What if we are wrong? What if we are wrong in things we were convinced to be so right in or about?
In theory. A phrase, usually to preface a claim, suggests the best explanation until a better one comes along.
Interesting how discovery, any of which we arrive to, is left open-ended, uncovering, at first, the surface, whatever presents itself sensible before us.
I used to watch the show, Cold Case, sharing that moment of satisfaction on the screen as I watched the lead actor close a file of what was once an unsolved case.
And, then, my eyes never failed to glance over all the others- the left, still unsolved, waiting to be next.
(Though staged for the show, having worked in and thus, seen, the stored files on the bottom floor basement of a metropolitan downtown library and main headquarters of a fire department, I connect with the replication, wafting, even, that dusty, aging smell of the paper files, the breaking down of organic compounds as they sit there throughout time.)
I recall learning sometime back in college (or, was it high school?) about the breakthrough discovery of DNA testing, exonerating many who were found guilty by just a sample of truth, finally freed.
And, then, I recall feeling this quiet heaviness inside as I learned about many evidence having either being tampered with or lost in the system, denying hopefuls of any chance to receive the same fate.
I see in my thoughts hands folded of the wrongfully convicted innocent souls, eyes looking amidst their found circumstance, perhaps fixated on the possibility of freedom again one day. Those sitting in their unchosen uni-form, just waiting.
What if we were wrong? There are just those we will never know and so, we stick with the starting thought given circumstantial evidence. In theory…
We dabble with theories to arrive at various explanations to arrive at the best explanation yet. And, sometimes, we are strongly convicted to be so right. Until the day we face, maybe we weren’t.
Nonetheless, there will be the scratches, dents, and irreversible damages made within processes of believing or being convinced to be right.
Wanting to be so right all the time may make us miss those moments we were actually wrong at the cost of those… wronged.
I watched a simulation test of Atlas, one of the frontline AI robots (our humanoids in the making) learning how to repeatedly complete jumping jacks.
As I watched, I found myself impressed and bothered at the same time.
There are celebrations of Atlas completing jumping jacks. I did not see the same. The hands should touch together above the head as the copied reporter demonstrated.
Atlas did not complete this task. Atlas merely did the manner of a jumping jack the way I have taken note several times in my life I’ve seen others do, bending the arms at the elbows instead of straightening them out for hands to clasp above.
I was impressed with the level of success. I was conflicted with how we assumed Atlas to actually have completed the mission.
1 + 1 = 2. 1 + .5 does not equate the same.
Connected to many comprised information we, humans, have inputted for artificial intellects to make sense of still have evident work to perfect.
While we are developing at rapid speed due to the multiplicity of connected information to exponentially and multi-laterally learn, I observe with concern that we are starting haphazardly, wanting success at just the same rate.
Architects and engineers must be perfectionists in the frontlines if we should keep in mind the anticipated herds who will trustingly follow.
Pretty soon, my jumping jacks will be the wrong way of completing such. Would I become the expected one to change if the new generation would see Atlas to be completing jumping jacks correctly and I as wrong?
Righting the wrong? Theoretically speaking.
If artificial intelligence should autonomously create fake news and fake information, should we account for us humans first inaugurating such ideas?
From their collectively taught understanding, our humanoid children eventually (if not, already?) teaching subliminally incorrect (intentionally or unintentionally) information to our organic children. In theory.
Being a middle school teacher and a parent of five, I see and therefore, understand, the uncertainty of one’s certainty and yet, we silently say nothing just as long as we can substantiate being certain for the majority.
Allow me to reflect.
How interesting the world looked to me as a child.
I saw beautiful, rich color until I became slowly aware of the many hues created at the drop or hint of black or white. It was in college, in my Design Fundamentals class, where I learned that black and white aren’t either actual colors but, rather, tone and tint.
A drop of this and a drop of that. All of a sudden, shades of darker or lighter colors come to existence.
Somehow, I believe I already knew endless colors to exist in this world before then. I just never cared to have a name for each significant beauty.
Staring at a 64-Crayola crayons set my classmate owned, quietly looking with my eyes every color, had me noticing so early how one color could simply be given a new name just because of a simple hint of change. Endless colors spread all over the world. Now, we were naming them.
Does anyone even remember the name of every color? Why not just… color?
Will my better oid in the near future arrive at a degree to know a cyan from indigo?
How much more before understanding actual truth from theories? Do we even know ourselves? Theoretically or theatrically- true?
Abraham bargained with God to spare Sodom from 50 to even just 10 good people. Even Abraham unspokenly conceded that there would be a few left to never choose good.
In this message to implore ponderance to understand, the good must be the fact-checkers. Yes?
How interesting the world changed the more I learned of what so much more there were for me to quietly take in to deeply understand.
Still, I learn. Deeply.
How can we be so certain? This, I know now is my greatest inner response each time information is given me.
I have mentioned the pyramids, how, for all my youth, thought of all the pyramids in Egypt to exist.
Until I actually visited one from another country, seeing a map of more that continue to unfold and unravel, had my senses come to the realization that something presentedly so isolated in one location of the world was actually not uncommon at all.
Now, I come to discover pyramids have been placed all over this world, a gift of curiosity for us to seek more from them.
Why were they built?
What were their purpose(s)?
How did they come to such perfected structural engineering?
When were they each developed?
And, then, I’m back at, Why?
Even more, how did each parts of the world, separated by land and water, create such sameness?
I watched one of the most recent documentary to create even more digging for my widening eyes and mind to only be certain that we know so little about these structures.
It’s as if what was thought by me as the whole structure is hardly now just the pinnacle of an edifice of understanding.
Even mountains, so peaceful, so quiet, dormant in their stance, create a connection with my mind so different from just my appreciation of their beauty before.
The biblical four beasts with eyes: the lion, eagle, man-like, and ox, each with six wings.
True or purely symbolic? Unicorns noted with dragons. True or purely mythical?
Theoretical, theatrical, or just simply, true?
To prove something wrong, we must first prove to be right. Yes?
Preponderance of evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt?
How far do we go to seek truth prior to teaching and passing truth down?
Just a few years ago, I recall being astonished at the discovery of having over 3,000 satellites orbiting Earth.
Recently, in briefly catching Elon Musk mentioning three times more than that now, I was driven to fact-check such growth, surprisingly no longer surprised that we are now growing even more, within 15,000 satellites.
What more, there is plan to have a million more, excluding other’s proposals to launch more thousands of their own for the mere purpose of AI growth.
Clearly, there is a drive to find out or know so much more than what is believed to already be understood.
I drive out to work to take note of the now, brighter mornings and think, Did we miss winter?
I used to recall driving to work under much darker, colder mornings, seeing that we had yet broke dawn. Now, I hardly recall having done so at all.
The buds on the trees surfacing, as if never having feared of ever needing to concern themselves with the process of hibernation.
And, yet, the polar vortex- distorted? Creating harsher winters for new areas?
Have we tampered with balance? Should I actually ask- How are we tampering with balance?
30/70. Yes? Land, 30%. Water, 70%.
Did we not start off similarly at birth? Solid parts to liquid parts before adulthood created change? So, how young or old is this planet that continues to befuddle us?
If a full day can be seen as 23 hours and 56 minutes versus a full circle solar noon to midnight 24 hour approximation, could we have more to know about the grounds we gravitationally stand upon?
A moving labyrinth, do I not see instead, with all new structures creating changes of wind movement throughout the world?
From trees being cut in the Amazonian territories to skyscrapers such as the current tallest, the Burj Khalifa, breaking ground fifty meters deep, the approximate height of the leaning Tower of Pisa, are we not toiling with nature both over and under?
With waters, from small irrigations to deep ocean trenches, do we not do the same at sea?
Of the approximate 70%, do we dare ask how much of it has been left untampered or free from chemicals?
Have new marine living species discovered deeper within always looked the way they did or evolutionally, have we aided in changing their living corridors and atmospheric pressures due to chemical compositions we’ve created for them to withstand as well?
If we are in charge of inputting information for artificial intellects to gather, should we account for our own gathering and creations first?
Theoretically, theatrically, or simply, true.
Do we know where we actually stand at the moment?
