Random

I watched one of those Vogue 73 Questions videos recently and one of the questions they asked was if you had a superpower what would it be? Of all the questions they asked, this one stood out the most because it touches upon some very deep issues that most people have which then informs their choice. You can be superficial and think that there isn't much meaning behind the choices people make, that they are random, but that's not strictly true. Human beings have a remarkable incapacity to act with true randomness, something which I think in the modern era has become quite unnerving to many who sit and reflect upon the nature of the human condition.

What do I mean by the nature of the Human Condition? Well quite simply the state of being human. There's no lack of stories in the news and splashed across social media discussing AI right now and what that means for the future of humanity but this post isn't about pondering where AI could lead us but rather looking back and reflecting upon the fact that we don't completely understand how we got here.

Therapy is a wonderful thing, something that I think everyone could benefit from, not just when you think there's something wrong but when you don't think anything is wrong at all it still has a purpose. You should really see a dentist every 6 or 12 months for a check-up although admittedly many of us don't. You should really see your GP or Physician about as often for a checkup too although again many of us don't, albeit for different reasons - for some there is a cost associated, and for those who have access to Universal Healthcare like we do here in the UK there's almost a sense of guilt associated with the idea of seeing a doctor when you don't think anything is wrong because of the strain the health system is under. Regardless of the reality, in principle you're supposed to check in every now and then even if in practice we don't. Mental Health is no different, but the concept of a checkup for Mental Health is virtually non-existent in all forms of Healthcare systems unless you have a pre-existing condition that is being monitored.

Most people probably will never see a therapist and will likely never delve deep enough into their psyche to break down their motivations, their beliefs, desires, intentions, and their general thought processes and cognitive faculties. Many mental health conditions have seen a rise in diagnoses and whilst much is made of the reasons for this, personally I take the view that prevalence has not increased but awareness has, which increases the likelihood of diagnosis.

What all this has to do with the randomness of the human condition is the reality that if you switch places with the Therapist, the patients they will see will recount 99 times out of 100 the same experiences with minor variations in the scenario. Feeling insecure for instance will be one of the most common complaints, whilst the motivation or trigger for that insecurity will vary. The general conclusion here is that you are not as unique as you like to think you are - or to put it another way, you are completely unique just like everyone else.

AI acts as a mirror that is held up in front of us forcing us to reflect on the nature of the Human Condition. I have mentioned before about the harm that incidents like the Cambridge Analytica scandal can cause and the repercussions that forced us to pay closer attention to the way we are targeted by advertising algorithms. This targeting is based on observation of behaviour, identification of patterns, and formulation of selling strategies and marketing campaigns that have a high degree of success. Cambridge Analytica move the ball forward by changing what we were sold from a focus on an individual product to a focus on an individual idea or ideology - in other words, smart propaganda.

The reason these strategies are so effective is not just because human beings are limited in their capacity to incorporate randomness into their behaviour but also because as much as our domains that we interact with may seem open and expansive at first sight, there are very few things we do as human beings that cannot be defined, refined, constrained, and analysed. Science in general and the pursuit of structured knowledge that incorporates all information and evidence that can be gathered.

Which superpower would you pick is not as open ended as it first appears, spend any amount of time on the TV Tropes website for instance and you will find articles dedicated to the tropes that form the building blocks of fiction and narrative driven storytelling. When it comes to superpowers there are actually a surprisingly few number of powers in themselves, the variation lies in how they are implemented and used by the characters that are given them. The number of choices therefore is not unlimited and once you have limited choice you have already defined one boundary of that domain.

Choice in itself is an interesting concept, it's something we like to believe is individual and personal based on experience but it's not entirely. Just as the human mind is incapable of imagining a human face it has never seen before, your creativity to an extent will always be derivative. You will never see a face in a dream that doesn't belong to someone or something that you have already seen at some point in your life. This becomes most apparent when you ask people to draw a face they have never seen before, one they create from scratch. One of two things will happen, they either think of a face they have already seen as a foundation and then modify it to make it irrecognisable, or if they have an understanding of anatomy and proportions they will attempt to draw a face by building one that conforms to the expectation of realistic proportions. The only faces you can truly create randomly are ones that aren't possible in real life but again these tend to be derived from basic geometric shapes as starting points - Arnold and Stewie with their oval (American) football shaped heads for instance.

Of all the possible answers to the question people could give, there are two that always stand out as a bad idea. The first is being able to read peoples' minds, I think that would get real old real quick, and would turn into a curse rather than a gift. True Blood served as an accurate depiction of what that would be like I feel, Sookie rightly came to see it as a burden and tried her best to drowned out other peoples thoughts save for a few choice moments where it was needed within the narrative; Warehouse 13 also did something similar with Agent Jinks who although he could not read minds, could always tell if someone is lying without fail, the painful nature of this ability was also discussed within the narrative.

The other choice I think is probably one of the worst is the ability to see the future. Parallels to Cassandra aside even if you were able to change the future after seeing it, I still think this would become a curse in time. Everything that you could have prevented would burden your soul in time and crush you mentally, it's easier to dismiss our regret over inaction in hindsight by using ignorance as our excuse, or absolution, you couldn't rely on that alleviation once you have the foresight to know for sure what the outcome will be.

I don't know what the future holds, and I am not sure I would want to know for sure. If I had to pick a superpower I would choose the ability to speak and understand every language including the ability to communicate with understanding with animals. The former part of this ability at least is something you could actually spend your whole life working towards and come quite close. The latter, is probably unrealistic. What that says about me as a person, is that I seek knowledge and understanding.