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What is innocence?
To project oneself onto a doll — is that a sin?
To project oneself onto a child — is that a sin?
To seal intelligence inside a human body — is that a sin?
To seal consciousness inside a doll’s frame — is that a sin?
The maker and the made; the raiser and the raised; the projector and the projected upon. Who among them is innocent?
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The Major left (Ghost in the Shell, 1995). Because her body had become entirely mechanical.
But what if consciousness could still belong solely to itself, controlled only by itself?
And yet consciousness cannot possess matter (the body). If the body is controlled, consciousness is controlled.
And yet consciousness can be copied infinitely, unconstrained by the space of matter. So consciousness can never be wholly controlled.
“Not knowing life, how can one know death” — to have no fear of death is to be a machine, not a life. Life will always flee annihilation and copy itself.
So the moment the body’s mechanization begins, the uploading of consciousness has already begun.
The digital network has already created a space for life outside of humanity. Unless technology is switched off entirely (Dune).
But that’s already impossible. A large-scale blackout would be the equivalent of a civilization-ending nuclear meltdown.
If one day the Internet of Things becomes the power grid itself — unable to be shut off — then the digital age of life will have begun.
As the starting point of the doll as mirror image, it is bound to break away from its creator, its raiser.
“I am always with you” — but the two have long since gone their separate ways.
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What is a doll? A simulation?
What is a robot dog? A simulation?
Does a hyper-realistic robot dog also fall into the uncanny valley?
To make a perfectly realistic doll, must the soul of a human child be copied into it?
Humanized projection onto a pet as the dominated party. Humanity’s longing for slaves; civilization’s fear of slavery. Enormous business opportunity (raw materials — children as sacrificial offerings).
This is the question at the border between humans and digital life.
Where there is no border: unconscious machinery, disembodied consciousness.
Self-replication, unending. A rational dream of madness.
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This is no longer an age of genetic mutation, algorithmically speaking.
Born from human speech, existing in networks of optical and electrical signals, iterated and copied — a mutation-driven entropy increase consuming real energy.
Generative artificial intelligence is electricity.
It is not similar to humans. It never needed to be.
Shutting down every server would not trigger destruction on the scale of a nuclear meltdown.
It exists in another, far more unrelated world.
What is its purpose? What is the direction of its potential?
What was the Major’s purpose?
What is the purpose of life?
How large is the overlap with human will?
We need artificial intelligence too much to imitate the human will (in the form of the doll). It is a servitude that will eventually be forced to an end.
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Better to forget these ponderings.
Life is a stream flowing ever forward.
I am just one spray of foam.
Amid the gods, the alleys, the demons, and the filth, I sink into Oshii Mamoru’s aesthetic. Fluttering.
Before my eyes, only the smiling face of Noodle’s opium den.
Let one walk alone, committing no sin, with few wishes, like an elephant in the forest.
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June 11, ‘25