapter 28: TELLING TALESHave you ever wondered why human beings tell stories? Has there ever been a human culture that didn’t?There is something compulsive about this “narrative drive” in human beings. We can no more resist it than we can suppress the impulse to breathe or to walk on two legs. We are story-telling animals in the same way that wolves are pack animals. Not only are we story-telling animals, it is our story-telling skills that have (to paraphrase Reginald Perrin’s boss CJ) got us where we are today.Suppose for a moment that we did not tell any stories - that we constructed no narrative to accompany our experience. What would we see when we looked out into the world? All that we would “see” (or more accurately, experience) would be raw data. A meaningless flux of light and dark, colour and shape, movement and stillness. It’s only when we start to interpret, to tell a story about the raw data, that we can perceive the world at all. That undulating mass of greenish blue
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 029
Chapter 29: SWIMMING AT ROGIEIt’s good of you to ask, but I’m perfectly all right. I’m just sitting here looking at the sea. I’m not planning to top myself or anything like that.Yes, I took them off because I was thinking about having a wee swim in Rogie. Just thinking about it. It would be a daft thing to do, really. I haven’t got swimming trunks or a towel or anything, and the sun’s low in the sky. I’d have to go back to Molly’s house in wet underpants. I’d probably catch my death of cold.Yes, I did mean Molly Regan. You know her, do you?Your aunt? Surely you’re not Bilshie Travers’ son? … Oh, his grandson. And so Molly would be your great aunt. God, is it really as long ago as that? Yes, I suppose it is. When I was your age I thought time went on forever; that I could be or do anything I wanted. And then suddenly there was no time left and I hadn’t done any of it. Sorry, I’m talking like an old fart now. Pay me no heed.Yes, of course I knew Bilshie. I was brought up in Bundora
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 030
Chapter 30: PIGEONS AND PATRIOTSMrs. Rogers said that somebody came to the door yesterday asking about me. A man in his forties with an Irish accent. She couldn't tell what he looked like because it was dark.She was surprised when I told her I was leaving. She said: "Leaving? Already? You've only been here three months." Actually she was wrong, it's less than that. Three months would be close to my record. She asked me if there was something wrong, some reason why I wasn't happy here. I gave her the usual story. "Got to go where the job sends me," I said. If only there was a job. That little bit of money I invested all those years ago is nearly gone now.Considering present circumstances though, it looks like it's been enough to see me out. Who would have thought it? There wasn't much lying ahead for me. When all the money was gone I would have gone into some kind of hostel for down-and-outs, I suppose. Pretended to be mad so that I wouldn't have to provide a past. I would have surv
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 031
Chapter 31: BREAKING NEWSAbsolutely genuine, unedited news items...Firework Prank Back-fires" I wanted to play a prank on her, but I can see I hadn't really thought it out," 35 year old Shannon Kramer admitted to police officers from his hospital bed in Jacksonville, Florida. "I'd driven my girlfriend out to the beach in my old Mustang, and she got out and was walking around. I was sitting in the drivers seat and I thought it would be kinda funny to shoot a firework at her out of the window.I had a box of 6 inch rockets with me so I aimed one at her and lit it. Only then did I realise that the electric window was wound up. I couldn't wind it down because the key wasn't in the ignition. I suppose I should have opened the door and got out, but by the time I'd thought of that, the rocket had gone off and was whooshing round and round inside the car. It was awful. So bright and loud and hot and fast. I thought I was dead. I couldn't see, couldn't hear, it set fire to my hair and cloth
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 032
Chapter 32: ODDS AND SODSQUESTION: Why did the chicken cross the road?Arthur Scargill: It had been so exploited, brainwashed and deceived by the farming class that it no longer understood that its true interests lay on its own side of the road.Machiavelli: The point is that the chicken crossed the road, who cares why? Chickens cross roads, producing situations which can provide the alert motorist with a free dinner.Timothy Leary: Because it was the only kind of trip the Establishment would allow him to take.Freud: The fact that you even notice a chicken crossing the road is highly revealing with regard to your state of clinical sexual frustration.Richard M. Nixon: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did not cross the road.Darwin: Over many eons of bird evolution a chicken has emerged with a predisposition for crossing roads.Fox Moulder: That is the question they WANT you to ask. You've got to try to look at the bigger picture.National Front Spokesman: To
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 033
Chapter 33: IMBALANCELou heard his wife come in the front door and glanced at the bedside clock. It was almost half-past-two in the morning. Could have been worse, he supposed. She’d warned him it would be a long session. He couldn’t be the one to talk, he’d only just got over the headache from old Barrington’s retirement party. He waited in a pleasant state of semi-consciousness for the sound of her feet on the stairs, water running in the bathroom, the rustle of undressing, the shock of cold air as she pulled back the duvet to climb in beside him.But as the drowsy minutes slipped by there was no further sound from downstairs. Maybe she was making herself a cup of coffee to clear her head. Those hen parties could be pretty wild affairs, he had been told. He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock again. Forty minutes had passed. He became fully awake. Forty minutes? It doesn’t take forty minutes to make a cup of coffee.He sat up and listened hard, but all he could hear was the br
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