Jun 19 – Journal Entry

Today is Juneteenth in the USA – Not a federal holiday but recognized by 47 states in celebrating the emancipation of blacks from slavery.

I am slowly going through all my notifications and cancelling them, one-by-one.

I have spreadsheetiasis – been looking at way too many spreadsheets for way too long this week. Mainly cause I had to prepare more change requests than usual for one of our projects. Whenever I do anything involving math/finance like dev estimates, reviewing hours and costs on projects, I feel like I have to be extra, extra, extra careful. Check three to ten times, report once. lol. Long ago, I told myself, “you suck at math!” Now I have some serious anxiety when doing any financial reporting. Even with spreadsheets, I will still use a calculator to double-check (yes! I know that makes no sense.) BUT I am getting better.

I watched Replicas (2018) w/ Keanu Reeves – it was garbage, but I liked the science and ethical dilemmas behind it. Keanu is a scientist that works for a large biotech firm. His project is to transfer human consciousness successfully into a robot have failed so far. One day, one a weekend trip with his fam, they get into a car accident, and everyone dies (except Keanu). He decided that he is going to bring them back via clones and transfer their consciousness into the clones.

The transfer of consciousness is nothing new; neither is cloning. I don’t think I would bring a loved one back even if I could. Still, I recognize that I have never experienced sudden loss – which I believe to be very different from losing someone to a terminal illness, only because the ones left behind, and the one going, have time to “prepare” (for lack of a better word.) – Although the one going can really only “prepare” by having their finances and other affairs in order. I don’t know how you would go about preparing” emotionally for your demise.

In a way, we are talking about living forever. My grandparents would still be her. My mom too (although I don’t believe more time would have improved our relationship.) Would I want to grow a new me so that I continue going if my body broke down? I think so. In one of those lifetimes, I would become a neuroscientist. In another, I would be a forensic scientist or a biochemist – definitely something sciency/mathy. I’d like to work in a lab or for the CDC (looks glam in movies). Imagine having all your experience that you carry around from one lifetime to the next – I wonder if you can run out of memory space. You know, like you keep accumulating info over all these lifetimes, then you have nowhere to store it. Like how a hard drive can run out of space. Actually, I have a good idea, if we run out of space we can store info in the cloud, upload stuff we don’t need in our current lifetime.

I never finalized my death prep because I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be cremated or buried. I still don’t know. What I do know is that I would like to have my consciousness preserved in a memory hotel first – like that Black Mirror episode. This means, I cannot die until that service is readily available and affordable 🙂

One day, I will tell you about the three levels of consciousness as it relates to robotics and machine learning.

I’ve hit the 200 posts mark. This one makes 201. Hooray! I should go to bed. It’s 5:45 am. Birds are chirping. Soon the guys will be outside playing cricket.