Well, I feel a bit better than I did yesterday, at least.  I guess that’s not necessarily all that impressive, when you consider how grumpy and gloomy I was yesterday.  Honestly, I can barely remember what I wrote then or what thought process was going through my mind.

I think maybe some of the difference today (which can’t be due to pain levels, because they are pretty steady) is because I got a few hours’ continuous sleep last night‒maybe 2 or even a little more before any stirring started to happen.  I don’t want to get too excited about this; after all, it’s possible that I’ll never sleep that well again for the rest of my life.  That may not be likely, but it remains possible, at least until I do have a better night’s sleep in the future.

Still, you take what you can get, right?

I find myself quite chagrined‒quite often‒by how grumpy and angry I have become.  This is largely due to my chronic pain, of course.  Even the most loyal and lovable family dog may growl and sometimes snap if it’s hurt and someone seems to mean to touch it.

Not that people seem to mean to touch me.  I’m not drawing that tight an analogy.  Nobody touches me, and for the most part I’m okay with that.  I really dislike it when, for instance, acquaintances want to pat me on the shoulder or what have you.  I can tolerate handshakes, but I like fist bumps better.  They feel almost like something Klingons might do.

Though, more often, I prefer the Vulcan salute, which I use to greet people who know me (and sometimes, without thinking, people who don’t know me).  I even use the emoji for it when texting: 🖖

In addition to the preceding, I created my own Vulcan-salute-based flip-off (there’s no associated emoji), and that is basically to do the Vulcan salute but with the back of my hand outward instead of the palm.  In my mind, the meaning is pretty clear and harsh:  Since the usual Vulcan salute means “Live long and prosper”‒at least, those words accompany the salute*‒then the Vulcan flip-off means roughly “suffer, and die young/soon”.

I know, that’s not a sentiment the Vulcans would be likely to endorse, but in case it wasn’t clear to anyone, I am not a Vulcan.  Quite apart from the obvious physical characteristics, Vulcans are a fictional species, and I am not.  At least, as far as I know, I am not.

I suppose I could be a work of fiction in a sense, as could you:  we could be simulated in some fashion, including being simulated within the mind of some truly vast intelligence, one powerful enough to imagine even all the thoughts of the things they imagine.

But, of course, if you simulate someone right down to their mind, their thoughts, their feelings, then they are not a simulation.  Or, rather, even if they are a simulation, they are nevertheless thinking, feeling, experiencing beings.

It’s possible, of course, to simulate a person without simulating an inner mind.  You could put the whole range of responses you want them to give to most situations in a very large lookup table, and you would have something like the NPCs in computer games (or older-fashioned role-playing games).  Then you are not actually simulating a mind, you are only simulating external behaviors.  It would be something like a very advanced animatronic.

But once you actually simulate a mind, you have created a mind, something with (in principle) moral valence.  Then, even if you are the creator, you still have moral obligations toward your creations, at least if you have them toward anyone.

Maybe this is why God** doesn’t try to anticipate what humans will do, but gives them “free will”, because to know what they will do, God must simulate what they will do, in all detail, in various versions of all possible situations, so God could choose the best outcome.  But to do that would be to create all those versions, including ones that suffer horribly, and God may not be keen to create‒of necessity‒the worst possible versions of these lives and make its creations live them.

So, God leaves them to their devices with the intent to steer events to a very limited degree, and to make things up to them when they die.

It’s an amusing thought, isn’t it?  Maybe not.  If nothing else, this bit of mind play should demonstrate why you shouldn’t really pay too much attention to religious apologetics, especially to theodicy.  Any reasonably good writer of sci-fi and/or fantasy can come up with oodles of scenarios that can explain almost anything; these don’t have any bearing on external reality.

Huh.  How the hell did I get to that line of thought?  I guess I’ll see as I edit this.  In any case, I think that’s enough of my weirdness for the moment.  I hope this was better to read than yesterday’s post must have been.  Who knows what state of mind I will be in tomorrow?

Well, probably, it will be the state of Florida.  And as everyone probably knows (unlike the New York state of mind) Florida is a state of mind reminiscent of the “killer on the road” in Riders on the Storm:  it’s a mind that is squirming like a toad.  Or perhaps it squirms like a snake, or an alligator, or‒worse‒like a Florida politician.

Whatever.  I hope you have a good day.

*The usual, formal response is to return the gesture and say “Peace and long life.”  It is not always done with the right hand; I’ve seen responses to a right-hand Vulcan salute given with left-hand Vulcan salutes.  I don’t know if this was deliberate or just an “acting choice”.

**I’m assuming arguendo, and only arguendo, that this God exists.  So, then I am imagining God, including God’s thoughts.  Does that mean, in this sense at least, that God exists, if only in my mind?  I suppose one could say that, but only in a trivial sense.  I don’t have the processing power to simulate God very well.  And any God simulated by my mind would probably welcome its own rapid dissolution.