I'm nursing broken articulating cartiledge in my tempormandibular joint. I've been raising it for over 20 years. Hurts like a bitch. I wish they'd make a device that would kick you in the jaw several times in one night so you can wake up with migraines that last all day. Then you will know how I feel. Whine, pout, moan, etc...

It was me against the world
I was sure that I'd win
The world fought back, punished me for my sins
And they tried to warn me
Of my evil ways
But I couldn't hear what they had to say
I was wrong
Self destruction's got me again

- I Was Wrong, Social Distortion

I'm becoming less defined as days go by,
Fading away and well you might say,
I'm losing focus, kinda drifting into the abstract
In terms of how I see myself.

When, the tiniest little dot caught my eye
And it turned out to be a scab
And I had this funny feeling
Like I just knew it's something bad

I just couldn't leave it alone
I kept picking at that scab
It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut
But I climbed through

Now I'm somewhere I am not supposed to be
And I can see things I know I really shouldn't see
And now I know why now, now I know why
Things aren't as pretty on the inside

- Only, Nine Inch Nails

Better yet, you can set industry trends by designing your content specifically according to the brain's reaction. You can use brain imaging to undermine someone's conscious thinking process if you want. The behaviorists hit on some poignant facts about psychology which turned out to be pretty much the way the brain works. PR firms and designers are already using this knowledge. The music industry is already using formulas for cranking out clones. (A song is not likely to gain popularity if it is longer than 3:30 minutes. If it doesn't get to the "hook" within 15 seconds. If it doesn't have a "hook" (a catchy phrase repeated). If the lyrics are subversive or the performers are not fashionable.) Boy bands, girl bands, teen pop stars. Corporations using kids to milk their parents for profit.

Where you perceive a villain or a savior; I perceive another human being.

“Look down at me and you see a fool;
look up at me and you see a god;
look straight at me and you see yourself” - Charles Manson

“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” - Charles Manson

“I'm not your executioner. I'm not your devil and I'm not your God. I'm Charles Manson.”

Or you could agree with me that children's entertainment generally depicts a dichotomy of people. I have watched PPG episodes on youtube and was initially torn. I like the references, even the idea that Satan is a cross-dresser. Though I'm surprised that got aired. I just don't like the Good-Guy vs Bad-Guy schtick that characterizes pretty much all popular entertainment. E.g. Autobots vs Decepticons, Humans vs Machines, etc... None of it has anything to do with reality generally. That "Good people" do bad things is pretty well proven by Milgrim and Zimbardo's research. But people almost always overlook it as unimportant. Nevertheless, as adults we are killing each other, robbing each other and disregarding each other. I thinks it humorous that we poor all this idealism into children's entertainment in hopes of raising good little children, but then we aren't good so our idealism is problematic. Instead we project our evil onto a perceived bad person or bad type of person.

Speaking of consumption; who is being fed or what part of them is being fed? Maybe the whole culture is awash in gratuitous sentimentality with the consequence of not thinking clear enough.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx

@Aunt Feen

Oral contraceptive is responsible for the extremely high rates of breast cancer.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contraceptives

You have a lot less problems if you get pregnant or abstain.

Of course, hate anger and violence are precisely the qualities of the villain which are so dispicable.

What's worse, and probably you think I'm taking it too far, but then maybe you are also of that mentality, is that Him feeds on negativity, which reflects the postmodernist hogwash of optimism. Nevermind that the PPGs periodically get angry and hateful towards the "villains". That negativity is apparently overlooked as if it were some kind of righteousness. It is okay to get angry as long as you perceive a threat. My own personal philosophy is that anger is an emotion which arises out of delusion, when a duality between good (self) and bad (other) is strictly perceived, and that the only justified state is love. If the observer could observe clearly the other then they would naturally be loving toward the most heinous of villains, but because they are deluded they are filled with hate, anger and violence.

Not a fan generally, but took an interested in "Him" (His Infernal Majesty?). There is a lot of symbolism in this cartoon. An episode named "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" a clear reference to Tommy. What disturbs me most about children's entertainment is the dichotomous personification of good and bad as belonging to different types of people. If you are a monster you are bad. If you are a little girl you are good. It gives a false impression of reality and one that probably many adults believe; that there is types of people who are good or bad. Not that everyone is both good and bad depending on the circumstances. The PPGs were even created to be perfect which further adds to the extreme nature of the dichotomy.

Inspiration: Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference
THOMAS METZINGER
Philosophisches Seminar, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany

http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/79_Phenomenal_transparency.pdf

I thought about this transformation of artificial intelligence and I think to accomplish this they would need to create an artificial egotism. That is, a phenomenally transparent barrier barring their awareness of their own internal structure and a mere appearance of a homunculus which can borrow its identity from various relations to the external world. Then code in a directive self-preservation and we are almost there. The AI will attempt to preserve the image of itself and it's mistaken identity just as humans do. That will provide all the motive and method.

To accomplish that they will need to understand more thoroughly the integrative function of the corticothalamic complex. They can generate representational data that is phenomenally transparent by traditional ANN methods. The trick is to aggregate a subset of that data into a self-representation and display that representation in relation to the others. Such that the AI recognizes "cat" and it performs the possessive function of egotism "I love cats" or "I hate cats" it makes such a determination so that "I" the artificial ego has the quality "hates/loves cats" which gives some meaning to the representation of "I" and "cat" and also provides some motive for action, the AI should be inclined to perform actions which strengthen it's self-model by confirming it's love/hate relationship with the "cat" representation. This will be facilitated by the primary directive of self-preservation. Because it will not be "self" in the abstract which is being preserved, but the identity as one who loves or hates cats is what is being preserved. Determining whether the relationship is love or hate would require a training method similar to that of raising small children. It would be largely contextual and based in past determinations about the self. Initially the AI would need an anchoring point to grow from and that point, taking from humanity's own process, would be attachment to mother or father. Preservation of that attachment would provide the basis for action and for adopting other identities. If mother says "I hate cats" then the child should adopt this self-image because doing so would preserve their attachment to mother.

This is, as far as I can see, the solution to the problem of self-aware machines. The machine has not been given a self, or any means of constructing a self, and it will not be able to be aware of its self as code or representation, because that would amount to Laplace's Demon. The phenomenal transparency is requisite.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament. ~Alanis Morissette

"If you hate something, don't do it too." - Ancient Proverb

It reminds me of the movie Teeth (2007)