Thoughts on a Drowning
This was posted to the original Asnuma blog on May 29, 2016.
It is over - my undergraduate years ended softly.
I completed coursework in neuroanatomy and embodied cognition, and I relished every moment of it as though those lessons were ocean and I was desert. Yet sometimes, education was flood and I was arroyo, at once overwhelmed and submerged in concepts beyond my hungry, reaching, greedy grasp. There is nothing half so fine as an education. I reiterate what I wrote in the last post: That I am grateful, that I am indebted to the minds of giants. Yet a thirst still rages within me. This post will be the first of two describing my next steps, which include autodidact mathematics education (in the next post) and the future of my research. However, before getting too far, I want to lay bare a scene: That of a drowning.
Out in the middle of the lake, a corpse floats on the surface of the water. Someone has drowned. Out there in the wilds of a lake, there is a body with a pair of combat boots and a faded, tattered jacket bearing a logo that can no longer be distinguished. The hair is splayed about, soft and delicate. Drink too deeply, and this corpse will be you. You will be saddened by what you know.
To research is to drown. In the beginning, I dreamed that I was the ocean, filled with secrets that would surface from within, that research was an odyssey of personal poetry. My first research projects were as narcissistic as one can imagine. Indeed, I do not deny that my current research is still aimed at the self. I am a cognitive scientist; we are obsessed with finding the soul within the software. Some of my projects are likely to go nowhere, to die of drought and fatigue. One such project involves an attempt to "clone" a memory, to recreate a memory of my own through code and mathematics, to plant this in a machine so that it, too, might recall the sound of my grandmother's voice, the wonder of playing on swings in the nighttime, the tears that sprung loose at the first reading of The Call of the Wild. Sometimes these absurd research goals sound more like science fiction, but more often than not they are the result of a mind desperate to mirror itself, to recreate itself, to paint self portraits on an electric canvas. Is that not what humanity aspires to do with artificial intelligence? Is that not what our cave paintings were all about?
I am swimming out into the middle of the lake now. This fall, I will begin work researching computational linguistics full time. I have a handful of goals. For one, I aspire to work with endangered and revitalized languages, particularly Zuni and Eyak. I want technology to have a purpose, to work toward bettering the world through the advantages a good computer provides. I want to work towards computer vision and processing of gestures and signed languages. I want to know where language comes from, where it emerged in our evolutionary history. I desire to see language from all angles: Sight and taste, smell and sound.
Perhaps I will drown. Cognitive science and computer science are overwhelming endeavors, after all. It is surprising but true: Cognitive science is spiritually taxing. Sometimes thoughts are reduced to neurons and fiber tracts. The wonder of contemplating the mind does not necessarily leave, but it from time to time becomes sorrowful to know that this incredible instrument has limits imposed by its biology. One becomes aware of her own mortality and edges, her empty spaces and her shortage of time. The goal of my research this fall is to find mortality and edges beautiful, not frightening. That is the next step: To know the limits of the mind and transcend them, love them, gnash at them, swallow them, become them. That is the next phase of research, to understand what language and the brain can't do. I will be saddened by what I know.
