Forever Curious, Part 7
Chapter 3: the Fractal Maze
Na-Yeli represents the human race, yet doesn’t feel quite worthy. The judges of the ‘Champion of Humanity’ competition weren’t offended when she revealed her self-induced tri-schizoid condition. On the contrary, they were well aware that she had an altered state and even complimented her on the extremely efficient usage of her brainpower.
Doubt, however, is a healthy part of her dominant personality. Still, knowing that doesn’t alleviate her feelings of inappropriateness. Her other two personalities—LateralSys the right brain creative genius and KillBitch the subconscious survival machine—have no such doubts over their abilities, they’re confident they’re the best. Even then, her lurking personalities like to refer to her as ‘Miss Egotrip’ (for other, perfectly good reasons, but still) or ‘the slow CEO’.
It was through a nascent ‘double-blind spot’ hypothesis that In the Gap of the Gods—the research group of which Na-Yeli was a member—eventually developed the self-triggered tri-schizoid condition. The general idea being that human minds, even as they increasingly discover more about the reality they exist in, might still have certain blind spots of knowledge.
Derived from old learning methods and theories, one could visualize a matrix:
Matrix You The Other
You known knowns known unknowns
The Other unknown knowns unknown unknowns
As such, they consider four areas of knowledge. First, you—your mind—knows the knowledge it already has: known knowns. Second, The Other—another mind, this might also be an alien—knows areas of knowledge that you don’t know: these are your known unknowns, or the blind spots—gaps—in your knowledge that The Other is aware of. Third, you are aware of blind spots—gaps—in The Other’s knowledge that they are not aware of: unknown knowns for The Other. Fourth and finally, there are ‘blind spots’ of knowledge that neither you nor The Other is aware of: unknown unknowns, or knowledge that neither of you has, or even suspect exists.
Originally, our minds and their tools—qualia, intentionality, agency, cognition—were limited by our senses and the environment in which they evolved. Then, after we developed the scientific method and all its tools, we began to see things beyond what our limited senses could perceive, and we recognized many gaps—blind spots—in our knowledge that we are still in the process of, if not filling them in, then at least demarcating their boundaries.
The ‘double gap’ hypothesis suspects that there are still areas of knowledge of which we have no inkling because we cannot know them by definition. Opponents call this the ‘black magic’ argument, or a surreptitious way to sneak religious and spiritual beliefs back into the scientific method. However, many ‘double gap’ supporters are working scientists, and they truly wonder if there are areas of knowledge, logic, or mathematics that our brains physically cannot understand, that are beyond our brain’s capacity to understand. Avenues of experimentation are machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the ongoing exchanges with extra-terrestrial intelligences.
The latter got started when First Contact was made, yet all the aliens we have met so far have not truly pushed our knowledge in new ‘blind spots’. Even the massive, slow, time-reversed gas cloud intelligences of the Horsehead Nebula; the plasma patterns in Procyon-A, 1-Centauri and Kappa Tucanea; and the Von Neumann machine intelligences from Gamma Capricorni that seemed inscrutable at First Contact are now slowly opening up to our—increased—understanding. Only the rare few Moiety Aliens, who seem to be a rare occurrence to the other aliens, as well—as far as humanity can find out—remain a mystery. Then again, they are a mystery to everyone in the known Milky Way. Some even wonder if they are the secret builders of the Enigmatic Object.
Na-Yeli’s group had two different approaches: outside→in and inside→out. Outside→in proposed that we cannot—by definition—fill in our unknown unknowns, that is: we need help from a truly alien perspective to both attend us to our blindness of blind spots, and—if possible—show us and teach us the knowledge in that double-blind spot.
Inside→out proposed the paradoxical approach, saying that our minds and brains, even if they did develop in a certain environment, are flexible enough to rise above that environment. After all, the scientific method had already demonstrated that, and there are no proven arguments that prevent our minds and brains from developing new types of understanding. So even if our qualia, intentionality, agency, and cognition seem self-limiting, the mind can develop new qualia, new forms of intentionality, fresh types of agency, and subsequently novel kinds of cognition that can open up new doors of understanding.
Na-Yeli’s forced, self-induced tri-schizoid condition stems from the inside→out group. KillBitch represents her subconscious: a part of her mind driven by survival that—in order to keep reflexes as fast as possible—never developed self-consciousness, as that would slow it down. By design it is not conscious, and has only rudimentary means of communication—another mode it refuses to use as it slows her down.
LateralSys represents the artistic, innovative part of her mind, which is situated in her right brain hemisphere. It is the seat of her wildest imagination, the part that loves to think outside the box, to which lateral approaches are second nature. As with KillBitch, this heightened ability comes with a price, as LateralSys is easily distracted by beautiful things. Like a magpie unable to resist anything that glitters, she can get utterly lost in a sea of elegant details, never minding if she’s drowning or not.
The Slow CEO—or Miss Egotrip—represents the rational part of her mind, situated in her left hemisphere. The logical, analytical part of her with a helicopter view over her situation. The part that carefully tries to consider all alternatives before making a decision, hence the ‘slow’ of the slow CEO. The part that is in charge most of the time, as it is not wont to get lost in an avalanche of elegant tidbits or keep killing everything around her just to show she’s the top dog. Hence the ‘CEO’ of the slow CEO.
As such the slow CEO—who Na-Yeli thinks of as herself—takes all responsibilities for her actions, taking the blame if these decisions were wrong, and wallowing in the glory if these decisions were right. The latter earned her left brain part its second nickname: Miss Egotrip.
As it is, Na-Yeli reckons that the disdain of her lurking personalities is a small price to pay for their expertise when they are truly needed. So the triumvirate, the tri-schizoid personality persists, with the most important mission in the history of mankind.
—or—
Author’s note: sometime serendipity strikes. My sister wanted to see John Wick 4 in Karratha, so we went. And I’ll be damned if the Akira character played by Rina Sawayama isn’t a near-perfect depiction of KillBitch in action. Of course, daydreaming about that movie made from your novel is the wishfulfillment of any writer.