The Brain In The Jar

I’m willing to meet partway in the middle of the road.  Not smack dab all the way exact 50%-50%, but maybe I’m right somewhere approaching 99.9999999999999%.  And more since I tire of typing endless 9’s easily.

If you want to fudge the laws of statistics and remark about the amazing coincidences in your life then ignore the law of large numbers.  I’ve been over how the two or three digit numbers will certainly repeat themselves.  Expose yourself to thousands a day and it is impossible not to find a match.  The brute force approach - compare a multitude of numbers.  As opposed to the “I have a number in mind, I’m going to do whatever it takes to force it as long as I can reasonably expect to get away with the manipulation without being called out for it being total BS” method.

But at a lot of times, many of which don’t even have a tiny bit of gematria associated to them, something odd will happen that seems remarkable.  Something outside the numbers.  Not trivial like, you see a pet food commercial as your giving your dog dinner.  Something like Dan finding a mysterious “Molly” koozie on the floor of his car after just having done a post about Molly.  A little closer to home with Molly not being that popular a name.  Far more relatable than being surprised that while thinking of football and then watching Family Guy, being surprised that the character’s name is Cleveland Brown.  Because you watch Family Guy all the time (lots of Dan videos on FG) and that joke name was completely intentional and it’s a recurring character.

I would be willing to admit that there is some bit of an Organic Matrix at work.  And although the Matrix movies are a fresh look and the first is so well done that it is cool, it is not an entirely new concept.  The brain in the jar theory suggests that real life doesn’t exist as we know it and we’re the subject of mad scientist experiments.  A disembodied brain with electrodes stuck on it getting stimulation to test our reactions to different stimuli.  Let’s give Dan a koozie, see what he thinks.

I think it’s odd that I got interested in this.  What are the odds that I became interested in cancer(leukemia), Jeopardy(because I’m smart) and fraud (mostly Scientology, with a con artist named Hubbard no less!) and reacted the way I did to the first Cindy Stowell video.  Surely we are all brains in jars.  They are being stimulated with tiny numbers most of the time which amuses the scientists on how much attention is paid to it.  After a period of mild stimulation they turn the juice up and unleash something a bit more exciting.  Here’s a dream.  Surely you don’t force a dream about someone you haven’t thought of in ages and then see them for the first time in years that day.  I in turn am being stimulated to consistently getting prodded by overreactions to other brain stimuli and wonder why my brain is a warehouse for useless trivia like Jeopardy!, movies and everything else.  There must be a higher purpose than simply having these characteristics.

Or maybe.  Maybe since people have varying degrees of long term memory and mine is better there are more coincidences for me.  My long term memory tells me I have talked about this before.  Eventually, if you aren’t just consciously looking at the data right in front of you, Gematria calculator vs. news story, and as each day goes by the number of memories build up.  Everyone old enough at 9/11/2001 remembers what they were doing.  Most people remember their own birthday.  Many people remember what they had for lunch the last few days.  Some people can name every movie they saw in the theater last month.  Few can name all  their classmates from their senior year without help.  And I doubt anyone knows exactly what time was on their alarm clock on the morning of 9/11/2001 UNLESS it was a significant part of their story.  It’s a scale of recency and importance.  I have what others would consider to be an odd coincidence on a daily basis and as a matter of self preservation of sanity I choose to ignore it.  Not knowing all the detail can be a blessing.

So for the sake of putting this up again for newer readers the brain in the jar is a different angle.  Based on your long term memory, how much emphasis to recency you weight it and how meaningful the information is you still have the law of large numbers.  What exactly defines the time frame?  Seconds, a day, a week, a month?  Is it really important like the worst terrorist event ever or a piece of trash lying on the car floor?  The lamprey argument holds true.

Next post will be about August 11, 2019.  So now I offer a big picture example.  I have specific thoughts about the Serena Williams incident.  And they are personal and the topic is debatable.  I’m willing to listen to rational debate and being told my opinion is wrong.  Sexism and racism is an issue.  I think my opinion puts me in the minority, because of experiences dating back to the 1980’s.  I sure don’t remember a lot of the details about John McEnroe’s antics which are part of the debate.  Because over the years that wasn’t important and I didn’t focus on it.  If I was a big tennis fan, with my brain I’m sure I would.  Now, switch it back and look for two digit numbers comparing McEnroe vs. Williams.  Oh yeah.  A mass history over decades is going to find lots of parallels between tiny numbers.  Extend the thinking to every single topic that is used by gematrimooks.  The numbers are always there.  And get ready for August 11th, 2019 talked about here next time.