April 7. That is the insidious thing about being born innocent: You don’t deserve to become guilty.

April 6. Family: such force fields and debris fields. And no one seems to be prepared for it from birth.

April 5. The wall of the examination room is full with certificates from neurological and ophthalmological associations. The oldest is from 1988. He is very confident and does not allow himself to be interrupted in the sequence of his examination steps. We make our way through my brain with the mouse wheel. “No one can read these images as well as I can,” he says, and concludes that the angioma in my brain stem got larger from January to March, and that’s clearly the reason for my paralyzed eye muscle. It will most likely go away on its own. – To this, my neurologist would say that the images can pass through slightly different planes and that if a hemorrhage were to disrupt this highly concentrated area in my brain stem, I should have more symptoms than just this one. – He thinks it is pointless to try and challenge the eye, exercise it. The eye muscle is one of only two muscles in the body that never takes a break. I think it’s pointless to discuss it, but: I don’t want to train the muscle, but the nerves. I want my signaling pathways back. And the retina. – He speaks his report into a microphone connected to a speech recognition program. Because the program is sluggish and makes many mistakes, he speaks so slowly that he could just as easily type it all. And he can type, because he keeps correcting the program’s errors.

April 4. The office of the neuro ophthalmologist calls. I hadn’t been able to get an appointment before May, but there has been a cancellation for tomorrow and I can have that slot if it works for me. They already called me two days ago for another slot but I hadn’t been quick enough to return their call. This time it works. – You need a covid test, says the receptionist. – What? Seriously? – Yes, unfortunately. Why do you think we have so many cancellations? – Oh wait, I still have some tests here. – You mean at-home tests? He doesn’t like those. I can give you an address of a testing site. – Okay, well, okay. I guess there must still be some mobile sites around in the streets, too. But my tests aren’t simple at-home tests. They come with a video voucher. Somebody watches me while I do it. I get an email result. You used to be able to fly with those. – Okay just show the email. Don’t explain anything, just the email.

April 3. Stuck in the elevator for an hour, a final rite of passage for Manhattan. Freed by three firemen with axes and crowbars. Now I know what men who look like Vikings want to do for a living, and where they go to get it.

When it is said that the AI “can only”, for example, reproduce what it has read or seen elsewhere, or only rattle off speech patterns, it is done with a tone of relief or reassurance. I would say it with a tone of disappointment.

April 2. The matter-of-factness with which someone in the New Yorker claims to only want to read stuff written by people. If this is one of the new fault lines running through humanity, I’m on the other side.

April 1. If I understand correctly, the AI issue is about three things: jobs, information quality, and replacing humanity.

I have little pity for jobs. If you can no longer make money doing what you used to do, you do something else. If technical developments change the situation in such a way that large parts of society can no longer earn money, you have to change society. 

The argument that artificial intelligences will flood humanity with vast amounts of false information that no one will be able to verify was also made with the printing press and the internet. It has proven to be pointless. One has always had to learn to distinguish good information from bad information.

And finally: If humanity is replaced by something that it has created itself and that is superior to it, why not? I don’t think that’s a given yet, but if it comes to that, it would be a lot like experiencing that your own children are better at something than you are. It is a humiliation, but it is also wonderful.

March 31. Met put to sleep. Admired J and her brother for the strength with which they made the decision that had seemed improbable and avertable only a few minutes before. I didn’t get to see Met often, and very rarely got to pet him – once when I was here for the first time, and once when he was not yet sedated, but already so weakened from the collapse of his bodily functions that he no longer had the strength for his normal PTSD responses. – Life is more mysterious than non-life, but disappearing life is even more mysterious. They don’t close their eyes, the vet said, to prepare us.

March 30. Finally saw Mercury, from the parking lot of the fire station in Beacon, where we had a good view west across the Hudson. After a few minutes, a white-haired man came out of the building and got into his car. Everything all right? They’d be having an event on Palm Sunday. – Mercury together with Jupiter, Venus, Mars. I was very surprised that Mercury was so much brighter than Jupiter, though it was clearly indicated in the app. Reading star charts like music scores. Also lots of airplanes moving through the evening sky like big, slow spaceships.

March 29. For me, the world consists of groups of people who are engaged in conversations I can’t comprehend. When someone else starts talking to me, I want to get the hell out as quickly as possible because I have nothing to contribute to the conversation. This has nothing to do with arrogance. I feel downright incompetent.