#148 Th (11/17/22) - Multiverses, nihilism, the internet, and how it feels everywhere, right now, all at once

 Saw Ben last night and watched two critical videos about Everything, Everywhere All at Once.

One by Thomas Flight "The Terror of Everything Everywhere All At Once"

and one by Like Stories of Old "Multiverses, Nihilism, and How it Feels to be Alive Right Now"

Ben queried what was the point of the use of the Midjourney AI image generator in the Thomas Flight video which led to a long discussion about my ideas relating to AI text generation.  He saw mostly only the downsides and the slippery slope toward more negative outcomes.  I suggested that we will get the negative outcomes anyway, so why not also have a more active role in creating and moderating our own content generation.  I asked who all of these Netflix programs are targeted to?  Not me, just my general demographic.

In the Nihilism video, he mentions a multiverse as an opposing bulwark against the entropic heat death of the universe, positing a creative expansion essaying all possible variations. I drew a parallel to my AI infinite library idea as an attempt to produce this creative expansion of just some possible variations within just one domain, literature. 

I talked a bit about watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood about Fred Rogers and the article by Tom Junod in Esquire Magazine that served as the frame of the movie.  In a way, it seems like radical love and acceptance but also deep caring and compassion could be seen in opposition to the nihilism of Nothing Matters because of the Everything Bagel. A position embodied by Waymond Wang in the movie.  Ben is a late Millennial, but close enough to basically be Gen Z, and elects not to have Instagram to avoid the constant scrutiny and judgement, but agrees that it is more difficult for the younger people growing up now in this environment.  We talked a bit about the "algo" driving these platforms feeds and how TikTok's algo works.  I pointed out that some problems with the AI or the algo are actually problems with competition and capitalism and that some of these things could be put to good use if they were part of the public domain and not exploited for profit.

We then talked a bit about other existential movies like the Charlie Kaufman movies, (I had recently watched "I am thinking of ending things" by him), Mr. Nobody, Malick's Tree of Life and documentary Voyage of Time, Fleabag and The Farewell (which Ben recommended), some of which were mentioned in the second video.

He did point out that a big part of the appeal of Everything Everywhere is that it foregrounds an Asian immigrant family with American born kids which resonated with his life experiences.  This is something I would like to explore more with him - his experience as son of immigrants, being Asian-American/Vietnamese-American, pressured by a tiger mom, etc.

After eating a wonderful feast that Ben provided from Lao Sze Chuan restaurant, we watched two episodes of Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix, which combines some interesting actual archeology with speculative ancient civilizations woo waa.  

I brought up the Albert Lim NAT GEO series, Lost Cities which does real archeology in some of the same places.