Medicine is, basically, the science of trying to reverse engineer the hideously complicated multi-level and multi-interface human system from first principles. The system didn't have any designers (and if it did, they should be shot for brute incompetence), and as such there are a number of subsystems that have no real particular use anymore but still have impacts on the whole. Also, it's a very brittle system, difficult to add or remove systems.

Well, okay, there was one particular designer: evolution. Of course, that's random chance at its finest; whatever instincts led us to be able to survive is what was selected through the deaths of those without that particular trait.

Over time, it became apparent that traits that were selected for in humans were larger brains and some modicum of reasoning ability, but perhaps most striking is the penchant for gathering in groups for protection and collective effort. In fact, a large portion of our instincts (language, territoriality and a "sense of belonging," and the concept of deities and leaders tends to show that we (but not just humans, of course, many other animals (often "higher species") display such traits) are almost built for societies.

Look around - the world is made up of governments, institutions and social hierarchies. People who threaten the established order are considered misfits or deviants and must be resisted at all costs. Change comes very slowly, often to the detriment of progress.

While the social aspect of humans is explored quite a bit, I think that as a factor in the concept of what we could call intelligence isn't explored nearly enough.

When I was a teenager one of my loves was artificial intelligence. Of course, this was during the mid-to-late '80s, not exactly a heyday for AI (I always say I was either born too early, or too late), and most of the good works you could get your hands on to read then were on symbolic AI, the idea that we'd figure out how a mind worked, independent of the actual brain, and break its functioning down into definite descriptions and build one such that every part could be understood, absolutely.

This was a delicious idea for a teenage geek-cum-mad scientist. I was really into the idea of picking apart the mystery of the mind and building a new one, not entirely in our own image, but far better. (I guess I was a misanthrope that far back, too.)

Of course, I didn't pursue AI. The old bastions of AI research were falling apart just as new ones were sprouting or blooming, like neural networks and genetic algorithms, and offshoots like artificial life and subsumption architectures. In fact, the big deal was that you couldn't look at a neural network or what evolved from a genetic algorithm and understand it directly, given a nontrivial example, and lots of Alife and subsumption engines weren't taught by anybody. They happened.

I had serious distaste for these because they were specifically not about building "knowable" systems. It lost the appeal, so... I discovered there were still delicious problems in cosmology (and they were all about "knowing," rather than just building, and I've always had more of a science bent than an engineering bent), so gave up computer science for physics.

Maybe what I overlooked back then, and was largely overlooked until Alife research, was the idea of social machines. How would machines interact with each other, when endowed with instincts and a spark of real intelligence? In other words, we were trying to build machines way back that could solve theorems, play chess and play a good game of Trillion Credit Squadron (sorry, I couldn't find a good link to TCS, it's really fun to play), but we always assumed if we built intelligent machines they'd interact like people, I guess.

This would probably not be the case unless they were built to be just like us (and that would be silly, since if we want humans it's a lot easier to breed them than build them). The machines would probably be antisocial (although I suppose they could be taught).

So what of people who aren't social? What about people who don't spend time around people, or are isolated because of their circumstances?

Well, generally, those people who are apart from general society, or hold themselves back, are also considered "damaged" in a way, and others avoid them instinctively (when asked, they say that they don't know why they avoid such people, or if they do, they express it as "they make me unhappy" or "they scare me").

In fact, a large number of such people tend to depression, and will even isolate themselves from the greater society, even though that's the last thing they need.

Many depressed people think self-destructively, or contemplate suicide. We express that as wanting to end our suffering or get out of our circumstances, but often we do it because we think that's what the people closest to us want. We do it for the flock, we do it for the greater good of society.

Christmastime is upon us, and I've fallen into my regular holiday funk, but this year it's worse than usual. I look back at the last year and see how it has really been more or less a wash, losing so much, and I'll have a real struggle ahead of me next year to get out of the pit that I've dug myself into. Nothing is guaranteed, and my grasp on what remains is tenuous.

I look back at the road behind me, and all I see is failure after failure. I see how people react to me; I am that "damaged" person that I talked about before. When I enter a room, people scatter. The only ones who tolerate me anymore are my family, and I can't withdraw from them because I am trapped here. The people who are around me by choice grows smaller every day. Some spend less time around me, some I bring down so I tend to spend less around them to save them the hassle. Some are gone because I decided to just cut them loose because it doesn't matter one way or the other, really.

Or I could just end it all, right now. A few people might care (for a while anyway), but then I'll pass into the winds of time. Perhaps that's as it should be.

Being that social animal, right down to the end.

I said it too many times And I still stand firm You get what you put in And people get what they deserve - From "Only God Knows Why" by Kid Rock

What sucks is that I couldn't do it. I'm too big a coward. Somewhere at the back of my mind is stupid, blind hope. Intellectually, I feel like I'll never get out of this pit, because most people don't (although on the TV "news magazines," stories on depression parade people on who "made something of their life," again, as society could define "making something of your life."

It's as though you need outside approval to have a reason to live. Well, unfortunately, maybe I do.

I don't know where to find it, though. Nothing I do is ever really good enough for anybody; I am apparently not much of a friend to anybody, and the few that I have managed to hang on to (they probably feel some sort of "duty," which makes it all the worse). I've tried so much, and nothing comes to fruition. It's harder and harder to even try.

In the back of my mind, a little voice tells me this will all pass, it's just a mood, once the holidays are past, it should change. But it's different this time. It's tangible, almost. It's everywhere, nothing helps. There's no escape.

Have you ever considered walking away? Leaving, changing your name, getting a whole birth certificate, social security number, an entirely new identity? I have. I've researched it, it's not terribly hard.

It's comforting, in a strange way. It's an alternative. Something really wants me to just get in the car and drive away. Never come back. Lose myself, try to be somebody else.

But if we go and try to be somebody else, don't we bring along the same baggage? Can we leave it behind? Can there be an analogue of the Witness Protection Program to hide us from ourselves?

I bet I couldn't do it for more than three days before it all came back. But it's rapidly becoming all I can think of to try.

restlessmind