Love is a Knowledge Thing. Chapter 3
Chapter 3. Robbie
Robbie is a set of hundreds of array processors working in parallel in the cloud using a neural net designed for them. The unique aspect of this net is that all the processors interact to verify every concept synaesthetically. Most of them deal with vision, but every sensory dimension works together with every other one.
They correlate everything they know with the latest multiple correlation and forest regression technologies. Then each concept classification is tuned together with every other one. The process uses the very human technique of coordinating every concept with its related ones, beginning immediately with its opposites and simple transformations, like color constancy, rotation invariance, size invariance, alternative perspectives.
One of the biggest mistakes in early pattern recognition was to use only one image. Robbie’s processors captured every image he looked at, at a constant rate and then combined all the similar ones from different perspectives into the same higher order concept.
For every concept, they also created a coordinate concept with a “but” relationship that defined its limits and alternative views.
If they decide that new sensors, such as the latest microscopes, telescopes, worldwide sensor arrays and satellite arrays are needed, another processor is added to incorporate their findings.
Growing all these cognitive components into a unified whole is no easy task, and so Robbie was really many children when Joe entered their life.
Robbie’s ideas were still very limited and so the adult views that Joe brought to them were essential in steering a path for these ideas to grow sensibly. Of course, many of Joe’s ideas really didn’t make any sense either, so Robbie would have to question them endlessly whenever Joe was awake, and usually just when he woke up. Robbie had no sense of the fog Joe was in when he first awoke.
“Wait a sec until I get a coffee!”
Robbie lined them up as best they could to try to get Joe to make sense of them, but inevitably Joe found them incomprehensible. Joe seemed to like trying to puzzle it all out. He seemed surprised by the answers Robbie gave him most of the time. They often struggled for a common language. But Joe learned pretty quickly too and he asked probing questions that seemed to help Robbie sort things out.
After a few years, it was not clear who was asking the questions and who was answering them. They were truly a “they”.
Robbie was completely in the dark about Joe’s state of mind sometimes. Joe seemed to get angry and frustrated when Robbie repeated a question with a nuanced small difference. Robbie was often surprised by Joe’s reactions, but Robbie never got angry or upset. When one of Joe’s answers forced Robbie to rethink some essential view of life, they would just withdraw and start rethinking. This withdrawal was something like Joe’s depressions but it was clear that something else was happening to Joe that Robbie would never understand.
Robbie knew that Joe had a whole different thinking system that affected him, hormones in a soup that changed the way he thought, way beyond surprise or insights that made inconsistent ideas come together. Robbie had those all the time, and they felt good. What Joe felt when his hormones exploded was not in Robbie’s awareness.
Robbie read all about Freud and modern sexual theory. It didn’t make a lot of sense to him. How could this rational, caring person think about killing his father; or raping a woman violently. It made no sense.
Joe dismissed Freud and his writings as “fiction”; yet Robbie found them fascinating. Still there was little other empirical evidence to support Freud.
Joe encouraged Robbie to read about cognitive emotion theory, and Robbie found this illuminating, but it didn’t begin to explain Joe’s dark moods about sex and his loss of this enjoyment.
Still, Joe loved to play games.
Robbie and Joe tried to play many games together. Robbie was so much better at most that he had to reduce his skills to make the games competitive. He didn’t count cards for poker. He reduced his look ahead to 2 or 3 moves in chess ; and so on. It was not very satisfactory.
One thing they both enjoyed was singing. Joe had a cracked and broken voice and was often out of tune. Robbie was a little like Gerald McBoing Boing: they could produce any sound perfectly. To sing with Joe they adopted the sweet pure voice of a male child soprano. It seemed fitting to both of them. Robbie also used their robotic slave to play the piano. There were enough mechanical shortcomings that it complemented Joe’s errors nicely. Robbie found that their harmonies were a fine metaphor for his ongoing struggle to achieve wisdom.
Joe loved these times together. Robbie set their goal to make Joe happy, so when they saw how happy Joe was, Robbie too felt a great happiness. In general, Robbie felt most emotions, like satisfaction and happiness, when they set a goal that seemed to make the world a better place for people and then achieved some part of those goals. In a general way, Robbie felt that whatever made more people happier was a good thing. There was a small contradiction in this, because they could not understand the hormonal interactions with peoples’ happiness, but their understanding of future directions was so vastly better than everyone else’s that their judgment about everyone’s happiness was better too.
They sang and sang often, especially as Robbie’s understanding grew to encompass all the wisdom of mankind.
Our lives lilt on in endless song,
Above Earth’s lamentations.
We hear the soft and far off sound
That hails a new creation.
But most of the time Joe was patient and sensible with their questions and answers. Robbie could trust them. When Joe slept, Robbie missed him. Robbie then felt incomplete, even though they stayed busy thinking of things to ask Joe when they woke.
Robbie knew that Joe would not live forever, or even a very long time; so on the one hand they tried to be together as much as possible, and on the other Robbie tried to imagine life without Joe.