Sublime

Consciousness is not a clever algorithm. Its beating heart is intrinsic causal power, not computation. Causal power is not something intangible, ethereal, but something physical—the extent to which the system's recent past specifies its present state (cause power) and the extent to which this current state specifies its immediate future (effect pow

The book, its existence, its creation, is the product of a causal loop. It comes from nowhere, has no unique origin, and yet its creator is me.

“Humans don’t have programming.” “Yes you do. You have too much of it. Conflicting programs, none of it interfacing properly, all calling different functions at the same time—or the same function for contradictory reasons. Yet you ignore it sometimes. That is not a flaw. It is what makes you you.”

I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write… I’ve made myself into the character of a book, a life one reads. Whatever I feel is felt (against my will) so that I can write that I felt it. Whatever I think is promptly put into words, mixed with images that undo it, cast into rhythms that are something else altogether. From so much self-revisi

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on the one hand, thoughts are expressed on behalf of an integrated nameable self and, therefore, seem to be ‘my’ thoughts; on the other hand, the fact that they are spoken in words, which are designed to communicate between people, suggests a degree of internal fragmentation.

The noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks had this to say about originality, in his essay “Prodigies” from the book An Anthropologist on Mars: Creativity, as usually understood, entails not only a “what,” a talent, but a “who”—strong personal characteristics, a strong identity, personal sensibility, a personal style, which flow into the talent,