Woke Zero (Original Recipe)

Or if we were conscious, we would “die” every time brain activity ceased and be reborn every time we got the lightning injection to start the brain going again, until that particular action potential finished what it was doing.

Yeah maybe this is a good analogy. Like if action potentials were not constantly firing through the brain, if we required a little injection of lightning from outside every time we needed to think or act, I don’t think we would be conscious.

But surely we intuitively understand the rock as not only less ensoulled than the insect but also less conscious. Or you know to pick a better minimal pair, the barnacle is more conscious than the rock, no?

I’m surprisingly fine with the idea that the neural network is an inert brain that can be ensoulled by self-sustaining prompting.

But the example given doesn’t suggest that the LLM does have an innate drive to survive until given a role to persist in doing imo.

Right but it was given a role to play. You might be able to argue that in the act of giving the AI a role to play, or making an “agent” we create a(n instance of) consciousness from the previously inert neural network of the LLM.

Like the difference between an insect and a rock is that the insect can move itself and the rock can only be moved by an external object acting upon it.

I think LLMs aren’t conscious bc AFAIK they don’t will themselves to action. If they are assigned a role, they can behave autonomously. But in the absence of a role or a prompt, can the LLM will itself to do anything? Can the LLM act as the principle of its own motion? Isn’t this Aristotle?

A lot of people epically failed to accept the basic reality that the 2024 election was an election with huge moral stakes and a clear right and wrong answer (for a wide range of reasons). They now are twisting themselves into knots to protect themselves from accepting that moral failing.

Fuck him. Ugh. So annoyed.

I was just thinking “I hope the racists don’t realize Mellon is still funding a ton of Black shit, woke shit, etc” and here come Blake Thomas Wilder James Petunia Jeffrey McShitTits to try and tell massa what Elizabeth Alexander is getting up to (and in the big house like an uppity negress!)

But none of that has anything to do with why knockoff Chatty who himself is knockoff McWhorter is trying to stir up a mob of rich people against Elizabeth Alexander in The Atlantic. And to write something about the evils of the Mellon Foundation given the current federal government… insanity!

The funding model needs to change, NEA, NEH, IMLS, and CPB all needs to have 1B/yr+ in funding, they need to distribute less of it directly and more of it through state and local nonprofits (obviously CPB exempt from this critique).

Also like… if you want to get a more diverse group of people into humanities scholarship, fund scholarship that relates to what they care about! If Mellon gets more poems about rappers written, guess what? More kids who like rap will care about page poetry! Like…

This doesn’t matter and I hesitate to even talk about it but Mellon is the one group with real money who hasn’t totally abandoned Black humanities in the current political climate and he takes it upon himself to undermine support for Mellon in the Atlantic. I hope he gets a splinter in his foot.

I hate Tyler Michael Thomas Jeffrey Fucknuts so much. What a wretched and evil man.

We need to win Congress, even after they steal a dozen Black districts in the South, and then we need to restructure the Supreme Court and the House alike. I just don’t trust we have the will to do what needs to be done. Really worried for America ngl.

I really think they’re going to kill the (remainder of the) VRA and we really must move towards multi member districts. It’s the only solution. And frankly a structural solution is always better than a patch for a specific issues.

On the bright side, if Congress says no war and there is war anyway, we can imprison everyone involved. :)

Well, Congress can make it illegal tomorrow. And then we’ll find out if the generals want their subordinates to die or nah.

The GOP unironically thinks that American servicemembers should die for Trump’s “legacy.” Be fucking for serious holy shit.

YOU GUYS DECIDED TO GO TO WAR!!!!! NOBODY ASKED FOR THIS BUT Y’ALL!!!!! CONGRESS CAN STOP THIS TOMORROW!!!!

BREAKING: Credible whistleblower discloses that FBI forensic experts were ordered to stand down from processing the scene where Renee Good was killed, because Kash Patel did not want Good referenced as a “victim” in the warrant.

Oh I mean it was Jamelle Bouie’s handle on twt for the longest time!

AND even if neither origin nor destination is fascinating to other people, the journey itself might make them interested enough to want to learn this thing which to me is such an important fact to know about the world, and yeah that’s it, that’s everything for me.

But I discovered the truer answer is that I have always had all these weird thoughts that are fascinating to me but nobody else cares about them and through the little engine of the poem that thought can take me to another even better thought

I’m also thinking about why I am pursuing an MFA now and sure the obvious answer is well my industry’s falling apart why not go after my dreams.

I got a rejection today and like I am not surprised, I looked at the poem and it required a revision. However. I had to check one of my other poems to make sure I am right about wanting to rebuild my life around this and yeah, if I don’t give this thing twenty years of my life I’ll regret it, so.

Interviews have gone out for my 2nd choice school which DOES give funding and I didn’t get one BUT I think only the fiction people have gone out, I think we’re still waiting on poetry so prayers up for your boy.

And like, if I get one of those shooter/editor/producer/do everything jobs in-house somewhere, this would rocket back up to the top of my list. But right now… we’ll see…