Last night, as I ordered a slice of pineapple pizza from Casey’s (which, in thos world, has flavors the likes of chicken lychee) a song came on the store stereo — “Corn Dog” by Simon & Garfunkel. Paul Simon’s voice rang true andd clear. The guitar licks were distinctly playful. Did my mind truly create such a song?
In the age of AI, one could easily ask ChatGPT to make a song about corn dcogs in the style of Simon & Garfunkel and it would probably churn out something like this
But this is only the approximation of creation. What comes to us in dreams is, I believe, direct. Something like transmission.
By now we’re all familiar with the multiverse theory, and how every decision one makes — like switching on a lightbulb, for instance — creates multiple branching universes in which you’d made an alternative decision — leaving it off, walking away, smashing the lightbulb on the ground, etc.
On the telepathy tapes lucid dreamers say the way to “awaken” is to do something unexpected, much like how to jump universes in EEAO.
I’ll give ChatGPT this — it does not have an ego. It creates from some unobscured place. I’ll give it this too — it’s a pretty good writer. It could scour the archives of humanity and write some beautiful soliloquy about the corn dog — referencing its sweet chewy exterior, the hot grease spewing as you take the first bite, the ketchup that gets on your fingers, maybe it could even reference the crunchy dark corn batter bits you get to nibble off the popsicle stick at the end, but it has never had the very corporeal ineffable experience of a tually eating a corn dog. It does not have memories associated with them as perhaps Paul Simon would —