Coursing through Twitter at 2 am this morning after getting semi-drunk on IPA last night, I came across a new term which I’m unfamiliar with: Artificial Stupidity

WTF?

Here’s the tweet:

There are lots of definitions in Wikipedia, but it appears that a researcher named Tina Eliassi has recently given a lecture which explains what Artificial Stupidity is.

From wikipedia:

Within computer science, there are at least two major applications for artificial stupidity: the generation of deliberate errors in chatbots attempting to pass the Turing test or to otherwise fool a participant into believing that they are human; and the deliberate limitation of computer AIs in video games in order to control the game's difficulty.

The idea that a computer researcher somewhere in Google land is programming a machine to be dumb on purpose seemed quite hilarious to me. While people are starved, raped and blown up, Tina is on a stage describing to a room full of people what artificial stupidity is. LOL.

GIF made from @stevenalexander's genius video, Big Gigantic

From this idea, the concept of ‘artificial stupidity’ sent me down my own rabbit hole, which i will attempt to explain to you.

I believe that humans derive most of their pleasure in life from idiotic moments. We like to think we are logical, but that is rarely the case.

We are animals in search of sensations, safety, meals, friends, security, acceptance, survival and purpose. Evolution has made us all different in the hopes that some of us make it out alive when the Singularity is upon us. [grain of salt, take it]

Much of my greatest memories have involved making an ass of myself, or noticing someone else making an ass of themselves. Life without humor is a horror story, and I doubt I would stick around for that. I live for the dark re-enactment of human stupidity, arrogance and asininery.

Case in point: I have laugh attacks in public which are completely uncontrollable, but which have made my life quite hilarious and wonderful. Meaning is born from ridiculousness.

I have a list of memories which involve me being unable to contain myself in serious settings, like church, jobs, lectures, etc. One particularly hilarious memory involved my father and I when we were on a cruise ship. There was a self-help guru New Age religious leader who was giving a presentation on a serious topic: How To Find Your Path In Life. The leader then guided us through taking out a sheet of paper and writing down something that we thought was uber significant to our lives, like finding our true purpose. I looked over at my dad, (who I knew was nervous about the idea of singing in the Cruise’s talent show) and shot a glance at his piece of paper to see what he wrote down.

He wrote this: “Will I Sing in the Talent Show?”

I took a look at my dad after reading his note, and I busted out in the loudest, most obnoxious laughter I’ve ever had. My dad did too. Realizing we were both incapable of stopping our laughter, we jumped up out of our seats, splattering giggles all over the place, and ran out of the lecture hall……dying of laughter the entire time while the crowd watched on. It was fantastically funny. It has the quality of a dream to my memory.

Moments like these are defined by our vulnerabilities, our illogical natures, our shared experience of stupidity and of making awkward situations into something hilarious. It’s our mistakes that bond us together as humans, and this is something I doubt machines will be doing.

So as we move forward into the age of automation, we can embrace everything that makes us human, and we can focus on bonding with one another, laughing about our weird selves, which are all different, and illogical to a great degree.

Now, there are the Dan Larimers of the world, but I would be that less than 1% of the human population is able to operate at that high level computational way.

This brings us to art.

I think a lot about what the future will be like and where humans fit into that. Anything that can be automated, will become automated, so where does that leave us?

It leaves us with art.

Art is not a Picasso painting. To me, art is an extension of being human, and being aware of our thoughts. All that art is: an extension and acknowledgement that much of what makes us human is illogical, and derives from sensation, longing, emotions.

Art has been twisted by modern corporate society. All humans are artists. You have been fooled into thinking you have no talents. That’s what modern Western society has done to you. You can be a programmer who creates new inventions…..this is art. The thing that separates the shitty artists from the sublime ones is mastery and dedication. Most people are not focused enough to master anything. They flit from sensation to sensation, until they enter the grave. That’s probably 90% of us. Maybe only 10% ever achieve anything worth remembering by the human masses.

Depending on how aware you are of your own mind, you will either understand the role of synergy, connection, and subconscious impulses or this next bit will sounds completely foreign to you.

I rely on some hard-to-explain internal and impulsive compass to guide a lot of my actions.

So, what does ‘impulsive’ mean? When I experience a ‘visceral’ thing, what am I talking about? I think I am talking about my lizard brain. I’m talking about chemicals in my brain and sensations which are physical, not abstract things. I am talking about my own memories, and how sometimes hidden and unfulfilled desires come back to the surface of my mind, and collect energy, expanding their reach.

Why do you think porn is so popular? Humans have a lot of unfulfilled and ridiculous fantasies. We are pretty good at making up weird stories, and entertaining ideas that have very little significance except to ourselves.

Why do we do this? It comes back to our primary focus, which is on our senses. We are chained to our sensations, as I think we are hard-wired to have a life filled with sensual experiences because it gives very pleasurable things to our brains. Having amazing experiences, or “peak moments”, also serves another purpose: to dissolve the divide between our material and immaterial selves. Our dreams and visions often extend way beyond our physical sense of time and space. We can think of a better world and we can dream up ways to make it better. In this regard, we can turn our thought energy into actions which other humans can pick up on and react to. We can, in some way, change the future with our thoughts and actions.

For me, life is a stream of curious bread crumbs, which have led me everywhere worth going. I’m exploring constantly, and I follow my inner compass which is tied to my fantasies, lizard brain and to those stories which refuse to get quiet.

This all leads me to this next bit:

The thrusting bit was unique, because it was a bit sexual, but in a completely ridiculous way.

This video set something off in my mind. @kenny-crane was the one who found it and pointed it out to me. The mask combined with the Chewbacca outfit did it, coupled with the weird dance moves. I found it on Steemit six months ago. @stevenalexander made it. The full video can be seen here

This video contained a lot of the contents of my imagination and stirred up some ancient creative impulses that I explored with my best friend in college. When i first saw this video, it was like being thrust into someone else’s dream state, and this is the only art I’m interested in…..Art that is contrived has no place, but art that feels like an extension of someone’s fantasy life, now that to me is what art is all about.

Here’s one of the mini films I made with my bff in college:

It took me six months to wake up to the fact that I have synergy with @stevenalexander. I’ve been making weird films ever since my college days, and I just never stopped. Both Steve and I have been creating videos, of a range of topics. But the ones that really get my blood pumping are the weird ones. Something freaky has been dying to emerge, and I am finally letting it out, with my co-conspirator, @stevenalexander. He has that same creative gene that my best friend in college had, and which made my life so full…..and to be honest, I have been missing that creative connection……….the void was simply not able to be filled.

If you have not seen the hilarious videos that Steve made, you need to see these from his YouTube channel. You will not be underwhelmed.

I know this is a long post, but I have a final question for you: have you ever created something that you have no memory of making?

I found this video on my YouTube channel, but i have no memory of making it:

I made it during the Occupy Wall Street time. Bitcoin is the real Occupy Wall Street. ha ha. Anyone who knows me, realizes that my experiences at big corporations were like Black Mirror. When I was fired from Hallmark, it was Orweillian. My desk phone rang, a random voice told me to put my things in a box and an armed guard escorted me out. Why was I fired? I solved a huge 10 year-old problem that the management staff hadn’t thought of, but I was just a contract worker, and I didn’t follow the “chain of command”. I existed outside the box.

All I ever wanted in life was to have the time to study, learn, share and create. This is it. Now it appears that I finally have a co-conspirator: @stevenalexander

If you have not watched our new show that we launched called Steve and Stella Show, you’re missing out. Follow us for sheer weirdness: https://steemit.com/@steveandstellas
Every Friday is a new episode (plus we will have some additional episodes through the week, too).

Cheers,
Stellabelle