Patterns And Caution
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Patterns are something we see everywhere in life and stories. For those in Academia patterns are a sign of intelligence, and intelligence is supposedly the greatest skill people possess. We’ve created languages based on purely logical patterns. These are programming languages. Patterns make things predictable to a degree. They give us the illusion of being able to forecast the future. Patterns are also a big element in the Scifi/ Fantasy genre. And the symbol of a system of patterns, patterns incarnate, are the machine and more specifically the robot/ android. We’ve made the highest form of artificial creation in our image. We call this emerging life form the AI/ android/ robots. But when do patterns not deliver on the promise of better outcomes?

There are plenty of cases better that produce better outcomes because of patterns. Picture getting a parking ticket when you get into your car in the morning solely because the people in your neighborhood are ‘known’ for being notorious double parkers. In essence you get a parking ticket because of the group the software says you belong to and not because any laws were broken. We call that unfair. In this case you can saw that a person is punished for being a member of a certain community, or maybe is in proximity to a certain community and the like. This is very unfair. No society that values the civil liberties of people, all people, should tolerate such forms of injustice.

The mother of all pattern fails and pattern injustice is the idea of thought crimes or precrimes as the great PKD would call it. The idea of enacting a punishment against a person or people for crimes they have not committed but that the ‘system’ believes they will. That is clearly wrong. The reason why such systems catch on is because they a cheaper to run and can assure you the numbers and stats to justify funding. What is the name of such behavior? Yes. Yes. It’s called discrimination. Such a system does not punish or even necessarily deter wrong-doings or crimes. Like I said, it can guarantee numbers and fulfill statistical predictions and feed a predatory system. We are already in such a society, to a degree, but we need to bring fairness back into systems when using AI. It’s so important.

Also, as people our lives can fall into patterns, if we’re not careful. Picture someone who follows the same routine 5 days a week of going to work, taking lunch at a certain time coming home the same way every day etc. etc. Such a person is stuck in a kind of pattern. It’s a little like Sisyphus and his boulder. In such cases In think that patterns are detrimental. But this is all obvious.

What not so obvious detrimental effects can patterns have on the everyday person? Because they exist. I read about a study that partly explained why time feels like it goes by faster as we age. When we are children time seems to go by slower and why is that? Well the answer, partial answer at least, is the way we get better at organizing our lives and we do this with patterns. Essentially when we live our days fulfilling patterns it effects how deeply we live life. Things are no longer new and it is this fact that, at least partly, has our minds compress our memories. Also, to fulfill many of our daily patterns we need to take ourselves and our attentions away from people, interacting and focusing on people. Over time too much of this can diminish our lived experience. So, this feeling that time runs faster when we are older is partly due to the patterns we are locked in.

So. If you take your coffee at 7am every morning change things around and take it at a different time and chat with people along the way. This is not only good for neuro-plasticity but for our memories and lived life experince as well. It’s about time we start looking at our brain, memories and experiential health when sizing up our quality of life. It really matters. After all, we may be getting better and better at building artificial life but true growth and development does not come with us being ruled by patterns and algorithms. That is tyranny. And, after all maybe ditching some patterns in our lives are a way to slow the experiential clock as we get older. That solution is gimmick free.

This is not an AI generated article. It was completely written by me.

John Ink2Quill

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