It's very rare that people can talk about their fears openly. In an exercise that I'm conducting I'm trying to see what are people's greatest fears. Yeah, great conversation starter indeed :)
But here's my greatest fear - I guess in a more abstract way, a lifelong fear not the 'might happen tomorrow" kind of fear if that makes any sense - one that I keep returning to over and over.
Living my life without an original thought
I am terrified that all the sum of everything I ever thought or understood or said is just the pale sum of everything I read or what someone - a smarter, better informed, maybe more ingenious someone - told me. It's something that I am very keen to notice and I am always very impressed with some sort of thought innovation. What I mean by that is that I talk with someone and they say smth that is totally new and interesting ( at least for me), I'm trying to figure out if they reached this thought by themselves or are parroting something they've read/learned.
I guess this is a standard that is a bit unrealistic. After all, is anything "new" in this world?
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The last time I remember someone having a very novel idea is a friend in a discussion about A.I. We were talking about how A.I is a threat - or not!? - to humanity and how Elon thinks that and Google said that other thing and bla bla bla. As you can see, this is prime example of two people parroting. I'm being unkind as this is exactly how new thoughts and idea bloom, we need to start somewhere but in reality, despite the somewhat interesting subject, our conversation would have bored most of you who are up to date with the current discourse on A.I. But I digress..
Anyway, so he said something I did not hear anyone else say:
"I think that A.I fears are unreasonable. Imagine that an AI becomes self-conscious and analyzes the whole of existence. It's a pure rational machine despite the conscious, isn't it? It won't have a self-preservationist mechanism that makes us do stupid things like we do. So what would it do?
It's my opinion that it will, upon reaching a conclusion about the state of the matter, immediately self-terminate.
It's the only rationale thing to do and we, as humans, do not and can not do that because we must live on, procreate, and not die but if we were rationale..."
I mean, ok, it's bleak and maybe you do not agree but hey, it's original. I for one haven't heard this idea before! It sure put a nice twist in the direction of our conversation - that again might be trite if you are up to date with what Camus says and seen the last of Rick and Morty and stuff like that.
So what I mean is, did I even have an original though until now or do I seem to have because I'm well informed? I can fool some people but I can not fool myself. Nor do I want to.
On the other side, this is really the kind of fear that has no practical impact on your life.
I often think that I am still young and that I am still drawing dots. Everything I read learn or hear is a dot. One day they'll connect to reveal something original.
Maybe it's a dick.