Malfunction

Guest blogged by Anuj on 21 April 2008.

I had a hardware malfunction today, I apparently got a cold and I was running a fever. Oh great, today was the day when I had hoped to get something finally done about her, and boom! I couldn’t think straight, I was shivering like an Australian in Antarctica, everything made me feel like I was sitting inside a freezer, and I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I was in my delirious sort of state, where I blabber everything about nothing. I didn’t want to go home as it seemed useless to me at the time, I don’t know why but I just didn’t feel like going back; I just wanted to get it over with.

Did I mention that I was going crazy with frustration? I don’t get it why the hell didn’t I come home, perhaps it was due to the fact that both mum and dad were away at work, I had to get it over with, I thought that I could handle it, I had this irrational burst of understanding about everything.

In short everything was malfunctioning, I wish that I was a non biological machine at least I could get faulty components replaced and I wouldn’t have to go through this nonsense, I guess that will be the defining moment in history when we are able to repair ourselves with the help of machines in a dramatic manner, perhaps swarms of nano-robots working within us, working to for our longevity. That would be insanely great.

I got a lengthy lecture about it afterwards by mom, “You don’t eat right. Look at you you’re a skeleton… how do you expect not to stay sick with that attitude of yours… I told you that you should exercise… you’re getting sick after every 15 days, what will I do with you… how can you hope to do anything with a sick body like yours?… are you getting me?” so on and so forth.

Maybe, mom is right, okay, she is definitely right. I remember reading that article about Kurzweil in wired where he talked about his experiments with longevity; he basically treats his body like a machine. He ensures that it gets basic amounts of input to function, he monitors its state every week and makes adjustments in the input to create a perfect equilibrium, he ensures that there is enough physical output for long term maintenance done by it. Basically he’s pulling all stops to live beyond 125.

Maybe I should do something like this. Strike a long term association with a doctor interested in longevity research and put my body through the paces to live for 150 years, at the rate I am going I won’t last beyond 60. This is a problem; I want to be around to see the singularity happen, to see the stars being conquered, to see the mysteries of science being solved and new ones being discovered.

So what’s the solution?

I am planning to read more about the human body in order to help me make more informed choices (after I am finished with her), and if I am rich enough; hire a few consultants to help me along with the process, you know weekly check ups, scans, the latest in technology for me, but that

Hopefully, no long term damage has been done, but to ensure that no further damage will take place I am planning to nullify my allowance for fast food, which will be hard as I am an addict but lets see how long I will last. Instead, I will go on a high fiber natural diet with lots of water and exercise. This will do for now, and lets see how much I malfunction over a period of a year, if this works then I will continue it indefinitely. I will maintain a log over here for my long term convenience. I realized today that Kurzweil is right our bodies have to be treated like machines in order to prevent any malfunctions, especially the most dangerous one of them all. If you don’t do it then you pay the consequences, like I am paying right now.

Anyway, I am not going to school tomorrow so I will probably finish reading the text I was reading and guess what? It’s finally coming together, the basics had been cleared a long time ago but now the details of it are coming together and in a month or so after that book comes the coding will begin. So probably by the end of the summer vacations it will be ready, or I would come to know by that time if I should ditch it until further reconsideration, basically going back to the drawing board. I have realized that there’s lots of things which I don’t understand in this, it’s like climbing a mountain but I will climb and conquer it, maybe leave my mark upon it. I will do it no matter how long it takes.

So everything got cleared today, maybe it was some error in my vastly complex, yottabyte scale neural net [ ;); I think that if you map out a whole brain then it will probably less than an exabyte let alone a yottabye], or maybe it was the low power state I entered for the rest of the day, something definitely went insanely great today. Sigh, Ankush is right I am crazy, see I told you that I lots of things are being revealed today, although that should have been obvious.

I need to sleep…